Above photo: Tower Hall at San Jose State University. Wikimedia.
‘Do You Value Life, SJSU?’
“I can no longer ethically or morally consent to use my labor in any way that supports an institution that is explicitly manufacturing consent for the unrestrained, illegal, ‘apocalyptic’ ongoing series of ‘calculated’ genocides to destroy Palestine”
Editor’s Note: Professor Rochelle McLaughlin sent the following letter to the leadership of San Jose State University on December 5, 2024. McLaughlin has been a professor in the Department of Occupational Therapy since 2004.
Dear, CSU Board of Trustees, Mildred Garcia, Cynthia Teniente-Matson, Jennifer Malutta, Mari Fuentes-Martin, Patience Bryant, Jahmal Williams, Kristin Dukes, Jon Tucker, Mai Ma Cantos, Nnenna Abaeze, Vincent Del Casino, Ro Khanna, Zoe Lofgren, Ash Kalra, Alex Lee, Evan Low, Cindy Chavez, Omar Torres, Matt Mahan, Dr. Shillington, Dr. Masucci, Dr. Knepper, Dr. Smith, OT Department faculty, staff, and students,
Please accept this as my letter of resignation from SJSU effective December 20, 2024. I have been teaching here for the past 20 years and I can no longer ethically or morally consent to use my labor in any way that supports an institution that is explicitly manufacturing consent for the unrestrained, illegal, “apocalyptic” ongoing series of “calculated” genocides to destroy the people of Palestine. I believe that neither our tax dollars nor students’ tuition ought to be funding genocides. Over the last 14 months, SJSU students and faculty along with our local community have been trying to hold up a moral and ethical compass for our university to stand up for humanitarian law, to speak up against killing innocent people, and to disclose and divest from war and weapons. During this time, I have felt deeply saddened, pained, and disappointed in witnessing the university’s response in repressing and silencing repeated pleas from our faculty, students, and community to end SJSU’s complicity and material support of the military-industrial complex and the Zionist occupation of Indigenous land (Refer to ADDENDUM).
As an alumna of SJSU and a faculty member of 20 years, I embraced and aligned with SJSU’s vision of being “an intellectual environment in which hands-on, transformational learning experiences help students, faculty, and staff collaboratively address complex issues in global communities.” This historic anti-genocide and pro-Palestinian global student movement, where our very own SJSU students and faculty have been putting their bodies and careers on the line, upholds and fulfills this very promise. I am shocked and outraged by my university’s restrictive and punitive response to our community’s urgent public outcry for human empathy, understanding, integrity, and accountability. The hypocrisy in SJSU’s mission statement proclaiming to “nurture leaders to thrive and transform our community…and the world” while simultaneously punishing them for doing exactly that is abundantly clear. The hypocrisy in SJSU having a massive anti-apartheid statue in the heart of campus, presenting itself as a university at the epicenter of justice and equity, while simultaneously suspending and wrongfully maligning Dr. Sang Hea Kil, a Justice Studies professor, and Faculty Advisor for Students for Justice in Palestine will be remembered by historical records forever.
As I resign from SJSU, I call upon the institution to look at Sacramento State and San Francisco State which conducted peaceful negotiations around divestment issues after their anti-genocide encampments. SJSU must learn from these universities, apologize to Professor Kil, end her suspension, and lead with ethical and moral standards of behavior instead of aiding the U.S.-Israeli genocide by manufacturing impunity for the perpetrators. It is a gross injustice to see SJSU’s administration push the propaganda of conflating Zionism with Judaism and villainize anti-genocide speech as antisemitism because this is precisely what has sustained decades of human rights violations in Palestine. I join with the United States Human Rights Leahy Laws, rulings of the International Criminal Court (ICC), the International Court of Justice (ICJ), Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, B’Tselem, The Lancet, eyewitness members of civil society, Haaretz, Israel’s Former Defense Minister and IOF Chief of Staff, the voices of the SJSU’s Associated Students, renowned SJSU faculty, and The Oxford University Union all of which expose SJSU’s complicity in the U.S.-Israeli genocide that is in the service of racist apartheid, which, according to ICC chief, Judge Akane, as stated on December 2, 2024, puts “the future of humanity under threat”.
Ultimately, Palestine is an issue of values. Do you value life, SJSU? Do you value humanity, SJSU? Are you going to continue to engage in anti-Palestinian racism while the U.S.-Israeli government continues starving, murdering, and terrorizing tens of thousands of children? Will you continue to provide an institutional cover for and collude in the imperialist violence as was described in detail by the University of California People’s Tribunal? Or will you use the privilege of your institutional power to do what you can to stop this horror through boycotts, divestment, and sanctions once and for all?
If you continue your complicity, you will continue to participate in the laundering of our tax dollars into the hands of stakeholders of the U.S. Military Industrial Complex. If you don’t like your propaganda and complicity to speak for you, then give us actions that speak louder. What kind of future could you possibly hope for your students as UC Irvine Professor, Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, bravely expressed? The future of your students and faculty is on the line, while the lives of Palestinian children, educators, journalists, healthcare, and aid workers are being gleefully starved, butchered, and slaughtered en masse while being live-streamed, in broad daylight.
As Josh Paul, former director of the U.S. Dept of State Bureau of Political-Military Affairs stated, “If we want a world shaped by what we perceive to be our values, it is only by holding our partners, and above all by holding ourselves, to those values, that we will see it.”
It’s time to do the right thing SJSU. Follow the lead of Sacramento and San Francisco State Universities. Apologize to your anti-genocide faculty and students you have harmed. Move forward on the right side of history. Publicly condemn U.S.-Israeli violence by calling for immediate intervention to punish the perpetrators of the genocide, including an arms embargo, divestment, and severe sanctions now to save the Palestinian people, the future of your students and faculty, and humanity itself.
Sincerely,
Rochelle McLaughlin, December 5, 2024
Addendum
SJSU has been repeatedly informed of the following facts about the gross violations of human genocidal crimes:
- Palestinians have experienced genocide, domicide, cultural erasure, dehumanization, institutional racism, forced starvation, murder, torture, crimes against humanity, relentless expulsion, and land/resource ecocide and theft for over eight decades that was born through British Colonialism, created through Zionist terrorism, supported by Western Imperialism, sustained by fake claims of antisemitism and illegitimate claims of self-defense, and heavily engaged in settler colonialism.
- 1,151 Palestinian doctors and nurses, 341 aid workers, and 191 journalists who have worked bravely and steadfastly to slow the ethnic cleansing of their people have been targeted and killed in the past year; in some instances, assassinated, burned alive, bulldozed alive, and buried alive, and in some cases raped to death in Israeli-U.S. torture camps. Children are forced to undergo surgeries and amputations without anesthesia with Gaza now having the most “child amputees” per capita in the world. 1.8 millian Palestinians are facing imminent death by starvation.
- At least 220,000+ Palestinians including at least 17,000 children have been massacred, with at least 21,000 missing, some 4,000 remain trapped under the rubble, some vaporized by the latest American-made carpet bomb technology being tested. Only 44,532 people have been properly identified with an additional 105,538 being injured. At least 50,000 Palestinian children have been orphaned due to U.S.-Israeli violence.
- Every university in Gaza has been obliterated by the highly lucrative U.S. military-industrial complex where the Pentagon appears to be unable to account for $2 Trillion of U.S. taxpayer dollars (again), which is responsible for committing “scholasticide”.
- 63 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza because the U.S. continues to be the only country to repeatedly veto the ceasefire proposals. In comparison, over 11,800 Palestinian hostages (including children as young as 11 months old) languish, without charge, in Israeli-U.S. torture camps.
With SJSU’s support, Biden/Harris just approved another $680 million dollars in arms sales to “Israel”.