[Editor’s note: Open letters published in the Bi-College News do not reflect the views of the publication, its staff, or its editorial board. This letter represents only the views of the author. The Bi-Co News continues to strive to reflect the perspectives and experiences of all students across the Consortium.]
I would like to respond to the recent Letter to the Editor and expand on the referenced community comment discussion. The letter published on March 25 opposes Plenary Resolution #9: “Cutting Study Abroad Ties with Two Approved Programs, In Line with Bryn Mawr Mission Statement.” I aim to clarify misconceptions mentioned in the letter and emphasize the harm of supporting Israeli universities under the guise of standing in solidarity with Palestinians.
First, while Bryn Mawr does not award credit for unapproved study abroad programs attended during the academic year, it does indeed provide credit for these programs during the summer. In addition to transferring credit for summer programs, the college offers many avenues of financial support for students. For instance, the Career & Civic Engagement Center offers funding for summer learning experiences, and the Office of Global Engagement offers several different summer grants and fellowships.
Arabic has distinct dialects, including the Levantine dialect, which is spoken in Palestine, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon. Levantine Arabic consists of two sub-dialects: Northern Levantine Arabic, spoken in Lebanon and Syria, and South Levantine Arabic, spoken in Palestine and Jordan. The Sijal Institute teaches the Levantine dialect, with an emphasis on South Levantine Arabic. But immersion requires more than learning a language in the classroom. There are over two million Palestinians in Jordan, the vast majority of which fled following the 1948 Nakba. In the city of Amman, the capital of Jordan where the Sijal Institute is located, Jordanians of Palestinian descent make up over 80 percent of the population. By contrast, Palestinian citizens in the apartheid state of Israel constitute only 19 percent of the total population. I attended the Sijal Institute, which granted me the opportunity to make contacts with Palestinians on the ground. Such opportunities cannot be afforded by the University of Haifa, which has repeatedly taken disciplinary action against students who expressed pro-Palestinian sentiments.
Israeli universities are endogenously incompatible with Palestinian solidarity. Scholar Maya Wind identifies that, for over a decade, these institutions have been crucial tools in expanding the settler-colonial project and are strategically built on occupied land. Wind’s research includes the Hebrew University, the first university of the Zionist movement, which appropriated 90 percent of land originally owned by the neighboring Palestinian community of Issawiyeh. She also notes that the Hebrew University is home to an active military base on its campus, and its Department of Islamic and Middle East Studies trains soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) and bolsters their surveillance of the Palestinian people. The University of Haifa similarly provides training to the IDF, buries evidence of its participation in ethnic cleansing, and violently represses student activists, according to Wind. The University of Haifa also disproportionately punishes Palestinian students and prevents them from participating in student government. The university violates Palestinians’ rights to education and arbitrarily denies dorm applications, effectively barring Palestinians from access to higher education. Wind writes that during the 2021-2022 academic year, Palestinians made up only 16 percent of bachelor’s degree students and 3.5 percent of faculty at Israeli universities.
Showing up for Palestinians means heeding their calls to boycott Israeli academic and cultural institutions. The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) was launched in 2004 by a group of Palestinian scholars, including Omar Barghouti who later co-founded the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement in 2005. One hundred and seventy Palestinian civil society organizations, including trade unions, grassroots initiatives, women’s and refugee rights associations – all which are comprised of individual Palestinians, came together to launch this movement. Advocates for an academic boycott are not exclusively Palestinians. Maya Wind, an Israeli scholar, extensively details the complicity of Israeli institutions in the violation of Palestinian rights in her book Towers of Ivory and Steel: How Israeli Universities Deny Palestinian Freedom, which is cited by the resolution writers.
The main impact of Plenary Resolution #9 is that it calls upon Bryn Mawr College to uphold its principles of social justice and make a statement that our student body stands against apartheid, genocide, and scholasticide. We must recognize our position as a private American institution in higher education and contribute to the broader movement alongside Pitzer College, which ended its study abroad program with the University of Haifa.
It is important to understand that this is larger than any single individual. To be a student leader is to first be a student – to listen before speaking. The fight for Palestinian liberation is not new, and a commitment to activism requires a willingness to honor and understand the work that came before us – both in Palestine and our local communities. I encourage you to donate to mutual aid campaigns, where you can directly connect with a Palestinian family, as opposed to organizations. I hope you consider this letter, not just when you cast your vote, but as you assess your own complicity in upholding the apartheid state.
