NYU Global TIES Stands with Palestine Amid Campus Unrest
April 29, 2024
Last week U.S. university campuses erupted as students and faculty clashed with university administrations over pro-Palestinian protests. New York University, the home of Global TIES for Children (NYU-TIES), was at the heart of some of the headlines, when faculty and students were arrested while staging a peaceful protest in solidarity with Palestine. Many staff at NYU-TIES have been speaking out in support of Palestine and Palestinians and attending and organizing protests since the war on Gaza escalated this fall. As a research center committed to children’s well-being, growth, and educational opportunities, and having worked in the Middle East for the last decade, we want to make it unequivocally clear that we stand with Palestine, we stand with pro-Palestinian protestors, and we stand against Israel's systematic and historical oppression of Palestinians and its current war on Gaza.
The situation for everyone in Gaza, especially children, is bleak. UNICEF now identifies Gaza as the most dangerous place in the world to be a child. Nearly 14,000 children have been killed since October, an additional 17,000 have been orphaned, and many more wounded, maimed, or have had guardians severely wounded. These numbers increase daily. There has been a “systematic obliteration” of Gaza’s education system; as of mid-April 2024, 88% of schools had been destroyed. This is part of a broader decimation of Gaza’s infrastructure, with 62% of all homes destroyed and only 10 out of 36 hospitals remaining “partially functional”. At the same time, entirely preventable conditions of famine and disease are looming, and violence in the West Bank is increasing. It is not hard to understand why the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled that these conditions may amount to a genocide.
Science tells us that children’s resilience is deeply dependent on the resilience of the settings in which they develop. Both the occupation and current levels of devastation will have an adverse effect on the children of Palestine for decades, if not generations, to come. An immediate ceasefire and opening up of access points for humanitarian aid are an important first step for addressing this, but they are not enough. They must be followed by good-faith commitments from all actors, most notably Israel and its allies, to work towards a true and just peace that includes full rights for Palestinians and abolishes the system of apartheid in place since 1967.
Israel, however, continues to flaunt its obligations under international law and refuses to heed orders by the ICJ. And university administrations, including our own, continue to falsely define speech criticizing Israel as antisemitic. To be clear, antisemitism exists and must not be tolerated. But it is not antisemitic to criticize the actions of the government of Israel, to call out violations of international law, or to speak up for the rights of Palestinians. Antisemitism does not justify Israel’s oppression of Palestine or its current war on Gaza.
All of us (Global TIES for Children, NYU, and other universities) need to not only continue to echo calls for a ceasefire but also examine our own complicity, listen to what the protestors are saying, acknowledge the history of dispossession and oppression in Palestine, and leverage whatever tools are at our disposal, including divestments and boycotts, to pressure the Israeli government to end the current bombardment, dismantle the systems of oppression, and promote a just, real peace.
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Signed by the following TIES Leadership team members, staff, and affiliates:
Larry Aber
Dalia Al Ogaily
Patrick Anker
Berta Bartoli
Rezarta Bilali
Sneha Bolisetty
Douha Boulares
Lindsay Brown
Roxane Caires
Sohini Das
Leah de Vries
Emily Franchett
Silvana Freire Barrios
Lizzie Goodfriend
Marian Haji-Mohamed
Dennis Hilgendorf
Caroline Hiott
Yeshim Iqbal
Ha Yeon Kim
Sharon Kim
Tahiya Mahbub
Duja Michael
Casey Moran
Maung Nyeu
Sergio Ozoria
Wendy Palmer
Franklin Pichardo
Joyce Rafla
AK Rahim
Lucero Ramirez Varela
Kate Schwartz
Evelyn Seminario
Abiraahmi Shankar
Priyamvada Tiwari
Elisa Ugarte
Alice Wuermli
Hirokazu Yoshikawa
Click here for the accessible PDF.
