Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at Pratt Institute is an affiliation group acting in solidarity with the Palestinian people. We are open to all Pratt faculty and staff. We also welcome participation among Pratt students, as well as our broader communities.
We are an affiliate group of the national Faculty for Justice in Palestine network.
For recent updates, click on “Newsletter” above; you can subscribe to future newsletters at the bottom of this page.
Mission Statement
We, Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at Pratt Institute, express our solidarity with the Palestinian people. We oppose genocidal expressions of coloniality wherever they surface, and we organize now to directly address the state of Israel’s genocidal conduct in occupied Palestine. We condemn U.S. military, diplomatic and financial support for Israel – an ethnostate that since October 2023 has killed over 37,000 in Gaza, including more than 15,000 children (updated June 2024). Conducted in blatant disregard of international law, Israel’s recent campaign has destroyed vital infrastructure and displaced more than 1.7 million people by dropping kilotons of explosives on what rights groups describe as an open-air prison. We view this genocidal violence as a continuation of Israel’s effort to ethnically cleanse Palestinians from the region, an effort that began before the Nakba in 1948 and that has proceeded ever since with endless illegal evictions and settlements, killings and kidnappings, segregation and dehumanization.
FSJP at Pratt will work towards strengthening geopolitical awareness and connections among faculty, staff, graduate students, and community educators. The Palestinian question has become one of the great moral as well as political issues debated on university campuses, and students and teachers whose work explores the legacies of colonialism and racial capitalism, and/or who are part of the Palestine solidarity movement are increasingly subject to surveillance and criminalization. Thus, we view the movement for justice in Palestine as a crucial terrain for highlighting the defense of freedom of expression and political commitment within the academy; the preservation of free inquiry, engaged pedagogy, and open scholarship; and the survival of egalitarian campus governance and community in the face of attacks by off-campus groups allied with unconditional United States support for the Israeli state.
As scholars, artists and writers, part of our project is to recognize, and if possible to understand, the history and conditions of oppression. Such experiences and apprehensions can be no mere witnessing, but must affect our work. As teachers, it is our duty to welcome difficult discourse between divergent viewpoints. Our classrooms are, and must remain, places where students can dwell in community without precluding the discomfort that is often intrinsic to deep, compassionate learning. As scholars, it is our responsibility to study history, and to consider the politics of location of our selves and our institutions. In witnessing Israel’s destruction of schools and universities in Gaza, we recommit to scholarship as a transcultural and global practice; and understand we can only do our work when the writers, researchers, and thinkers of Palestine can do their work.
None of us is free until Palestine is free.
Principles of Unity
FSJP is a democratic and plural collective of Pratt faculty and staff who support the cause of Palestinian liberation. We define faculty broadly to refer to those involved in making education available at Pratt, including both tenure and non-tenure track faculty, staff, and graduate employees.
- FSJP understands the struggle for Palestinian freedom to be aligned with anti-colonial movements and struggles in many parts of the world. These include movements for indigenous land rights, Black liberation, gender and sexual freedom and a liveable and sustainable planet.
- FSJP supports the call for Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions and for an end to Israel’s occupation and colonization of Palestine. We insist on the fundamental rights of Palestinians to self-determination and legal equality, and we pledge to respect, protect and promote the rights of Palestinian refugees to return to their homes and lands.
- FSJP rejects the conflation of support for Palestinian liberation and antisemitism; we stand against racism in all its manifestations.
- FSJP will support and amplify the work of SJP (Students for Justice in Palestine) and JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace) groups on campus.
- As part of our commitment, FSJP members engage in education, advocacy, and action.
- The most securely employed among us protect more vulnerable members at all times.
- FSJP participates in regional cross-campus coalitions with allies at other universities, and as a branch of an emergent national network.
We also support and abide by FJP National’s Principles of Unity.