We, the undersigned faculty and staff at Pratt Institute, write in solidarity with Palestinian people. We oppose genocidal expressions of coloniality wherever they surface, and we write now to directly address the state of Israel’s genocidal conduct in occupied Palestine. In the recent, ongoing bombardment of Gaza, Israel has dropped kilotons of explosives on what rights groups describe as an open-air prison. Israel’s effort to ethnically cleanse the region, from Gaza to the West Bank, conducted in blatant disregard of international law, has destroyed vital infrastructure, displaced more than a million people, and resulted in incalculable loss of life. Enough.
As inheritors of a legacy of American genocide and indigenous land displacement, we protest on every level the United States’ role in funding and enabling the violence enacted on Palestinians, which benefits weapons manufacturers and the ruthless geopolitical interests of the United States at the expense of Palestinian lives, including whole families, cities, cultural memory, and precious ecologies that are stamped out under the heavy tread of war. We condemn U.S. military and diplomatic support for Israel, and we rebuke our leaders—political and institutional—who enable Israel’s settler colonial ethnostate with words, weapons, and other military aid. We recognize the pattern of the United States government’s consistent opposition to people’s movements everywhere, against global liberation struggles, and we lament this endless series of lost opportunities to direct resources toward justice and peace.
We join our colleagues and students, from K–12 classrooms to college campuses across New York and the United States, who are calling for a ceasefire in Gaza now. As socially-engaged artists and designers, part of our work is to transform our feelings—our grief, rage, and frustration—through expressive action. We have a responsibility to witness and speak out against oppression wherever it surfaces. As teachers, it is our duty to welcome difficult discourse between divergent viewpoints; our classrooms are, and must remain, places where students can form community without precluding the discomfort that is often intrinsic to deep, compassionate learning. We aim to cultivate our students’ critical imagination and to empower them to interrogate the supposed inevitabilities of a disastrous status quo. As staff and faculty at an institution that prizes inquiry, creativity, diversity, equity, inclusion, and understanding, our roles require us to protect the speech of our most vulnerable students and colleagues when social and institutional pressures would coerce their silence. As scholars, it is our responsibility to study history, and to consider the politics of location, of ourselves and our institutions. In witnessing Israel’s destruction of schools and universities in Gaza, we commit to scholarship as a transcultural and global practice. We understand that we can only do our work when the writers, researchers, and thinkers of Palestine can do their work. We must speak and act in accordance with our pedagogical values always, and especially now, when global conditions demand it.
To that end: we call for an immediate ceasefire and an end to the occupation of Palestine. We affirm the right to safety of Jewish people, and all people, while at the same time we reject as falsehood the idea of the militant police state as guarantor of security and well-being. When predicated on systematic dispossession and carceral control, safety will always remain illusory and tenuous. We amplify our Jewish colleagues’ and students’ calls: Never Again For Anyone. Not In Our Name.
We resolve to be clear in our language: naming Israel an apartheid state and calling Israel’s military campaign in Gaza genocidal. We oppose efforts in the U.S. and around the world to silence protest against genocide and settler colonialism in the public sector, the press, and the University. We appeal to Pratt and to our faculty and staff unions and parent unions, the NYSUT and OPEIU Local 153, to adopt the academic and cultural boycott of Israel until apartheid conditions are ended and war criminals removed from power.
We stand in solidarity with students and faculty at colleges and universities who have faced censorship and retaliation for their expressions of solidarity with the people of Palestine, and for their criticisms of the state of Israel. We acknowledge the violent realities of Islamophobia, racism, and antisemitism in the U.S. and abroad, and we recommit to speaking and acting out against all forms of hate, discrimination, and racial supremacist ideology. We recommit to the practice of civil discourse as a cornerstone of the social-intellectual-creative project that is higher education. We define this mode of discourse as open, critical, compassionate, and respectful dialogue. We will hold space for grief while disallowing grief to be weaponized. We reject all excuses and false exceptions that normalize genocide.
Our students already face innumerable challenges: of climate precarity, wealth inequality, social and political systems predicated on exclusion, and a political apparatus that is structurally unresponsive to popular opinion and regularly threatens complete dysfunction. Over two-thirds of the country is in favor of a ceasefire and end to the siege in Gaza. Solidarity has always been the antithesis to systems of domination. Today, let us embody our democratic ideals toward justice and peace. None of us are free until Palestine is free.
In solidarity,
Rachael Guynn Wilson, Visiting Assistant Professor, Humanities and Media Studies
Tess Brown-Lavoie, Visiting Assistant Professor, HMS
Brandon Wilner, Program Assistant, Master of Landscape Architecture Program
Laura Henriksen, Visiting Assistant Professor, Writing Department
Kimi Hanauer, Assistant Professor, Graduate and Undergraduate Communication Design
Rachel Levitsky, Professor, Writing Department
Dan Boscov-Ellen, Assistant Professor, SSCS
Jonathan Beller, Professor, HMS
anna moschovakis, Writing Department
Ana Mengote Baluca, Visiting Instructor, Industrial Design
Jon Tan, Serials and Electronic Resources Technician, Pratt Libraries, OPEIU Local 153
Nida A, Associate Professor
Lisabeth During, Associate Professor SSCS
Emily Martin, Adjunct Assistant Professor, HMS
S.E., Visiting Assistant Professor, Undergraduate Communications Design Department
Jessica Flemming, Visiting Assistant Professor, Undergraduate Communications Design
Nene Villalobos, Assistant to the Chair UG COMD
Holly Wilson, Associate Professor, Libraries
Sal Tuszynski, Access Services Clerk at the library, OPEIU 153
Sara Jane Stoner
Tate Rench, Production Facilities Technician
Erin Murphy, Associate Manager of Admissions, GAUD
Bryce T., Pratt UA architecture
Josh Cruz
Anya Bernstein, Model Services and Classroom Manager, Office of the Provost
Regan Good
Bethany Ides, Adjunct Professor, Humanities & Media Studies
OC, Visiting Assistant Professor, History of Art and Design
Lauren Krauze, Visiting Assistant Professor, Humanities and Media Studies
Madeline Isakson
Laura Elrick, Associate Professor, Writing Department
S K, Adjunct Associate Professor, Communication Design Department
Christopher Rey Pérez, Visiting Professor, Writing Department
Gerardo Ismael Madera
Ann Holder
Elizabeth Berg, Libraries
Hannah Lillith Assadi, Writing Department
Zat J, Assistant Professor
Mike Tully, Visiting Assistant Professor, Undergraduate Communications Design
SPP, School of Design
Lipika Bhargava, AICAD fellow, Fine Arts
Claire Donato, Adjunct Assistant Professor with CCE & Acting Chairperson of Writing
K.S., Assistant Professor
M.P.
June Bendich, Evening Asst. Manager, Library Department
Elæ Moss, Adjunct Professor
A.H.
Lama Shehadeh, Visiting Instructor, ID Department
Paul Rho, Digital Imaging Technician, Pratt Library
Alysia Slocum LaFerriere, Writing Department
Minh-Ha T. Pham, Associate Professor, Media Studies
Velina Manolova, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Humanities & Media Studies; Secretary, UFCT 1460
Moein Shashaei, Visiting Assistant Professor, School of Design
Cameron Crawford, Professor/CCE, HMS
Maria Damon, Professor, Humanities and Media Studies/Writing
BY, Adjunct Instructor, Social Science and Cultural Studies
Audrey Lindsey, Visiting Instructor
Lisa Bateman
Eleanor King, Technical Director, Foundation Department
Faith Holland, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Foundations and Media Studies
Emily Beall, Adjunct Assistant Professor w/CCE, Humanities and Media Studies
Caitlin Cahill, Associate Professor, SSCS
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Chris Lee, Assistant Professor, Undergraduate Communications Design
ERP
cs, dda
Wini Austin, UA
Christian Hawkey, Writing Department
Todd Ayoung, Adjunct Associate Professor, CCE, Foundation
Vatsal Upadhyay, Architecture
Ben Erickson, Visiting Assistant Professor, Undergraduate Architecture
ML, Undergraduate Sophomore, COMD Illustration
S.B.
Jay P, staff
Jackie Ess, Visiting Assistant Professor, Writing Department
Janki Patel, Assistant Director, Office of Education Abroad
Chip McCall, Assistant Chairperson, Fine Arts Department
Asher Groh, Film/Video Technician (OPEIU Local 153)
Last updated Oct 17th, 2024.
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