Dear Friend,
As the end of year approaches we are preparing for the next stage of our fight at SFSU to defend Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi, Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diapsporas (AMED) studies, and critical Palestine scholarship and campus activism. We need your help to win this fight by donating and encouraging your contacts near and far to publicize widely!
Israeli lobby organizations have long pressured SFSU to punish Dr. Abdulhadi for her scholarship, teaching and advocacy for justice for/in Palestine. Dr. Abdulhadi has refused to be silent and resisted attempts to shut down AMED Studies and criminalize her student. She defeated Zionist Lawfare with the help of her two pro Bono lawyers and the support of the braodest supporters of justice for all like yourself. Despite her victory against Lawfare on behalf of SFSU and CSU, the university refused to distance itself from the Israel lobby. Instead SFSU Administrators have escalated their collusion with pro-Israel groups and refused to support Dr. Abdulhadi, AMED Studies Program and her students whose very safety and hers are threatened. She filed Federal and State lawsuits to hold SFSU accountable to the public and insist on education for all instead of catering to Zionist and right wing special interest groups.
On August 16, 2019, Dr. Abdulhadi’s lawyers struck a major victory when a federal judge decided that the lawsuit would move forward. To prepare for trial, the legal team will now need to embark on discovery, a costly but necessary undertaking toward winning the lawsuits.
A long history of undermining Palestine scholarship at SFSU, 2017, escalated when the Lawfare Project, an Israel lobby organization, partnered with mega-law firm, Winston & Strawn, to sue Professor Rabab Abdulhadi for criticizing Israel in her scholarship, teaching and advocacy. Her two movement lawyers, Mark Kleiman and Behnam (Ben) Gharagozli, spent over 400 hours of pro Bono legal work given free of charge
SFSU cannot fire Professor Abdulhadi not only because she is tenured but because she is doing her job well despite unrelenting Zionist and Administrative attacks. Instead, SFSU is using all sorts of bureaucratic excuses to make her life miserable and thus force her to resign. These abuses range from locking her out of her courses, interfering with her ability to lead and run the AMED Studies program in an attempt to shut it down, denying her legally enforced disability accommodation, cancelling her faculty-led Palestine Study Abroad trip at the last minute, squeezing her financially by denying her reimbursements for almost a year, and refusing to provide her and her students with safety measure in the face of racist and Islamophobic death threats. e Dr. Abdulhadi’s Federal and State lawsuits seek damages for SFSU’s retaliation against Dr. Abdulhadi for her academic work and political speech for justice for and in Palestine, SFSU’s violation of her MOU job offer contract that attracted her to SFSU to develop AMED Studies and the university’s violation of employment laws.
We have a unique opportunity to go on the offensive now to loosen Israel lobby’s grip on SFSU and deliver justice to Dr. Abdulhadi, her program and her students. As we do, we will also be able to expose how the lobby suppresses speech on campuses.
Academic successes and achievements:
This past year alone, Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi received 3 prestigious awards: ADC’s Alex Odeh Award, the Lucius Walker Community Organizing Award, and she was named the Bay Area Visionary by the National Women’s Studies Association for 2019 for her lifetime of commitment to the indivisibility of justice for Palestine and everywhere. While battling Administrative abuse and a toxic and dangerous environment, Dr. Abdulhadi published several articles and books chapters.
Dr. Abdulhadi has also continued to take seriously her role as a public intellectual whose first accountability is to her communities of justice. She brought Palestinian solidarity to Mauna Kea Camp, the 50th anniversary of the College of Ethnic Studies at SFSU, Black Palestinian Solidarity: Contesting Settler Colonialism with Aborignial communities, the 50th anniversary of the occupation of Alcatraz and the 50th anniversary of the American Indian Movement. She participated in the Crystal City Pilgrimage marking WWII internment camps, and the National Women’s Studies Association conference.
She resisted attempts to shut down AMED studies program and succeeded in planning six courses for the upcoming Spring semester, following a very successful Fall semester with open classroom events and collaboration with SFSU Constitution Day. Department of Asian American Studies, Comfort Women Justice Coalition, while building our project on Teaching Palestine: Pedagogical Praxis and the Indivisibility of Justice which we took to South Africa, Atlanta, Cuba and Seville.
To keep our momentum going, we need your support.
Please consider donating to this campaign for justice here: launchgood.com/supportRabab
And please do not forget to share this post with friends, family, and organizations as well as on social media!