“Wij werken en studeren aan deze universiteit”, legt promovendus Zouhair Hammana van Erasmus School of Colour (ESoC) uit. “Wij willen ons hier veilig voelen. Als je dan ziet dat er dubbele standaarden zijn, dat de ene regio belangrijker is dan de andere en dus dat sommige levens belangrijker zijn dan andere, dan voelt dat niet veilig.”
Dat politieke uitingen en steun in de vorm van een noodfonds bij de oorlog in Oekraïne wel mogelijk is, vinden de mensen achter ESoC en EUC Collxctive alleen maar goed. “Dit zijn het soort zorg-gecentreerde benaderingen van het onderwijs die we altijd zouden willen zien”, schrijven zij in een brief aan het College van Bestuur. De houding van de universiteit wordt ‘selectief solidair, hypocriet en racistisch’ genoemd door de briefschrijvers.
Sit-in
Dinsdag hielden de studenten een sit-in op campus Woudestein. Dit protest was gericht tegen de EUR. De universiteit wilde vorig jaar de acties van Israël niet veroordelen. Toen werd de Gazastrook gebombardeerd en werden Palestijnen uit hun huis gezet voor Israël. De Palestijnse vlag en pro-Palestina-spandoeken mochten niet als protest aan de gevel van EUC hangen. Het beleid van de universiteit zou het niet toelaten om gebouwen te gebruiken voor politieke uitingen.
Het protest en de brief vallen samen met de Israeli Apartheid Week. Sinds 2005 wordt er tijdens deze week aandacht gevraagd voor ‘de Palestijnse vrijheidsstrijd en voor andere situaties waarin racisme, onderdrukking en discriminatie spelen’. Wereldwijd worden bij onder meer bij universiteiten bijeenkomsten georganiseerd. Dit jaar haken ook Rotterdamse (studenten)organisaties aan. Maandag en dinsdagen waren zij bij protesten in Den Haag en Utrecht.
Reactie CvB
“We willen hierover graag duidelijk zijn”, schrijft rector magnificus Annelien Bredenoord in een reactie aan de twee organisaties. “Wij betreuren alle conflicten in de wereld waar slachtoffers vallen, mensenrechten worden geschonden en/of waar minderheden in de knel komen. We zijn voor vrede en respect.”
Ook geeft de universiteit twee verklaringen waarom zij nu over Oekraïne wel een statement maakte. “Het leed komt nu extra dichtbij omdat Oekraïne direct aan de Europese Unie grenst”, luidt de eerste. De tweede is de veroordeling van de Russische agressie door de Nederlandse regering en de Europese Unie. De minister van Onderwijs heeft onderwijsinstellingen opgeroepen alle banden met Rusland te bevriezen. “De EUR heeft in het verband van de Universiteiten van Nederland aan deze oproep gehoor gegeven.”
Lees hieronder de hele brief van ESoC en EUC Collxctive.
Over the past couple of days, numerous higher educational institutions — from universities to university colleges, to universities of applied sciences —have issued statements of support and solidarity with the people of Ukraine. We think it is great that educational institutions are making their support and solidarity public to their students and staff. We also think it is great that they offer resources and possibilities of postponing deadlines to students and staff that are affected by the war in Ukraine. These are the kind of care-centred approaches to education we would always like to see.
At the same time, we cannot look past the selective solidarity, hypocrisy and racism of educational Institutions that have previously claimed neutrality. To illustrate, a year ago, during the brutal bombing of Gaza and the continued dispossession and displacement of Palestinians from their homes, various student and staff collectives, and individuals, asked these same institutions for a public (endorsing of a) statement in support of Palestine. We were met with answers such as: “we cannot issue a statement in support of Palestine, because then we would have to issue statements in support of everything that is happening in the world” or just bluntly “no.” In 2020 a Palestinian student’s flag was confiscated by campus security. A year later, several banners dropped at EUC, WDKA, and the Piet Zwart Institute were taken down for expressing political statements on university buildings because institutions “cannot give the impression that we take sides”, which is not a paraphrased excerpt, but a direct quote from staff representing the above-mentioned institutions.
Currently, around the EUR campus, there are several flags and banners that express the
university’s solidarity with Ukrainian scholars and students. Simultaneously, WDKA students are encouraged to attend a student-organized workshop to make banners in support of Ukraine: highlighting that the university can indeed promote these kinds of student initiatives. The same attitude was not taken towards students who voiced their solidarity with Palestine. Instead, they were directed to sources that could “offer participants insights about some of the historical and contemporary complexities that are often overlooked in the media” so that they could “prepare” for a discussion in which they experienced continuous silencing.
Palestinian students who could not focus on their course work because of the brutality, viciousness and nefariousness done unto the people of Palestine would have to go to unreasonably extra lengths to prove that they indeed were not in the right mindset to hand in a paper on time. These are clearly double standards. Double standards we have seen from media coverage on refuge and refugees to various railway companies offering free transport and countries opening up their borders to Ukrainian refugees, to our own universities extending their support and solidarity to the people of Ukraine. None of these aforementioned things were ever offered to refugees from the Global South. Nor have these universities ever extended their support and solidarity to countries from the Global South. We cannot but conclude that these extensions of grace, humanity, civility, care, and love are extremely racialized.
We stand with the people of Ukraine, as we have stood with the people of Palestine, the people of Yemen, the people of Afghanistan, the people of Somalia. We stand with all those facing the brutality of war and the devastation of death, dispossession and displacement which accompanies it.
We will hold the university accountable. Their response sets a clear precedent that the
university is capable of issuing statements of solidarity and support and that it is capable of
having a care-centred approach towards students and staff. We ask the university to keep that same energy and to not (re)produce selective, racialized solidarity and support. Solidarity should not be dependent on people’s proximities to whiteness and Europeanness.
With all this in mind, we reiterate our demands and we urge institution(s) to reflect on their
hypocrisy and double standards and extend the solidarity they offer white, European bodies to all individuals.
Reiteration of demands:
● Boycott and divest from companies and institutions that sustain the (settler) colonial
violence done unto the earth and unto life
● Cut ties with Tel Aviv University
● Cut ties with Ban-Ilan University
● Demand from the ABP to divest from Israeli companies
● Demand from the ABP to divest from companies investing in Myanmar junta
● Cut ties with Shell
● Take diversity and inclusivity seriously, beyond the marketing/PR level
● Take decolonisation seriously, beyond its uses as a metaphor
● Take Black life seriously, beyond the empty statements
● Take the dismantling/abolition of patriarchy seriously
● Take the dismantling/abolition of heteronormativity seriously
● Take the dismantling/abolition of racial capitalism seriously
● Take the dismantling/abolition of coloniality seriously
Here are some links which can serve as reminders to previous student and staff attempts at
reaching out to the institution:
https://www.erasmusmagazine.nl/en/2021/06/09/dear-eur-action-still-demanded-ii/
https://www.dub.uu.nl/en/opinion/utrecht-university-cut-ties-israeli-universities
https://networkcultures.org/entreprecariat/notes-on-the-wdkas-pro-palestine-resistance-banner-removal/
https://soundcloud.com/euc-collxctive/collxctive-podcast-v2
https://www.ipetitions.com/petition/double-standards-on-free-palestine-banner-at
Signed,
EUC Collxctive and Erasmus School of Colour