Faculty support student protest for Palestine
Professors and lecturers marched in solidarity and gave speeches.
By CHRISTINA CHKARBOUL & ZACHARY WHALEN
Faculty members across the University’s schools took part in the “Gaza Solidarity Occupation” at Alumni Park Wednesday, with one group carrying a cotton poster that read, “USC FACULTY AGAINST THE GENOCIDE IN PALESTINE.”
Professors and lecturers held signs, participated in poetry readings, addressed the protesting crowd and supported demonstrators at the all-day event organized by the USC Divest from Death Coalition. The protesters aimed to present a united front advocating for the organizers’ demands, which include a “Complete Academic Boycott of Israel” and an end to “War Profiteering and Investment in Genocide.”
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Ali Pearl, a lecturer of writing, said she attended the demonstration to support students drawing attention to “the ways USC is complicit” in the genocide in Gaza. Pearl, who is Jewish and grew up in a Zionist synagogue, said the protest was peaceful until the Department of Public Safety “stormed” the camp and began pulling students’ and faculty members’ belongings out of their hands — including her own.
“Israel is committing a genocide against Gaza, and our students are fighting back,” Pearl said. “Universities have a duty to both protect their students from police violence and also to allow discourse and dissent, and I hope that USC will let students, faculty and staff continue to speak out about the genocide without retaliation.”
At around 3 p.m., the demonstrators — waving Palestinian flags and carrying signs that read “VIVA VIVA PALESTINA” and “USC IS COMPLICIT,” among other messages — gathered in the grassy heart of Alumni Park for a series of chants and speaker addresses. One such speech came from Black Lives Matter – Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah, a professor of Pan-African studies at California State University, Los Angeles and USC alum, who called for Black solidarity with Palestinians to a cheering crowd.
“Ain’t nobody free until we’re all free,” Abdullah said, holding a megaphone and wearing a T-shirt that read “Black Trojan.” “Fight on and fight back until we have a Free Palestine.”
Another scholar who spoke at Wednesday’s “occupation” was Viet Thanh Nguyen, a professor of English, American studies and ethnicity and comparative literature. Nguyen recalled his days of student activism at UC Berkeley — which resulted in two arrests and four misdemeanors, he said — and echoed a message of solidarity.
“We are not protesting only as individuals,” Nguyen said. “We are making a stance as part of a collective, as part of a movement to defend people, to defend Palestinians, to defend Gaza.”
Jody Armour, a professor of law, said he had been at the protest since 7:30 a.m. Armour was glad to see protesters of a variety of faiths — including Jewish, Muslim, Catholic and Protestant attendees — come together for a moment of peace.
“I saw … a lot of good folk coming together to exercise their free expression rights and interests and it was glorious,” Armour said. “I started to feel good about us as an institution.”
Viet Thanh Nguyen, a professor of English, American studies and ethnicity and comparative literature echoed a message of solidarity at the “Gaza Solidarity Occupation.” Faculty gave speeches and recited poetry regarding their thoughts on the protest and officer presence. (Jordan Renville / Daily Trojan)
Armour’s perception quickly changed, however, when he returned from class an hour later to find armed officers had disrupted the protest, he said.
“The same students that we encouraged to come here, induced to come here with brochures that brag about how much we want to … develop their skills to be advocates, to be important political actors — when they start doing what we taught them to do, we cracked down on them violently,” Armour said. “I was very disappointed.”
Armour said antisemitism is “horrible [and] real” but could not be equated to criticizing the state of Israel for the atrocities they had committed against the Palestinian people. He also said the students protesting were on the “right side of history” and that he was frustrated with faculty who were unsupportive of the demonstrators.
“It seems like many administrators are, frankly, stuck on stupid when it comes to cracking down on students who are rightfully, righteously angry about the lack of consistency between many of our values and our actual practices: what we actually do as a campus, what we actually invest in and how we actually treat the students that come here,” Armour said.
The protest featured a poetry recitation that began at around 9:35 a.m. Olivia Harrison — a professor of French and Italian, comparative literature, Middle East studies, and American studies and ethnicity — spoke at the reading and said she was inspired by the protesting students. Harrison thanked them for being present before reading “We,” a poem by Ghayath Almadhoun in which a Palestinian speaker sarcastically apologizes for how the deaths of Palestinians have impacted the rest of the world.
“We are the things you have seen on your screens and in the press, and if you made an effort to fit the pieces together, like a jigsaw,” Harrison recited, “you would get a clear picture of us, so clear that you would be unable to do a thing.”
