GUPS Statement of Support for SF State’s MOU with Al-Najah University in Palestine, the AMED program, and Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi

We the General Union of Palestine Students at San Francisco State University write to affirm our support of the Memorandum Of Understanding and partnership between SF State and Al-Najah University in Palestine, the Arab Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas (AMED) program at SF State, and our mentor and advisor Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi in the face of attack, harrasement, suppression and slander by the Zionist organizations Canary Mission, Campus Watch, and AMCHA. These are outside organizations to the university that foster Islamophobia, racism, xenophobia, and anti-Semitism. As justice conscious students at SF State we pride ourselves as fighting for social justice on our campus, our communities and in our society; we vehemently challenge all forms of hatemongering, including the hatemongering that Canary Mission, Campus Watch and AMCHA promote. Last year we faced firsthand the hate brought onto our campuses when students engaged in peaceful and impactful protest against colonization of Palestinian, Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities were targeted by Canary Mission. Canary Mission runs an online smear campaign that creates profiles filled with inaccurate, racist, and Islamophobic rhetoric against students and faculty and adds links to their social media accounts leading to threats of violence against students on campus and at their places of work. Canary Mission, Campus Watch and AMCHA have no place on our campus to spread their hate. Rather, we celebrate and support the amazing programs and production of social justice knowledge rooted in the indivisibility of justice fostered in the AMED program, the partnership with Al-Najah, and by Dr. Abdulhadi who leads these projects. Since AMED was initiated in 2007 at SF State, the program and its senior scholar Dr. Abdulhadi have taught the relevant histories of Arab and Muslim communities through frameworks of social justice, the indivisibility of justice and feminism that combat Islamophobia, xenophobia, sexism, homophobia, among other forms of discrimination in our society and helps foster the growth of students in our communities. In our partnership with Al-Najah University multiple transnational delegations have been organized by Dr. Abdulhadi with academics and activists from diverse fields such as women of color and indigenous feminists, labor unions, and prison abolitionists. These delegations foster dialogue between Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, Christian and Jewish communities at Al-Najah and brings that dialogue to SF State where it teaches students from the perspectives of the communities themselves. We students want to see this partnership grow and want to see SF State make it possible for us to visit our peers in Palestine and share experiences in the interests of co-learning and the pedagogy of the oppressed. We at SF State have a very special gift in the AMED program and the partnership with Al-Najah, and we appreciate and stand firm with Dr. Abdulhadi and these programs.