JVP Academic Council Statement Condemning Temple University’s Treatment of Student Protestors

Dear President Fry and Board of Trustees:

We, the Academic Council of Jewish Voice for Peace,* strongly condemn the treatment of the Temple University students who protested Temple’s consideration of establishing monetary ties to Israel at a public session of the Board of Trustees. Your actions are a broad infringement of academic freedom and a heightening of censorship and political persecution. You have violated your own principles and protocols. Your actions are leading to the production of a chilling effect on free speech and academic freedom alike. They will produce an environment of suppression and fear inimical to creating free and open inquiry and debate on campus.  

We emphasize that this was a public session.  The students were protesting genocide and Temple’s potential complicity in that genocide through its investments. 

Protests about such weighty matters as genocide cannot be carried out as if the students were at a tea party.  One should expect protest against genocide to be potentially noisy and disruptive. Rather than condemn these students you should express pride  in their strong moral ethics and their willingness to stand up for principles in the face of your efforts to suppress them.  

Instead, you have tried to silence them. It is bad enough that you kicked them out of the room where the Board meeting was being held.  Worse yet, you criminalized their activity.  Criminalizing peaceful protest follows the current Trump administration’s efforts to suppress academic freedom, particularly speech that contests the administration’s policies.   

As a university spokesperson told the Temple News, “Protests and open exchange of ideas are a core part of university life, and we respect the right of our community to express their views. However, it is important that demonstrations remain peaceful and follow university guidelines, so they do not interfere with the educational process or operations of the campus.” The students complied with these guidelines to not interfere with the education process or operations of the campus. This demonstration was peaceful. We object to your deliberate misinterpretation of your own policy. 

 Your criminalization of these students harms the basic rights of students, staff, and faculty to espouse critical viewpoints in the face of an ongoing genocide and relentless repression of the Palestinian people, including the new death penalty law that applies only to Palestinians.  

In effect, Temple University, as with an increasing number of other universities, has instrumentally used “time, place, manner rules” to make it incredibly difficult for students to conduct demonstrations that your administration will pay attention to and dialogue with them about. 

If as you say in your new Strategic Plan that you want to further develop a culture at Temple that fosters creativity, then you must allow space for students to discuss contentious issues. That is what academic freedom is all about. You cannot have it both ways: true creativity or obedience. Support for academic freedom or capitulation to authoritarian powers. 

You should not follow the trend to narrow speech on your university campus. You must not in effect get rid of faculty shared governance.   

We strongly urge you to arrange an open meeting to discuss Temple’s ties to Israel, as a conversation between your students, your administration and Board of Trustees.  

Sincerely, 

Dr. Jonah Rubin, JVP Sr. Manager of Campus Organizing, on behalf of the JVP Academic Council

The Jewish Voice for Peace Academic Council is a network of scholars dedicated to furthering JVP’s vision and values. Drawing upon our shared commitment to both progressive Jewish values and Palestinian liberation, we organize in solidarity with the Palestinian freedom struggle in educational and academic settings. We draw upon our skills as scholars, educators, and writers to develop critical analysis of contemporary censorship on Palestine. We oppose the deployment of the charge of antisemitism to censor or criminalize speech critical of the State of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians.  We defend employment rights, academic freedom, and rights of association within higher education and confirm the core values of Jewish Voice for Peace.