August 13th, 2007

 

 

Principal Karen Hitchcock,

 

We, the staff, faculty, undergraduate and graduate student board members of the Queen’s Coalition against Racial and Ethnic Discrimination (QCRED), express our deepest regrets and disappointments in response to your statement of July 6th 2007, in which you denounce the proposed boycott of Israeli institutions and invite the British Universities and College Union (BUCU) to add Queen’s University to their boycott list.  We believe that the statements you have made are misrepresentative in that they wrongfully suppose that the students and faculty of Queen’s University agree with your sentiments and strategy on the issue, thereby casting members of the Queen’s community, such as QCRED, in a political position that we did not invite, and one that could further compromise our academic work, ironically impeding our “freedom in research and publication”.  We are indeed saddened to see that you have used your position as principal to mislead, perhaps unwittingly, the academic and greater public about the political and personal positions of members of the Queen’s community.  We kindly ask that you immediately remove your statements on this boycott, and take steps to remedy your mischaracterization and defamation of Queen’s community members, like QCRED, who strongly oppose your stance here.

 

Although the UCU may have felt that an academic boycott was necessary to address the documented inequitable treatment of Palestinian academics such as the present day imprisonment and shootings of faculty and students, student permit denials, revocations of visiting scholar visas, and university blockades and closures, QCRED realizes that such a course of action may not be an agreeable strategy for Queen’s and its members.  Nonetheless, it is clear that the treatment of Palestinian academics has been torturous, unlawful, and demonstrates an unequivocal threat to our shared Academic Freedoms in the most explicit definition of the term; Palestinian academics have been denied “freedom…to study, teach and carry research without fear of harassment, intimidation or discrimination.”  It is extremely upsetting that the Queen’s administration has failed to express any outrage about these infringements of Academic Freedom to Palestinian academics at home and abroad.  Therefore, QCRED is concerned about what appears to be a discriminating practice in speaking out against what you deem as a threat to Academic Freedom.  Your years of silence about the mistreatment of Palestinian academics is now met with a sudden strong public oppositional stance to Britain’s boycott which aims to address the very issues that you have failed to concern yourself with.  Regardless of your intentions, your silence on one hand, and your voice on another, implicitly have lead us to believe that your definition of Academic Freedom is ethnically biased.

 

As a group on campus concerned with acts of racial and ethnic discrimination, we are particularly worried about the impact of your statement on and for the Queen’s community. How do we, a university that does not offer Arabic, has almost no books on the Arab world, has no historian of the modern Middle East, look when we post on our web-page a statement that implies that academic freedom is the right of the Israelis but not the Palestinians?  In the absence of any institutional commitment to these fields, such a statement makes Queen’s appear blatantly racist and anti-Arab in the eyes of the world.  Since your statement comes after a number of recent racist incidents at Queen’s, such as occurred when a white Queen’s student dressed in blackface or when white Queen’s students yelled racist chants at a Black police officer during homecoming, or when the Queen’s University Muslim Students Association display was torn down in the John Deutch Centre, it compounds the hostile environment that many students, staff, and faculty of Colour experience here.  For that reason in particular, whatever your intentions may have been in writing the statement, we feel that it is our duty to alert you to its larger implications and ask for your help in redressing the damage.

 

In your statement you urge the academic community “to encourage open debate and dialogue, and to listen to and learn from the views of others.” Through following such processes we believe that you would find that members of the Queen’s community do not agree with your stance on the UCU boycott and do not wish to be misrepresented by your own personal and political beliefs.  There are also many who are undereducated on the issues and wish the opportunity to learn more before coming down on one side or the other. It is the recommendation of QCRED that the university hold a number of public forums on the inequitable treatment of Palestinian academics and students before inviting a boycott of our institution that infringes on our own academic freedoms.  Let us see Queen’s University as an academic leader, rather than an institution that blindly follows the tail of a few neighbouring institutions and their political agenda.

 

 

Respectfully,

 

The staff, faculty, undergraduate and graduate student board members of QCRED.