An Open Letter Calling for Divestment from Ongoing Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity

Authoring Organizations

  • Muslim Student Association
  • Hong Kong Student Association

Original Cosponsoring Organizations

  • Georgetown Bipartisan Coalition
  • Georgetown University College Republicans
  • Georgetown University College Democrats

January 23rd, 2022: We, the undersigned organizations, represent several student groups especially affected by the People’s Republic of China’s campaigns of oppression against Uyghur and Turkic minorities, Chinese nationals living abroad, and others engaged in peaceful protest and activism against authoritarianism. These campaigns directly threaten the people that we as organizations represent. As advocates of our communities, we are obliged to speak out against discrimination, intimidation, and oppression, both here and abroad.

As Georgetown’s student leaders, we also call upon our mission to be People for Others in objecting to injustices, wherever they may occur. We recognize our duty to hold the University accountable for its silence and compliance in those injustices.

A bipartisan, objective consensus has emerged in Washington that the actions being carried out in Xinjiang (East Turkestan) against Uyghur and Turkic minorities constitute nothing short of genocide. In response, Congress passed overwhelmingly, and President Joe Biden signed into law, the Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act in December of 2021. In light of this, our organizations must now fulfill responsibility to advocate for our communities, object to these injustices, and call on the University to follow suit.

Based on that responsibility, we call for the following:

  1. We demand that the University rejects all forms of intimidation by the People’s Republic of China against Uyghurs, other Turkic minorities, Chinese nationals living abroad, and all others engaged in peaceful protest and activism, and pledges to protect impacted students from any form of retaliation, harassment, or intimidation.
  2. We demand that the University investigate its direct holdings, externally managed funds, and all financial instruments for investments in companies and entities complicit in the repression of the Uyghurs and procurement of benefit from their forced labor.
  3. We call on the University to either directly divest from these companies and entities or exercise their influence as investors, or call on external fund managers to exercise their investor influence, to redirect companies from profiting from the genocide and forced labor of the Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities.
  4. We urge the University to investigate its research collaborations between affiliate universities and entities involved in the mass surveillance, genetic sequencing, forced labor, and repression of Uyghurs.
  5. We further urge the University to promote, including through the Georgetown Initiative for U.S. China Dialogue, research and discourse regarding the human rights abuses in Xinjiang and best practices for companies with operations in China to ensure their supply chains are free of forced labor.
  6. We call on the Georgetown University Student Association to join in advocating for Georgetown University to investigate and divest from any financial or research connections to the genocide and other crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Turkic minorities ongoing in Xinjiang.
  7. We further call on student bodies beyond Georgetown University to join together to demand that their respective universities follow suit.

Signatory Organizations

  1. International Relations Club
  2. Stand with Kashmir
  3. Georgetown Progressive Alliance
  4. Georgetown Asian American Student Association
  5. School of Nursing and Health Studies Academic Council
  6. Dear Asian Youth Georgetown
  7. Georgetown University Young Democratic Socialists of America

Signatory Faculty and Staff

  1. James Millward (SFS, History)

Signatory Students

  1. Christopher Boose (COL ‘21, GSAS ‘22)
  2. Doha Maaty (NHS ‘23)
  3. Jeffrey Ngo (GSAS ‘24)
  4. Matteo Caulfield (COL’ 23)
  5. Hannah Bomberg (SFS ‘23)
  6. Dominic Gordon (SFS ‘24)
  7. Arjun Badami (COL ‘24)
  8. Melody Stainbrook (COL ‘23)
  9. Maya Smith (SFS ‘25)
  10.  Isaac Solly (COL’23)
  11. Justin Dean English (COL ‘24)
  12. Evan Farley (COL ‘25)
  13. Sarah Ackels (MSB ‘24)
  14. Brandon Wu (SFS ‘24)
  15. Abigail Keating (SFS ‘23)
  16. John C. DiPierri (SFS ‘25)
  17. Marwa Katir (COL ‘25)
  18. Ria Pradhan (SFS ‘23)
  19. Joe Massaua (SFS ‘25)
  20. Urooj Ahmed (COL ‘24)
  21. Ikram Muhammedsani (NHS ‘25)
  22. Justin Liu (COL ‘24)
  23. Andrew Colliton (SFS ‘24)
  24. James Garrow (COL ‘24)
  25. Nathan Sonnenfeld (MSB ‘24)
  26. Gregory Latronica (COL ‘24)
  27. Meredith Lambert (SFS ‘24)
  28. Spencer V. Woodall (MSB ‘24)
  29. Johnny Sussek (COL ‘24)
  30. Joshua Bernard-Pearl (SFS ‘25)
  31. Julia Maenza (COL ‘22)
  32. Evan Hage (COL ‘23)
  33. Emily Cheesman (SFS ‘25)
  34. Sean Bronson (COL ‘24)
  35. Casey Goss (NHS ‘25)
  36. Chloe Anderson (COL '25)
  37. Katherine Benjamin (SFS ‘25)
  38. Claire Cushman (COL ‘23)
  39. Robin Huang (SFS ‘23)
  40. Rachel Tao (COL '25)
  41. Eric Bazail-Eimil (SFS ‘23)
  42. Graham Hillmann (SFS '24)
  43. Anaya Mehta (COL ‘25)
  44. Molly May (COL ‘25)
  45. Allison Yingst (MSB ‘24)
  46. Noah Blake Smith (COL ’23)
  47. Ari Filler (SFS ‘23)
  48. Emily Fisher (SFS ‘22)
  49. Joshua Grundhoefer (COL ‘25)
  50. Anthony Duan (COL ‘25)
  51. Sergio Rodriguez Cifuentes (SFS’25)
  52. Luke Henkel (COL ’23)
  53. Chijioke Achebe (SFS ‘25)
  54. Alicia Gopal (COL ‘25)
  55. Soraya Bata (SFS ‘24)
  56. Iman Blackwell (SFS ‘23)
  57. Jiwon Hyun (COL ‘24)
  58. Nesreen Shahrour (NHS ‘23)
  59. Roudah Chaker (COL’24)
  60. Maryam Ahmed (COL’22)
  61. Zachariah Elkordy (COM’24)
  62. Margaret Gleason (COL ‘22)
  63. Emily Hardy (SFS ‘23)
  64. Andres Zimmermann (COL’24)
  65. Alex Nelson (COL ‘23)
  66. Elizabeth Buckley (SFS ‘25)
  67. Rohan Jain (SFS ‘24)
  68. Aleena Dawer (NHS ‘24)
  69. Mike Brodo (SFS ‘22)
  70. Clare Westerman (NHS ‘23)
  71. Caleb Yip (SFS ‘21, SSP ‘22)
  72. Vincent Zhang (SFS '24)
  73. Robby Turner (COL ‘24)
  74. Daniel Rogov (COL ‘23)
  75. Sabreen Mohammed (NHS ‘24)
  76. Gustav Gulmert (SFS ‘22)
  77. Danielle Northup (SFS ‘24)
  78. Nile Blass (COL '22)
  79. Gov Prabhakar (SFS ‘24)
  80. Fardusi Uddin (SFS ‘22)
  81. Veronika Matysiak (SFS ‘23)
  82. Esther Wroth (SFS ‘24)
  83. Melinda Blumenstock (COL ‘23)
  84. Matthew Koessler (MSB ‘23)
  85. Jackson Neme (COL ‘24)
  86. Aminah Malik (SFS ‘25)
  87. Maisha Maliha (COL ‘23)
  88. Dr. Said Salih Kaymakci (GSAS ‘17 & GSAS‘20)
  89. Fatima Choudhary (Col ‘22)
  90. Omar Rahim (COL ‘24)
  91. Brett Guessford (COL '23)
  92. Phoebe Chambers (COL ‘25)
  93. Julian Jimenez (COL ‘24)
  94. Mananal Fazal (SFS ‘24)
  95. Adam Garrity (COL ‘25)
  96. Dalton Nunamaker (COL ‘22)
  97. Whitney Johnson (COL ‘24)
  98. Chloe Potamianos Homem (COL ‘25)
  99. Ammar Hussain (SFS/MSB ‘24)
  100. Nyalee Dias (COL '25)
  101. Fornia He (NHS ‘25)
  102. Rachael Homola (COL ‘22)
  103. Fadilah Farrin (NHS ‘24)
  104. Ronald Wang (COL ‘24)
  105. Lauryn Ping (COL ‘23)
  106. Nicolas Stewart (COL ‘24)
  107. Nile Adhami (COL ‘25)
  108. Sarah Edmondson (COL '23)
  109. Aiyana Langa (COL ‘22)
  110. Anna March Kruse (SCS ‘23)
  111. Jonathon Marek (SFS ‘21)
  112. Bora Balcay (SFS ‘23)
  113. Tommy Ormsby (COL ‘23)
  114. Griffin Crafa (SFS ‘25)
  115. Kamil Lemdani (COL ‘25)