To the Higher Administration, the Board of Governors, and the Community of Students, Staff, Faculty, Retirees, and Alumni of the University of New Brunswick
17 September 2025
As scholars of the past who have dedicated our professional lives to understanding and interpreting historical reality, we members of the Department of Historical Studies and the Department of History and Politics of the University of New Brunswick, can no longer remain collectively silent about our university’s complicity in Israel’s genocidal violence against the people of Gaza and of Palestine more generally.
While we deplore the killing of Israeli civilians by Palestinian militants on October 7, 2023, we have become increasingly outraged by the massive disproportionality of Israel’s collective punishment of the Palestinian people. In the last 23 months its assault on Gaza has killed over 67,000 Palestinians, the majority women and children. Credible scholarly analysis estimates that the death toll is far higher.[1] Israeli forces continue to deliberately target journalists, humanitarian aid workers, and medical personnel. Israel’s ongoing blockade of food, water, baby formula, medicine, and other necessities of life has now resulted in widespread famine and disease. The mass starvation of Palestinian civilians is a deliberately engineered strategy, as statements from Israeli political and military leaders confirm.[2] In recent months, hundreds of civilians desperately seeking aid at distribution sites have been murdered by Israeli forces. And for every Palestinian killed, many more are wounded, permanently maimed, and traumatized for life. The physical destruction of critical infrastructure roads, hospitals, sanitation systems, water and electrical facilities--has proceeded with the stated intent of making Gaza unlivable. We are especially disturbed, as educators, by the fact that all of Gaza’s twelve universities, and most of its libraries, archives, cultural centers, museums, and heritage sites, now lie in ruins [3] The situation on the ground is apocalyptic. It may once have been possible to interpret Israel’s war on Gaza as an attempt to defeat Hamas and rescue hostages. That time has long passed. Israel’s systematic war crimes and violations of international law--features of its illegal occupation of Palestinian land for many decades--are now eclipsed by the overarching crime of genocide.
Our job as historians is to interpret and evaluate what has happened in human societies. We believe that understanding the past can help humankind do a better job of navigating the present and shaping the future. The task has an indelible moral dimension. Not only do we seek to describe and explain the Holocaust, for example, we condemn it, and we seek to instill in our students the conviction that such horror never be allowed to happen again. And just as we judge that the empirical evidence of the Holocaust is so overwhelming that no unbiased person could deny it, we view the current genocide in Gaza as an undeniable historical reality, voluminously documented in real time by its victims, its perpetrators, and a multitude of international observers and organizations.[4] Unlike the Holocaust, however, this unconscionable reality continues to unfold as we speak. “Never again,” it seems, is now.
UNB historians are strong supporters of our university’s engagement in the Truth and Reconciliation Process. UNB’s commitment to seeking and acknowledging the truth of Canada’s settler-colonial past and present seems to us an overdue step in the right direction. “Seeking the truth” is the first principle of the Truth and Reconciliation Strategic Action Plan.[5] It is likewise central to “Piluwitahasuwawsuwakon,” the Wolastaqey concept of “allowing your thinking to change so that action will follow in a good way toward truth” that inspires UNB’s “Toward 2030” Strategic Vision. “This commitment,” UNB proclaims, “lies behind all we do as a university.” Other aspirations articulated in “Toward 2030” include the goal of empowering students to “think critically and communicate clearly” and to be “problem solvers and leaders, full participants in a healthy and vibrant democracy.” Our university, we are told, will “enable positive social change” and help to build “a more just, sustainable, and inclusive world.”[6]
UNB has betrayed these aspirations and principles by refusing to end its complicity in the Gaza genocide. The administration has either ignored or rejected calls for the university to disclose and divest itself of its financial interests in corporations arming, enabling, and profiting from Israel’s genocide. It has either ignored or rejected calls to cut ties with those Israeli academic and research institutions that support and sustain Israeli militarism, occupation, and apartheid. These calls have emanated from a wide array of individuals and organizations within the UNB community, including the Association of UNB Teachers, the Faculty Senate, and the Student Organizing Collective.
One of the most influential historians of the last century, Howard Zinn, famously argued that “you can’t be neutral on a moving train.”[7] What he meant is that political neutrality is a pretense that is itself political. Not taking a stand against injustice and oppression simply perpetuates them and is thus a form of collaboration with their purveyors. UNB’s commitment to truth and reconciliation repudiates the settler colonial violence which sought to physically and culturally eradicate the Indigenous Peoples of Turtle Island. On this issue, the university has taken a political and moral stand. Its policy of “political neutrality” with respect to Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Palestine, however, is antithetical to this principled position.[8] It allows the university not only to be indifferent to, but to actively support the most egregious, brazen, and murderous settler colonial violence in the world today.
If UNB is actually interested in “seeking the truth” and in “tackling society’s great challenges head on” to create “positive change,” it will recognize the truth of the genocide staring it in the face. Seeking the truth is rarely neutral. Because new truths, new knowledges, disrupt the settled assumptions that uphold the status quo, their recognition often has implications for relationships of power and are thus inherently political. This is why discovering the truth, acknowledging it, and being accountable for its consequences can be disconcerting. Being challenged, becoming uncomfortable, is in this sense an essential component of education. It is what universities do. But education, as “Toward 2030” makes clear, cannot stop there. UNB is not about ideas alone, we are told, it is dedicated to “turning ideas into action.”[9] In other words, we have an obligation to apply our knowledge by acting on it in the real world. We must not only be seekers of truth; we must also be speakers of truth. And when necessary, we must speak that truth to power. As with the Holocaust, as with the genocidal oppression of Indigenous people here in Canada, the genocide in Gaza is no longer a political issue where there can be legitimate disagreement. Denying its reality and doing nothing is complicity. It is to stand on the side of a racist settler state engaged in the extermination and ethnic cleansing of a people every bit as entitled to life, health, education, opportunity, justice, freedom, self-determination, dignity, and respect as any other group of human beings.
Unfortunately, the administration’s recently unrolled policy of “institutional autonomy and political neutrality” is designed specifically to foreclose any possibility of a constructive response to student, staff, and faculty protests on behalf of Palestinian human rights. As recently as 2022, President Mazerolle issued a public statement condemning the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Now, however, he has announced that the university will “refrain from taking public positions on political issues.”[10] This selective neutrality has nothing to do with inclusion and freedom of expression as is claimed. On the contrary, it supplies the pretext for the administration’s efforts to intimidate and silence anti-genocide student activists. “Neutrality” is our administration’s disingenuous attempt to legitimize its denial of the truth and refusal to take action. In the case of Palestine, “allowing your thinking to change so that action will follow in a good way toward truth” is simply too inconvenient. It would, after all, oblige UNB to rethink some of its investments. It is possible, moreover, that it would displease some of UNB’s donors. And there are undoubtedly students, parents, and others associated with the university who would be made uncomfortable.
Nevertheless, we write this in the spirit of hope that UNB’s leadership can muster the courage of their convictions and take action despite its inconvenience. They must respond to the undeniable truth of the Gaza genocide with the integrity and boldness invoked in the “Toward 2030” vision. UNB must join the growing numbers of universities around the world that have taken a stand against occupation, apartheid, and genocide through disclosure, divestment, and boycotting (a list, incidentally, which includes a variety of UNB’s partner universities).[11] It must end its complicity, and by extension the complicity of all of us, in Israel’s ongoing and intensifying efforts to uproot and obliterate the people and culture of Palestine, a society firmly established over many centuries in the land Israel claims exclusively for itself.
We invite members of the UNB community to express their support of this appeal by adding their names and affiliations in the response box provided at the end of the document.
Sincerely,
Dr. Jeffrey S. Brown, Department of Historical Studies, UNBF
Dr. Matthew A. Sears, Department of Historical Studies, UNBF
Dr. Debra Lindsay, Department of History and Politics, UNBSJ
Dr. Fred Burrill, Department of Historical Studies, UNBF
Dr. M. Willis Monroe, Department of Historical Studies, UNBF
Dr. Cheryl Fury, Department of History and Politics, UNBSJ
Dr. Stephanie Cavanaugh, Department of Historical Studies, UNBF
Dr. Stefanie Hunt-Kennedy, Department of Historical Studies, UNBF
Dr. Stephen Dutcher, Department of Historical Studies, UNBF
Dr. Sarah-Jane Corke, Department of Historical Studies, UNBF
Dr. Tia Dafnos, Department of Sociology, UNBF
Dr. Miriam Jones, Department of Humanities & Languages, UNBSJ
Shana Saunders, BA History 2009, BEd 2010, MEd 2021
Incé Husain, BSc Psychology Alumna, UNBF
Dr. Tony Myatt, Department of Economics, UNBF
Noah Pleshet, Anthropology, UNB
Viqar Husain, Professor, UNB
Meriet Gray Miller, UNB Forem, Msc candidate
Jeff Houlahan, Department of Biological Sciences, UNBSJ
Dr. Thom Workman, Professor of Political Science (retired) UNBF
Hassan Mehmood, PhD Student, Department of Mathematics, UNBF
Dr. Daniel Tubb, Anthropology, UNBF
Mike Nason, Open Scholarship & Publishing Librarian, UNB Libraries.
Sameera Yusuf (Alumna)
Dr Christopher (nob) Doran, Dept of Social Science
Sofia Erickson, MA Student, Department of Historical Studies, UNB
Robert Whitney, Professor Emeritus, (History) UNB
Pluto Shaw, UNB Alumni
Colin Cyr, Undergraduate Student, Political Science, UNBF
Dora Szemok, Graduate Student, Political Science, UNBF
Yun Liu, Undergraduate Student, Anthropology, UNBF
Aniqa Riasat, Grad student, Computer Science, UNBF
Paul Refvik, Graduate Student, Department of Historical Studies, UNBF
Matthew Webber, staff/employee (UNB Central Heating Plant)
Natalie Sokol-Snyder, alumna Class of 2025
Jason Marshall, Alumnus UNBSJ
Dr. Tavleen Purewal, Department of English, UNBF
Dr. Rohan Ghatage, Department of English, UNBF
Emery Hatchard, Undergraduate Student, Department of Culture and Media Studies, UNBF
Rowan O’Reilly, BA Student, UNBF
Nathan Kalman-Lamb, Sociology, UNB
Isaac Scott, Alumni, BA History & Political Science, UNBF
Dr. Nicole O’Byrne, Faculty of Law, UNB
Edith Snook, English, UNBF
Jeffrey Bate Boerop, MA Political Science UNB 2017
Sabine LeBel, Associate Professor, UNBF
Dr Robert Gray, Dept of English, UNBF
Gwen Remme, Registered Nurse, University of New Brunswick
Peter Titus, Research Assistant, TA and Student
Sean Cunningham
Willem Millett, alumni
Maren Savarese Knopf, PhD student, Department Sociology
Angél Mahood, UNBF History Undergrad.
Charlotte Toner, UNB MScEM Candidate
Hana Perry, Undergraduate Student, UNBF
Marcus Legere, 4th year history major at STU
Wyatt Letourneau, Former Student, Arts UNBF
Luke Umar-Khitab, UNB Alumni
Void Clark-Nason, Department of Sociology, PhD Student
Ella Melvin, BA student, UNBF
Lauren McGrath, UNBF Alumni, BSc
Dannika Lockhart, Undergraduate Student, Psychology, UNBF
Kate Cyr, Undergraduate Student, UNBF
Lauren Cyr, Graduate Student, Department of Biological Sciences, UNBSJ
Ian LeTourneau, UNBF Staff, BBA, BA, MA
Martin Foote, UNB Undergraduate Student
Sydney Morehouse, Undergraduate, Psychology, St. Thomas University
Kaze Shema Davy, BBA, UNB
Samy Ahmed, UNB B.Sc. Student
Olivier Banville, Political Science Major, UNB
Madeline Parlee, MScEM Candidate
Gina Lonati, PhD, alumna
Grace Dunn, Undergraduate Student, Computer Science, UNBF
Sam Loutet, MSc student, Department of Biological Sciences, UNBSJ
Rod Hill, Professor of Economics (retired), UNBSJ
Kasey Goodine, BA at STU.
Christine Mason, BN, UNBF
Eve Walker, second year philosophy student at STU
Summer Carroll, UNB alumni
Keegan Webster, Undergraduate Student, Biology, UNBF
Jade O’Toole, Student
Karena Wh, Undergraduate Student, UNBF
Kelsey Chase
Prof. Gabe Hrynick, Anthropology, UNBF
Anna Hamling, Culture and Media Studies, UNBF
Raiyan Ahmed, UNB BCS '25 alumni
K A S M Iftekharul Haque
Maryna Myronenko, UNBF student
Saqeef Jameel Shahabuddin, MBA Alumnus, Faculty of Management
Abir Hasan
EIT Mohammad Rahil, M.Eng. Electrical and Computer Engineering, Alumnus UNBF
Israt Arafat Tasmia. UNB. Bangladesh
Dallas Tomah, Anthropology, Undergraduate Student, UNBF
Rafa Nonan, BSE, UNBF
Emad Uddin STU
Alexander D'Alessandro, UNBF GSL MA student
Bashudha Sreshtha, UNB BA
Vivian Lamoureux, MA at UNBF
Abdullah Khan, UNBF, Civil Engineering Alumni
Farah Taman Nur, UNB
Aishwarya, current UNB student
Phoebe Marmura, UNB Alumni
Farrukh Bin Rashid, UNB Alumni, MCS
Sydney Curry, MA UNBF
Travis Wysote, UNB alumni
Juhi Karkera, BA Hons, UNBF
Taryn Abernethy, UNB BSc
Miriam Richer, UNB student
Mike Thorn, PhD, Contract Instructor, Department of English
Mohammad Sadiq Hassan Siddiqui, BScE, UNBF
Jay Lalonde, PhD Candidate, Department of Historical Studies, UNBF
Rafid Farhan,UNBF, Grad Student
Susan McAdam, BA UNBF, MA Student, Department of Historical Studies, UNBF
Naoshin Tahiath Nuha
Grace Taylor, UNBF, Staff
Alison Luke Research Associate Centre for Research in Integrated Care
Dr. Lisa C. Robertson, Department of English, UNBF
Lisa Jodoin, UNB
Bethany Henderson, UNBSJ, PhD Student
Hareem Haider, UNBF student
Kirpass Kaur, Undergraduate Student
Sue Sinclair, Associate Prof of English, UNB
Matthew Gwathmey, English, UNBF
Dr. Kasia Van Schaik, Assistant Professor, Department of English, UNBF
Juliette Tristant-Akret, UNB Alumni
Hillary Parlee BAA (UNB NBCCD), BScKin (UNB), MScOT (Dal)
Dr. Sophie M. Lavoie, Professor, Culture & Media Studies, UNBF
Jack Nason, PhD Student, Biological Sciences, UNBSJ
[1] The most recent estimates place it at around 500,000. Zepka, Adam. “The Real Gaza Death Toll is Impossible to Know Today, But the Minimum Isn’t.” Counterpunch, 19 Aug. 2025, www.counterpunch.org/2025/08/19/the-real-gaza-death-toll-is-impossible-to-know-today-but-the-minimum-isnt /. @RalphNader. “Open Letter to Journalists on the Vast Undercount of Deaths & Serious Injuries in Gaza.” X, 15 Aug. 2025, 8:26 pm, x.com/RalphNader /status/1956497647935590599. Khatib, Rasha, et al. “Counting the dead in Gaza: difficult but essential.” The Lancet, vol 404, no 10449, 2024. www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(24)01169-3/fulltext. In addition, over a thousand Palestinians have been killed by Israeli soldiers or settlers in the occupied West Bank since Oct. 7, 2023.
[2]Graham-Harrison, Emma. “The mathematics of starvation: how Israel caused a famine in Gaza.” The Guardian. 31 Jul. 2025, www.theguardian.com/world/2025/jul/31/the-mathematics-of-starvation-how-israel caused-a famine-in-gaza. “Famine in Gaza: ‘A failure of humanity itself’ says UN chief.” United Nations News, 22 Aug. 2025, news.un.org/en/story/2025/08/1165702.
[3] Giroux, Henry A. “Scholasticide: Waging War on Education from Gaza to the West. Journal of Holy Land and Palestine Studies, vol. 24 no. 1, 26 Mar. 2025, www.euppublishing.com/doi/full/10.3366/hlps.2025.0348. Miller, Karen. “Historians Against Israel’s Genocide.” Jacobin, 6 Aug. 2025, jacobin.com/2025/08/gaza-history scholasticide-genocide-academia.
[4] Since the International Court of Justice ruled on 26 January 2024 that it was “plausible” that Israel was violating the 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the charge that Israel is, in fact, actively committing genocide has been advanced and documented in reports by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, and by Amnesty International, Médecins Sans Frontières, B’Tselem, Physicians for Human Rights-Israel, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention, the International Federation for Human Rights, Genocide Watch, Defense for Children International, Oxfam, the European Center for Constitutional and Human Rights, the US Center for Constitutional Rights, Human Rights Watch, and numerous other civil society organizations. A short list of the dozens of analyses providing evidence of genocide includes Albanese, Francesca. “From Economy of Occupation to Economy of Genocide: Report of the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories since 1967.” United Nations, 16 June 2025, www.un.org/unispal /document/a-hrc-59-23-from-economy-of-occupation-to economy-of-genocide-report-special-rapporteur-francesca-albanese-palestine-2025/; “Amnesty International investigation concludes Israel is committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.” Amnesty International, 5 Dec. 2024, www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2024/12 /amnesty-international-concludes-israel-is-committing genocide-against-palestinians-in-gaza/; “Our Genocide.”B’Tselem, July 2025, www.btselem.org/sites/default/files/publications/202507_our_genocide_eng.pdf; and “Gaza Genocide,” Médecins Sans Frontières, 10 July 2025, msf.org.uk/issues/gaza-genocide. Innumerable scholars and specialists on genocide, the Holocaust, and international law have likewise acknowledged the reality of the Gaza genocide. They include the historians Ilan Pappé, Amos Goldberg, Daniel Blatman, Donald Bloxham, Enzo Traverso, and Omer Bartov.
[5] “Seeking the Truth.” Annual Report on the TRC Strategic Action Plan, UNB, 2018, www.unb.ca/annualreport/2018 /reconciliation/actionplan.html.
[6] “Toward 2030: Our Vision,” UNB, 2020, www.unb.ca/toward2030/vision.html.
[7] Zinn, Howard. You Can’t be Neutral on a Moving Train: A Personal History. Beacon Press, 2004.
[8] “Institutional autonomy and political neutrality at UNB,” UNB, www.unb.ca/leadership/president/political neutrality.html. Mazerolle, Paul. “Statement from the President.” UNB News, 31 May 2024, blogs.unb.ca /newsroom/2024/05/statement-from-the-president.php.
[9] “Toward 2030: Our Vision,” UNB, 2020, www.unb.ca/toward2030/vision.html.
[10] “Institutional autonomy and political neutrality at UNB,” UNB, www.unb.ca/leadership/president/political neutrality.html. UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese specifically calls out this trend in her report “From economy of occupation to economy of genocide”: “Universities worldwide, under the guise of research neutrality, continue to profit from an economy now operating in genocidal mode. Indeed, they are structurally dependent on settler-colonial collaborations and funding” (www.un.org/unispal/document/a-hrc-59-23-from economy-of-occupation-to-economy-of-genocide-report-special-rapporteur-francesca-albanese-palestine 2025/). See also Blouin, Katherine, Nathan Kalman-Lamb, and Derek Silva. “Canadian universities too should be in Francesca Albanese’s report.” Al Jazeera, 13 July 2025, https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2025/7/13/canadian-universities-too-should-be-in-francesca-albaneses-report.
[11] UNB partner universities that have agreed to some or all of the demands of their students to disclose, divest, and/or boycott include Queens University Belfast, Bangor University, and Swansea University in the UK; the Rotterdam University of Applied Sciences in the Netherlands; the University of Bergen in Norway; the University of the Basque Country, the University of Alcala, and the Universidad de Jaen in Spain; and Curtin University and the University of Melbourne in Australia. See “Universities are ending complicity in Israeli Apartheid and its Gaza genocide in numbers never seen before.” BDS News, 31 Dec. 2024, bdsmovement.net/news/universities-are-ending-complicity-israeli-apartheid-and-its-gaza-genocide numbers-never-seen; Perry, Noam. “How divestment for Palestinian rights is gaining ground.” American Friends Service Committee News, 28 Oct. 2024, afsc.org/news/how-divestment-palestinian-rights-gaining-ground; and “Queen’s moves forward with divestment process.” Queen’s University Belfast News, 28 June 2024, www.qub.ac.uk/News/Allnews/2024/queens-moves-forward-divestment-process.html.
