The following email was sent to administration and faculty on October 24, 2023, in addition to the letter and signatories.
Dear Silberman administration and faculty,
Please see the following letter that has to-date been signed by 441 Silberman students, faculty, alumni, staff, and student groups, of which more than 300 are current students.
Since members of the Silberman community came together to organize this letter two weeks ago, the administration has not rejected the Islamophobic and anti-Palestinian impacts of the CUNY and Hunter College statements. Silberman administration has not apologized for the harm the passive endorsement of these sentiments has caused Palestinian students, the broader Muslim community, and their allies. Nor has the administrative leadership acknowledged the political context in which the ongoing, rapidly escalating violence is taking place. As social workers and as students, we are concerned by these rhetorical moves. As organizers of this letter, we urge the Silberman administration and the wider community to denounce the Israeli genocide and to embody decolonial practice by demanding an end to the occupation of Palestine.
As of October 23rd, 5,100+ Palestinian people have been murdered by Israel’s most recent bombing campaign of Gaza, and 10,000+ Palestinian people, including over 100 children, continue to be held hostage in Israeli prisons. Peace and safety are impossibilities for all people living on stolen Palestinian land while colonial occupation and apartheid continue.
There is a long and well-documented history of professional and academic silencing and retaliation directed toward students, faculty, and staff who have supported Palestinian people, both at Silberman and across CUNY institutions. We recently learned that faculty were encouraged to not sign onto our letter, in order to protect their jobs. A significant portion of signatories have chosen to sign onto this letter with their initials rather than with their full name, and many have not signed on at all as a result of this intimidation. All individual signatories have signed their names as individuals and not representatives of any organizational affiliation. Please note we are not publicly sharing signatories at this time.
—Silberman Social Workers for Palestine
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Silberman must support Palestinian liberation
As students, alumni, faculty, and staff at Silberman School of Social Work, we write this letter to Silberman administration to reject the condemnation of solidarity with Palestinian people and opposition to Israeli occupation. In emailed statements from CUNY (on October 10) and Hunter (on October 12), administrators claimed community-led demonstrations in solidarity with Palestinian people living under 75 years of Israeli occupation were “[celebrating] the killings, injuries, and capture of innocent people.” These sentiments are anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic and decontextualize decades of Palestinian solidarity and resistance. As social justice workers, we fully support the Palestinian people in their struggle for freedom and affirm social work's ethical obligation to organize against settler colonialism around the world.
We recognize the loss of life is deeply devastating for anyone mourning loved ones and communities. We also recognize our responsibility in practicing decolonization is to understand self-determination and resistance as contextualized responses to colonial occupation. Displacement, military violence, and murder are not new to Palestinian people, and oppression in Palestine is rooted in Israel's settler colonial and apartheid regime and years-long military blockade of Gaza.
Hunter College and all CUNY institutions have the responsibility to divest from Israeli funded projects that oppress Palestinian people. CUNY currently invests $1,093,900 in weapon manufacturers, which “assist the Israeli military in maiming and murdering Palestininans.” Companies such as Boeing, General Electric, Lockheed Martin supply missiles, jets, helicopters, bombs, and munitions to the Israeli military directly, and are part of the CUNY Portfolio Holdings from 2014. Despite institutional pushback, divestment is not unprecedented, as CUNY School of Law student organizations and faculty endorsed the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) in 2021, a nonviolent movement for Palestinian rights historically rooted in the South African movement to end Apartheid.
Hunter, and CUNY administrators’ statements intentionally erase history and reproduce white supremacist rhetoric, denying the lived asymmetry of violence in Palestine and Israel, and refusing the Palestinian necessity for freedom. Our faculty and students, who believe in the central tenets of social work such as self-determination, justice, equality, and freedom will continue to support Palestine and challenge this institution's silence.
As current and past Silberman School of Social Work students and faculty, we call for the following:
Silberman must rescind its support for anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic statements issued by Hunter College and CUNY leadership;
Silberman must issue a statement in solidarity with Palestinian students which recognizes Palestinian suffering as a result of ongoing Israeli occupation, siege and apartheid;
Silberman must endorse Not On Our Dime! Campaign and Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movements;
Practice Lab instructors must receive ongoing training in discerning between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism;
Practice Lab instructors must be comfortable and competent in facilitating conversations about Israel’s settler colonialism, U.S. imperialism, apartheid, and anti-colonial Palestinian resistance.
Our Practice Lab courses teach that decolonization is necessary to challenge the entrenchment of white supremacy, capitalism, colonialism and other ideologies of power within our current models of social work practice. We agree with this notion, and we also believe that decolonization is not a theory that we learn in academia, but it is something we practice. For this reason, we support the liberation of Palestinian people and believe that Silberman must show its commitment to decolonization.
We are hopeful that our demands are not met with resistance and we look forward to working together.
If you have come here to help me, you are wasting your time. But if you have come because your liberation is bound up with mine, then let us work together.
Lilla Watson
If you are personally affiliated with Silberman OR a CUNY-affiliated organization and willing to endorse the letter, please fill out this form to add your signature to the final letter. If you fill out your personal name, you are signing this letter as an individual only, not affiliated with a group.
