The Department of Historical and Cultural Studies stands in solidarity with Palestinian students, staff, faculty, and other members of our community in the face of enduring Israeli state violence in Gaza, the Occupied West Bank (including East Jerusalem), and on Palestinian citizens within the 1948 borders. We reaffirm the legitimacy, indeed urgency, of speaking about Israel-Palestine as part of the University of Toronto’s vaunted commitment to academic freedom. We urge the University Administration to ensure that research and teaching about the region are not compromised by external pressures and censorship. As a department, HCS will continue to facilitate critical teaching and research about the Middle East, settler colonialism, racial capitalism, and the intersectionality of power and oppression. We invite all members of the community to reach out, ask questions, and seek deeper knowledge beyond social media and mainstream headlines.
For more information on the recent Israeli assault on Palestinian lives in general, and educational and research institutions in particular, see this statement from the Middle East Studies Association of North America and this petition from the Palestinian Feminist Collective. For concerns over the University of Toronto’s commitment to academic freedom, and the critical study of Israel-Palestine, see this primer on the censure of UofT by the Canadian Association of University Teachers.