in support of our students @ SAIC
https://openletter.earth/in-support-of-our-students-saic-3fcd4e26
May 4, 2024
To : President Elissa Tenny & Provost Martin Berger,
We want to commend the respect you afforded our students during the walkout this past Friday. We are deeply disturbed by the decisions being made at institutions across the country to suspend students for organizing non-violent spaces of collective education. We watch in horror as scenes of law enforcement units in riot gear entering campuses unfold across the U.S., including at many cherished progressive institutions, and as students and faculty are arrested en masse. We recognize and value that last Friday SAIC administration did not criminalize students who were exercising their first amendment rights and allowed them to do so safely. As faculty it was gratifying to see students thinking critically, acting courageously, creating communities of care – peacefully, joyously, and lovingly – and taking their socially engaged creative practice outside of the studio and into the world, as we have taught them to do.
We ask that as we near the end of the academic year, you continue to protect SAIC students, faculty, and staff who wish to express their views on Palestinian liberation, the role of the U.S. in financing and supporting the destruction of Palestinian lives and culture, and the current humanitarian crisis in Gaza.
We urge you to stand with us against the cynical posturing that suggests peaceful student political expression is dangerous and harmful, and that you not succumb to the suggestion that it ought to be silenced.
We reject the belief that support for Palestinian self-determination is anti-Semitic, and believe that suppressing the voices of those on our campus who support Palestinian liberation, is a contemporary form of McCarthyism.
We recognize intellectual discomfort and our ability to “sustain argument” (SAIC Core Values document) as our greatest strengths as a school community. We appreciate that bold, brave, artistic voices may pose ideas that are challenging. We hold dear that ours is a community committed to constructive debate around complex ideas. We ask for these values to be prioritized as SAIC students continue to organize creatively, peacefully, thoughtfully, and with care through the end of the semester. Faculty, staff, and administrators at an art school know only too well the powerful role of the arts to envision new worlds, and we assert that it is incumbent upon all of us to protect those, whose safety and education has been entrusted to us, to symbolize, represent, and call into being liberatory practices. This is at the heart of an SAIC education.
Most importantly we insist that they be able to do so without fear that the administration will weaponize internal disciplinary policy against them or against the faculty and staff who support them, or call law enforcement even if their peaceful public expression temporarily disrupts SAIC/AIC operations. Further, as an urban campus with Chicago as our classroom, we know you will encourage students’ civic engagement and exempt them from disciplinary action.
Sincerely,
Aiko Kojima Hibino, Lecturer, Liberal Arts, SAIC