ISSG Statement in Support of Student Demands
We in the Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender (ISSG) at Columbia stand with student activists on our campus who are risking so much in order to express their views while the administration has resorted to the use of police violence to stifle their rights to assemble, protest and speak. These student activists, like campus activists from other generations, are using the knowledge and the modes of thought that they acquire in the classroom to offer potent and meaningful critiques of the current political moment. To not acknowledge the important lessons embedded in the actions, activities and transformation politics forged by the students is to ignore the contradictions that currently structure our fraught present. ISSG supports the students as they make demands upon the university.
They have asked that support not focus solely on their circumstances, as they want to maintain focus on the war in Israel Palestine. We join them and human rights advocates globally in calling for an immediate and permanent ceasefire. Our ISSG faculty, staff, and students surely will not agree on all of their demands (which include financial divestment and academic boycott) however we unequivocally support their right to make these demands and to engage in outspoken protest and civil disobedience. This places them in the tradition of queer and feminist activists about whom we teach. The students also call for the end of policing on campus and while our Institute may not be unanimous on that point, we agree that the policing of student protest over the past week at Columbia and beyond only weakens the legitimacy of campus policing.
We adamantly join many of our colleagues in calling for the lifting of all suspensions, the protection of students from the NYPD and solidarity moving forward.
