친 팔레스타인 게시물로 뉴욕대에서 정직당한 아민 후세인(Amin Husain) 교수의 복직을 촉구하는 지지서한에 2천여명 이상의 예술가와 사회운동가들이 서명했다.

하이퍼알러직에 따르면, 사회운동 단체 Decolonize This Place의 공동 창립자인 아민 후세인은 지난 5년간 휘트니뮤지엄, 브루클린뮤지엄 등지에서 최루탄 사업을 해온 워렌 캔더스(Warren B. Kanders) 등의 축출 시위를 주도해왔다. 최근에는 가자에 대해 소셜미디어에 친팔라데스타인 게시물을 올린 후 1월 23일 NYU로부터 정직 처분을 받았다. 

아민 후세인은 발파라이소대에서 철학과 정치학, 인디애나대 로스쿨 및 컬럼비아대 로스쿨을 졸업한 후 뉴스쿨을 거쳐 2016년부터 NYU에서 가르쳐왔다. 다음은 아민 후세인 지지 서한 전문이다. 

Free Palestine, Decolonize This Place: A Statement in Support of Professor Amin Husain and Collective Speech Against Genocide

As we witness the genocide unfolding in Palestine, measures of repression against pro-Palestinian speech around the world are intensifying. Among the latest examples is the suspension last week of Professor Amin Husain from his long-standing adjunct teaching job at New York University for speech-related activity about the U.S.-funded war on Gaza. These attacks on speech (and speakers) reflect the ideology behind the logic of destruction inflicted on the cultural infrastructure of Palestine itself. Every university in Gaza has been destroyed, not to mention most libraries, archives, and bookstores. Museums have been looted, and cultural and religious sites decimated. Scholars, poets, students, artists, journalists, medics, doctors and at least two Palestinian college presidents are among the 26,000+ Palestinians assassinated.

This statement amplifies calls by students and colleagues to NYU president Linda Mills to immediately reinstate Professor Husain’s classes, Justice Lab and Art and the Practice of Freedom, and to issue an apology for having disregarded the students’ educational rights. More importantly, this statement is a call to each other to protect and strengthen our spaces of assembly, anti-colonial pedagogy and aesthetics.

Professor Husain has been teaching for a number of NYU departments since 2016. He is a popular teacher, which is why departments continue to call on him to offer courses. A week before classes were to start, Professor Husain was called to meetings with NYU Office of Human Resources, where he was questioned about speech-related activities and his affiliation with Decolonize This Place (DTP), an art-based collective. The officers referred to DTP’s social media and brought up posts relating to the war on Gaza, indicating there were allegations and complaints but refusing to provide further context. Hours before Professor Husain’s first class was set to begin on Tuesday January 23, the class was canceled by the administration, leaving students at a loss without explanation. NYU publicly announced his suspension in a statement given to the press, which was then sensationalized by media outlets that published doxxing articles with malicious intent. The administrative actions appear to be a clear violation of academic freedom because off-campus speech is fully protected from retaliation by an employer according to the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) principles of academic freedom.

Professor Husain’s situation is egregious, but not unique. Many NYU students have also been suspended, and other faculty members have been interrogated and cautioned. In the words of Shay Negron, an attorney for the Parachute Project, a civil liberties organization representing Amin and others who are facing repression on campus, “A new form of McCarthyism, in which accusations of anti-Semitism take the place of charges of pro-Communism, has been creeping to the fore for many years, but greatly accelerated after October 7. Among the faculty and students we are representing at a variety of universities, we are seeing accusations of anti-Semitism based on uses of the phrases and terms ‘settler colonialism’, ‘genocide’ and ‘Zionist’. First Amendment-protected speech critical of a nation-state, Israel, is now routinely punished and chilled. We are dedicated to assisting Professor Husain and our other clients re-establish their rights of academic freedom and free speech and to oppose all attempts to destroy their reputations and careers.”

The crackdown on pro-Palestinian speech in the university aims to prevent people from seeing each other and learning together; it is a war on our collective intellect, memory, and imagination. Repressive measures are also an attack on people’s livelihood and material condition, entangling us further with bureaucratic and legal mechanisms that sap energy away from doing the work and caring for each other. In these ways, the university acts to extend and normalize an ongoing genocide and settler-colonial occupation, which it upholds most explicitly at the ground level by maintaining a satellite campus in Tel Aviv.

Classes are canceled. Students are assembling. Faculty are opening their homes to foster and support, rather than regulate and suppress, study. Unions are stepping up to defend academic workers. The unsavory power of Zionist trustees and donors is being publicly exposed and called out. Artists and cultural workers are making the connections between museum boards, empire and genocide. We are taking action in the places where we are, standing with each other across institutions, movements, and borders, cultivating our interconnected struggles with Free Palestine as our compass.

We urge the NYU administration to change course and stand on the right side of history. End the punishment, policing, and silencing of all students, faculty, and staff speaking out against genocide, and redress the harm already done.

2,000+ Sign Letter of Support for Palestinian Professor Amin Husain

https://hyperallergic.com/870452/2000-sign-letter-of-support-for-palestinian-nyu-professor-amin-husain/