Dear colleague,
As you may know by now, President Holloway has been summoned, along with the president of Northwestern University and the chancellor of UCLA, to appear tomorrow before the US House Education and the Workforce Committee to face accusations that he tolerated “lawless” disruptions and a “pervasive climate of antisemitism” during the protests on our campuses this spring. Both Holloway and the Northwestern president stand accused because the protests were settled without violence or arrests.
Our unions reject this outrageous mischaracterization of our campuses and believe the hearings are an attack on the foundations of higher education and part of a wider right-wing effort to stifle and curtail academic freedom and basic rights like free speech. We defend the agreement that the student-led antiwar movement reached with the administration at Rutgers and wish more universities had sought a peaceful resolution, rather than resorting to violent repression.
Dozens of our members have organized alongside unions at UCLA and Northwestern, as well as the national AFT, to be present at the hearing to show our opposition to this new witch-hunt committee so frighteningly reminiscent of the McCarthy era of the 1950s. We have several media events planned to project our defense of free speech and the right to protest, including a press conference outside the hearings on Thursday that will be livestreamed. Go to this page Thursday at 12:15 p.m. to watch!
Leaders of the participating unions have issued a joint statement to set out our position. Please take a minute to read it. As it concludes, “We urge the Committee and the public to listen to the people who work and study on our campuses, whose experiences reflect the actual threats to public universities coming from decades of declining funding and a long-term conservative offensive against higher education.”
In solidarity,
Rutgers AAUP-AFT and Rutgers Adjunct Faculty Union
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