Source: GW OAS Website
By Carly Novell, News and Opinion EIC
After Palestinian people were subjected to thousands of airstrikes for 11 days straight during a period of raised tensions between Israel and Hamas, the GW Office of Advocacy and Support (OAS) posted a statement in solidarity with Palestinian students. In response, GW administration limited the functions of the office, hindering students’ from essential assistance.
On June 2, the OAS Instagram shared the statement along with an advertisement for a virtual processing space on the events in the Middle East. According to Palestine Legal, the OAS staff attended an emergency meeting with high-level GW officials, including a representative from the Board of Trustees and the President’s Office where they required the office to cancel the event, remove the post and publish an apology. The GW officials also ordered the office to write several reports justifying its mission and practices, as well as prohibited it from conducting its regular functions for the past 6 months. This included communicating with professors, other university officials on behalf of students, accompanying students to meetings with faculty or staff and posting on social media.
“It has made it difficult to continue supporting people and it does disrupt that advocacy I would have otherwise done in some cases,” said OAS advocacy specialist, Nada Elbasha, “But we’re still here to support people emotionally and within those confines, but sometimes it’s not enough.”
In prohibiting the office from posting on social media, they cannot advertise their services to students who are in need of support but might not be aware of OAS, the only confidential advocacy research on campus.
On November 16, Palestine Legal, an organization dedicated to protecting the civil and constitutional rights of Palestinians in the U.S., initiated a complaint against George Washington University with the D.C. Office of Human Rights for the school’s alleged violation of the D.C. Human Rights Act (DCHRA) when they canceled trauma support services for Palestinian students. The complaint was brought forward by Elbasha, who is Palestinian herself.
In the past, OAS published similar statements without controversy during horrific instances offering support to Asian students, Black students, Jewish students and survivors of sexual assault under the heading: “We are Here and We Care.”
“There is pressure about Palestine to not offer solidarity, to not say certain words like ‘apartheid’, which has been internationally recognized, to not say words like ‘free Palestine’, there’s pressure to not do those things, because language matters,” Elbasha said. “If OAS did not post this statement, and advertise this virtual processing space, we would be giving in to that pressure, unspoken pressure because there’s no other reason because this is what we do as work. So if we had decided not to, it’s because we would be in fear of our jobs or because we know that this pressure exists.”
Elbasha and Palestine Legal define the phenomena of silencing individuals for speaking about Palestinian rights as the “Palestine Exception to Free Speech.”
“There is an overall theme in the United States – and maybe the U.K. too – of academic censorship of solidarity for, or just support for Palestine, or even talking about Palestine,” Elbasha said. “This is not a new or isolated incident, this is part of a larger campaign.”
Palestine Legal has responded to over 1700 incidents of repression since 2014, according to Radhika Sainath, senior staff attorney at the firm. Palestine Legal claimed that this isn’t the first time GW has violated the DCHRA either. Back in 2015, a student received an official warning letter from campus police for hanging the Palestine flag in his window. Former GW President Steven Knapp later apologized to the student for what he called a “misunderstanding.”
“This is reminiscent of Jim Crow era racism and denial of services. Israel was bombing Palestinians in Gaza last May, whole generations of families were wiped out. People were being threatened with evictions and forcible displacement in East Jerusalem. So there was real violence and trauma happening back home in Palestine,” Sainath said. “And Palestinian students were denied the opportunity to have trauma support services on an equal basis as other students, and that’s really appalling. There’s just simply no excuse for that to happen.”
Former prevention specialist at OAS, Olivia Blythe, told Jewish Currents that she left her job in October partially due to the actions of GW administrators. As of now, OAS only has two employees – assistant director Tamara Washington and Elbasha.
“I think really the question here is: what has stopped the office from expanding?” Elbasha said. “Expanding it is not just by tangible resources and more staff, but it is also trusting the expertise of advocates, allowing advocates to do what we do, centering us rather than policing our behavior, and believing survivors. It is about so much more than funding.”
The office also received publicity from student movements advocating for sexual assault survivor safety. One of the four major demands from GW Protects Rapists and GW Students Against Sexual Assault is guaranteed long-term funding for OAS.
“We want the guaranteed long-term budget like resource allocation to the office of advocacy and support because they’re the only office that’s actually been really helpful with fighting through all of this negligence by GW, helping us get the safety and justice we deserve,” said Abby Canning, co-founder of GW Protects Rapists.
Additionally, the school’s chapter of SASA also posted a statement offering a virtual healing space and support for Palestinian rights, but the organization was told by GW administrators to remove the statement because the post was “harmful and exclusionary,” according to the complaint.
Instead of listening to the needs of students and OAS staff, GW has placed the office under an audit, which could permanently close the office depending on the results according to the Palestine Legal complaint. President Thomas LeBlanc confirmed that an investigation is underway in an email to students.
