On April 25, 2024, UT Austin’s Office of the Dean of Students ordered the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC) to cease all activity based on allegations that they had violated the University’s institutional rules. More than six months have passed since then and yet Student Conduct and Academic Integrity has still failed to complete its conduct process of the student group leaving them in an indefinite state of “interim suspension.”
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine recognizes this tactical administrative delay as a clear violation of the University’s claimed support of free speech and a form of censorship, occuring amidst the University’s sustained silencing and repression of pro-Palestinian voices on campus. This history of both overt and covert repression includes the sudden refusal to allow human rights lawyer Noura Erakat to speak in-person on campus in January 2024; the militarization of our campus in response to pro-Palestinian student protest in April 2024; the severe disciplining of pro-Palestinian student protestors over the summer–even after criminal tresspassing charges against them had been dropped; and the indefinite “postponement” of Professor Maha Nassar’s lecture this fall to name but a few examples.
Student Conduct and Academic Integrity’s slow-moving investigation of the PSC stands in stark contrast with its rushed investigation and disciplining of many students arrested in last spring’s protests. What accounts for the glacial pace of the investigation of the PSC? In the absence of clear communication from the Office of the Dean of Students, we can only interpret the length of this conduct process as an attempt to prevent the PSC’s activity for as long a duration of time as possible. In particular, we are concerned that this administrative delay masks a purposeful attempt to prevent pro-Palestinian students from expressing their political beliefs and opinions during the national week of action marking a year of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and in the midst of rapidly escalating Israeli military aggression across the Middle East. In order to protect students’ rights to speech, expression, and assembly, Student Conduct and Academic Integrity must move quickly to a resolution in the PSC’s conduct process. More to the point, they must lift the PSC’s suspension and reinstate it as a registered student organization.
Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine at UT Austin 