[Uosenateexec] Supporting students and their rights to demonstrate

Tue Apr 30 14:59:06 PDT 2024

Dear members of the Senate Executive Committee,

I am writing as both a senator for CAS (Humanities), and as a member of this executive committee to see if we could be proactive in seeking the support of our central administration in developing the most tolerant and humane approach to the current camping protest that is developing in our quad in front of the Knight Library.

I have received multiple emails and requests from both faculty colleagues and students to take action and to make sure that our Senate and our administration show the highest level of compassion and understanding for this student display of solidarity in the midst of an unjust war that has already claimed the lives of more than 40,000 people and displaced more than a million people. As we talk about AI and global citizenship in the College of Arts and Sciences and across the campus, here's an opportunity to take sides with humanity: this war is completely one-sided from whichever angle we may look at it, and it is also deploying for the first time in history AI-guided weaponry through the Lavender program<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/05/israel-idf-lavender-ai-militarytarget/> which chooses targets through data-driven and computerized guided programs. It also has disproportionately affected women and children, offering no quarter, and respecting no grounds, including hospitals, shelters, and schools.

The racialized dehumanization of refugees, Muslims, and Palestinians in US media has dulled the responses of the general public in our country and in other places for over seven months now, but the small gesture of solidarity of a group of several hundred students which started as a camp in our midst yesterday, should make us proud instead of resorting to physical violence and repressive measures. It is a teaching opportunity if there ever was one for a community of learners like ours. We constantly talk about what makes us different as a campus, how to find our "edge". I believe we stand to demonstrate to our colleagues across the country, colleagues in Columbia and in Illinois, and many other places where faculty and students have been forcibly removed from university campuses and violently banned from re-entry for a year, and to show the entire world that our campus upholds the tolerant solidarity mode that our community in Eugene and Oregon expects from us, that we are prepared to exercise tolerance and empathy, compassion and humanity in the face of the dehumanized Terminator-like machinery that has been unleashed on humanity in Ukraine and elsewhere, and in this case on the small region of Gaza, a place that was already  developed as an intergenerational refugee camp decades ago and which is clearly being leveled to the ground in what increasingly appears to be as a genocide<https://www.timesofisrael.com/top-un-court-to-rule-in-gaza-genocide-case-over-german-supply-of-weapons-to-israel/> under scrutiny by various international institutions. Why should we allow a local replication of that evacuation of space and place our university as a proxy, an ally combatant against those who defend human rights? Is a graduation photo on the green what we care about? I know you are all compassionate human beings and I am sure we will be able to craft a resolution and enter into dialogue with our administration to assure that the best standards of public meetings and freedom of expression are guaranteed.

I have just received word of the statement issued by the University of Denver which I copy below, and I hope we can perhaps issue a similar statement asking our president and administration to exercise the maximum zeal in respecting civil rights and to think about this demonstration as a historical opportunity to show the world that we at Oregon are on the side of humanity and not on the side of its violent erasure by vindictive nationalist zealots armed with logarithms and computerized genocidal army forces.

Respectfully,
Pedro García-Caro

Pedro García-Caro<https://cas.uoregon.edu/directory/romance-languages/all/pgcaro>

Associate Professor of Spanish and Latin American Studies[Image]<https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5064-0845> | School of Global Studies, University of Oregon | UO Senator (2023-2025), College of Arts and Sciences, Humanities | Friendly Hall 325 | (541) 346-5813

General Editor, Periphērica: A Journal of Social, Cultural, and Literary Studies<http://journals.oregondigital.org/index.php/peripherica/index>
Co-Editor, Journal of Academic Freedom<https://www.aaup.org/reports-publications/journal-academic-freedom>

[signature_231923415]

The University of Oregon is located on Kalapuya ilihi, the traditional indigenous homeland of the Kalapuya people.<https://library.uoregon.edu/honoring-native-peoples-and-lands>

Dear University of Denver faculty,

We, the Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate, write today in support of faculty, staff, and students’ right to peacefully protest. Like many of you, we are disturbed by actions taken across the country at other universities where administrators have chosen to deny students their First Amendment rights by forcefully removing and arresting students who were peacefully gathered to demonstrate on behalf of their beliefs in nondisruptive ways.

We want faculty, staff and students to know that your University of Denver Faculty Senate has been working with University administrators for several months to develop a demonstrations policy that respects freedom of speech and freedom to peacefully protest and demonstrate.  Once the draft is complete, student, staff, and faculty senates will have the opportunity to review the policy and offer feedback before the policy is finalized.

We also recognize that a critical issue at other universities regards the use of armed police excessive force to remove non-violent demonstrators, Such unacceptable tactics are extreme and lead to needless escalation. These actions have also heightened concerns about the University of Denver’s plans to give Campus Safety officers access to guns and to partner with City of Denver police when necessary, a plan many faculty, staff, and students have been critical of. Please know that we will continue to advocate for all reasonable, experience-tested alternatives to arming Campus Safety officers and to allowing armed law enforcement officers to police peaceful demonstrations. We do so because we strongly support peaceful, nondisruptive protests on our campus, and know that any policing of demonstrations must also be peaceful.

Warm regards,

Your Faculty Senate Executive Committee

[https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-apps/imrs.php?src=https://arc-anglerfish-washpost-prod-washpost.s3.amazonaws.com/public/PX5TXHETPNCWLADKHVX6ABLNJ4_size-normalized.png&w=1440]<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/05/israel-idf-lavender-ai-militarytarget/>
Analysis | Israel offers a glimpse into the terrifying world of military AI<https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2024/04/05/israel-idf-lavender-ai-militarytarget/>
The IDF is allegedly using an AI-powered database identify targets to eliminate, according to a new report by journalist Yuval Abraham. That military tool’s name? “Lavender.”
www.washingtonpost.com

Best,
Pedro
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