Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine condemn University response to encampment

Penn Faculty for Justice in Palestine sent a letter to University leadership and issued a press release in response to Interim Penn President Larry Jameson's order to disband the encampment.

The letter — addressed to Jameson, Provost John Jackson Jr., and Senior Executive Vice President Craig Carnaroli — asks Penn leadership to address "troubling contradictions and inaccuracies" in University-wide communications sent on Friday. The letter was signed by 40 PFJP members whose names and identifying titles were redacted, citing safety concerns.

PFJP wrote that, contrary to what was stated in Jameson's email, University leadership has not engaged with the protesters or notified them of legal and policy violations.

According to the letter, representatives from Penn's Committee on Open Expression, Faculty Senate, and antisemitism task force joined the audience for programming at the encampment on Friday afternoon. The letter emphasized that the University representatives did not speak directly with students.  

PFJP wrote that an individual, whose name was redacted, later told a legal observer and some faculty members that students in the encampment "were in violation of university policy because they had not reserved the space."

"He wanted us to inform the students of this, yet left our questions repeatedly unanswered about what would happen to the students if they did not remove the tents, except to say that [the Center for Community Standards and Accountability] would have to question them and ask for their IDs," the faculty wrote. 

The letter added that the individual assured the legal observer and faculty members at the time that students would not be asked to disperse on Friday evening, and that students were not notified of any violations. 

PFJP referenced the University's respect of students' "right to academic free speech" during the Fossil Free Penn encampment in 2022 and compared it to the current Gaza Solidarity Encampment, which they say "is a principled and peaceful demonstration."

"We bear witness that students have not violated any policies or contributed to a hostile environment," the faculty wrote, noting that participants have "kept noise down at night" and "de-escalated" encounters with counterprotesters, who they feel have violated Penn's Open Expression Guidelines.

The faculty also wrote that they, along with the students, "encourage" an investigation into the vandalism on the Benjamin Franklin statue that occurred on Friday, "as the students do not know who did this graffiti and strongly condemn it."

The faculty described counterprotesters' behavior as "inflammatory," denouncing the group's signage as causing distress to all members of the encampment — noting that some participants "are experiencing direct losses as a result of this genocide in process, and many of whom are Jewish." They described these actions as additional violations of the Open Expression Guidelines.

"The students in the encampment, and the faculty who support them, have been denied the rights of citizenship as outlined in the Rights of Student Citizenship in the university," the faculty wrote in the letter. "Student and faculty access to and participation in academic and non-academic opportunities has been repeatedly blocked, and the use of the university's judicial process has lacked university accountability."

The letter called on Penn to lead campuses nationwide in "abiding by its stated commitment to open expression and allowing its students to speak their truth."

PFJP also published a press release "strongly" objecting to Jameson's email to the Penn community Friday evening, which ordered the encampment to shut down immediately due to "blatant violations of University policies."

The group called the email a "dangerous escalation" by Penn and linked back to the full letter to leadership.

"The students are doing everything imaginable to model peaceful protest, and the administration should be protecting and supporting their efforts rather than escalating," assistant professor of philosophy Sukaina Hirji wrote in the press release.

PFJP noted in the release and the letter that Jameson's April 25 email was only the second time the word "Palestine" was used in communication from a senior administrator since the Israel-Hamas war began.

"This silence and omission, needless to say, has compounded the harm experienced by our Palestinian students, colleagues, and their allies," they wrote.