During a Genocide, We Should Be Talking About Divestment, Not Chalk

Trinity Faculty Coalition for Justice in Palestine

We write to express concern in the wake of President Lugo’s Nov. 7 email to the college, which publicly condemned students’ participation in the Day of Action for Higher Ed as “Behavior Inconsistent With Our Values.” We believe this email, together with President Lugo’s concerning responses to a myriad of faculty objections, threatens students’ free expression and the academic freedom of faculty. Let it be known: the situation in Palestine is a human rights disaster that the UN last month called “a collective crime, sustained by the complicity of influential Third States,” including the United States. Human rights organizations, the UN, and genocide scholars are unequivocal: this is a genocide.

President Lugo characterized students’ chalk messages as “overtly political.” We agree, and in fact, we encourage students’ political expressions in our classrooms and collective organizing on campus. We strongly denounce President Lugo’s suppression of political dissent — itself an overtly political act — and his characterization of these messages as “harassment” and “intimidation.” Statements including “Disclose, Divest, Protest,” and “Free Palestine” express solidarity with Palestinians and criticize Trinity’s refusal to divest from companies that contribute to and profit from genocide. Who is being “harassed” by these messages? On the contrary, it takes courage, integrity and critical thought for students to urge those with institutional power to reconsider their moral obligations.

In this same message, President Lugo announced an investigation. This suggests that the verdict — that these messages are “harassment” perpetrated by the Students and Faculty for Justice in Palestine (SFJP) — is a foregone conclusion. This is alarming, and it misses essential context: that students have resorted to writing on classroom chalkboards because the administration has chosen to enforce the new protest policy beyond its intended scope, requiring permission to engage in any collective activity that expresses a perspective on global events. We find it particularly concerning that this policy has targeted expression in solidarity with Palestine.

Moreover, it is impossible to reconcile President Lugo’s characterizations with the recent federal first circuit decision that rejected the assertion that pro-Palestine activism on MIT’s campus — encampments, walkouts, die-ins, posters and marches through college buildings — created a harassing environment. The court held that speech “cannot be restricted simply because it is upsetting” and issued warnings to colleges attempting to suppress activity on college campuses in defense of Palestine. In light of this ruling, we call on President Lugo to ensure that Trinity students’ rights to political expression are protected and that students on Trinity’s campus have the same rights to self-expression as those on other college campuses.

Furthermore, we are troubled by President Lugo’s assertion that Trinity’s “employment policies clearly prohibit political activism within academic settings.” Neither the Faculty Manual nor the Employee Handbook contain such a policy. On the contrary, our institution’s avowed commitment to academic freedom was codified by the faculty and the Board of Trustees earlier this year in the “Trinity College Joint Statement on Academic Freedom,” which “affirms the ability to search for truth and to express positions challenging the nature of that truth without fear of reprisal.” 

It is vital to note that many of our students do regularly experience harassment on campus, and this drives many excellent students to leave Trinity. Our students routinely discover homophobic, transphobic and racist slurs etched into classroom chairs and tables. Students of color are regularly subjected to racist posts on Yik Yak. Only a few weeks ago, someone used chalk — presumably without permission from the administration — to deface a message of love and support for trans women. To our knowledge, none of these events have launched an investigation, let alone a public condemnation from President Lugo. In this context, it is deeply troubling that President Lugo’s first message about campus climate vilified expressions of solidarity with the people of Palestine. We call on President Lugo to drop this investigation.At the faculty meeting on Nov. 11, President Lugo passionately described his participation in the movement for divestment from apartheid South Africa when he was a college student. We think his work on this issue is admirable. It also invites a comparison between movements for divestment then and now; we welcome this opportunity to address the morally urgent need to divest from apartheid, occupation, genocide and militarism. President Lugo’s personal history of agitating for social justice does not have to stay in the past, but can, and should, inform his actions in the present. President James Fairfield English presided over Trinity’s own divestment from apartheid South Africa in 1986, an event that Trinity openly and rightly celebrates. President Lugo has the chance to join his predecessor’s ranks. He has the power and opportunity today that he did not have as a college student: to take the courageous step of divesting Trinity’s endowment from entities that profit from violence and ecological devastation.