The results are in, the members of the American Sociological Association have spoken:
THE ASA MEMBER RESOLUTION FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE HAS PASSED!!! 🇵🇸❤️
We are so deeply grateful for you all. Onwards to a free Palestine!
UPDATE: ASA Council responded & as expected they refused to endorse our resolution & plan to write their own. This spring members will vote between the two.
HOWEVER, they also unilaterally struck the 2nd item on our resolution re: financial disclosure & military investments 1/
HUGE NEWS! WE WON!
We just learned that at their meeting in Montreal, the ASA Council voted to DIVEST from weapons manufacturing companies, to publish its investment policies, and to develop a process for reviewing other investments. 1/
Despite 573 members of the ASA signing on to the resolution, Council claims that ASA members do not get to vote on investments because they are “an operational decision, not a public policy position.”
We reject this decision which is fundamentally undemocratic. 2/
We find shocking Council’s dubious claim that investments are not public policy decisions.
Sociologists have consistently shown financial investments have a profound impact on social, economic, and political conditions. 3/
Moreover, this arbitrary bureaucratic decision violates ASA members’ democratic right to determine how our association spends our membership dues, donations, and other contributions. 4/
ASA is not primarily a fiduciary organization. It is an organization that represents the discipline of sociology and its membership. Members have a right to participate in decisions about how the organization invests its assets and what it represents. 5/
Finally, removing the call for financial disclosure and withdrawal of investments in war-making corporations breaks with ASA’s own historical precedent which has included divestment from corporations that supported South African apartheid, or that were racist or anti-labor.
We call on the ASA Council to: 1) include our 2nd action item in the Member Resolution on Justice in Palestine when it goes up for a vote by the full ASA membership. 2) Immediately disclose any financial investments in military and defense corporations, without waiting for the 7/
outcome of the vote.
3) Share with members the policy that distinguishes between operational and public policy decisions, and reconsider this policy at the next ASA Council meeting.
For more read the open letter sent to council posted on our website:
8/
There too you can join our mailing list, and find out other news and information about Sociologists for Palestine.
Stay tuned this week for resources that will help you support the member resolution.
Onwards!
We have some big, heartening news. Eighteen (!!) former ASA presidents have issued a joint letter to endorse the Resolution for Justice in Palestine now on the ASA ballot. The list, a veritable who's who of the profession, speaks to the broad buy-in for this resolution.🧵
"One could not be a calm, cool and detached scientist while Palestinians are being lynched, murdered, and starved. One could not be a calm, cool, and detached scientist while Congolese are lynched, murdered, and starved..."
@ruha9
paraphrasing Du Bois on science & politics 🔥
Sociologists for Palestine are so proud of these Columbia students and stand in solidarity with them in their steadfastness and insistence on speaking truth to power.
We hope sociologists too will read Said. Use Said. And understand Said.
Free Palestine. 🇵🇸
We’re holding a teach-in! Come join sociologists Ruha Benjamin
@ruha9
, Michael Burawoy, Roi Livne
@RoiLivne
, Areej Sabbagh-Khoury & Sharmila Rudrappa reflect on their support for the ASA Resolution for Justice in Palestine!
Register here:
Also not to brag or anything but
@johncusack
follows
@soc4pal
? Not only that but he has also retweeted some of our great Sociologists for Palestine videos! Thank you John!
"We can no longer, if we ever could, retreat to a dispassionate objectivity within the walls of academia. Now is the time to also stand up for the moral principles that brought so many of us to Sociology."
Michael Burawoy, a guiding light over so many generations!
Reporting that
@gpbaiocchi
was arrested tonight in the NYU protests. We stand in solidarity with him and all NYU faculty and students protesting. Free Palestine.
"The moral case is clear...I'm someone who works internationally...and people are watching what we do in the United States." Gianpaolo Baiocchi on why he's voting yes on the
@ASAnews
resolution! Join him today, it's in your inbox!!
Marshall Ganz, a sociologist & senior lecturer at Harvard, faced allegations of antisemitism & an investigation for telling students that an ethno-state cannot be a democracy.
We stand with him & all educators targeted for their criticism of Israel.
As we wake up to a crisis in the American academy, please listen to Howard Winant, sociologist of race and child of Holocaust refugees, explain his support for the
@ASAnews
Resolution for Justice in Palestine.
If you haven't, now is the time to vote yes!
Hey
@ASANews
if you care about free speech as you claim do not stay silent as our students and faculty are brutalized. Condemning this horror is the bare minimum.
We are a collective of sociologists who support the cause of Palestinian liberation.
We came together to push
@ASAnews
to call for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza.
Yesterday they issued the following that falls far short of that objective. 🧵
"It matters to me as a jew...the genocide being committed against Palestinians is not being done in our name."
@ASAnews
member
@EliDFriedman
on why he is voting YES on the Resolution for Justice in Palestine, and why you should too.
The passing of the
@ASAnews
Resolution for Justice in Palestine, calling for an immediate & permanent ceasefire in Gaza and supporting academic freedom, including for those speaking out against Zionist occupation, is a historic moment.
You can read our press release here:
UPDATE: We were just informed by
@ASAnews
that they’ve completed the verification process and enough signatures were verified to move the Resolution for Justice in Palestine
forward to the Council!
We did it thanks to all of you!
Get ready to vote this spring!
Onward! 🇵🇸
Member of
@ASAnews
Jean Beaman
@jean23bean
asks you to vote YES on the
@Soc4Pal
Resolution. She says:
"As a scholar of race and racism, I believe it is crucial to speak out against all structures of apartheid."
Why are you voting YES?
Today, Sociologists for Palestine sent an open Letter to ASA Council regarding academic freedom.
Over the the last two weeks, we witnessed students & faculty working together to protest & build encampments meant to draw attention to the ongoing genocide of Palestinians. 1/
Sociologist Zachary Levenson
@grundrza
, a member of
@ASAnews
, will vote YES on the
@Soc4Pal
Resolution for Justice in Palestine because
"When we say never again, we mean never again for anyone."
Why are you voting YES?
We are all tearing up at this powerful statement by Jordanna Matlon.
"As a scholar of colonialism, I know that the most dangerous thing in the world is to treat some lives as less valuable than others."
VOTE YES ON
@ASANEWS
RESOLUTION FOR JUSTICE IN PALESTINE TODAY!
"I cannot sit back and watch sophicide and scholasticism and not speak up. Every university in Gaza has been leveled."
Sociologist L'Heureux Lewis-McCoy urges you to vote YES on the
@asanews
Resolution for Justice in Palestine.
Thank you
@dumilm
!
Devastated to hear about the detention of yet another sociologist
@sameralatout
for standing up with his students. We also learned of students arrested earlier in the week.
All while our disciplinary association maintains a deafening silence.
Watch this powerful message from
@ASANews
member
@saigrundy
on the parallels between the fight for Palestinian freedom and the fight to end South African Apartheid.
"The truth of genocide always outlasts the lies of revisionist history."
Hey sociologists! We hope you’re having a great ASA!
Sociologists for Palestine
@ASAnews
are LOVING seeing all of you wear your S4P pins and your Keffiyehs ❤️🇵🇸
Use this post to show them off (we also want to see those fits)!
"This vote is personal for me as my parents emigrated as Jewish Refugees, and I've lost family in the Holocaust."
Watch
@michsmirnova
's powerful statement on why she voted YES to the
@ASAnews
Resolution for Justice in Palestine. Join her today!
"Genocides are not the result of a few big, bad, boogiemen but enabled by a bureacracy of evil of people just doing their jobs of people clicking, moving, working but not asking any hard questions"
@ruha9
We are so proud to see faculty and students across the country, many of whom are members of sociologists for Palestine standing up against genocide & admin repression and bullying.
Long time
@ASAnews
member & former chair of the Labor & Labor Movements Section, Chris Tilly is voting YES on the Resolution for Justice in Palestine.
"I visited the West Bank in 2014 & was appalled by the apartheid system & the violent oppression of Palestinians."
We are horrified by the arrest of Prof Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian by Israel for standing against genocide. We condemn Hebrew University, her employer, for its sustained & public repression of her voice.
The oppression of Palestinians has never been limited to the West Bank & Gaza
FOR IMMEDIATE CIRCULATION
Statement on the Arrest of Hebrew University Professor Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian
Around 5 pm on Thursday, April 18, 2024, Hebrew University professor and internationally renowned feminist scholar Nadera Shalhoub-Kevorkian was arrested by Israeli police
UPDATE: In response to the ASA statement failing to call for ceasefire we drafted a "Resolution for Justice in Palestine" that we hope all ASA members will be able to vote on this spring.
Yesterday we submitted a petition to get it on the ballot with 581 names /
It's a good time to call out the hypocrisy of our institutions, too often celebrating student activists after they've graduating but stifling them while they're enrolled. -
@Ruha9
telling it like it is
We love the
@ASAnews
conference theme this year, but it needed three more words to be accurate!
Ballots open tomorrow, April 17! Get ready to vote YES for the Resolution for Justice in Palestine so we say resoundingly we believe in solidarity, hope, justice for ALL!
Check out this statement by University of Connecticut sociology students on their department’s silence re Palestine and calling on them to support their protesting students, the soc for pal resolution, and to take a stand against genocide. This is how you do it!
Be like
@jgo34
!
@ASAnews
ballots are out today! Vote YES on the Resolution for Justice in Palestine!
"I don't want to be complicit. I don't want to be complicit in a systematic slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent Palestinians in the name of security ..."
"I voted YES on the Resolution for Justice in Palestine, bc as a sociologist who's an expert on racism, colonialism, the carceral state and disinformation, how could I not? As a Black woman, how could I not? And as a human being, how could I not?"
Thank you
@CurlyProfessor
!!
"As sociologists we need to lend our voice to the growing popular and intellectual struggles for permanent ceasefire!"
ASA Member
@CihanTugal
is voting YES on the Resolution for Justice in Palestine (
@ASAnews
). Join him today, the ballot is in your inbox!
TODAY IS THE DAY ballots will hit our inbox!
Tell us why you are voting YES for
@Soc4Pal
's Resolution for Justice in Palestine! Tag us in your tweet!
"I am a member of
@ASAnews
& I support
@Soc4Pal
's Resolution because... "
Don't be afraid of a thread! ❤️🇵🇸
Scientists have been complicit in constructing the very categories of race that create the conditions of genocide we're here to oppose.
You can't kill a people in broad daylight if you haven't first unpeopled them.
-Ruha Benjamin
"As a Palestinian, these have been some of the hardest months of my life. But I find great solace in residing a discipline that calls for justice and sees inequality. I hope my fellow sociologists apply the same logic to Palestinians."
@emanabdelhadi
votes YES, you should too!
I am a member of
@ASAnews
and I am voting YES on the Resolution for Justice in Palestine.
I am proud to be in a discipline concerned with justice. As a Palestinian, I hope my people are not the exception to that commitment.
Join me in voting yes! Ballots are in your inbox now.
"I've lived and conducted research in Gaza...I've lost friends and colleagues...but nothing I have seen compares with the horrors we are witnessing in Gaza today."
Andy Clarno, one of our organizers, shares why he supports the
@ASAnews
resolution!
Goosebumps listening to
@RoiLivne
make a powerful case for the
@Soc4Pal
Resolution:
"I would ask ASA members to look for reasons to call for a ceasefire, not for excuses to oppose the call..."
Before I became a sociologist I worked as a grade school teacher, and I would care and take a stand even if I were sitll a grade school teacher or a truck driver or unemployed.
Should sociologists take a stand?
How did we sociologists come to imagine ourselves as something ..
"To be silent is to betray our values as sociologists and as teachers."
Thank you James Jones
@blackcapitol
for this moral clarity and conviction.
To support the Resolution for Justice in Palestine, get your vote in NOW! Ballot closes at 5pm EST.
In our memo, we encouraged Council to use the American Friends Service Committee’s (AFSC) divestment list & Investigate website to review its investments. We are confident these tools will help ASA uphold an ethical investment strategy moving forward. 2/
Another frequently asked question is: will this member resolution divide
@ASAnews
?
So far, over 30,000 people in Gaza have been killed and close to 2 million people have been displaced yet again. It is not the call to stand against this violence that is divisive. 1/3
We have some big, heartening news. Eighteen (!!) former ASA presidents have issued a joint letter to endorse the Resolution for Justice in Palestine now on the ASA ballot. The list, a veritable who's who of the profession, speaks to the broad buy-in for this resolution.🧵
Palestinian liberation is a reproductive justice issue!
Sociologist Sharmila Rudrappa makes clear that "genocide and colonial occupation are in direct violation of reproductive justice."
You can now watch the full
@soc4pal
teach-in at
We want to thank YOU the sociologists & allies who voted & organized & we want to than the members of Council who rallied around us and endorsed our proposals.
Please join our mailing list to be up to date on events & next steps! 3/
"If we don't use our knowledge & our voice to stand up agains the annihilation of an entire people, we are failing our discipline, our students & humanity."
Sociologist Samantha Agarwal (
@mutinous_lass
) on why she voted yes on the
@ASAnews
Resolution for Justice in Palestine!
"The moral case is clear...I'm someone who works internationally...and people are watching what we do in the United States." Gianpaolo Baiocchi on why he's voting yes on the
@ASAnews
resolution! Join him today, it's in your inbox!!
This makes us proud to be sociologists, proud to have a discipline lead by disciplined people, committed to justice everywhere, from across subfields, regions, and generations.
Thank you to these sociologists and to everyone who has publicly endorsed the resolution. ❤️🇵🇸
TODAY IS THE DAY!
Come hear five renowned sociologists speak on why they support Palestine and the
@soc4pal
resolution. We turned this into a webinar so we don’t have to turn anyone away (we exceeded 300 in 1st 48 hrs)!
Register below if you haven’t yet, and share widely!
We’re holding a teach-in! Come join sociologists Ruha Benjamin
@ruha9
, Michael Burawoy, Roi Livne
@RoiLivne
, Areej Sabbagh-Khoury & Sharmila Rudrappa reflect on their support for the ASA Resolution for Justice in Palestine!
Register here:
Excellent piece today by
@RyanEQuinn
that places the Resolution for Justice in Palestine within the context of
@ASAnews
history of statements re apartheid, Iraq war & Russia, & lays out our position that silence in the face of a US-funded genocide is a political statement 1/
Leaders of Sociology Group Resist Call for Ceasefire Resolution
Members of the American Sociological Association will now get a say, voting on whether to make their group the latest to call for an end to the war.
#HigherEd
Does the
@ASANews
Resolution for Justice in Palestine minimize antisemitism?
Sociologists for Palestine strongly stand against antisemitism. We follow the lead of pro-Palestinian Jewish organizations...1/5
As a member of
@ASAnews
Dan Hirschman supports
@Soc4Pal
's Resolution for Justice in Palestine because
"As an American and a Jew and a parent who cries thinking about the thousands of children of Gaza killed...I can at least stand up and say: "Not in my name."
"One cannot be a calm, cool and detached scientists with Palestinians, Congolese, Dalits, Negroes are being lynched, murdered and starved."
@ruha9
adapting DuBois today!
"Killing more than 30,000 people, many of whom are children, is always wrong. As a professional organization the most fundamentally decent and basic position we could take is to call for a ceasefire."
Join
@wisammy
& vote YES for the
@ASAnews
Resolution for Justice in Palestine
We are dismayed to learn our colleague
@Jairo_I_Funez
is subject to harassment aimed at his firing due to his pro Palestine advocacy.
We encourage you to sign on to the open letter below in his support.
@ASAnews
here's another opportunity to stand for academic freedom!
Our friend
@Jairo_I_Funez
is the latest target of doxing and intimidation due to his pro-Palestine views by a right wing media outlet which has FOIA'd his private correspondence & called for his firing.
Please sign on to show our support!
🗳️ Vote YES on the
@Soc4Pal
Resolution for Justice in Palestine! Check your inbox. You received an email from ASA Election (Sociological.ballot
@intelliscaninc
.net)
@ASAnews
with instructions.
"Genocides are not the result of a few big, bad, boogiemen but enabled by a bureacracy of evil of people just doing their jobs of people clicking, moving, working but not asking any hard questions"
@ruha9
As a member of
@ASAnews
Jess
@jesshardie
says that she will vote YES for
@Soc4Pal
resolution for Justice in Palestine because
f"remaining silent is as political as speaking up"
LOUDER 📢🔊📢🔊
Why are you voting YES?
Universities are imploding, but "Sociology is mostly abstracted by its own insular professional affairs and doomed to irrelevance or subservient collaborationism," like Avery Gordon said.
barest of bare minimums: vote YES
@Soc4Pal
resolution
Only THREE days left to vote!
The ASA Ballot closes on Monday, 20 May at 5pm EST. Make sure to vote and remind your friends and colleagues to get their votes in!
"One ASA section chair said that the resolution promotes antisemitism this is libelous, yes we didn't address antisemitism, but we didn't call out islamophobia and racism either, not because we condone any of it but because we're focused on one thing: Ceasefire."
@RoiLivne
seeing all these statements on why folks are supporting
@Soc4Pal
intiative at
@ASAnews
is one of the best moments of collective effervescence i've ever had in this discipline
Listen to Claire Decoteau explain her support for the
@soc4pal
Resolution:
"As a sociologist who studies structures of inequality, as a global scholar and as a parent, I cannot stand silently by and watch the slaughter of the Palestinian people."
VOTE NOW! Two days left!
Finally, here's a text of the email above -- Elon's alt text is glitching:
Dear ___ and Sociologists for Palestine,
Thank you for your input to the ASA Council regarding divestment from weapons manufacturing, both in written form and at the Business Meeting. 4/
As a trans crip sociologist my own liberation can’t be separated from the eradication of white colonial violence. And you know what taught me that idea — the interlocking, inseparable reality of our struggles? Sociology. 🇵🇸♿️🏳️⚧️
we—former presidents of the American Sociological Association—endorse the member Resolution for Justice in Palestine now on the ASA ballot."
We were overjoyed to see that the list includes the vast majority of this century's ASA presidents. Check it out for yourself:
In addition, Council will clarify our longstanding investment strategy and develop a regular cycle on which the strategy will be evaluated. Council will announce its decision and provide more detail about ASA’s investment strategy to the full membership in the coming months. 6/
It is unacceptable that you won’t call out the genocide and scholasticide in Gaza.
This is at your doorstep, happening to your students, who are bravely standing for Palestine in ways you won’t. Speak up.
It's not unprecedented for Council to take seriously where our $ goes, in the case of South Africa, the Council agreed that South African companies would be divested from. It's happened before, I don't see why it can't happen again. Seems like basic democratic accountability..
(In alphabetical order)
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Duke University (ASA 2018)
Michael Burawoy, Professor of Sociology, Emeritus, University of California Berkeley (ASA 2004)
48 hours left!! Let's go!!!
Get your vote in for the
@soc4pal
Resolution before the ballot closes on Monday.
Social movements scholar Caitlin Schroering reminds us:
"For the sociologist, there is no neutrality. You are either on the side of the oppressed or the oppressor."
We call on the ASA Council to act now! Condemn the attacks on student and faculty protesters by police, vigilantes, and university administrators. Demand respect for academic freedom and freedom of expression on our campuses. Support our right to peaceful protest. 8/
We were all so grateful to hear from you. I hope you'll be pleased to learn that the Council will take steps to further reduce our already low exposure to weapons manufacturing companies, which includes the 18 companies that you noted. 5/
"I support this resolution because it's high time that we take a stance and join other academic and research institutions calling for the US to stop supporting Israeli efforts that have led to the loss of so many lives and destruction."
@GCristinaMora
on the
@Soc4Pal
Resolution:
This statement is disappointing not only because it is unwilling to recognize the ongoing genocide or call for an end to the killing, but also because it comes after 125 sociologists, including six former ASA presidents, sent a letter & proposed a draft statement to the ASA...