COLUMBIA AND BARNARD: STOP STAFF REPRESSION NOW
JUSTICE FOR OUR COMRADES!
Sign on to this open letter:
- Columbia Community and Student Organizations (sign here)
- Allies, Unions, and Community Organizations (sign here)
On May 10th, 2024, Clara C., an administrative assistant in a Columbia language department and union member of United Auto Workers Local 2110, was terminated by the university. Her termination came just three weeks after she visited the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on April 18th during her unpaid lunch break, at which point she was off the clock. On that day, now former President Minouche Shafik authorized the arrest of over 100 students and staff by inviting the NYPD onto campus in order to clear peaceful protest from the South Lawn. Clara was herself arrested as a result of Shafik’s blatant violation of free speech, shared governance and community safety by allowing police onto campus to suppress the protest of the ongoing genocide in Palestine.
Clara’s termination became the first of multiple retaliatory firings by the university to appease billionaire donors threatening to withdraw their financial support. To date, at least four employees of Columbia and Barnard, two of whom are members of UAW Local 2110, have been terminated, upending their lives and placing them in significant financial hardship. As outraged staff, we write this letter to condemn, in the strongest terms, the targeted firings of Columbia University and Barnard College workers for their participation in the movement for a free Palestine and divestment from Israel. These firings are an escalation in the coordinated campaign to suppress anti-Zionist speech and organizing at Columbia and Barnard, including organizing protected by federal law. Over the last year, Columbia, Barnard, and universities across the country have deployed parallel strategies of surveillance and punishment to repress students, faculty, and staff alike, who dare to condemn the state of Israel’s genocidal campaign in Gaza and who uplift the courage and moral leadership of the Palestinian people.
Just as university policies governing student conduct were constantly revised to justify discipline for what had been previously normalized political activity, so too were new policies devised to prohibit staff from expressing solidarity with Palestine without risking termination. University HR investigations kicked into gear to quell staff involvement, leading to the first known staff firing in retaliation for visiting the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. The firing of Clara C. appears to be yet another rushed call from high within the university administration. Clara was initially suspended in a surprise meeting with HR on May 1st, with the reason for her suspension never stated. A grievance filed by her union immediately following her suspension was ignored by the university, denying Clara the opportunity to present evidence or understand the accusations against her. Columbia neither acknowledged nor scheduled a date for the grievance of her suspension, and instead terminated Clara on May 10th. With no prior disciplinary record or performance issues, the only reason ever given for her firing was “the serious misconduct that occurred on April 18, 2024.” In our employer’s eyes, “serious misconduct” amounts to sitting on grass and speaking out against genocide. Inviting lethal force onto campus, however, is normalized by Columbia administration as acceptable for daily working conditions. Non-union workers have also faced unilateral repression for their participation in the movement for Palestine, including two known firings carried out by letters in the mail in May. These staff received no warning or follow up communications regarding their termination.
The fourth known staff member fired, this time at Barnard and also a union member of UAW Local 2110, was terminated after months of harassment carried out by supervisors and directed by executive-level university administration. Incited by the staff member’s known support for Palestine, the university carried out an investigation in order to produce any and all information which could be used to effect their termination. HR recruited other workers to surveil the staff member in order to fabricate allegations against them which could form the basis of a “just cause” discharge. Again, with no disciplinary record prior to being targeted nor any record of performance problems, they were fired mid-summer for an alleged violation of their collective bargaining agreement. While egregious, these cases are hardly anomalous. For students, faculty, and staff alike, the university aims to make examples out of anyone who speaks up for Palestine in order to sow fear and dampen solidarity.
This connection, however, is often obscured due to the insistence that staff are solely workers, not part of the greater intellectual or political community. The university, in its mission as an educational institution, encourages the political engagement of its students and its faculty. But as an employer, the university suppresses the political engagement of its workers. An apology can be issued for bringing NYPD to campus by the same administration that will retain a white-shoe law firm to undermine worker collective bargaining and carry out student conduct cases aimed at evicting and suspending pro-Palestine students for months on end. Whether we demand living wages or we speak openly of an ongoing act of genocide, a worker’s voice is a threat to their employer. Palestine makes plain that surveillance, censorship, and the menace of punishment are the nature of the workplace: bosses have the power and the prerogative to watch everything workers do; staff are expected and encouraged to surveil each other under the guise of mutual accountability; and all are coerced to comply with rules, standards, and unspoken expectations for silence under threat of discipline and termination.
In response, we as workers must organize to defend ourselves. Without rank-and-file power, without solidarity across shops, across locals, across organizations, the protections supposedly enshrined in contracts and in law are a dead letter, all to the benefit of the bosses. The university administrations seek to exercise unilateral authority over the conditions of employment for unionized and non-unionized staff alike, and the ongoing colonization of Palestine presents an opportunity for them to vastly expand their capacity to do so.
This is why staff continue to choose to resist alongside students, student workers, and faculty for justice in Palestine. Though the risks are different, the administrative capacity for surveillance, censorship, and punishment which is routinely deployed against workers is now being deployed against everyone else. The same vice presidents who fire staff suspend students. The same provosts who investigate faculty send warnings to whole departments where solidarity with Palestine is concentrated. The same basic need for housing and healthcare is leveraged to extract compliance with policies designed to manufacture consent for genocide.
At each step of heightened university repression, students and workers for Palestine prove that the only answer is renewed resistance and strengthened solidarity.
AS SIGNATORIES TO THIS LETTER,
WE UNEQUIVOCALLY DEMAND:
(1) Immediate reinstatement for Clara C. and for all fired university workers at Columbia and Barnard
(2) Compensation for the emotional and material harms our employers have caused
(3) An end to baseless HR investigations into anti-Zionist workers
(4) We further call upon labor unions across higher education to treat the coordinated university suppression of protest of genocide as an emergency for the rights of all workers, worthy of proactive planned countermeasures from rank-and-file union members, community members and union staff
(5) We remain steadfast in our call for total university and union divestment from Israel, an end to genocide, and a free Palestine within our lifetime
