Dear Washington University Community Members,

We write to welcome you back to campus and to provide what we feel is important context for the upcoming academic year.

On the surface, things look much the same as ever: the quad is neatly manicured; students eat, study, and catch up with friends in the usual haunts; the unsightly security fence has finally been removed, and our handsome old buildings are again visible from the street.

But from our perspective, things are far from normal. As faculty members who were suspended and banned from campus this spring for standing with students against the genocide in Gaza, we know that our school remains gripped by a moral crisis stemming from its complicity in the occupation of Palestine. In April, we experienced firsthand how the University prioritizes its ties to weapons contractors like Boeing over its commitment to the safety and well-being of its community members. 

Given the stress of impending final exams, the call of summer vacation, and the general unpleasantness of the events of this April, it is forgivable if some of us have forgotten— or would like to forget— what happened on campus last spring. 

The shortened version of events is as follows: On the afternoon of Saturday, April 27, after a semester filled with smaller demonstrations against the University’s ties to Boeing and its active role in the genocide in Gaza, hundreds of students, staff, faculty, alums, and other community members gathered for a peaceful protest in Tisch Park. As faculty members, we were there to express our solidarity with the Palestinian cause and to show the students there that they would not have to be alone in courageously living up to the ideals publicly professed by their school. 

Shortly after some participants said an evening prayer, amid families with kids playing and young people snacking and texting while relaxing on the grass, police moved in on the small encampment. Under the orders of the highest-ranking members of the University, over 100 people, including several of us faculty, were violently arrested and charged with criminal trespassing. Steve Tamari, a professor at nearby Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, had nine ribs and his hand broken and was beaten nearly to death for recording the police response. Many other students, staff, alumni, and community members were also injured by WUPD.

When asked by the press in June about the administration’s excessive and illegitimate use of force, Andrew Bursky, Chair of the WashU Board of Trustees, had only this revealing remark to share: “I know there’s pictures of police beating on others and so forth, which is unfortunate.” 

In total, seven different police departments were mobilized to crush the peaceful encampment in its first hours. Even relative to other brutal crackdowns on nationwide campus protests against Israeli genocide in spring, this puts WashU’s reaction among the most extreme and intolerant in the country.

It seems that Andrew Bursky’s only regret is that the crackdown wasn’t harsher, telling donors on a private call that he wanted the FBI to come to campus to investigate the protests, per reporting in The Intercept. This is meant to protect the school’s financial ties to the weapons industry and to have a chilling effect on future activism around any issue that is at odds with the administration.

As employees of the University, we were summarily suspended and banned from campus, forbidden from speaking to students and colleagues, had our online services revoked, and were subject to a shambolic, nonsensical “investigation.” This totally nontransparent process made it impossible to determine whether the school was abiding by its own rules and procedures. In response, our colleagues voted overwhelmingly in the Faculty Senate for an independent fact-finding committee to review the niversity’s erratic response. But as they allegedly did with Student Union (SU) Senate’s own pro-Palestine resolution, again the Board stepped in to make sure the interests of their donors were protected. 

In conjunction with Chancellor Martin, Bursky made clear in an email this summer that the democratic will of the Faculty Senate would be overruled. He stated that only the Board could conduct such an investigation, that faculty were “biased” and “unqualified,” and that he would not allow administrators to participate in a faculty-led investigation. The University is either involved in a cover-up of its outrageous and possibly illegal actions, or it simply does not care that it appears to be.

Because of the University’s dubious justification for cracking down on the protests, and because no criminal charges have yet been brought against us, we have been informed that the administration has stopped its campaign against us and lifted our suspensions. We celebrate this unqualified victory and return to our respective jobs on campus ready to teach, research, and support our students and colleagues.

But we also know that the work is far from over. Many students who were there with us that day have been subjected to a long, frustrating, and punitive hearing process intended to make them regret speaking out and to silence the rest of the campus community. At least three students were suspended relating to the April 13 protest after hearings and at least one student from the protest on April 27 still awaits a decision. Several others are currently on probation. The administration’s slow process left many students facing uncertain futures right up until the end of summer.

We continue to call on the administration to drop all disciplinary proceedings and punishments against all of the student protesters. So long as a single student has an outstanding conduct charge, probation, or a withheld degree, we will not consider this matter resolved. If faculty and staff can go back to work, students should be able to go back to their classrooms.

We look forward to getting back to business, but not business as usual. After a 65-year-old man was nearly beaten to death by WUPD cops, after a hundred of us were violently arrested at a peaceful protest on our own front lawn, after the Board of Trustees has made clear it will not respect the will of student and faculty democracy, there can be no more business as usual.

We welcome you all back, and we look forward to seeing you around campus this year.

Signed,

Dr. Michael Allen, Senior Lecturer, Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Urban Design: Sam Fox School (Former); Visiting Assistant Professor of History: West Virginia University (Current)

Dr. Megan Green, Adjunct Instructor: Brown School (Former); President of the Board of Aldermen (Current)

Dr. Bret Gustafson, Professor, Department of Anthropology

Dr. Angela Miller,  Professor, Department of Art History & Archaeology

Dr. Aaron Neiman Lecturer, Department of Anthropology (Former); Postdoctoral Research Associate: Brown School (Current)

Dr. Scott Ross Lecturer, Department of Anthropology