In a recent op-ed, Distinguished Professor of Sociology Barbara Risman accuses the UIC community of antisemitism for statements opposing the Israeli state’s response to the October 7th attacks. She also charges the UIC administration with antisemitism for not suppressing the ability of our community to make such statements. Risman calls on the UIC administration to “create policies prohibiting departments and programs from using state resources to issue political statements that expressly alienate students because of their religious or ethnic identities or even their political beliefs.” We, a collective of 31 graduate students in sociology, strongly believe that UIC students should never be targets of violence, including hate speech, on the basis of religious or ethnic identity. However, we oppose blanket suppression of political speech even, or especially, when advocacy for its suppression is religiously framed. To ask for a campus without departmental political speech is to ask to put limits on innovation and progress, which we cannot accept at UIC. 

The University of Illinois has a proud history of active political confrontations, like many other institutions of higher education. In spite of this, the UIC administration has appointed a task force on statement guidelines to place limits on “statements on matters of public interest” which will impact us as both students and educators on this campus. We emphatically call on the University to respect the outstanding legacy of political speech on campus and through departments, by protecting the ability of all UIC community members, departments, and organizations to speak freely on political matters. To center this in our current moment of political debate, we demand that speech on Palestine, Israel, and Zionism, including anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel, be protected. As Risman states, criticism of Israel is not anti-semitic and, as reiterated recently by a panel of Jewish UIC faculty members, anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. 

We challenge the task force on statement guidelines as an example of university-led suppression of free speech. Across the nation, student protests against the genocide have faced repression from administrations. University crackdowns on free speech have escalated nonviolent, peaceful protests to the point of high risk to student lives. We urge UIC to listen to our demand to dissolve the task force and make no further moves to silence the campus community.  

We echo and uplift UIC faculty responses to Risman’s op-ed and the Graduate Employee Organization (GEO) letter of condemnation that calls for the dissolution of the task force. We assert that the formation of this task force, aimed at censoring political statements, is a violation of our work as sociologists. We were drawn to UIC for the departmental focus on engaged sociology, a practice that routinely takes research-based findings into non-academic settings with the explicit aim to inform policy, educate the public, and eliminate social inequality–all of which require politics of some kind. The emphasis on public sociology is one that Risman has sponsored under her departmental leadership and contributed to through the publication of numerous op-eds. Risman’s recent call to curb political speech on campus is in direct contradiction with the departmental values that she has helped implement and that attracted us to UIC sociology as young scholars.

We champion the ongoing political engagement of UIC centers and departments on the Palestinian genocide. We especially endorse the speech of cultural centers as activist entities that should take political stances as part of their dedication to supporting marginalized student populations. Cultural centers and academic programs are an essential component of UIC’s academic mission and a service to all students. The Women’s Leadership and Resource Center (WLRC), previously called out by Risman, has a 30-year history of supporting all members of the UIC community. Originating from student activism, the WLRC provides essential support services for survivors of gender-based violence. Many centers, including  WLRC, have issued statements in response to the experiences of policing and harassment reported by Palestinian students. Supporting students in distress aligns with their mission. This backing does not deny services to others; rather, it underscores centers like WLRC’s responsiveness to student needs–an aspiration for all educators. 

Furthermore, academic departments and centers, including those at UIC, have formed and grown out of political battles for existence. Proposed restrictions on the ability for centers and programs to make statements on political issues deny this history and contradict UIC’s record as a guiding light on political issues affecting Chicago and beyond. UIC has made strides to center the needs of the predominantly student-of-color undergraduate population, many of whom are Palestinian, reflective of the large Chicago-area Palestinian population. Risman’s op-ed conflates discomfort over challenges to one’s political views with threats to safety and livelihood. We entreat UIC to avoid reversing course by centering the comfort of those more privileged in this critical moment.

This inconsistency suggests that the task force on statement guidelines and Risman’s editorial are measures intended to silence discussion of the harms experienced by Palestinians, specifically. This moment is reminiscent of the backlash to Black Lives Matter. Opposition to Black Lives Matter framed the particular attention paid to Black lives as somehow devaluing non-Black lives. Risman frames statements acknowledging Palestinian suffering as devaluing Jewish suffering. While the suffering of all matters, statements that provide the broader cultural and social context of the colonization of Palestine are acknowledgments of the particular suffering and pain experienced by Palestinians globally and in our community. To suggest this is wrong overlooks the clear power imbalance in Israel’s genocide in occupied Palestine.  

UIC cannot accept the proposal that political beliefs must be safeguarded from challenge. Even more so in this instance of heightened political contestation, free speech must be protected, both as a conduit for social progress and as a component of the support and engagement of marginalized student populations.