"History Will Be On Your Side"
The following speeches were delivered by two members of the academic team to commemorate 100 days of the camp.
During our 100 days of the ANU Gaza Solidarity Encampment, we worked closely with an incredible team of distinguished academics who supported students as we navigated the hostile relationship with ANU management. The management weaponised the code of conduct, called the police on its students, and even cut off electricity to the camp. Despite facing hostility from ANU management, these academics stood firm, meeting with them on several occasions to oppose a genocide that the ANU is complicit in.
The following speeches were delivered by two members of the academic team to commemorate 100 days of the camp.
Professor Sango Mahanty is a human geographer and studies the politics of social and environmental change.
I am part of a group of academics operating as intermediaries between encampment and ANU management.
The unfolding genocide in Gaza has deeply concerned and angered us all,
At times we feel helpless to influence events that are happening so far away
This is where the Palestine solidarity encampments like the one at ANU have played such an important role.
By your presence, you have brought the injustices faced by Palestine people into our daily lives and consciousness.
And like other Solidarity encampments, you have pushed our University to reflect on how we contribute to the problem and asked the ANU to take measures to change this.
Specifically, the ANU encampment has highlighted ANU’s investments in weapons and tech companies that are fueling the genocide, as well the University’s partnerships with complicit Israeli institutions. These investments and policies need to change.
Through your actions, you have not only shone a light on the injustices in Palestine and shown solidarity. You have also asked: can we please get our own house in order - to stop our own investments in genocide?
Drawing this connection between our personal and institutional actions and the global context is powerful. It means we cannot turn away from distant events, but must face our own actions and roles that contribute to these.
We know that the last 100 days have been very challenging and involved physical and other risks for encampment members, not least from our own institution.
We want you to know that your presence here, your courage and resilience has inspired us all.
And we thank you for it.
Elise Klein is an Associate Professor whose research is situated in the intersections (and cracks) of development, social policy, de(coloniality) and care.
Thank you for having me
I also want to acknowledge the stolen and unceded land in which we gather.
Just last night, more people were murdered by the occupation – in the most horrifying, painful and cruel ways
I cannot get so many images out of my head of this genocide. Of colleagues, of families, of children.
Starved
Humiliated
Dehumanised
Whole and full lives reduced to numbers
To bodies
Denied anywhere to go
Denied treatment
Anesthetic
Massacred
Hunted
No one deserves such horror.
And yet such cruelty hasn’t been met with not just silence, but active repression of all those that dare speak of genocide, apartheid, settler colonialism and Zionism. We are watching these images broadcast on our screens of sheer terror, and we are being told there is nothing to see.
Yes, liberal democracies have always been built on slavery, colonisation and genocide… but the denial of what know we are seeing, and the continuation of business as usual is next level.
Things are not well.
BUT it has been students everywhere that have shown humanity and moral clarity amidst this. You have shown how our lives are linked clearly to the genocide… through investments this University and others make in weapons companies.
You have called for a very modest measure – to divest. To break ties with institutions on occupied land.
And yet you have been met with such disdain and non gratitude…
Of a University that would speak against you in the Federal Senate
That would use the code of conduct against you without giving you due process and even tell you what you are being accused of in the first instance
That would call the police on you
That would report you to the AFP
That would allow mainstream media to defame you
That would cut your power and shiver through Canberra winter
Rather than simply work with you to divest.
Well I say thank you.
I say thank you for showing such moral leadership in the absence of leadership from those that are paid to show it.
Leadership admits this violent and cruel circus. It has been the encampments that have exposed the violent work of Universities and given us a sober assessment of how far we are from where our University needs to be.
But thank you for showing us a way to get back there:
hosting hard conversations respectfully. Holding space for diverse views and backgrounds, acting on the evidence base, and the willingness to stand for what is right.
History will be on your side.
And to the University, history is calling – our colleague Professor Hilary Charlesworth as well as 14 other judges at the ICJ has just called for governments and institutions not to support Israel’s occupation across the Palestinian territories.
Divest now.
Thank you