U of A Faculty Senate chair defers antisemitism resolution after encampment response

Despite calls for a formal resolution condemning antisemitism, the University of Arizona Faculty Senate chair said Monday that she could not “in good conscience” submit one after a pro-Palestinian encampment was broken up on campus last week.

Chair Leila Hudson was initially called on by some faculty members to write a formal resolution on antisemitism after a Jewish fraternity on campus, Alpha Epsilon Pi, was graffitied last month. The graffiti, which fraternity leaders said was antisemitic, referenced the Israel-Hamas war.

But Hudson said Monday she could not submit her drafted resolution “without fueling the current and extremely concerning trend of the reflexive and unexamined mobilization of police power that we saw on April 30.”

Hudson, who is Palestinian and is a professor in the School of Middle Eastern and North African Studies, said the police response to the pro-Palestinian encampment at the UA was “disproportionate, selective, violent and threatening to First Amendment freedoms and the traditional obligations that a public land grant university has to its community.”

Early last Wednesday morning, law enforcement officers with the UA Police Department, the Tucson Police Department, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department, the Arizona Department of Public Safety and SWAT descended on the encampment near the UA main gate. Protesters in the camp, which included pop-up tarps, stayed on campus past the 10:30 p.m. curfew for non-academic activity. UA President Robert C. Robbins, after an hours-long standoff that he said created a volatile and dangerous situation, told authorities to “immediately enforce campus use policies and all corresponding laws.” Officers fired rubber bullets and pepper balls at protesters, some of whom were UA students.

Hudson said she is working to create an ad hoc faculty committee to investigate the police response to the encampment.

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“Students and community members who peacefully breached university rules, in the long tradition of civil disobedience on college campuses, assembled peacefully to call attention to Israeli atrocities in Gaza, unconditional U.S. material support and the university ties to government and private sector contributors to the political economy of occupation, ethnic cleansing and the violation of humanitarian law,” Hudson said about the encampment.

Hudson said in her statement to the Faculty Senate on Monday that it is a “critical moment for the principles of free speech and academic freedom,” as the U.S. Congress is “attempting, uniquely, to legislate the meaning of antisemitism in a way which many individual scholars, and many individual citizens, believe will limit free speech in the name of fighting hatred, which I personally oppose.”

Because of that, Hudson said, she is instead referring her draft motion on antisemitism to the Faculty Senate’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion committee.

“It’s more important to get the matter right then to do it quickly in a short amount of time allotted,” she told the senators. “I know this will disappoint some of you, but I hope it opens us up to a broader conversation about how we become a more united and effective community.”

Hudson said the Faculty Senate has “unconditionally rejected all forms of bias, bigotry, hatred, intimidating or harassing conduct based on race, ethnicity, disability, language, nationality, physical appearance, political views and affiliations, age, religion, sex, gender identity, reproductive status and sexual orientation.”