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For over a year, we’ve watched in horror as Israel wages war on the Palestinian people—a “war” that legal experts around the globe, from Elizabeth Warren to the UN Human Rights Office, say constitutes a genocide. Israel has killed tens of thousands, a figure estimated to be woefully undercounted by the prestigious medical journal The Lancet. News of the Israeli army’s assaults on children, hospitals, and refugee camps flow out of the siege on Gaza every day. We witness the near total destruction of schools, universities, libraries, hospitals, and cultural centers as the people of Palestine share their desperation on social media.
With a new administration taking charge in DC, the war machine that arms the slaughter shows no sign of slowing down. Despite the recent (and fragile) ceasefire in Gaza, Israeli troops continue to kill Palestinians, including children. We believe our role, as taxpayers funding war crimes, is to do everything we can to halt the tide of destruction and loss.
That’s why we formed the PSU Solidarity Caucus—a collaborative and autonomous group of PSU members who want to leverage the power of our union to combat suffering in Palestine and beyond. We have concluded that justice for Palestine is a union issue at UMass, and will make our case to you in this article.
Academic work functions beyond borders, with research projects often connecting professors and students from multiple universities, internationally; attacks on universities and professors in Palestine are attacks on our would-be colleagues. Moreover, we serve Palestinian students at our campuses who deserve the freedom to pursue higher education without fearing for their and their families’ safety and wellbeing. The Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees (PFUUPE) has called on higher education organizations across the world to sever ties with the institutions, programs, and departments that are complicit in the ongoing genocide and the scholasticide of Palestinian educational institutions.
UMass has been an active and politicized campus for decades, from protests calling for an end to U.S. intervention in Vietnam to divestment campaigns against South African apartheid. The university regularly touts its history of student activism, and brands itself with the slogan “Be Revolutionary.” Yet, when our students—who we all work to support—called for divestment from contemporary war profiteers in May, they were arrested en masse.
This crackdown on the rights of protestors is deeply concerning. The administration has displayed its willingness to suppress freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, and other rights enshrined in both our contracts with our university and our government, in order to silence calls for Palestinian liberation. As most know, PSU’s fight for a fair contract is ramping up and growing increasingly contentious. If we stand by and allow our rights to protest for Palestinian liberation and against the war machine to be suppressed, we demonstrate to the administration that they can use that same playbook on future issues, including our contract fight.
We—as the staff who make this campus run—must send a clear message to the administration that these suppression tactics are not acceptable to us by leveraging the power of our union and standing in solidarity with the students who have put their academic futures—and their bodies—on the line for justice.
If you’ve been following the student protests, it’s probably not news to you that the university is actively funding the genocide through its financial investment. Local investigative journalism recently found that the UMass endowment includes indirect holdings in one of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturers, as well as in a company that sells AI surveillance systems to the Israeli military.
UMass also receives grant funding from defense corporations, meaning the university profits alongside Raytheon and other corporations from destruction in Palestine and beyond. Our campus routinely welcomes weapons manufacturers and war profiteers to recruit students for careers and internships. UMass is actively complicit in the genocide in Palestine.
As PSU members, we see these morally corrupt investments as a part of the larger story of UMass’s financially dubious dealings. In 2023, over 100 PSU members’ jobs were forcibly privatized and transferred to the UMass Amherst Foundation. This move upended the professional lives and financial security of our fellow union members. It also formalized a shift in the university’s financial holdings, making them both more beholden to corporate interests and largely invisible to the public. The oversight we deserve, as employees and Massachusetts residents, has been stripped. UMass isn’t operating like a public institution anymore—it’s a corporation, earning a profit off of genocide.
As union members, we believe it is our responsibility to answer the call for solidarity that both Palestinian and U.S. labor unions have made to fellow unions worldwide. The National Labor Network for Ceasefire, which includes the National Nurses United, United Auto Workers, and the National Education Association (our national union), has demanded a halt to U.S. military aid to Israel.
How do we act? We organize! We join forces with the American Historical Association, the National Network for Ceasefire, the PFUUPE, and the local chapters of national groups in solidarity with Palestine already on campus (FJP, SJP) to impact the decisions made by UMass—an institution that could not function without us.
An undeniable turning point in the fight to end South African apartheid was the Longshoremen’s Union boycott of South African goods, launching an 11-day campaign when union workers were refusing to unload South African goods from ships at port. This boycott contributed directly, and massively, to the U.S. anti-apartheid campaign—using the union as a political coalition to effect real and lasting change. As unionized staff at UMass, we have the opportunity and the responsibility to utilize our union as a political coalition to protect one another, to protect our rights for freedom of speech and assembly, and to demand our institution stop funding and supporting the brutal genocide of the Palestinian people. Join us! If you have any questions, please email us at psusolidarity@gmail.com.
In solidarity,
The PSU Solidarity Caucus Steering Committee
Santiago Vidales
Hannah Bernhard
Monica Garcia
Koby Leff
Ari Jewell
Sierra Dickey
Tamarin Butcher
Opinion pieces are written by rank and file PSU members and do not constitute an official PSU position.
