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The patterns and rhythms of my personal life have revolved around the academic calendar for so long now; I struggle to recall what it was like before I had these markers, these indicators of the change of seasons, of cyclical beginnings and endings, especially as time has seemed to both compress and collapse into a distortion that challenges my own perceptions these past two and a half years, ever since the intensified accelerated genocide of the Palestinian people began in October 2023.The end of every academic year and all of its accompanying graduation ceremonies that have since followed have also hit me differently, harder, with a weight I don’t know how to stop carrying. Just as I cannot help but think about and see the students and educators of Gaza whenever I am on campus at Western, I also cannot help but feel increasingly disheartened by the continued deliberate disconnect between our peers, colleagues, and academic institutions in this country, and our peers, colleagues, and academic institutions in Gaza. This is one example where for me “the Palestinian Exception” shines the most glaringly, blindingly, brightest and harshest.
This weekend was full of graduations and celebrations, as students at WWU and elsewhere marked their achievements. At the same time, students in Gaza have been working hard to finish their final semester of the year, many hoping to graduate soon. They have been doing this despite their college and university campuses having been bombed, damaged, or destroyed by Israel and the United States, and despite being forced to experience and endure human-made famine, forced starvation, illness, violence, bombing, and suffering.
A friend in Ramallah once told me that in Gaza, education is particularly special. She explained how it is integrated into the culture, the lives, and the values of the Palestinian people in Gaza in a way that is unique and beautiful, and I also believe this to be true. When she told me this, I thought about my friend who continued to teach throughout the genocide for free, or rather at a cost to himself, since he had to walk long distances and pay for things like power and internet access himself in order to teach. And I also think about my friend Mohammed, the brilliant engineering student who was accepted to WWU and awarded a scholarship he was never allowed to receive because of Israel’s continued illegal blockade, occupation, and genocide—all of which are enabled, sustained and supported by the United States.
This past Saturday, Mohammed was on my mind and in my thoughts, as I went up to campus for the graduation festivities, along with my husband and two friends, each of us there in community with both the students at Western, and the students in Gaza, and particularly with Mohammed, who should have been there with us. We set up a small table in Red Square, which included photos of Mohammed, and quotes of his messages to the Bellingham and Whatcom community.
I had taken my graduation cap, the one I wore 25 years ago when I graduated from Western, and tied a hand crocheted-watermelon that my sister made to the top of the cap as a graduation tassel. I placed this on the table next to Mohammed’s photo, in his honor and in recognition of his academic achievements. Through everything and despite everything these past two and a half years, and during the time we spent trying to lift the barriers that were preventing him from coming to Bellingham, Mohammed still continued to take classes in Gaza. His commitment to his education is unwavering. His efforts unyielding. And despite being blocked from attending Western, he will still be graduating this summer in Palestine from his university in Gaza. And this is something we should recognize. Which is what we were trying to do, in our own small way.
We stood at our table in honor of Mohammed for several hours as the crowds in Red Square dissipated and grew, ebbing and flowing with the tides of the different graduation ceremonies. We had placed a handmade card and some markers on the table, where people could write messages for Mohammed inside and on the back of the card. I explained to people that we would take pictures of the messages and send the digital photos to him, and that I would also keep the card safe, until I could deliver it to him in person, at some future time when he is finally allowed to leave Gaza. Or at some future time when the people in this world who are standing with humanity have somehow found a way to end the genocide.
As we stood near the table smiling and greeting passersby, graduating students, family members, and WWU staff and faculty walked past, some occasionally stopping to talk with us, to learn more about Mohammed, to thank us for being there. Others walked by without looking at us at all, while some waved, or gave us a thumbs up, or shouted “Thank you for being here!”
It was a sunny day with a bright blue sky, and the feeling in Red Square was celebratory. It was bittersweet being there on such an occasion, without Mohammed’s presence but with him in my heart. I was thinking about this when a young woman approached the table, followed by what I assume were her parents and perhaps siblings and grandparents. I did what I had been doing all morning and afternoon and smiled at the young woman and introduced myself, and explaining we were there on behalf of our friend Mohammed, a student in Gaza who had been accepted to Western with a scholarship, but who had been blocked from leaving Gaza, despite our best efforts to overcome this.
I explained how he was part of our community, even though he could not be here with us, and I started to share more about him, to tell them how he had been interning at a hospital that had been destroyed and how he was trying to help repair it, when suddenly one of the men standing behind the young woman said “I don’t think former IDF soldiers are allowed at this table,” to which the man standing next to him laughed.
Taken aback, I said nothing, still processing what was happening, and then the man who had laughed said, “Ah, yes, ‘free Palestine!’ We believe in freeing Palestine from Hamas!” They began to walk past the table when one of the women with them turned towards me and said, “We support the IDF! We want them to kill babies!” She said this loudly, clearly, and directly.
We want them to kill babies. My stomach churned. I felt instantly sickened and confused, shocked and repulsed.
These words were spoken openly, adamantly, without shame, without hesitation. These words were spoken to four people standing there in a crowded square, near a small table with a handmade card for a WWU student trapped in Gaza, who was trying to protect his family from violence and forced starvation, who was being denied his right to education, and was trying to survive a genocide.
As I stood there still processing what had happened, feeling nauseous regret that I had told the people who wanted my friend’s family members to be killed anything at all about him, feeling as though I had exposed him to even more harm from a distance, harm through and in proximity to me that only reinforced the harm he was constantly facing, I watched this family, the family who openly declared they wanted Palestinian babies to be killed, join their graduating student, the young man whose graduation cap was decorated with an Israeli flag. I saw how there were also graduating students standing near them, students who had kefiyehs draped across their shoulders over the graduation gowns, and I worried about them as they were so close to those who proudly uttered such violent words.
I tried to let the words go, but I kept hearing them echo in my mind, ‘We want them to kill babies.’ At our table, the four of us tried to focus on the reason we were there, to turn our attention back to Mohammed, to talking with the people who were glad of our presence, when less than 20 minutes past and a WWU staff person approached our table. At first, I naively thought she was interested in talking with us about Mohammed, maybe even in signing his card. But no, she was there to tell us we needed to leave because the space we were in was reserved for the graduation celebration and related gatherings.
I explained that was precisely why we were there—that we had come for this exact reason—and that we were part of the Western community—our small group was made up of two alums, a student, and a staff member. We explained we had been there for hours and there had been no problems, and that on the contrary, people had been expressing gratitude to us for our presence. I said I wondered if this sudden need to tell us we could not be there had anything to do with the family who had just visited us and who had said they supported the “IDF” and wanted them to kill babies. The staff person explained they did not know anything about that, but a few moments later admitted that yes, there had been “a complaint” about us, and the complaint is what precipitated her visit to us.
She tried to explain that the issue was not that we had done anything wrong, but rather, it was our presence in a space that had been reserved by the President’s Office. We again reiterated that we were there as part of the intended purpose of the reservation, and what followed were a few exchanges about policy, consistency, and adherence to various rules. We tried to follow the logical threads and understand their logical implications, the concern about consistency and practical applications for future precedents. I have been on the other side of such discussions often enough as someone who works in administration at Western, and I understand there is institutional pressure to act within the parameters of one’s job expectations, guidelines, and trying to apply policy consistently.
But when it came down to that particular situation, it was clear we had done nothing wrong. We were not being disruptive. We were not approaching people. We were not creating an obstruction. People were free to come up to us or not, as they chose. We were not blocking access to anything. On the contrary, one of my friends even helped out some graduating students by taking some photos for them as they posed near the fountain. The whole reason we were there was for graduation.
The staff person listened to us and talked with us and expressed that they wanted to figure things out with us, adding that she was "the nice one," and that other people at Western "might not be so nice." And while she may have intended this to be a friendly comment, it did feel like intimidation to me. And as we were talking, a man who may have been the parent or relative of another graduating student, came up to the table and asked us to explain a little more about why we were there. He also said he wanted to thank us for being there. I explained about Mohammed, who he is, what we were doing, and he said he really appreciated our efforts and our presence. "Thank you for saying this,” I responded to him, “although we are being told we need to leave now."
The man said he wondered if that was happening, which was another reason he came over to us, because he wanted to express his support for us staying. He said that higher education was about learning, and about being engaged in the larger world, and that this was something important, related to the most important issue of our time, and that actually he thought it was very appropriate that we be there. The staff person tried to explain that it wasn't what we were representing, but rather Western’s policy of not having anything unrelated to the purpose of an event in the reserved space at the same time, and that she was trying to convey the details about the policy, but that she did not make the policy. I again repeated that we were there because of what the event was, and the man who was trying to give us his support said that it could be useful to follow up with others who were telling her to enforce this policy, and that he had some things he may want to share as well.
Eventually after some time and more conversation, about our table, about our visibility, about our purpose and intent, we were permitted to stay, on the condition that if a family asked us to move if they thought we were blocking access to a place where they wanted to take photos, then we would, which we agreed to do.
After the afternoon graduation ceremony ended, the student with the Israeli flag on his graduation cap and his family members who had expressed they wanted the "IDF" to kill babies walked past our table again, this time from a distance. At one point, they stopped and turned and stared at us, and one man began to walk towards us, but then a different family member tapped him on his shoulder and shook his head, and then they all left together. After the crowd dissipated and as we had been on campus for many many hours, we began to pack up our table and collect our things, so we could return to our homes and recover from the many hours of standing in the sun, of talking with people in the community, and of experiencing all of the emotions and realizations that the interaction with the family who openly declared that they wanted Israelis to kill babies provoked.
In the hours and days that have since followed, there have been more Palestinian babies and children killed by Israelis. And I have heard from more friends this weekend who lost more relatives and friends to missile strikes on families in camps, and sniper attacks on people who were sitting among friends talking in cafes. And as I have talked with other friends, students, and families who are forced to somehow try to keep moving through all of this, I kept picturing the four of us on Saturday standing at our little table in the middle of Red Square, this tiny, inadequate gesture of support for student in Gaza, and for one student in particular, a student who is also a member of the WWU community. This tiny inadequate gesture of solidarity and support was deemed objectionable. While the killing of babies is not.
I have spent nearly three decades of my life, both as a student and as a professional working in higher education, at Western. To have a presence on campus in honor of Mohammed, in honor of the many students in Gaza, on graduation day was truly to me the very least that could be done. The very very least. When so much more is needed. And so much more is owed. And to my mind, we would be justified in asking Western for so much more. But we weren’t asking for anything. We were just taking up space in a community that we were already part of to do something so small. And even this was objected to, while Western Washington University has yet to publicly proclaim its objection to the genocide and scholasticide. It has yet to make any statements of solidarity in support of the students and educators in Gaza who have been violently targeted, attacked, killed and harmed.
Time and time again, the institution that chose "Make Waves" as its tagline, has shown its adherence to remaining institutionally careful, to retreat behind the illusion of objectivity through references to policies and their commitment to ensuring they are applied “fairly,” but without acknowledging that these policies, actions, and words reflect and preserve the dominant power structures already in place, and that they are slanted in favor of protecting those who are not in need of protection, while pressuring those who are the victims of institutionalized racism and bias.
This is a longstanding pattern. And it is one that is allowing such conditions to worsen.
As recently as this past April, Western hesitated to prevent a harmful event from taking place on campus. It was an event designed to give a platform to those who seek to justify the murder of the family and friends of Palestinian students in Gaza. When the event was eventually moved off campus in response to much public outcry expressing concerns for the safety and well-being of those who were most at risk, the institutional rationale for requesting that the event take place off-campus was not because of this, but rather it was framed as a matter of adhering to policy, and a concern for the safety of the event organizers. Or at least, this is the widespread perception of the rationale behind the change, as again, I am not aware of any public statement from the institution acknowledging the harm that such an event would have caused to Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, students, faculty, staff, community members, and their visible allies.
I make a distinction between what is public and visible, and what is private, as I have frequently encountered people who express their support to me privately, but are hesitant to do this publicly. And I understand people are often acting from a place of fear. But when we willingly cede our own personal responsibility and power in the face of injustice, we are actually less protected, not more.
I have been thinking a lot about how it can be that we live in a world where people can talk openly about wanting babies to be killed and then be welcomed, supported, and respected, while those who are being targeted by the violent reality of such genocidal language are treated as threats. We have seen the Palestinian people be abandoned time and time again by the people and the institutions that could and should support and protect them in this upside-down world. This is not a world I want. This is not a world I will ever willingly participate in upholding. This is a world I reject and will continue to reject with every fiber of my being.
Every person has a choice in every moment and every place we are in to do what we can from within the spaces where we are present. And what we do and say matters. It matters a great deal. It matters more than we may know. While nothing we are doing is enough, everything we do matters. And I urge everyone reading these words or listening to my narration of them to think about this, to look around, to ask yourself questions that help you understand: How are the actions I am taking today helping? And how are they causing harm? Who is being supported? And who is being hurt? Who is being protected? And who is being excluded?
Our answers can help guide our actions. Our actions can be aligned with our values. And if we are honest with ourselves we will recognize that there is so much more we could be doing, both as individuals, and together in our communities.
I will close this lengthy piece of writing by offering you something you can do right now, something that will make a difference, something that those of us in the United States, particularly those of us who are in Washington State, and those of us who are connected to WWU, those of us who are in Whatcom County, and in Bellingham, and those of us who are working in education could and should do, and this is: to give Mohammed our support. To help him pay off his education debts and support his efforts to keep moving forward in pursuit of his education and his future, despite everything.
This is one thing we can do right now. And it is important that we do it.
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