Why she was 'Disappeared'

AS A FORMER newspaperman, I sometimes feel my Substack is like the newspapers I edited years ago. I feel deadline pressure (self-imposed), and I value, as I did as a small-city editor, fair play, even if it means airing opinions that are controversial or different from my own. In that vein, today I’m publishing a guest essay written by Rumeysa Öztürk, Fatima Rahman, Genesis Perez and Nicholas Ambeliotis, students at Tufts University. Readers may recognize the first name mentioned; she’s the woman from Turkey who was arrested a few days ago and removed to a detention facility in Louisiana. She stands to have her visa revoked, or maybe it’s already been revoked, as Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggests, because her ideas are not welcomed in the White House. 1 It appears the woman in question is guilty of having and expressing an opinion, not of participating in or organizing pro-Hamas demonstrations. Mr.Rubio suggests that she was raising a ruckus. 2

My few followers may or may not agree with the points stated in the op-ed piece, which was published in the Tufts University student newspaper and directed toward the Tufts administration. More important to me is that these ideas be independently considered, along with the startling set of circumstances that strongly suggest we now have an administration which intends to silence and punish dissent. While uncommon in the United States, this practice is not rare in authoritarian countries such as Russia and China.

Her attorneys and supporters want her F-1 student visa restored. We’ll see how that goes.

This seems to me to be innocuous, standard-fare activity for American university campuses. To be sure, the war in Gaza is highly controversial, and there are passionate points of view on all sides. To some, expressing any sympathy for the innocent Palestinians and the destruction of Gaza is anti-Semitic. I can’t agree. Younger people often become impassioned advocates for their developing world views. I’m reminded of a young poet named Persche Bysshe Shelley, who was expelled from Oxford University in 1811 for his views on atheism and a pamphlet he wrote about British involvement in an unpopular war. Ironically, the pamphlet, “A Poetical Essay on the Existing State of Things,” was lost for decades and then rediscovered and famously added to the Oxford library.

For your consideration, here is the op-ed essay published in the Tufts University newspaper. Consider:

Kumar: Renewing calls for Tufts to adopt March 4 TCU Senate resolutions

By Rumeysa Öztürk, Fatima Rahman, Genesis Perez and Nicholas Ambeliotis

Published Tuesday, March 26, 2024

On March 4, the Tufts Community Union Senate passed 3 out of 4 resolutions demanding that the University acknowledge the Palestinian genocide, apologize for University President Sunil Kumar’s statements, disclose its investments and divest from companies with direct or indirect ties to Israel. These resolutions were the product of meaningful debate by the Senate and represent a sincere effort to hold Israel accountable for clear violations of international law. Credible accusations against Israel include accounts of deliberate starvation and indiscriminate slaughter of Palestinian civilians and plausible genocide.

Unfortunately, the University’s response to the Senate resolutions has been wholly inadequate and dismissive of the Senate, the collective voice of the student body. Graduate Students for Palestine joins Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine, the Tufts Faculty and Staff Coalition for Ceasefire and Fletcher Students for Palestine to reject the University’s response. Although graduate students were not allowed by the University into the Senate meeting, which lasted for almost eight hours, our presence on campus and financial entanglement with the University via tuition payments and the graduate work that we do on grants and research makes us direct stakeholders in the University’s stance.

While an argument may be made that the University should not take political stances and should focus on research and intellectual exchange, the automatic rejection, dismissive nature and condescending tone in the University’s statement have caused us to question whether the University is indeed taking a stand against its own declared commitments to free speech, assembly and democratic expression. According to the Student Code of Conduct, “[a]ctive citizenship, including exercising free speech and engaging in protests, gatherings, and demonstrations, is a vital part of the Tufts community.” In addition, the Dean of Students Office has written, “[w]hile at times the exchange of controversial ideas and opinions may cause discomfort or even distress, our mission as a university is to promote critical thinking, the rigorous examination and discussion of facts and theories, and diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas and opinions.” Why then is the University discrediting and disregarding its students who practice the very ideals of critical thinking, intellectual exchange and civic engagement that Tufts claims to represent?

The role of the TCU Senate resolutions is abundantly clear. The Senate’s resolutions serve as a “strong lobbying tool that expresses to the Tufts administration the wants and needs of the student body. They speak as a collective voice and are instrumental in enacting systemic changes.” In this case, the “systemic changes” that the collective voice of the student body is calling for are for the University to end its complicity with Israel insofar as it is oppressing the Palestinian people and denying their right to self-determination — a right that is guaranteed by international law. These strong lobbying tools are all the more urgent now given the order by the International Court of Justice confirming that the Palestinian people of Gaza’s rights under the Genocide Convention are under a “plausible” risk of being breached.

This collective student voice is not without precedent. Today, the University may remember with pride its decision in February 1989 to divest from South Africa under apartheid and end its complicity with the then-racist regime. However, we must remember that the University divested up to 11 years after some of its peers. For instance, the Michigan State University Board of Regents passed resolutions to end its complicity with Apartheid South Africa as early as 1978. Had Tufts heeded the call of the student movement in the late 1970s, the University could have been on the right side of history sooner.

We reject any attempt by the University or the Office of the President to summarily dismiss the role of the Senate and mischaracterize its resolution as divisive. The open and free debate demonstrated by the Senate process (exemplified by the length, open notice and substantive exchange in the proceedings and the non-passing of one of the proposed resolutions), together with the serious organizing efforts of students, warrant credible self-reflection by the Office of the President and the University. We, as graduate students, affirm the equal dignity and humanity of all people and reject the University’s mischaracterization of the Senate’s efforts.

The great author and civil rights champion James Baldwin once wrote: “The paradox of education is precisely this: that as one begins to become conscious one begins to examine the society in which [they are] being educated.” As an educator, President Kumar should embrace efforts by students to evaluate “diverse and sometimes contradictory ideas and opinions.” Furthermore, the president should trust in the Senate’s rigorous and democratic process and the resolutions that it has achieved.

We urge President Kumar and the Tufts administration to meaningfully engage with and actualize the resolutions passed by the Senate.

This op-ed was written by Nick Ambeliotis (CEE, ‘25), Fatima Rahman (STEM Education, ‘27), Genesis Perez (English, ‘27) and Rumeysa Ozturk (CSHD, ‘25) and is endorsed by 32 other Tufts School of Engineering and Arts and Sciences Graduate Students.