HAPA Board member Andrea Brower resists fascism in higher education
Mahalo to the Guardian and Alice Speri for shining a light on the weaponization of Title VI to silence critique of Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza and US complicity in her recent article: The chilling effect of Title VI investigations: the professors accused of antisemitism.
HAPA founding board member, Andrea Brower, PhD speaks out on how these attacks ultimately led her to quit her tenure-track position as the lead instructor in a Solidarity and Social Justice program at Gonzaga University.
We applaud our dear friend and colleague Andrea for her moral clarity and courage.
Mahalo to the Guardian and Alice Speri for shining a light on the weaponization of Title VI to silence critique of Israel's genocidal campaign in Gaza and US complicity in her recent article: The chilling effect of Title VI investigations: the professors accused of antisemitism.
HAPA founding board member, Andrea Brower, PhD speaks out on how these attacks ultimately led her to quit her tenure-track position as the lead instructor in a Solidarity and Social Justice program at Gonzaga University.
We applaud our dear friend and colleague Andrea for her moral clarity and courage.
Speri writes, “Brower’s case is hardly isolated. As the Trump administration has turned civil rights legislation into cudgel to root out progressive politics on US campuses, with billions of dollars in federal funding on the line, pro-Palestinian professors have increasingly been caught in the crossfire.”
“But while the government’s crackdown on universities has drawn widespread condemnation, a parallel campaign targeting specific faculty members has received far less attention…Often initiated by actors seizing on the political climate and vulnerability of universities, accusations against professors of antisemitism have come at a great professional and personal cost for many.”
In Andrea’s resignation letter she states, “What are we actually preserving in higher education if we are contorting ourselves to fly under the radar of fascism? If we cannot speak honestly, clearly, and loudly about the genocidal starvation of children — or at minimum support our brave students who are — what is our role as scholars?
Universities have fraught histories as both institutions that reproduce dominant class structure and ideology, and institutions that seed liberatory thought, imagination, hope, and resistance. If we concede the latter, what are we left with?”
Personally, I have long admired Andrea’s scholarship, political analysis and commitment to speak out on injustices when it isn’t easy or convenient. Her activism at home around the abuses of the agrochemical industry led her to write the poignant book: “Seeds of Occupation, Seeds of Possibility, The Agrochemical-GMO Industry in Hawaiʻi.”
Please share this Guardian article with your own networks. Andrea’s courage to speak out reminds us that in these times of rising fascism and erosion of democratic norms we all can and must engage.
One tangible thing you can do today is to tell your Member of Congress to co-sponsor H.R. 3565, the “Block the Bombs Act" and to end U.S. complicity in genocide.
Mahalo for taking action.
In solidarity,
Anne Frederick,
Executive Director
