Palestinian students protest alleged censorship at Rhode Island College

"We must recognize the importance of providing a safe space for all voices to be heard, especially Muslim and Arab, considering the rhetoric that is being pushed by the United States & Western media."

Shamir, Adam, Aya, and Farah

“We just want to start off by saying this is a peaceful demonstration,” said Farah, a Junior at Rhode Island College [RIC]. Farah is a Palestinian student and she was speaking to just over 100 people who were attending her on-campus protest. “This is peaceful, okay? Don't shut us down. But honestly, if they did shut us down, that would prove our point that we are students being silenced and we won't stand for that, and that's why we're here.”

Farah and three other students - Shamir, Aya, and Adam - had planned a teach-in on Palestine, and put up posters around the campus to advertise the event. The administration of RIC President Jack Warner shut down the teach-in and took down all the flyers advertising it.

“We gather here today to shed light on the challenges faced by us, as students who often find themselves silenced or marginalized due to censorship, especially surrounding Palestine,” said Farah. “We must recognize the importance of providing a safe space for all voices to be heard, especially Muslim and Arab, considering the rhetoric that is being pushed by the United States and Western media in general. By doing so, we not only uphold the principle of freedom of speech but also foster an environment that encourages intellectual growth and understanding.”

All four students addressed the crowd, and all the speakers can be seen in the video above. Below you can read the full comments of all four students, and the College’s response to my inquiry.

Shamir

We're gathered here today to talk about being suppressed on this campus for wanting to share our concern about the genocide that is currently happening in Gaza and the West Bank. We were not allowed to speak about the atrocities being committed on the Palestinian people.

Our voices will not be as suppressed. We have the right to speak, teach, and learn about the injustices in this world. In 1947, the United Nations split Palestine into two separate states, an Arab state and a Jewish state. A year later, Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes when the southern colony of Israel was formed. Fast forward to now, Israel owns 97% of the land while the indigenous Palestinians only own 7% of the land, known as the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

As of today, more than 20,000 Palestinians, including men, women, and children have lost their lives. 70 percent are women and children, both Christian and Muslim. As a Muslim student at Rhode Island College, I would like my voice to be heard and not to be treated like a nobody. When the president told us that we can't have any event like this, I felt unsafe and unwelcome at this college.

Muslims should not be treated like second-class citizens. We deserve to have our voices heard and have our needs met. I was very hurt by the fact that this was done by President Warner. The president said that he doesn't want to want to look bad and that this is a complicated subject. Why is it complicated when it has to do with brown, bearded men or Hijabi women?

Why is it that we Muslims need to have our words censored?

When it came to Ukraine, everyone stood by them. Schools actually stood for a moment of silence for them. Why? Is it because they're considered to be more civilized by the Western media? We need our voices to be heard and we all need to speak up. We pay tuition. We pay for books. We pay for classes at Rhode Island College and we are being censored. By who? President Warner. With all due respect, we will not be censored.

Aya

I'm a junior at RIC, but RIC is only a piece of my story. Before coming to RIC, I lived another life, one of war and destruction. I was born and raised in Syria and I lived through two years of the war. Two years of nonstop bombing, two years of losing friends and family members. Education was taken away from me. We were living in constant fear of whether or not we'd survive the next day.

I was only eight, wondering why the world was letting this happen to us. What crime did we commit to have one side of the world living their everyday life while we're struggling to find water or to drink or food to eat? I question if the world can see the fear on my face. I question if they can hear my cries every night.

So you understand that watching the ongoing genocide in Palestine is not merely something I watch, but sometimes I understand intimately. I felt the least I could do is hold an educational session on the history of these people, of this land, and of the war, but President Warner, decided to cancel the event and instructed the RIC administration to take down all the flyers I had put up.

Freedom of speech is an illusion on campus. We don't have a thing called equality at RIC. Rather, we are subjected to censorship for simply speaking about our history. I would never have imagined, as a kid in Syria, that one day my voice would be censored as an American college student. I never would have thought that there would be cowards trying to silence us about a genocide. But that is what has happened.

President Warner, when you censor Palestine, you are censoring our stories, our families, our people, the very things that have made us the people we are today. How privileged is Jack Warner for not allowing us to talk about the murder of Palestinians? Half of them are kids!

Speaking about Palestine somehow ruins his reputation he stated. Coward.

There's a saying, "They tried to bury us but they didn't know we were seeds. When you restrict and cancel our attempts at student voice, you think you are silencing us, but what you don't know is silence is not an option for us - for our people - especially not when speaking against injustice. Any kind of injustice.

If any of you experienced one day out of my two years living in Syria, you would not be silent about the genocide. You would use every opportunity to speak up and educate your surroundings. College is meant for our voices to be heard, so no President Jack Warner, we are not going to be silent about our history or the ongoing genocide in Palestine. I have a voice. Each one of us has a voice and we should use it. Silence is not an option. Silence is violence and we will do whatever it takes to be the voices of the voiceless civilians in Palestine.

Farah

I'm a very proud Palestinian and a very proud Muslim and I'm here representing myself as a student at Rhode Island College. As a person who has an ancestry that is fully Palestinian, I have always spoken up about the Palestinian struggle, the struggle of my family, the struggle of my grandparents and my great-grandparents, who were forcibly displaced and became refugees in 1948 along with 750,000 Palestinians. Every day of my life, as my Palestinian blood rushes through my body, I am more and more passionate about the land of my ancestors, my land, the land of the 750,000 Palestinians who are forcibly displaced, the home of the indigenous Palestinians. While I always dreamed about going to live in my homeland, I knew that my family and I couldn't. Palestine is under occupation by a settler colony. As Palestinians, we are not allowed the right to return to our indigenous land.

This is why I'm so loud. My grandfather who is older than the settler colony deserves to return to his home. Although I always wanted to go and live in Palestine, I always appreciated the United States for what it was. I appreciated having one thing in particular, freedom of speech, a right that not even the government, not even the Supreme Court could have taken from me. However, during this time, it has been made abundantly clear to me that we are allowed free speech until it affects the pockets and reputations of those in power. While the United States has been working extremely hard to censor as much Palestinian content and solidarity as possible, college campuses are also following this order to save their reputations, including Rhode Island College.

They're actively censoring us as Palestinians. As students who wanted to talk about the history of Palestine, we were met with the harsh reality. Those in power at our college wish to censor our desire to spread the truth about Palestine, its rich deep history, its lively villages, and beautiful culture. We wanted people to know Palestine not for what the occupation has made it, but for what it truly is. A beautiful home to its indigenous people.

By not being allowed to share this story due to the shabby excuse of lack of security and planning, our struggle to highlight the beauty of Palestine became even harder. While trying to convince the President to allow us to have our teaching event this week we grew frustrated by the typical, almost robotic answers he gave. My eyes flooded with tears and I tried with everything in me to resist allowing them to fall in front of the very person attempting to silence me. I was frustrated [by his] attempt to silence the struggle of my family and censor the truthful narrative.

There were claims by the President that this event wouldn't be fair to the other side. To that, I say it's not my job as a Palestinian who has felt the oppression while living in the United States and while visiting my family in Palestine to speak for the other side. And if the other side wanted to speak, I'm sure they would not have received this type of pushback, right?

We, as Muslim and Palestinian students have a right to speak and a right to safety. Nobody should be trying to force us to censor what we say and how we say it. This oppression has lasted too long and we will not adhere to the countless attempts at silencing and censoring us. The more you try and silence us and our movement, the louder we will get. We are fighting for justice. We are fighting for the right to feel free and speak freely, on and off campus. President Jack Warner must do more to ensure the safety and comfort of all students. President Jack Warner must allow students to speak freely, especially about educational history. President Jack Warner should not be silencing us and we will not be silenced.

Adam

I'm here to talk to you as a Palestinian Muslim. I'm not here to delve into discussions about religion or change anyone's beliefs, but I'm here to speak to the human in all of you and the part of you that transcends political and religious beliefs and sees families dying and understands that this isn't just a Palestinian problem, but a human problem.

Let me tell you what it is like to be a Palestinian, what it is to resist a narrative that paints us as terrorists and describes us as subhumans while the oppressors are being described as the victims. These words hold power and further dehumanize a group and desensitize all of us to the suffering that they're going through. These words are deeply embedded in the apartheid regime and in their actions. What we see on a day-to-day basis this year has been a challenging one for all of us Palestinians, not just the ones here in the States, but even more so for the ones back at home.

Why must we live with fear? Why must we live with a target on our backs? As we discuss progress, we find ourselves regressing more than ever. If this is truly a country that values freedom, then it should stand for those principles and if we find it falling back, then it is our duty to hold it accountable and initiate the change that we seek. We must move beyond mere words of hope and start asserting our will. It is not enough to say that we shall, but rather we should be saying we will. It's not about someday, it is about today.

I want to read to you guys a verse from the Quran that I feel relates to all of us.

"And fight for them, on until there is no more oppression and there prevails justice and faith in Allah. But if they cease, let there be no hostility except to those who practice oppression."

RIC President Jack Warner

Recently, a non-college affiliated group put up flyers around campus promoting an event to be held in our dining facilities during finals. This is not the process for outside groups seeking to hold events on campus and given that it is finals week, the college did not officially sanction the event. A group of students and activists chose to hold a demonstration today on the quad instead. This was not an officially sanctioned college event, nor was it hosted by a formally recognized student organization. However, the college did not attempt to interfere with students’ right to free assembly in public spaces or to prevent them from expressing their views. The event did not disrupt any campus activity and dispersed peacefully at the conclusion.