Warwick UCU is writing to express our solidarity with students currently occupying the SU building, which follows a protest on Tuesday regarding the Jewish Israeli Society’s hosting a speaker from the IDF. We share their concern with the issues that they have brought to the attention of the campus.
We have seen rising incidents of racism and islamophobia in our country and in our institutions. For years, staff and students at University of Warwick have engaged in anti-racist organising together. We have fought against the PREVENT agenda because it is discriminatory and encourages disproportionate surveillance of Muslim and BME students. We’ve fought side by side to ensure that the survivors of the racist, anti-Semitic, and sexist group chat received the justice they deserved. We’ve fought to prevent deeply racist and reactionary speakers from coming onto our campus. And now students have voted to support staff as we strike to end the racial pay gap at Warwick and nationally.
But this racist and islamophobic culture is pernicious and it has permeated our society, our University, and the institutions therein.
This occupation is important as are occupiers’ demands that we as a University community finally begin to take serious, coordinated, and concerted action to tackle these problems.
We call on our members to stay up to date with the demands of the occupiers: https://twitter.com/WarwickOccupy and, if able, to consider supporting the occupiers. https://justgiving.
We ask that the SU ensure the rights of the occupiers and their safety.
And we call on the University to launch an official and widespread investigation into racism on campus, and particularly the ways that it is embedded in processes ranging from pay gaps to the external speaker policy.