Why URBC started the Boycott Cornell campaign, supporting Amandla Thomas-Johnson and Momodou Taal
Question: Why is a UK-based migrant student campaign demanding that we boycott Cornell University, a US-based university?
Higher education is a global enterprise. Students who graduate from UK universities progress with their education to US universities and vice versa. As in the UK, US universities like Cornell University pride themselves on their global reputation and market themselves in glossy brochures as welcoming and committed to diversity and inclusion, for racialised home and migrant students alike. Yet, the continued mistreatment of Amandla and Momodou points to issues we have long campaigned against here in the UK that are also happening in the US landscape: the normalisation of border policing inside higher education, the weaponisation of student visas, the advancement of counter-terrorism intended to discipline Muslim political voices and the criminisation of Palestine solidarity on campus, and the refusal to divest from industries complicit in the genocide in Gaza, South Lebanon, and the wars in Iran and Yemen.
In our interview with both Amandla and Momodou, Amandla reminds us that Cornell University, like so many imperial universities, colludes with the economy of genocide,
“[…] came down hard on us at this particular jobs fair that we were protesting at. These universities obviously rake in the million, two million, three million dollar cheques everyday from their donors. They have students who go work for Boeing, who go work for L3Harris, who go work for McDonald Douglas, [and] who go work for City Group. And they give money back [to Cornell University]. There’s a whole economy here, as to why they are so invested in having these companies come to campus. People like us making mischief, they see us as sort of being the end of the world because it is the end of the world to their economy.”
Question: Won’t Amandla’s and Momodou’s joint fundraiser help them recoup their PhD funding loss?
Yes, indeed, Amandla and Momodou have a joint fundraiser. URBC has donated to the fundraiser, and we encourage everyone to donate whatever you can.
However, while this fundraiser continues, we demand that Cornell University reinstate its PhD funding immediately. Cornell University’s weaponisation of Amandla’s and Momodou’s funding is intended to strike fear in its academic staff and students, particularly those who are migrants, not to fight for the liberation of Palestine from Israeli genocide and settler-colonialism. If Cornell University is allowed to take away the PhD funding of two migrant, Black, Muslim students because of their pro-Palestine stance, with no repercussions for their vicious action, we are then only given carte blanche to them and all other universities to behave similarly, particularly when it comes to migrant racialised Muslims resisting instruments of Zionism on their campuses.
Question: I want to support this boycott, and I feel for Amandla and Momodou, but I was just offered a job, a degree programme at Cornell University, or a book contract at Cornell University Press.
We know the academic job market in the Global North is in tatters. Departmental closures, academic staff losing jobs, and the continued adjunctifcation of academic labour have made working in higher education precarious. But whatever we are facing as academics and students in the belly of imperial, genocidal violence doesn’t come close to the bombs that are still falling on university students and academic staff inside Gaza. Data from the Palestinian Ministry of Education and Higher Education has revealed that since 7 October, the genocide has claimed 1,386 university students’ lives. On 27 October, Israel bombed the Islamic University of Gaza, adding to the growing death toll of university students and academic staff.
Supporting the Boycott Cornell campaign extends beyond just the current situation of Amandla and Momodou, but to a university that continues to kowtow to Zionists interests that are contributing to the death of higher education in Gaza and the United States. If you continue to ignore the carcerality affecting Momodou and Amandla, or the mounting death toll and destruction of higher education in Gaza, don’t be too surprised when you get pushed out of academia while Cornell University awards more contracts to genocidal industries and there is no one to support you.
Question: How can I support Amandla and Momodou?
Good question! Sign the Boycott Cornell letter and donate to their fundraiser. All information is contained in our three signature forms:
