Dr. Janelle Scott and AERA Council,
I want it to go on record that your milquetoast response is appalling and outright contradictory to AERA’s mission to “promote the use of research to improve education and serve the public good”. Take for instance AERA’s theme last year, which was a call to action to Dismantle Racial Injustice and Construct Educational Possibilities, or this year’s theme on Research, Remedy, and Repair. Neither action, remedy, nor repair was taken on behalf of Palestine, even though members reached out to the AERA Council during both years. The AERA Council’s silence on Palestine is sufficient to know where this organization stands. It not only refused to acknowledge the content and demands of the Petition for the Resolution for Justice in Palestine, but it also made it clear that this organization is not run democratically.
The AERA Council claims to be worried about the attacks on democracy, education, and research, yet it refuses to democratically engage in dialogue with the demands of over 700 AERA members. It does not seem to be able to make connections between the current attacks on education and the repression of dissident voices who supported and participated in the Gaza Solidarity Encampments and anti-genocide protests during the Biden administration. It is thus content with the role academic organizations play in furthering this repression by ignoring the demands of its members. The AERA Council disregards the attacks on academic freedom and the right to assemble before Trump[1] started his second term, presenting him as solely responsible for what we are seeing today. This dissociates from the sociopolitical context in which pro-Palestine protests were attacked and criminalized by university administrators and politicians, Democrats and Republicans alike. Now we are seeing the consequences of years of silence. Students and professors are having their visas revoked, some of whom are being hunted down by ICE agents to be arrested and deported. The silence of the past is manifesting itself in the present, and the silence and indifference of today will certainly have more serious consequences in the future.
If an organization is not democratic in its decisions, statements, and positions, what legitimacy does it have when it is suddenly worried about the attacks on democracy and education? Why should scholars who politically practice what they preach in their scholarship form part of an academic organization that has chosen silence and complicity instead of speaking truth to power when it mattered most?
If the AERA Council is unwilling to show minimum levels of solidarity with the most urgent issues, it will be remembered for its inaction and indifference—when men, women, and children were buried under the rubble; when dead bodies were strewn in the streets; when parents carried their children’s bones and guts in plastic bags; when Israel systematically bombed critical infrastructure; when all universities, schools, and hospitals were destroyed; when churches and mosques were demolished; and when the ability to sustain life was no longer viable.
Although my focus is not on individuals, it is unfortunate, to put it mildly, that even those who claim to be doing abolitionist and decolonial work, including those on the AERA’s Council, remain silent because apparently, they do not know enough on the matter or because things are much more complicated. Their “unwillingness to take discursive…risks at the podium or in the public sphere”, as Mohammed El-Kurd writes, “reveals an unwillingness to disrupt the norms that sustain these [complicit] organizations”. One can only hope that historians of education will one day trace the archives we are creating and leaving behind today to absolve those who spoke out and organized against genocide. Perhaps these same historians will also condemn the organizations that, through their silence, indifference, and inaction, enabled Israel’s genocide in Gaza. As many activists have pointed out, universities and academia in general are not passively complicit in genocide; they actively participate in genocidal, colonial violence.
That is the legacy you will leave behind, despite the research that appears, on paper, to care about the well-being of oppressed communities. Genocide, as many organizations have called it and what hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of protestors have chanted in the streets, is what is happening in Gaza, despite your denial of it. Your refusal to acknowledge that a genocide is taking place in Gaza will not be forgotten or forgiven. History will not be kind to you.
Indignantly,
Jairo I. Fúnez-Flores, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Curriculum Studies
Program Chair and Incoming Chair of the
Decolonial, Postcolonial, and
Anticolonial Studies in Education SIG
Additional Context
On March 17, 2025, I wrote the following email to the American Educational Research Association Council:
Dear Dr. Janelle Scott and AERA Council
I hope this email finds you well. I am writing on behalf of hundreds of education scholars (AERA members) who stand against genocide and the systematic displacement of Palestinians. The Petition for the Resolution for Justice in Palestine (attached), which includes over 600 signatories (numbers keep increasing every week), does not demand much besides consistency. AERA has made several statements on Ukraine and has formed part of other efforts to offer material support to Ukrainian scholars, all of which are mentioned in the petition.
Important to note is that reluctant organizations such as AERA have begun to shift their views on what is happening in Gaza and all of Palestine due to pressure from below. AAUP, for instance, recently organized a webinar to discuss scholasticide and genocide in Gaza, highlighting the work of Palestinian, Pro-Palestinian, and antizionist Jewish scholars (e.g., Dr. Ahmad Abu Shaban, Sundos Hammad, Dr. Abdel Razzaq Takriti, Dr. Chandni Desai, Dr. Raz Segal, and Dr. Ahmad Shokr). This would have been unimaginable a couple of years ago. AERA's Council has a simple choice to make. Either it continues to remain silent on genocide and all that it entails or it can take an ethical position by recognizing what the United Nations, the International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Court, and Amnesty International (to name a few leading organizations) have referred to as the plausible genocide Israel is committing against Palestinians in Gaza, not to mention that these organizations have referred to Israel as an apartheid state in numerous reports.
The reason we are sharing this petition is for the council to call for a vote so that AERA can finally make a statement that falls in line with its mission and so many of its annual meeting themes revolving around social justice and transformation. With the deliberate destruction of education in Gaza, AERA's silence speaks volumes, which will not go unforgotten when historians of education look back at academic organizations that refused to speak out when it was most urgent.
If AERA's Council and Executive Board are willing to, we would like to establish a time to meet to discuss the petition further in the upcoming weeks. For transparency purposes, I would like to share that, if the Council and Executive Board is unwilling to meet the demands in the petition, those leading this effort, including many signatories, are ready to depart from AERA and boycott annual meetings, as well as all of its academic activities, since we don't find it ethical to form part of an organization that is not willing to show minimum levels of solidarity with the Palestinian people and those who speak out and organize against their annihilation. We would instead prefer to contribute our work to organizations that are on the right side of history.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Jairo
On April 11, 2025, Dr. Janelle Scott responded on behalf of AERA:
Dear Professor Funez,
Thank you for sharing this petition with the AERA Council and for taking the time to articulate your concerns and requests of AERA. At this time, we will not be issuing a statement. I understand that this outcome is not what you and the signatories of the petition seek. You are valued members of AERA, and we would be saddened if you relinquished your memberships given our shared commitment to AERA’s mission of advancing education research. We hope you will remain active in AERA even as we understand and appreciate the principles and values by which you decide what organizations you belong.
Sincerely,
Janelle Scott, on behalf of AERA Council
[1] On April 14, 2025, AERA sent out the following announcement: “We want to inform you that the American Educational Research Association (AERA), in partnership with the Society for Research on Educational Effectiveness (SREE), has filed a lawsuit against the Department of Education over the unlawful dismantling of the Institute of Education Sciences (IES) and its consequent harms to our members and the educators, policy makers, and countless families and students who benefit from education research.”
Thank you for practicing what you preach and hold AERA to higher ethical standards.
I want to help! Where do we start!