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As some of you perhaps know, On October 7, 2023, when the Palestinian resistance in Gaza broke free from the largest concentration camp under economic blockade since 2007, I posted the following on social media platform X: ‘Academia loves to decolonize everything besides occupied land. Its silence on Palestine is enough to know how decolonization has become a metaphor signifying everything besides material change and collective resistance’. I also wrote about Palestinians’ right to resist colonialism, occupation, apartheid, and displacement, as well as their right to live with dignity on their own land. The next day I drew on Frantz Fanon’s (1967) work to historicize violence within colonial contexts, pointing to the psychosocial and asymmetrical power relations constitutive of colonial contexts, under which violence and resistance unfold. I noted the importance of taking seriously into consideration the children who have witnessed their family buried under the rubble, loved ones tortured and killed, and villages razed, one can only imagine the thoughts of resistance that develop in children’s minds. These children, who lost everything and became orphans during previous Israeli military campaigns of displacement and dispossession in Gaza, are no longer children and now form part of the Palestinian resistance.
Shortly after these posts, I also wrote, ‘When a child has experienced colonial domination their entire life, what do you expect them to do to resist? Hug the colonizer?’ It is important to recognize here that peaceful means have been used and exhausted. For instance, the Great March of Return of 2018 resulted in over hundred Palestinians killed and thousands badly wounded by ammunitions designed to completely destroy limbs (Molavi 2024). I then included a frequently cited quote by Walter Rodney: ‘By what standard of morality can the violence used by a slave to break his chains be considered the same as the violence of a slave master?’ In other words, there is no moral equivalence between the violence of the oppressed and the violence of the oppressor. I also wrote a post suggesting that ‘decolonization is about dreaming and fighting for a present and future free of occupied Indigenous territories. It’s about a Free Palestine. It’s about liberation and self-determination’. All of these Twitter posts went viral.
Less than a week after October 7, I had already received hate emails, voicemails, and death threats from people who had read my social media posts. I remember going to the office and noticing a letter in my mailbox, which read as follows: ‘whatever horrible things might happen to befall you, you would richly deserve with your announced support of Hamas terrorism’. My university never offered support, even though administrators were aware of the threats I had received. My safety was not a concern, as universities pretend is the case when justifying repression of faculty and students who speak out against genocide. Around the same time, other random individuals, who had read my social media posts, accused me of supporting the beheading of children, the raping of women, and of being a ‘Jew-hater’. It may seem futile to counter these accusations within a reactionary context that not only diffuses fabricated stories of beheaded babies (Abunimah 2023; Scahill, Grim, and Boguslaw 2024) but also conflates anti-Zionism with antisemitism in order deflect attention from the ongoing genocide in Gaza. The former is used to villainize the Palestinian resistance and dehumanize all Palestinians to justify the total destruction of Gaza. The latter serves a similar purpose by discrediting and villainizing the emerging pro- Palestinian movement, thus it justifies the repression of anyone willing to critique Israel’s settler colonial project.
On March 4, 2024, without any communication with the administration, I was suspended (Soliz 2024). Less than thirty minutes after receiving my suspension letter via email, the President and Chancellor issued a media statement (McGee 2023). I learned about this media statement through a news reporter who wanted to hear my side of the story. She informed me that the local media had already published several articles on my suspension. It is rather clear why, in addition to the suspension letter, the President and Chancellor made these accusations public. Their media statement was aimed at simultaneously discrediting me and justifying my suspension. They directly labeled my social media posts as ‘hateful, antisemitic, and unacceptable’ before initiating an investigation. They stated that the Office of Equal Opportunity (OEO) would investigate whether my ‘antisemitic sentiments’ made their way into the classroom and work environment.
The President and Chancellor unilaterally decided to suspend me, and they initiated an investigation against me aiming to prove I am in fact antisemitic. Important to note about their statement is that they not only made the same accusations as Texas Scorecard, but they also referred to the same ethical code of conduct. While Texas Scorecard wrote that ‘Texas Tech Professor Jairo Funez-Flores has publicly posted antisemitic remarks. These actions do not correspond with the high standards of ethical conduct the university demands of its employees’ (Stanciu 2024), the President and Chancellor wrote, ‘Assistant Professor Jairo Fúnez-Flores posted a series of social media comments that…are antithetical to our values including those found in System Regulations 01.05’. Both texts include hyperlinks to the same ethical conduct regulations and accuse me of antisemitism. Perhaps the similarity is just a coincidence, but it is one that I keep thinking about.
My suspension stems from a hit piece written about me by a far right media outlet in Texas, which was founded by the multibillionaire, Tim Dunn, who coincidentally happens to be an alumnus of Texas Tech University, and is also one of the leading figures in the state pushing for the systematic restructuring of education at all levels, including the reactionary education anti-CRT bills which have led to the banning of numerous books. These bills, now codified into law, are dictating what can or cannot be taught in schools and universities. In Texas and in many other states, new laws are not only attacking what can or cannot be taught; more crucially, they are stripping our right to assemble and protest genocide.
Fast forward to July 2025. I read an email announcing that the Chancellor was retiring. I thought this was good news at the time, until I found out that Brandon Creighton, a Texas state senator, will take his place. Creighton is the architect of the reactionary education bills mentioned above, who initiated the inquisition against activism, academic freedom, free speech, shared governance, tenure, DEI, and critical race theory, to name a few. I recently found out that Creighton will become the Chancellor of the Texas Tech University System. In the post below, he states that Texas Tech will become the “tip of the spear for the future of higher education”. Texas Tech will be his laboratory, where he will oversee the implementation of his own policies.
Is the Chancellor retirement and the hiring of a state senator a coincidence? Perhaps coincidence isn’t needed when the hierarchical restructuring of higher education and its governance structure is intimately linked to the cracking down of dissent, particularly in a context of social uprisings that have emerged at unprecedented levels.
Last week, faculty voted on the following items to address Creighton’s Senate Bill 37, now codified into law, which consists of the systematic restructuring of university governance:
Each college/department/area will have at least two senators: one will be appointed by the President of the university, and the remaining will be elected by the faculty of that college/department/area. Some areas will have more than one elected senator, based on proportional representation.
This also means that there will no longer be “at large” senators. We did not “lose” these seats, they were for the most part just integrated into elected positions for respective areas in a proportional manner.
Appointed senators can serve up to six one-year terms.
Elected senators will serve for two years and must cycle off for at least two years before being eligible for election again.
Senate officers: president, vice president, secretary, will be appointed by the President of the university.
The constitution mirrors the language of SB37, clarifying that the Faculty Senate is advisory only and may take up matters of concern related to the general welfare of the university.
The new laws in place reflect what Alana Lentin refers to as the recalibration of the racial regime. The reactionary laws in place directly respond to pro-Palestine protests and University Faculty Senates holding no confidence votes after Presidents repressed the Gaza solidarity encampments. It’s not like universities were radical spaces of “indoctrination” as Politicians like to believe. Yet the small pockets of resistance were sufficient enough to lead to a reactionary whitelash.
Now we have a former state senator overseeing the implementation of a new governance structure, one that allows appointed senators to serve up to 6 years while elected senators “must cycle off for at least two years before being eligible for election again.” It’s not like Texas Tech University’s Faculty Senate took a radical position in terms of Palestine, but any hope that it would ever head toward that direction has been permanently foreclosed with Creighton’s vision of university governance.
Many of the new laws will also allow for the overseeing of courses to align them to market demands. One can only imagine which courses will be canceled if they do not meet these demands. The little radical thought that remained in higher education, at least in Texas, will certainly become smaller in the years to come. Texas Tech will be the model for other universities, that is, the tip of spear, to rid higher education of dissident voices.
In spite of all these changes and increasing surveillance and criminalization, since my suspension and my reinstatement, I became a founding member of the Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine and the advisor for the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Texas Tech, the founding member of the Palestine Anti-Repression Network, the founding member and organizer of the Decolonial Conference and a member of EdScholars4Palestine, and the founding member of the emerging collective for the People’s University. I intend to continue this work, even if that means that the inquisitor/state senator, who will be the new Chancellor next year, will try to fire me. In a time of genocide, speaking truth to power doesn’t mean shit if we’re unwilling to take risks.
Wow. The mist clears and the illusion (or is it delusion) of shared governance and academic freedom is shown to be just that… a tenuous ideal that has any reality only as long as it is tolerated by those in power. Unfortunately, most faculty will just keep their heads down - “please don’t rocka my boat, because I don’t want my boat to be rockin’ “ [Bob Marley]
This resonates 'the hierarchical restructuring of higher education and its governance structure is intimately linked to the cracking down of dissent, particularly in a context of social uprisings that have emerged at unprecedented levels'.