Jairo Fuenz-Flores honored by SJP organizers and community members. Photo by Reece Nations.
By Reece Nations and Avery Mendoza
Texas Tech Students for Justice in Palestine organized a peaceful demonstration in front of the Administration Building on Thursday in support of suspended professor Jairo Fúnez-Flores.
Fúnez-Flores, associate professor of curriculum studies and teacher education, was suspended by the university this week after a report, published by the Texas Scorecard in late February, detailed a series of social media posts he made criticizing Israel’s ongoing military response to the Oct. 7 Hamas-led attack. The article characterized Fúnez-Flores’ pro-Palestinian remarks as “antisemitic,” prompting SJP to mobilize the demonstration in his defense.
“His suspension happened on no basis of evidence, just an attempt for censorship,” Adam Matter, SJP president and sophomore computer engineering major from Alexandria, Egypt, said at the protest. “I strongly believe as an American citizen that it is definitely a right to practice the First Amendment.”
Among some of Fúnez-Flores posts was a poem from Palestinian activist and poet Dareen Tatour, entitled “Resist, my people, resist them,” which he posted on the same day as the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks against Israel. Tatour was sentenced to five months in jail by an Israeli court in July 2018 for posting her poetry on social media, although her conviction was later overturned, according to +972 Magazine.
Demonstrators bear flags and signage in support of Palestinian solidarity. Photo by Reece Nations.
Tatour’s posts were made during a period of heightened violence related to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In sections of her poem, she wrote, “I will not succumb to the ‘peaceful solution.'” This led the court to initially imprison her on charges of inciting violence.
Shortly after Texas Scorecard’s article drew attention to Fúnez-Flores’s posts, the Tech administration, represented by President Lawrence Schovanec and Chancellor Tedd Mitchell, announced Fúnez-Flores’s suspension with pay. This action came pending an investigation by the system’s Office of Equal Opportunity. In their statement on March 4, Schovanec and Mitchell said the views expressed in Fúnez-Flores’s to be “hateful, antisemitic, and unacceptable.”
Their statement goes on to describe his rhetoric as “antithetical to our values” and a breach of the system’s regulations regarding ethical conduct. Matter contends that Fúnez-Flores is being treated unfairly by administration officials, which served as the inspiration for SJP organizers and community activists to rally in the courtyard of the Administration Building, instead of a free-speech area on campus.
“I really think as students, every one of us should be educated, especially [on] the strong, big connection that there has been between the United States and the conflict that’s going on in the Middle East,” Matter said. “I think… we have enough resources and ways to look at and research about this.”
SJP, Fúnez-Flores protest for Palestine
Fúnez-Flores – whose areas of expertise include decolonial theory, ethnography, qualitative research and activist research – attended the event and expressed gratitude for the support he’d received since his suspension made headlines. Ahmad Altabaa, a senior political science major from Lubbock and member of SJP, addressed the crowd through a loudspeaker at the event and said the administration had “slandered” Fúnez-Flores as an antisemite before it had conducted any investigation.
“So today, we’re here to stand in support of him against these allegations, to show that we, Texas Tech students, we value, we care for our professors and won’t accept any slander,” Altabaa said in his remarks. “This is a testament not only for [Fúnez-Flores], but for all professors at Texas Tech and across the entire country that we stand behind you. If they try to come for you, that we will be there to back you, no matter the cost.”
Ahmad Altabaa addresses the crowd gathered in support of Fúnez-Flores. Photo by Reece Nations.
SJP issued its own public statement in response to the administration’s decision to suspend Fúnez-Flores, calling the action a “deeply disappointing” one that contributes “to the oppression of voices within our immediate community.” Additionally, the organization is circulating an open letter and gathering signatures in Fúnez-Flores’s defense.
In comments made to The Hub during the event, Altabaa called on the administration to reinstate and apologize to Fúnez-Flores. Similarly, Altabaa urged the Biden administration to do more to curb the behavior of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and the militant response in Gaza.
In January, The Hub reported that SJP organized a silent, non-disruptive protest in the TTU Library following the United Nations’ International Court of Justice’s ruling that directed Israel to do more to protect innocent Palestinians’ lives in its military operation against Hamas. Altabaa said President Joe Biden’s response to Israel’s treatment of Palestinians is enough to “[make] his humanity questionable to the American voter.”
“If anything, the primary showed that historical amounts of people [remain] uncommitted in this election,” he said, “and I hope that sends a message to [Biden] to change course before another administration comes in and replaces his.”
When asked about his message to those with contrasting viewpoints about Israel and the war in Palestine, Altabaa said that although every person is entitled to their opinion, “they’re not entitled to the effects of those opinions.” Moreover, he said opposing “the slaughter of children” should not be seen as controversial.
“Yes, you may have your viewpoints regarding the Israeli government, regarding the Israeli people,” he said, “but the truth of the matter is a dead child at the end of the day is a dead child, and we have an ethical responsibility to end that. End that first, and then let’s sit at the table and discuss and negotiate and move on from there.”
Fúnez-Flores told The Hub@TTU that the criticism levied against him originates from “alt-right and far-right groups” that intentionally misrepresented “critiques of a settler colonial state [as] antisemitism.” This, he said, distracts from “real antisemitism” gaining traction among “white supremacist and white nationalist groups.”
“[Describing] this whole critique of the nation state of Israel as antisemitism is baseless… there is no evidence for it,” Fúnez-Flores said. “I used that way of expressing myself in particular because of what was happening in Rafah in southern Gaza… at times, we could use academic language [or] intellectual language, and other times as concerned citizens we can express ourselves with profanity, and I think that’s all right.”
According to Schovanec and Mitchell’s statement, part of OEO’s investigation is aimed at determining whether any of Fúnez-Flores personal sentiments “found their way into the classroom or the work environment.” Fúnez-Flores said that although he would never espouse his personal viewpoints in the course of his official professorial duties, he wants to “expose students to a wide range of theories.”
SGA resolutions fails despite strong support
Later in the evening, the protesters gathered in a basement classroom of the College of Media & Communication to sit in a Student Government Association meeting where Matter and others representing SJP addressed those present, urging them to support a resolution calling for the reinstatement of Fúnez-Flores.
“When I came to America, I was informed of the Bill of Rights and that every American could speak their mind,” Matter said. “This this an attack on the right of free speech, and an attack on [Fúnez-Flores] is an attack on all of our rights.”
Matter compared the events of the Israel-Palestine conflict to the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia and said that if Fúnez-Flores was talking about Russia instead of Israel the university would not have suspended him.
“Let’s call a spade a spade, if [Fúnez-Flores] was condemning Putin and Russia, then the university would not have acted in this way,” Matter said. “Why are we allowed to talk about Russia but not about Israel?”
During the meeting, the senate opened the floor for debate on the resolution’s passage. Anum Javeed, a sophomore family education major from Houston and first-year senator for the College of Human Sciences, spoke to her fellow senators in support of Fúnez-Flores’s reinstatement.
Javeed said that as student senators they need to do their job in protecting the rights of students and the professors that represent the university.
Andrew Sinclair, a senior political science major from Houston and first-year senator for the College of Arts & Sciences, took to the stand in opposition of Fúnez-Flores’s reinstatement.
“We should wait for the university to conclude its investigation before we pass any resolution towards [Fúnez-Flores] reinstatement,” Sinclair said. “We as students senators are not equipped to conduct an investigation on the same level as the university.”
SGA’s resolution advocating for Fúnez-Flores’s reinstatement ultimately failed to pass even though most senators voted in support of it. SGA rules require a four-fifths supermajority to pass resolutions of this nature, meaning the motion failed, receiving 19 votes in favor, 17 votes against, and 12 abstentions.
“I understand that this is a quick decision, but we should still keep in mind the rights of students,” Javeed said. “We will bring up this resolution at our next hearing after the investigation has progressed further.”
Jewish campus organization Texas Tech Hillel did not return The Hub’s request for comment on this article and its president Julian Cohen declined to comment. Texas Tech administration officials issued no new statements in response to The Hub’s requests for comment.
Fernando Cruz contributed to this report.
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