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THE TUFTS DAILY | Opinion | Sunday, May 21, 2017
Nesi Altaras Looking In
T
Order
his year has been a challenge to order. Whether you like the current order or not, at least it exists. We live in order, not in chaos. The existence of an order is not pre-ordained and there are places without it. A challenge to order can be a force for good when it is constructive and represents a coherent alternative future. The challenges seen this year have not been that. These were “burn it down” type attempts that would bring uncertainty to our lives. Donald Trump’s presidency is the most important example, but Brexit and its looming uncertainty, Marine Le Pen and Jean-Luc Mélenchon of France, Geert Wilders of the Netherlands, Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rigged referendum in Turkey and other developments have posed challenges to the world order this year. But the order held strong, mostly. Trump’s challenge to the established order in the United States has been paralyzed because the American order is strong and well-established. Love them or hate them, the one absolute truth is that American institutions like the parties, federal agencies and most importantly, the courts, are strong. The Republican Party, an institution I have no love for, absorbed Trump almost completely and swallowed his “challenge the order” rhetoric whole. The past 100 days are a testament to the power of the American judiciary and separation of powers. America’s order, though damaged, goes on. The European order also survived with wounds. The European Union (EU) has brought, above all, peace and prosperity to its members. It is lacking in many ways, but it is an order that strives for positive change. The EU is young, so it is not yet as strong as American institutions and needs time to develop. Brexit was a hard blow, but the European project will live. Thanks to Emmanuel Macron’s victory and Wilders’ loss, the EU will not have to face the specter of Dutch or French exits. The EU will have to adapt itself. Turkey is moving from parliamentary democracy to presidential autocracy. Though Erdogan’s autocracy is fear-inducing, the death of the parliamentary system is just as depressing. It took decades and several coups for the democratic culture to form and that culture was formed around the parliamentary system. Looking at the list of prime ministers, the uncertainty worries me. Thinking of the post-parliamentary order in Turkey is scary. Order is hard to create and easy to sustain. When it gets damaged, it is hard to rebuild. Once Erdogan breaks the back of Turkey’s political system, it will be extremely difficult for the new order to be strong and durable. Every change to the Turkish constitution, every comprise given to the United Kingdom in its exit, every vote won by Marine Le Pen, every bizarre policy and jab at the free press Trump makes will hurt the order, and it will take many years for these institutions to recover, but they will persevere. We need to be ready to repair them when the time comes. Nesi Altaras is a sophomore majoring in international relations and economics. Nesi can be reached at nesi.altaras@ tufts.edu.
tuftsdaily.com
OP-ED
Part-time faculty union contract negotiation update The Part-time Faculty Union Bargaining Committee We want to congratulate this year’s graduating seniors on their significant accomplishment. As part-time faculty who teach many of the foundational writing and language courses at Tufts, as well as many other courses across all disciplines, we are proud to have been part of the educational experience of the Class of 2017. The Tufts Part-time Faculty Union has met several times this semester with the university to negotiate a follow-up to our first contract, signed in 2014. The union hopes that we will be able to reach an agreement before our current contract expires on June 30. Any new understanding will necessarily result from a willingness on the part of both parties to work together for our mutual benefit and to fulfill Tufts’ educational mission. We are faced with difficult circumstances. Until about 30 years ago, those teaching at our colleges and universities held solid middle-class positions with good pay and job security. Things have changed dramatically since that time, though. Like many others in our country today, most people who teach at the college level fill “contingent” positions with low pay and little job stability or security.
That’s why the mission of our union is to regain lost ground on some basic employment standards. We propose that seasoned faculty members who have demonstrated a commitment to Tufts should be able to expect a transparent and reasonable reappointment process that includes standard protections against arbitrary or biased treatment. We also believe that we should be able to predict our course loads from one semester to the next, as fluctuations in our assigned courses can dramatically reduce our salaries, wreaking havoc on our already precarious financial situations. To us, these items represent the fundamental fairness that should be extended to all faculty irrespective of their part-time or full-time status. Our working conditions are student learning conditions. Just as we should not be expected to teach in a climate of instability and unpredictability, Tufts students should not have to wonder whether a faculty member will still be working at Tufts when, in a few years, it comes time to ask them for a letter of recommendation for a job or graduate school. We part-time faculty teach about a third of the courses at the university and we uphold the idea of One Faculty, with a goal of equitable compensation and equal treatment across all faculty ranks, and a sala-
ry scale over the life of our contract that exceeds increases in the cost of living in this extraordinarily expensive urban area where we live and work. Tufts has been a model for forward motion on relations with contingent faculty, and we made significant progress in our first contract. We hope to continue that progress toward shifting the paradigm for academic employment back to a model where ours are good paying jobs with reasonable expectations for stability, security and improvement over the years. We appreciate that in recent negotiating sessions, the university has begun to acknowledge our concerns and take them more seriously. We applaud them and hope that our positive negotiating experiences can translate into action. We are sure that the university can find ways to work with us toward mutually beneficial solutions to some of the non-economic issues on the table. We also hope that the new, positive atmosphere will carry over to our discussions regarding economic issues, including compensation. If you find yourself with a representative of the university over commencement weekend, please don’t hesitate to express your support for the faculty who have contributed so much to the success of graduating seniors and other students here at Tufts.
OP-ED
On Dialogue by Students for Justice in Palestine We, the members of Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), write to update the Tufts community on our campaign to divest from companies complicit in the Israeli occupation. After successfully passing our resolution through the Tufts Community Union Senate on a 17-6-8 vote, we continue to pressure the Board of Trustees into action, namely divestment from G4S, Elbit Systems, Northrop Grumman and HP, all involved in a variety of human rights violations in Palestine and around the world. SJP has reached out to the board multiple times over the past semester requesting information about Tufts’ investments, and following the resolution’s passing, we requested a meeting with the board to discuss the potential of divestment. We were met with the following response from Paul Triangle, Secretary of the Corporation: “The Chairman does not believe that meetings such as you have requested would prove to be productive.” This came only minutes after the Board’s Chairman, Peter Dolan, sent out a campus-wide email claiming that, “In accordance with its founding principles, Tufts encourages and welcomes respectful expression and debate of all viewpoints from every member of our community in an environment free from discrimination. Such dialogue is essential to how we learn from one another and strengthens our role in society.” We are extremely disappointed in the inherent contradiction the University has presented. The Board of Trustees calls for expression and debate, yet simultaneously refuses to engage with us. Tufts Students for Justice in Palestine wants to engage in dialogue. That’s why we host Tea with SJP weekly in the Campus Center to talk with the student body about the occupation and our work, in addition to the myriad of speakers, workshops and other events we host year-round. But this dialogue is actively denied by an administration consistently failing to guarantee students’ rights to free speech and safety. If Tufts has true interest in fostering a campus climate of free dialogue, it must commit
to this rhetoric with actions such as the following: 1. Agree to a meeting between the Board of Trustees and members of SJP. 2. Guarantee the safety of SJP students, allies and senators from intimidation and threats. We must also remember that these discussions don’t occur in a vacuum. Pro-Israel groups like Friends of Israel, Tufts American Israel Alliance and Tufts Students for Two States are barred by their umbrella group Tufts Hillel from co-hosting or co-sponsoring events or discussions with groups like SJP and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) that support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement. Hillel International’s Standards of Partnership effectively shut down any chance at cooperation. Instead, campus organizations often falsely accuse pro-Palestinian groups of antisemitism. Though SJP does not take these accusations lightly, we stand with Tufts JVP in condemning false claims of antisemitism designed to silence criticism of Israel. Smearing SJP with accusations of antisemitism is a defined strategy employed across the United States to shut down campus organizing in solidarity with Palestinians. Pro-Israel organizations attempt to rewrite the definition of antisemitism to include any and all critique of Israel, then use this new strategy to silence calls for Palestinian human rights. It matters to us when people in positions of power like President Monaco, Dean Solomont and the leaders of Tufts Hillel bring up questions of antisemitism. As Jewish and non-Jewish students alike fighting for collective liberation, we are committed to ending the occupation, ending Islamophobia, anti-Arab racism, antisemitism and all other forms of oppression. But when people in positions of power misuse the charge of antisemitism, conflating it with criticism of the state of Israel, they discount the very real problem of antisemitism on this campus, in this country and around the world halting dialogue on the occupation and the liberation of Palestine. With this resolution, we hope to push our University and our senators to act on
their values. As a university committed to protecting all members of the community, Tufts must protect the senators who were filmed during the resolution, or whose names were plastered on Facebook alongside their votes on the resolution. These breaches of privacy directly threaten students’ safety and their ability to enter the state of Israel. They increase the likelihood of being placed on McCarthyite websites that falsely accuse pro-Palestine activists or those who support BDS of antisemitism to attempt to tar their reputations. President Monaco claims we ought to “enhance our efforts to support and protect our DACA and undocumented students.” If so, then Tufts should actively ensure that through funding or profit, it has no dealings with the companies noted in the resolution, which are violently involved in the racialized profiling, deportation and violence against undocumented communities in this country. Changing Columbus Day to Indigenous People’s Day was a huge step for the University, fueled by the resilient work of many student activists, but it was a minor one in supporting indigenous populations. Committing to supporting indigenous communities — beyond a name change in a calendar, that is — necessitates that Tufts cut ties with companies such as G4S, whose use of militarized violence against Water Protectors in Standing Rock and other indigenous communities, contributing to the oppression of students on this campus. Currently, Tufts is inconsistent and contradictory with its values, words and actions. Our resolution reflects SJP and JVP’s demands for the university to demonstrate a true dedication to its students and to people all over the world suffering from the violence enacted by these companies, which uphold intimately connected systems of oppression. Through this letter, we call for a dialogue, one that doesn’t silence marginalized voices, one that guarantees the safety of students and one that truly addresses the power dynamics at play at this University. We are calling on President Monaco, the Tufts Administration and members of the Tufts Community to act upon their “unwavering” values.