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Science for the People “Canada”: statement of solidarity with international students and migrant workers on the December 18th Day Without Migrants

English / Français

Since the formation of our collective in 2022, Science for the People “Canada” has been built by scientific knowledge workers from many different regions of the world. We are deeply affected by the new wave of attacks on migrant workers and international students, including a total freeze on two major permanent residency streams in Québec. We support the call by the Immigrant Workers Centre-Centre des travailleurs et travailleuses immigrants (IWC-CTI) for international students and workers to get organized and fight back.

In addition to endorsing the key demands of the IWC-CTI on the December 18th day of action, we recognize the following:

1. International students from the Global South are increasingly “migrant workers” first and “students” second, with university tuition merely serving as the extortionary price of admission for selling one’s labour in the Global North. In many cases, these labour and migration dynamics are the consequence of a global system of imperialism which, in Canada, serves first and foremost the capitalist class.

2. International students, who comprise 34.6% of temporary immigrants to Canada, serve to prop up Canada’s underfunded education sector. As a result of massive reductions to the proportion of public funding for post-secondary institutions (47% of university operating costs in 2018 compared to 80% in 1990), universities are increasingly dependent on corporate donors and exorbitant tuition fees shouldered by international students, many of whom are seeking a pathway to permanent residency. While tuition for domestic students has remained nearly constant, international student fees have increased by 97.7% from 2006/7 to 2023/24, after adjustment for inflation. International students provide more funding for Ontario post-secondary education than the government does.

3. International students are a growing source of invisible and informal on-campus labour, particularly in labour-intensive STEM fields. International students comprise 50% of doctoral students in the faculty of sciences at UQAM, and 46% of faculty of science graduate students at McGill.

4. A system of stipend-based labour compensation falsely classifies many STEM post-graduate workers as “students” or “trainees” rather than “workers” – despite the fact that, in practice, these “trainees” serve as full-time employees and are responsible for the vast majority of scientific labour within Canadian universities and research institutions.

5. In addition to preventing scientist-workers from unionizing or even understanding themselves as “workers,” the deliberate sleight of hand that classifies students and post-graduates as “trainees” makes the migration status of international students dependent on their continued “good standing” with a particular institution. This helps to guarantee the steady supply of cheap and precarious student-workers with little to no legal recourse against exploitative and unsafe working conditions.

6. International students are also a significant and growing source of precarized labour off of campus. For international STEM doctorates lucky enough to receive a research stipend at all, Québec’s FRQNT stipends are currently a meagre $25,000/year, with many annual stipends set even lower. A growing proportion of international students working full-time in the laboratory or in the field are therefore forced to take second jobs in order to make rent, with 56.7% of international graduate students and 36.3% of international bachelors students reporting a T4 income in 2018*.

7. As of November 15, 2024, international students in Canada are officially permitted to work a maximum of 24 hours a week off-campus on a student visa. However, these limits are often inadequate to the cost of living, incentivizing under-the-table employment, unofficial overtime, and informal job contracts.

8. In addition to exploitative working conditions, international students are vulnerable to sexual harassment and abuse. For example, 41.6% of international students from Francophone universities in Québec have experienced at least one incident of sexual violence on campus. The academic sector is characterized by high rates of sexual harassment, which are particularly egregious within STEM.

9. International students are often hesitant to seek support against harassment, attend protests, or join a union or political organization because they fear that conflict with university administrators or law enforcement could impact their immigration status. Exploitative working conditions are exacerbated by language barriers and manufactured uncertainty surrounding one’s political rights and legal protections as an immigrant.**

10. While STEM degree-holders continue to enjoy significant privileges compared to other workers, post-graduate education is rapidly expanding while the post-graduate job market is shrinking, reflecting significant changes to the nature and purpose of the graduate degree over the last 30 years. While a postgraduate STEM degree was once a signifier of class privilege, or a mechanism of so-called “upward mobility” as a ticket to a professional-managerial job, a growing proportion of post-graduate students in Canada are now better understood as precarized, temporary workers, who are expected to perform an ever-growing number of years of informal labour as “trainees” in order to gain access to the formal job market at all. Graduating with an average debt of $41,100 CAD, this new “academic precariat” faces increasingly slim odds of obtaining a job related to their years of specialized “training,” and/or of remaining in the country in the case of international post-graduates.

As scientists and friends of science, these facts compel us to stand in solidarity with all international students and workers, temporary foreign workers, and refugees on December 18th to demand status for all, and working and living conditions that are stable, secure, and dignified. As we suffer the consequences of a nation-wide housing crisis, stipends and salaries that are deeply inadequate to meet the rising costs of living, and a general deterioration of social and economic conditions, we reject the federal and provincial governments’ attempts to scapegoat migrant workers and international students for these problems. We know very well that these economic hardships do not result from immigration, but rather from the systematic underfunding, deliberate neglect, and privatization of public services – carried out by the same political class now attempting to blame immigrants for their own failures. Further, as anticapitalists and anti-imperialists, we recognize that the solution to these injustices, on both the local and global scale, requires organizing for systemic political change by building collective power where we are — in our laboratories, in our workplaces, in our unions, and on the picket line.

Further reading:

Senate Report on International Student Conditions
The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada 2024

Footnotes:

* A T4 income is any remuneration paid by an employer to an employee during a calendar year, which excludes scholarships and bursaries. The percentage of international postsecondary students receiving T4 slips has been increasing from 17.6% in 2000 to 46.6% in 2018.

** For more information see the following reports:
The Shadowy Business of International Education
Women International Students: The Invisible Workforce Project Report

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Science for the People « Canada »: solidarité avec les étudiant·es internationaux·ales et les travailleur·euses migrant·es pour la Journée sans Migrant·es du 18 décembre

English / Français

Depuis la création de notre collectif en 2022, Science for the People « Canada » a été construit par des travailleur·euses scientifiques venant de différentes régions du monde. Nous sommes profondément touché·es par la nouvelle vague d’attaques contre les travailleur·es immigré·es et les étudiant·es internationaux·ales, incluant un gel total de deux programmes menant à la résidence permanente au Québec. Nous répondons à l’appel lancé par le CTI aux groupes communautaires à nous organiser et à riposter contre ces attaques.

Nous soutenons les revendications du CTI et reconnaissons les faits suivants :

1. De plus en plus, les étudiant·es internationaux·ales du Sud global sont principalement des « travailleur·euses migrant·es » et secondairement des « étudiant·es », les frais d’inscription exorbitants servant de coûts d’admission au pays, donnant aux migrant·es le privilège de vendre leur main-d’œuvre dans le Nord global. Ces dynamiques de migration sont souvent le résultat d’un système global impérialiste dont, au sein du Canada, la classe capitaliste est le bénéficiaire principal.

2. Les étudiant·es internationaux·ales, qui représentent 34,6 % des immigrant·es temporaires au Canada, servent à soutenir le secteur de l’éducation sous-financé du pays. En raison de réductions massives dans la proportion de financement public des institutions postsecondaires (47 % des coûts de fonctionnement des universités en 2018 contre 80 % en 1990), les universités dépendent de plus en plus des dons provenant des entreprises et des frais de scolarité exorbitants payés par les étudiant·es internationaux·ales, dont beaucoup cherchent à obtenir une résidence permanente. Alors que les frais de scolarité pour les étudiant·es domestiques sont restés à peu près constants, les frais pour les étudiant·es internationaux·ales ont augmenté de 97,7 % entre 2006/07 et 2023/24, une fois ajustés pour l’inflation.  En Ontario, les étudiant·es internationaux·ales financent davantage l’éducation postsecondaire que ne le fait le gouvernement.

3. Les étudiant·es internationaux·ales constituent une source croissante de travail invisible et informel sur leur campus, particulièrement dans les domaines à forte intensité de main-d’œuvre, dont les STIM (sciences, technologie, ingénierie et mathématiques). Les étudiant·es internationaux·ales représentent 50 % des doctorant·es en sciences à l’UQAM et 46 % des étudiant·es des cycles supérieurs en sciences à McGill.

4. Un système de rémunération basé sur des bourses fait en sorte que de nombreux·ses travailleur·euses des domaines STIM sont faussement classé·es comme des « étudiant·es » ou des « stagiaires » plutôt que comme des « travailleur·euses » — alors qu’en pratique, ces « stagiaires » remplissent les fonctions d’employé·es à temps plein et assurent la majorité du travail scientifique dans les universités et centres de recherche.

5. En plus d’empêcher les travailleur·euses scientifiques de se syndiquer ou même de se reconnaître comme des « travailleur·euses », le tour de passe-passe délibéré qui classe les étudiant·es des cycles supérieurs comme des « stagiaires » engendre une dépendance de leur statut migratoire sur leur statut d’étudiant·es « en règle » au sein de leurs établissements. Cela garantit un approvisionnement régulier de main-d’œuvre bon marché constituée de travailleurs·euses précaires peu enclins à contester des abusives conditions de travail.

6. Les étudiant·es internationaux·ales sont également une source importante et croissante de travail précaire hors campus. Pour les doctorant·es internationaux·ales en STIM qui ont la chance de recevoir une bourse de recherche, les bourses du FRQNT au Québec s’élèvent actuellement à un maigre 25 000 $/an, avec de nombreuses bourses annuelles fixées encore plus bas. Une proportion croissante d’étudiant·es internationaux·ales travaillant à temps plein en laboratoire ou sur le terrain sont donc obligé·es de prendre un deuxième emploi pour payer leur loyer : 56,7 % des étudiant·es internationaux·ales des cycles supérieurs et 36,3 % des étudiant·es internationaux·ales en premier cycle ont déclaré un revenu T4 en 2018*.

7. Depuis le 15 novembre 2024, les détenteur·ices de visas étudiants au Canada sont officiellement autorisés à travailler un maximum de 24 heures par semaine hors campus. Cependant, ces seuils sont souvent insuffisants face au coût de la vie, ce qui leur mène à travailler au noir, à faire des heures supplémentaires non officielles, et à accepter des contrats informels.

8. En plus de ces conditions abusives de travail, les étudiant·es internationaux·ales sont vulnérables au harcèlement et aux abus sexuels. Par exemple, 41,6 % des étudiant·es internationaux·ales des universités francophones du Québec ont subi au moins un incident de violence sexuelle sur leur campus. Le secteur académique est marqué par son haut niveau de harcèlement sexuel, surtout dans les domaines STIM.

9. Les étudiant·es internationaux·ales hésitent souvent à demander de l’aide, à participer à des manifestations ou à rejoindre un syndicat ou une organisation politique, craignant que des conflits avec l’administration universitaire ou la police n’affectent leur statut migratoire. Ces conditions de travail sont aggravées par les barrières linguistiques et par le fait que les patrons cultivent l’incertitude par rapport aux droits et aux protections légales en vigueur.**

10. Bien que les détenteur·ices de diplômes STIM bénéficient encore de privilèges importants par rapport à d’autres travailleur·euses, le nombre d’étudiant·es en cycles supérieures augmente rapidement tandis que l’offre d’emploi se raréfie, un signe que des changements majeurs par rapport à la nature et au but des cycles supérieurs sont survenus au cours des 30 dernières années. Alors qu’un diplôme supérieur en STIM représentait autrefois un signe de privilège de classe ou un mécanisme de « ascension sociale » vers un poste professionnel, beaucoup d’étudiant·es en cycles supérieures au Canada sont maintenant classé·es comme des travailleur·euses précaires et temporaires, qui doivent s’attendre à ce qu’iels aient à travailler de plus en plus longtemps de manière informelle comme « stagiaires » afin d’accéder au marché de l’emploi formel. Avec une dette moyenne de 41 100 $ CAD, les membres du nouveau « précariat académique » font face à des chances de plus en plus minces d’obtenir un emploi en lien avec leurs années de « formation spécialisée » ou de rester dans le pays.

Le 18 décembre, en tant que scientifiques et allié·es de la science, nous nous tenons solidaires de tou·s·tes les étudiant·es internationaux·ales, des travailleur·euses étranger·ères temporaires et des réfugié·es, et exigeons un statut pour tou·s·tes ainsi que des conditions de travail et de vie stables, sécurisées et dignes. Alors que nous subissons une crise du logement, des bourses et des salaires profondément insuffisants face à l’augmentation du coût de la vie et une détérioration générale des conditions sociales et économiques, nous rejetons les tentatives des gouvernements fédéral et provinciaux de faire des travailleur·euses migrant·es et des étudiant·es internationaux·ales des boucs émissaires pour ces problèmes. Nous savons très bien que ces difficultés économiques ne résultent pas de l’immigration, mais plutôt du sous-financement systématique, de la négligence délibérée et de la privatisation des services publics — orchestrés par la même classe politique qui tente aujourd’hui de blâmer les migrant·es pour ses propres échecs. De plus, en tant qu’anticapitalistes et anti-impérialistes, nous reconnaissons que nous ne pourrions contrer ces injustices qu’en luttant pour un changement du système politique et en construisant une puissance collective là où nous sommes — dans nos laboratoires, nos lieux de travail, nos syndicats et sur les piquets de grève.

Pour en lire plus :

Rapport du Sénat sur les conditions des étudiant·e·s internationaux·ales (Senate Report on International Student Conditions)

L’état de l’éducation postsecondaire au Canada 2024 (The State of Postsecondary Education in Canada 2024)

Références :

* Un revenu T4 correspond à toute rémunération versée par un employeur à un employé au cours d’une année civile, à l’exclusion des bourses et des subventions. Le pourcentage d’étudiant·e·s internationaux·ales de niveau postsecondaire recevant des feuillets T4 est passé de 17,6 % en 2000 à 46,6 % en 2018.

**Pour plus d’informations :
Les dessous obscurs de l’éducation internationale (The Shadowy Business of International Education)

Les étudiantes internationales : le rapport sur une main-d’œuvre invisible.(Women International Students: The Invisible Workforce Project Report)

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Statement on the Results of the 2024 Presidential Election

The New Haven chapter of Science for the People invites all scientists, tech and academic workers in Connecticut and beyond to join us in the struggle against capitalism, the reactionary politics that undergird it, and the false promise of liberalism as a political alternative. The only real alternative is to establish vibrant anti-capitalist mass organizations.

Trump returning to the White House signals a serious decline in the ability of liberalism to justify itself as a progressive political alternative to reactionary conservatism. For decades, liberalism and conservatism have operated as two faces of the same coin: hand-in-hand they propel capitalism forward by inertia, if nothing else.

As such, we see that liberalism fails again and again to secure even the most basic protections for abortion access, immigrants, and the LGBTQ+ community, a weakness that will now be exploited by Trump and his neo-fascist cronies.

What does this mean for scientists, for whom liberalism is often the political partner to the perceived progress of science?

First we should ask: what has liberalism offered to science as a human endeavor?

Our view is that liberalism has duped scientists again and again. While budgets for vital basic research recede and scientific activity is further cordoned off into private firms with no accountability to the public, liberals have turned a blind eye to the impending climate catastrophe and placed science in deeper subservience to the military industrial complex. This makes scientists the stooges  of capitalism, imperialism, and ecological exploitation against their will, the consequences of which have become devastatingly apparent as the genocide in Gaza proceeds uninhibited with the full support of the Democratic Party.

Moreover, as science continues to become a more diverse profession, the oppression of people with marginalized identities will not only hurt our friends and colleagues, but undermine scientific work by making the discipline even more precarious for many people.

How can scientists resist this depravity and build a better alternative?

We compel scientists to realize their role as agents in class struggle, rather than elite, individual, and politically disaffected actors.

Science is a social endeavor, driven by the combined efforts of vast numbers of people working diligently across the globe. The products of science form the basis of the modern world: technological advancements most often start in publicly-funded laboratories. But most scientists have no control over how the products of their research are used. Our disciplines are driven by university administrators, venture capitalists, and the boards of tech companies. Scientists are thereby made more and more into proletarians: cogs trained in the academic machine to which we must submit in return for a paltry wage, insufficient benefits, and no social safety net.

We do not have to accept this fate.

We should accept that the conditions of science are deteriorating under the stewardship of liberalism, and with them the conditions of life on Earth. We believe this ought to compel scientists to recognize that their fate is intertwined with that of all proletarianized working people, in the so-called US and around the world. If this is true, it’s about time we start acting like it!

Scientists need to organize within the working class, and we offer Science for the People as a home for all scientific workers to begin to organize in opposition to capitalism, the false hope of liberalism, and the depravity of conservatism and neo-fascism.

This means that scientific workers need to rebuild the infrastructure of working class institutions in their workplaces, their apartment buildings, and in their communities. Whether we are fighting for better wages, reduced rents, or against imperialism, we should be cohereing these struggles into a unified political movement against capitalism and for socialism.

Join us … You have nothing to lose but your chains!
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The Absurdity of Transitional Funding

As student-workers across the University of California (UC) system begin to shape the contract demands for the 2025 renewal, BDS is once again the subject of intense organizing and struggle within UAW 4811. Amidst the discussion, the idea of Transitional Funding (TF) has been floated as a substitute or a supplement for Divestment. Below we explain why TF is nonsense.

1. TF as a bargaining item has its conceptual origins in the protective measures against workplace harassment, particularly for Teaching Assistants under abusive supervisors, which exist in some academic workers’ contracts.

2. In the current context, TF seeks temporary support for students who morally object to military funding, following the promotion of “pledge to reject department complicity” letters.

3. Far from being an “antiwar labor strategy” as have been widely advertised, such letters had little organizing traction—a fact admitted by the drafters themselves as early as February 2024—and remained static, symbolic gestures over the course of nine months since their publications.

4. TF follows the same tactical (il)logic that relies on individual choice instead of organized collective action. That is, “divestment” can be achieved if individuals choose to reject military/zionist funding, and that individual risk may be minimized by TF.

5. Reality checks: 

    • TF is deeply flawed in practice. What kind of funding would legally fall under the category of “morally objectionable”? Who gets to define morality? Many zionist/military connections with the UC will escape this category without anyone being able to challenge.
    • By reframing institutional complicity to individual complicity, TF is incongruous with collective action. How do organizers ensure that a singular individual seeking TF does not experience a change of heart, or reassessment of what is/isn’t moral, during the protracted grievance process?
    • In many STEM fields (e.g., CS, Aerospace, etc), there is simply nothing to transition to. Are they then excluded from TF?
    • TF may open the door for agitation from reactionary individuals. One can find reproductive research, or transgender health research “morally objectionable” based on one’s religion. What is the tactical counterweight against this?

6. Demand shapes the movement, both internally and externally. A tactically flawed demand generates no momentum—as shown by the failed pledge activism and the poorly managed June strike, leaves weaknesses for the opponent to exploit, and worse, distracts from other core demands.

7. TF cannot replace divestment, and is not even a next-best alternative, or “divestment-lite.” Divestment is supported by an international movement with decades of practice and aims to challenge the structure directly. TF is muddled, underdeveloped, and comes from a small, isolated corner of STEM academia. The two are not comparable.

8. The minimum in supporting the Palestine struggle is Disclose, Divest, and Amnesty. Anything less is a compromise that diminishes one’s own credibility within the broader movement.

Do not let TF dilute, defer, decenter BDS in our upcoming fight for Palestine solidarity.

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Stanford Physics & Applied Physics Graduate Student Workers Labor Divestment Pledge

We, graduate students of the Stanford Applied Physics and Physics departments, stand with the Palestinian people in their fight for liberation and refuse to be complicit in the ongoing occupation and genocide perpetrated against them.

1. Background/Context

For over 100 years, Palestinians have suffered under Zionist military occupation, starting with the 1917 Balfour declaration, solidified with the 1948 Nakba (during which 750,000 Palestinians were ethnically cleansed from their homes), and further entrenched in the following 75 years of intensifying occupation, apartheid, and genocide [1]. Today, we are witnessing yet another horrifying escalation of the Zionist colonial project: since October 7th, Israel has relentlessly and deliberately terrorized the Palestinian people in Gaza. Its atrocities include killing over 34,000* people, displacing over two million, and systematically starving and withholding medical aid from the entire civilian population of 2.5 million people, half of whom are children – a war crime known as collective punishment [2]. Countless more war crimes have been documented already, including attacks upon hospitals, refugee camps, and places of worship [3], the targeting of journalists and medical personnel [4], and the use of banned weapons such as white phosphorus [5].

On October 16th, 2023, Palestinian Trade Unions put out an urgent call for international solidarity with Palestine [6]. The call to action states, “Palestinian trade unions call on our counterparts internationally and all people of conscience to end all forms of complicity with Israel’s crimes — most urgently halting the arms trade with Israel, as well as all funding and military research.” As workers whose research labor is deeply entangled in the U.S. military-industrial-academic complex which is backing the Zionist genocide in Gaza, this statement is our response to their call.

* This number comes from the official Gaza Health Ministry county. However, due to Israel’s systematic destruction of all hospitals/health infrastructure in Gaza, this official count is likely much lower than the actual death toll. This count also does not include the thousands who are missing and buried under the rubble.

2. Stanford’s Complicity

Since its creation, the Zionist state’s military has been heavily supported by the United States. By last year, the U.S. had given a total of $158 billion (non-inflation-adjusted) in bilateral assistance (most of which is in the form of military assistance) and missile defense funding to Israel [7]. Since 2016, Israel has received an annual $3.8 billion in military aid and missile defense from the U.S. [7]. Since October 7th, Joe Biden has approved a total of $247.5 million in weapons sales for Israel’s genocide in Gaza, in addition to over 100 Foreign Military Sales (FMS) to Israel [8]. The House of Representatives recently approved an additional $26 billion in military aid [9]. As a result of Israel’s U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza, the stock prices of some of the largest military contractors like Raytheon and General Dynamics are soaring [10].

Stanford University is deeply entrenched in this business of war. While the details of its 35 billion dollar endowment aren’t publicly available, its financial and academic ties to companies such as HP and Lockheed Martin are undeniable. The former provides data services to the Israeli military and prison systems used to uphold apartheid across Palestine. The latter is infamously the United States’ largest weapons manufacturer and has manufactured many of the missiles used by Israel in Gaza.

Beyond its financial investments, Stanford received over $75 Million in research funding from the U.S. Department of Defense in 2022 alone [11]. $17.5 Million of research funding went directly into the Physical Sciences [12], with $7.8 million going to Physics and Applied Physics research. Stanford Physics labs have also received at least $140,000 in research funding directly from Northrop Grumman Corp and $280,000 from Lockheed Martin Corp [13].  For a more complete breakdown of funding received by Stanford Physics and Physics Independent Labs by the U.S. military and private war profiteers, see Table 1.

3. Physics and War

The widespread funding of physics research by the U.S. military and private war profiteers is not coincidental – it is directly tied to a long history of physics research being used to advance military technology. The integration of physics research into the U.S. war machine began in World War I and solidified in World War II with the Manhattan Project (from which the DOE National Laboratories, including SLAC, emerged). Despite witnessing the horrors caused by nuclear weapons, physicists have continued to funnel their academic labor into the machinery of war. Throughout the Cold War, physicists contributed to mass nuclear proliferation in the name of “national security”, playing a major role in destabilizing the world and motivating imperialist proxy wars in the Global South. Physicists have contributed to the development of anti-submarine and ballistic missiles, cryptography, radar detection, and more, and breakthroughs in physics (such as the laser) have in turn motivated ongoing excessive military spending through programs like Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. A large focus in current physics research is quantum information and computing. This is at least in part due to the high military interest in quantum computing technology for data security and artificial intelligence [16]. The latter has been increasingly used by the Israeli occupation forces to surveil and massacre Palestinians in Gaza [17].

Conducting research that is funded by the U.S. military and private war profiteers will never be morally neutral. The U.S. military is rooted in settler militias that displaced and massacred the Indigenous people of this land en masse. It continued this legacy through imperial wars in Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, Iraq, and more. Now, with the U.S. providing instrumental military support to Zionism to enact genocide in Gaza, the U.S. military is once again inextricably linked to the genocide of Indigenous people, driven from their land and murdered en masse by a settler colonial state. It is not possible for us in the physics community to accept ongoing military funding without bearing moral responsibility for the destruction that the U.S. military-industrial-academic complex has unleashed in the world. We have an urgent duty to reject the ties between physics research and U.S. militarism.

4. Our Pledge

We, the Stanford Physics and Applied Physics graduate students, represent the future of our field. We unequivocally demand an end to Stanford’s complicity in the Israeli settler colonial regime. We join the Students Against Apartheid in Palestine (SAAP) [18] in calling for Stanford to divest its money from complicit companies and industries, and end all academic partnerships with corporations and institutions fueling occupation and genocide in Palestine.

Additionally, we pledge

  • To withhold all academic labor benefitting militarism. This includes divesting our labor from research projects funded by the U.S. military and private military contractors.
  • To refuse to work for the U.S. military as well as private weapons/weapons adjacent industries both for internships and in post-graduation careers.
  • To refuse to work for or with companies complicit in Israeli occupation and genocide for both internships and post-graduation jobs, especially those specifically listed in the Palestinian-led BDS (Boycott, Divest, Sanction) campaign.
  • To heed the Palestinian call for an academic and cultural boycott of Israel, following the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) [19] guidelines.

We call on Stanford faculty to disclose their funding sources and support their students in withholding their academic labor. We also ask them to consider the ethical implications of their research and join PACBI [19]. We call on academic workers everywhere to withhold academic labor benefiting militarism, occupation, and genocide.

5. UCSC and Resources

If you are looking to organize within your own department, we highly recommend reading “UCSC Astronomers Reject Researchers’ Complicity with the Genocide of Palestine“. As part of this impactful statement, the UCSC graduate students put together several documents with resources and organizing advice. Beyond this, we recommend reaching out to your local SJP or FJP (Students/Faculty for Justice in Palestine) chapters.

6. Closing

This statement comes over half a year into the raging genocide in Gaza. We are grieved and enraged at the horrifying range of atrocities that the people of Gaza have experienced in this time span, as well as in the prior decades of siege and occupation. We also see clearly that despite its mass slaughter and forced starvation of the Palestinians in Gaza, Israel has failed to achieve any military or political gains. Instead, it has only become increasingly isolated on the global stage, with several countries severing diplomatic ties, while global solidarity with Palestine has reached historic levels. We wholeheartedly believe that Palestine will be free, from the river to the sea, within our lifetimes. Free Palestine. 

Sephora Ruppert, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Rupini Kamat, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Elena Corbae, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Shintaro Fushida-Hardy,  Graduate Student Worker, Mathematics
Anonymous  Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Sydney Erickson,  Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Anonymous Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Anonymous Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Erin Fleck, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Anonymous Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Nicole Ticea, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Anonymous Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Anonymous Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Anonymous Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Anonymous Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Chris Gustin, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Sara Irvine, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Jered Zhang, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Tori Ankel, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Ocean Zhou, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Paris Franz, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Neelanjan, Graduate Student Worker, Mechanical Engineering
Eesh Gupta, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Bernardita Ried Guachalla, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Cindy Wang, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Viraj Manwadkar, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Sophie Allen, Graduate Student Worker, Sociology
Matiwos Mebratu, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Tara Dacunha, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Anonymous Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Anonymous Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Martin Grassl, Graduate Student Worker, SLAC
Benjamin Dodge, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Sam Robison, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
David Monteserin Narayana, Graduate Student Worker, Religious Studies
Abby Pan, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Hephzibah Akinleye, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Liam Herndon, Graduate Student Worker, Chemical Engineering
Cindy Wang, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Anonymous Graduate Student Worker, Chemistry
Vidushi Bansal, Graduate Student Worker, Chemical engineering
Sarah, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Gauri Batra, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Anonymous Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Javan Tahir, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Anonymous Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Anonymous Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Emma Simmerman, Graduate Student Worker, Applied Physics
Danial Shadmany, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Miriam Moore, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Haley Stueber, Graduate Student Worker, Physics
Anonymous Postdoctoral Fellow, Physics
Daniela de Angeli Dutra, Postdoctoral Fellow, Biology
Jesse Goldstein, Research Staff, “Natural Capital Project, Woods Institute”
Vyoma Sahani, Staff, Radiology
Anonymous Staff, Physics
McKayla Roberts, Supporter
Anonymous Undergraduate, Physics
Anonymous Undergraduate, Physics
Gabriela Rincon, Undergraduate, Physics
Anonymous Undergraduate, Physics
EJ Daniels, Undergraduate, Physics
Sathya, Undergraduate, Physics
Sophia, Undergraduate, Psychology
Marc Soong, Undergraduate, Statistics
Mira Banks, Undergraduate, Physics
Nupur Kapadia, Undergraduate, Physics
Lucas Imren, Undergraduate, Physics
Anonymous GSB SO, GSB
Anoop, Alum, Computer science
Leif Erickson, Alumni
Stanford Against Apartheid in Palestine (SAAP), Club/Organization
Black in Physics @ Stanford, Club/Organization

Table 1: Physics Research Funding according to Stanford 2023 Sponsored Projects Report [14]

 

Physics Department Ginzton Lab Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials (GLAM) Hansen Experimental Physics Lab (HEPL)
Military Funding
Air Force: $687,671 $1,144,727 $715,978 $241,012 $2,789,388
Army: $1,245,921 $541,091 $544,135 $2,331,147
Navy: $304,872 $1,636,211 $111,633 $2,052,716
Military Funding subtotal: $7,173,251
Private War Profiteer Funding
Lockheed Martin Corporation: $17,999 $283,061 $301,060
Intel Corporation: $233,657 $233,657
Naval Research Laboratory: $3,966 $3,966
Northrop Grumman Systems Corporation: $141,525 $141,525
Private War Profiteer Funding subtotal: $680,208
Total $2,238,464 $3,340,028 $949,635 $1,325,332 $7,853,459
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Police Repression of UCLA SJP Encampment Led to the UAW4811 Strike Vote—So Why Isn’t 4811 Leadership Calling UCLA Out on Strike?

On April 30, two days before UAW4811’s Triennial elections—in which President Rafael Jaime would face a challenger running on a Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS), Cost of Living Adjustment (COLA) for all, and a work-to-rule strike for Palestine platform—UCLA’s SJP encampment was violently attacked by Zionist agitators. Jaime was said to have stood alongside beleaguered encampment protestors and demanded answers to UCLA’s negligence. Jaime announced the next day to a crowd at UCLA that 4811 would be filing unfair labor practices charges against the UC for failing to protect workers’ right to free speech. That same night, LAPD violently swept the encampment. Jaime and his “Union MADE” Caucus (previously OSWP, affiliated with the UAW Administration Caucus) then called for a strike authorization vote, effectively opening the door for the union to strike in support of divestment demands.

Three weeks and an overwhelming “yes” vote later, the re-elected leadership continues to publicize the police brutality that occurred at UCLA, UCSD, and UCI on the official 4811 website and social media, but is yet to call a strike anywhere but UCSC. Meanwhile, they declined to offer a timeline or criteria for assessing strike readiness, and have barred rank-and-file members from attending Executive Board meetings to discuss the strike.

Since October 2023, local union chapters at UCLA, UCD, UCB, UCSC, and UCSB have passed numerous BDS resolutions and resolutions to commit to bargaining over BDS. Yet, Jaime and the leadership refused to disseminate this information to the membership; 4811 and Region 6 even endorsed the California Senate candidacy of Katie Porter, who repeatedly voted to send more money to Israel. Now, diverting attention from their weak position on Palestine and the perceived unwillingness to strike, the leadership claims that Science, Engineering, Technology and Math (STEM) workers in 4811, which make up the majority of the current workforce during the summer break, are ambivalent about the strike.

This is false. Not only is the strike action widely and vocally supported in our locals, as evidenced by the strike authorization vote, many STEM workers have joined hand-in-hand with students defending the encampments, protested the US-funded genocide, and were themselves violently attacked by the police. Consider that the call to solidarity with Palestine reflects US public opinion, of which 52 percent of registered voters support an end to US military aid to Israel and 77 percent of Democrats are pro-ceasefire. By deriding our professions, workplaces, and ourselves as regressive, the 4811 leadership is using a trite stereotype as a wedge to divide us from our fellow workers and union siblings. Instead, they should be leveraging the power of STEM workers in the strike.

The urgency to end the US-funded genocide notwithstanding, the future of the labor movement will depend on a clear STEM organizing strategy. The US economy is becoming more and more intertwined with high technology, and universities like UC are rapidly expanding their STEM research operations. The composition of higher ed labor will thus be increasingly STEM-heavy, bolstered by the Department of Defense, the weapons manufacturers, and other industries profiting from developing harmful technologies. It will take a powerful labor movement consisting of a large number of militant STEM workers to disrupt the war machine and protect the rights and safety of all workers and communities.

Concretely at this current moment, it is time to implement the try-and-tested research strike strategy around work-to-rule, which allows STEM workers to withhold labor in the long run. We need to expand the strike to include as many people and as much labor-time as possible to achieve maximum leverage, as well as ensuring that striking workers are protected from retaliation. All of this requires decisive action from the union leadership, which has thus far not gone beyond publicizing slogans, wasting mobilizing energies, while blaming STEM workers for its own inaction.

We, STEM workers of UAW4811, insist that Rafael Jaime and the UAW4811 leadership comply with the popular mandate, seize this historical moment, and immediately call all UC campuses on strike for Palestine.

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SftP Canada in solidarity with campus encampments

Science for the People (SftP) Canada stands with student-led encampments for Gaza that have arisen across Turtle Island (North America) and around the world. We condemn the militarization of campuses and the accompanying police violence against protesters, the defamation of student organizers by university administrators and politicians, and the violent attacks on students by Zionist vigilante groups.

Students with a passion for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) are refusing to work in the service of occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Futures of AI are experimentally tested in occupied Palestine; legacies of racial science live on in eugenicist anti-Palestinian slurs; technological research assumes the inevitability of capitalist domination of the globe. But a generation of students dreams of an anti-imperialist science. We owe them the work of dismantling the histories that link militarism, scientific progress, racial science, and settler colonialism. We must reimagine STEM for liberation.

Our universities all express their commitment to “reconciliation” with the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island. Yet, these same universities not only suppress their role in the genocide of the Indigenous inhabitants of the lands upon which they are built, but, through their financial and academic support of the Zionist occupation, are also actively complicit in the ethnic cleansing of the Indigenous Palestinian people. The struggle for Palestine is entwined with the struggle for the liberation of the Indigenous nations of Turtle Island.

Universities in North America have a responsibility to stand in solidarity with their peers in Gaza and cut their ties to illegal occupation, apartheid, and genocide. Since 2004, a coalition of Palestinian civil society groups and unions, including the Palestinian Federation of Unions of University Professors and Employees, has been calling for a cultural and academic boycott of Israel, and it is long past time for higher education institutions in North America to heed that call.

We unite in support of students’ demands on universities:

  • to disclose investments in Israel’s ongoing violations of international law
  • to divest from companies and institutions complicit in the occupation, apartheid, and genocide of Palestinians
  • to remove police from university campuses
  • to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to the occupation and genocide in Palestine
  • to endorse academic boycotts of Israeli universities, including study abroad programs, fellowships, seminars, and research collaborations. 

Most importantly, SftP Canada unites with the call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and an end to the occupation and genocide in Palestine.

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UCSC Physicists Reject UC Complicity with Genocide of Palestine

In the past 75 years, the colonization and occupation of Palestine has claimed the lives of tens of thousands of Palestinians. Before October 7th, 217 Palestinians had already been killed in the year 2023 alone.[1] Additionally, Gaza has been under a complete blockade -by land, sea and air- for the past 16 years by the Israeli military.[2] This violence has reached a new level of depravity in the last five months. There have been well over 30,000 Palestinian deaths since October 7th; 92% of these deaths are civilians, with nearly half of these civilians being children.[3] Over 50% of all buildings in the Gaza Strip have been destroyed, including hospitals, schools, mosques, churches and essential infrastructure for human existence, such as electricity and water.[4,5] In the West Bank, outside of Gaza, an additional 413 people have been killed since October 7th, 107 of whom were children. Countless more have been injured or detained indefinitely, often without charge.[6] Furthermore, 853 West Bank citizens have been made homeless by demolitions. As we were writing this document, Israel approved 3476 more houses for illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank.[7] As this unspeakable violence continues to claim more Palestinian life every hour, the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions has called “on [their] counterparts internationally and all people of conscience to end all forms of complicity with Israel’s crimes – most urgently halting the arms trade with Israel, as well as all funding and military research,” further emphasizing that “this urgent, genocidal situation can only be prevented by a mass increase of global solidarity with the people of Palestine and that can restrain the Israeli war machine.”[8] 

We, the academic workers of the UC Santa Cruz Physics Department, commit to honoring this request of solidarity by:

  1. Withholding academic labor benefiting militarism.
  2. Refusing research collaboration with federal military institutions as well as private arms and defense companies.
  3. Calling upon faculty and PIs in our department to disclose funding sources, resist suppression of political speech, and support their students in divesting their labor in the pursuit of ethical research.

The United States is Israel’s foremost benefactor. It has provided a cumulative $158 billion (non-inflation adjusted) in bilateral aid to Israel, 86% of which finances a sixth of the Israeli military budget, providing the military infrastructure used to carry out this genocide.[9] The University of California received $295 million in funding from the Department of Defense in 2022 alone, with UCSC receiving $10.5 million dollars to support research to make violence on this scale possible and efficient for the perpetrators.[10,11]

Additionally, demilitarization is a climate crisis necessity. The United States military produces more emissions than entire industrialized countries.[12] There is no teaching or learning on an uninhabitable planet.

For these reasons, demilitarizing our department and school is an ethical priority for graduate researchers and the faculty alike. Beyond our own department and in solidarity with the Palestinian General Federation of Trade Unions, we call on University of California graduate researchers and faculty to:

  • At minimum, disclose all sources of funding that support your research and students. Support students who wish to divest their intellectual labor in pursuit of “ethical science.”
  • Fight to withhold your research and patents from military applications. Campaign your institutions to reclaim ownership of your intellectual property and its applications.
  • Disclose and critically consider collaborations with any Israeli companies, NGOs and academic institutions that have shown themselves to be complicit in the genocide.  Support of the military action, economic strangling, and colonization of Palestine, even without active contribution, are some examples of such complicity.
  • Make your anti-genocide position clear to Israeli collaborators, share information on the actions of the military and human rights violations, and open discourse on what can be done from within an Israeli university to take action. Academic institutions have long been bastions of free speech and revolutionary thought, and so have acted as natural homes for the fight against oppression and tyranny. Encourage the condemnation of the Palestinian genocide by Israeli citizens, especially respected public figures like professors.
  • Critically evaluate the appeal of your work to military applications. For example, plenty of astrophysics of star formation and evolution, as well as fusion energy research informs nuclear weapons testing and development.[13] Lasers are integral to guided munitions as well as plenty of other military purposes. As the ones performing this research we have a unique responsibility in understanding the possible consequences of our work and advocating for our work to not be used to these ends.
  • Spread these actions beyond our department and into your own.

In solidarity,

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As faculty in the physics department we commit to supporting our graduate students and postdocs in their goals as outlined above:

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Science magazine’s editorial bias against Palestinians

After reading Science’s absurdly one-sided story (February 28, 2024) on the effect of the genocide in Gaza on Israeli academics, I wrote an email to the news editor to intervene. He responded by offering to publish parts of the email as a “letter” in response to the story. I then reworked the text of the email to prepare it for publication and submitted a draft. The editor sent it back with substantial deletions, notably removing the paragraph describing the deliberate nature of the Israeli military’s destruction of academic life in Gaza. The sentence in which I explained the principles of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) was also removed, on the grounds that “[w]e often don’t know the motivations of those calling for or practicing a boycott.” I pointed out to the editor that the initial story had speculated freely about the supposed antisemitic motivations of alleged boycotts of Israeli academics and insisted on retaining the deleted passages. The editor declined to withdraw the deletions and I decided not to allow the text to be published in amputated form. Below is the text, including the passages Science refused to publish.

—

It is grotesquely disproportionate to run a story on Israeli academics’ self-reported worries about possible difficulties in getting their articles published without so much as mentioning that the Israeli military has reportedly killed at least 94 Palestinian university professors and over 4,000 students since October. All 12 universities in Gaza have been destroyed or damaged. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) estimates that 625,000 students in Gaza currently have no access to education, not to mention the 1.7 million internally displaced people and the 2.2 million currently facing acute starvation at IPC Phase 3 levels or above.

The article dismissively refers in passing to “the Gaza Strip’s relatively small scientific enterprise” and contrasts it with “Israel’s far larger research community,” to which the rest of the article is dedicated. It seems as though we’re meant to conclude that the destruction of the “relatively small scientific enterprise” in Gaza doesn’t matter in comparison with Israeli academics potentially being invited less frequently to conferences. Failing to mention the 16-year Israeli blockade of Gaza, which—long before 7 October—prevented the entry of equipment and materials needed for research as well as the exit of academics trying to collaborate with partners outside Gaza, is an egregious omission.

The article states that “attacks on Hamas forces by Israel’s military have destroyed university buildings and other infrastructure,” despite the overwhelming evidence that Israeli forces have deliberately targeted civilian structures such as universities rather than simply destroying them incidentally in attacks on Hamas. The clearest instance is the Israeli military’s apparent controlled demolition of Al-Israa University in January, after they had used the site as a base and detention center for several weeks. This and other targeted attacks on academic life in Gaza have led the organization Scholars Against the War on Palestine to describe the Israeli military as committing “scholasticide”: “systemic destruction, in whole or in part, of the educational life of a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group.”

Finally, the article quotes without comment an Israeli academic’s unfounded speculation about a “slippery slope of hatred” leading to anyone with a “Jewish name” being subject to boycott. However, the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) clearly states in its “Guidelines for the International Academic Boycott of Israel” that “the [Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions] movement, including PACBI, rejects on principle boycotts of individuals based on their identity (such as citizenship, race, gender, or religion) or opinion.” Individual Israeli academics, not to mention Jewish academics outside Israel, are not the target of the campaign, which is instead focused on partnerships with Israeli institutions such as the European Union’s Horizon Europe program.

By not explaining the principles of the academic boycott of Israel or even quoting a single critic of Israel’s policies and actions towards the Palestinian people, the article conflates opposition to the decades-long displacement and oppression of Palestinians with antisemitism, which is a common manifestation of anti-Palestinian racism. In addition to providing cover for that oppression, this conflation makes combatting actual antisemitism harder by falsely tying the Jewish people as a whole to the actions of the State of Israel. 

I hope Science will begin to devote a more proportionate amount of attention to the Palestinian scientists living under indiscriminate bombardment and now facing famine conditions due to Israeli restrictions on aid entering Gaza, as well as the continual raids, arrests, and other obstructions on universities in the West Bank.

Josh Lalonde
Science for the People