Interview with UMass Faculty for Justice in Palestine

Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst became our 1000th Apartheid-Free Community on December 14, 2025. They are also our 30th Apartheid-Free student, faculty, or campus group, and our 303rd Apartheid-Free solidarity organization. 

We sat down with representatives Jordy and Cedric, both UMass Amherst faculty, to talk about their advocacy for Palestine, connections between labor and Palestine, and their decision to become an Apartheid-Free Community.

Thanks so much for making the time to chat with us! Please introduce yourselves and tell us a little about your community, UMass Amherst FSJP.

Jordy: UMass Amherst FSJP formed in the fall of 2023. FSJP is a very decentralized network with over 130 chapters supporting campus movements for Palestinian liberation, a movement which has met incredible repression from campus administrators and from the federal government. We’ve also done our own education and advocacy for solidarity with Palestine.

Cedric: I’m a faculty member in Sociology and Labor Studies at UMass Amherst. Our chapter’s work picked up after 57 staff and students were unjustly arrested for taking part in a sit-in at an administrative building in the fall of 2023. The chapter is full of amazing, loving, caring people with excellent politics, and I couldn’t ask for a better group of people to organize with.

How and why did your community decide to become an Apartheid-Free Community? 

C: It was a relatively smooth and straightforward conversation. The main sentiment that was expressed by the community was that Palestine is a picket line, and that many of our local struggles (including labor, to speak from my own background) are interconnected with Palestinian liberation. When we took the question of joining to a vote in our groupchat, the “thumbs-up” consensus was pretty immediate.

J: The Apartheid-Free Communities pledge accords very straightforwardly with our principles of unity, which are the departure point for participating in our community. A lot of people who are involved with UMass Amherst FSJP, even if they’re new to Palestine work since 2023, have also worked with AFSC locally around other issues, like sanctuary and migrant justice campaigns. The connections between the Palestine movement and other social justice movements are deeply embedded in Western Massachusetts. 

What does your advocacy for Palestine look like in the academic context?

J: One of our areas of focus has to do with education, and creating spaces for the campus community to talk about the history of settler colonialism and Palestinian dispossession. Carving out those spaces can be difficult these days, because of the repression of the free exchange of ideas. Another area of focus is divestment, including supporting students who are involved in divestment campaigns. 

C: We’ve also organized a lot of direct action. In 2023-2024, we organized petition campaigns, sit-ins, and of course our encampment, which was violently repressed in May 2024. We’ve been on the front lines, putting pressure on the administration to divest in support of Palestinian liberation. The labor connections have come up in part because of our direct action. The Palestine Labor Movement has called for solidarity activists to use our specific power as workers to exert pressure on our employers around Palestinian liberation. It’s not just that workers at UMass Amherst happen to believe in BDS, but also that the repression on our campus and other campuses across the US violates our rights as working people. We’re prevented from teaching classes at the encampment, or forced to monitor what we say in class. Our power lies not just in our beliefs and our voices, but also in withholding our labor. 

How have your commitments to or relationships with student activists or other groups on campus, like union workers or fellow staff, impacted your dedication to the values of the Apartheid-Free pledge?

C: Those relationships are the most powerful part of the struggle for me, personally. When I was in the encampment, I experienced so much love, care, and solidarity. UMass Amherst is kind of an impersonal, bureaucratic place, and working there can feel like drudgery. Being in the encampment was the first time I’d felt like part of an organic social community since I had started working at UMass Amherst in 2018. In that moment, UMass Amherst became a place of love and solidarity. All of those people, from all walks of life and all different social movements, from every constituency on campus, breathe life into me and into our movement. 

What are the biggest challenges your community has faced in the past two years, and how have you overcome them?

C: The mass arrests in May 2024 had something of a chilling effect on the movement. That was in part because supporting the folks who were arrested left us bogged down in legal and bureaucratic procedures. Huge amounts of energy went into this legal and university bureaucracy, and it took us out of the streets. Once the administration was punishing students, the student movement (which had been the beating heart of the movement on our campus) became more cautious. We were all exhausted after that ordeal. This year, we’ve been much more active. But to an extent, the political repression had its intended effect, which was to make people scared and exhausted. 

J: We face doxxing, or threats of targeted deportations and detentions of our students. It’s important to acknowledge the levels of exhaustion and fear in the movement. But we also have forms of defense and mutual aid that are built into our movement. We show up for each other. In difficult moments, I’ve tried to refocus on one of our simplest purposes, which is to educate and make space for the free exchange of ideas. That feeds the work and our community, on campus and in Western Massachusetts, and continues to build our movement forward. They try to pick people off, and deprive them of their rights and education. It’s very fortifying for us to come together and be in community. Alone, it’s easy to fall into a defensive position, but together, we can be more forward-looking. 

What else would you like to share with other Apartheid-Free organizers?

J: I’m having trouble answering this question because the work of Palestine solidarity is such a powerful mass movement right now. Even though I’ve been involved in it for decades, where it’s going has so far outstripped everything I’ve learned as an organizer in the past. There’s so much energy for this movement coming from so many different people and places. It’s hard to imagine what I can offer to a movement that has so much momentum on its own.

C: The movement for Palestinian liberation has been ongoing for decades, but in my 52 years I have never seen it as organized, as fierce, and as massive as it is now, at least in North America. We have an opportunity to win. No matter how hard it can be, and how fearsome the opponents are, this is our time.