For Immediate Release:

Thousands of Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Jewish students have been arrested across the country for simply demonstrating in solidarity with the innocent Palestinians in Gaza who have been murdered, starved, and displaced from their homes for over 200 days. 

At GWU, President Ellen Granberg refused to engage in good fatih negotiations with peaceful student protestors. Instead, she abandoned her responsibilities to protect students by twice calling in the notoriously brutal D.C. Metropolitan Police Department (MPD) to clear the peaceful demonstration. Her initial requests were rejected by Washington, D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser. President Granberg, her administrators, and the Republican-led House Oversight Committee amped up the pressure and forced Mayor Bowser and MPD Chief Pamela Smith into using violent force to avoid testifying in Congress today. 

The American Muslim Leadership Council (AML Council) believes that Actions taken by elected officials and law enforcement across are highly reminiscent of the censorship and brutality of the McCarthy Era. These brutal repression tactics are taken straight from the pages of past crackdowns on peaceful protesters – from the anti-war and anti-apartheid movements of decades past to the Black Lives Matter movement just a few years ago. “University administrators are blatantly bending to the will of genocide apologists, including members of Congress, instead of considering how they might act on their students’ demands” Added Imam Helmi Abu Farah El Agha Executive Director of AML Council.  Some universities have engaged in good-faith negotiations which led to compromise and non-violent conclusions. 

Aml Council supports the Gaza solidarity encampment movement is inherently peaceful and has proven to be so in all universities across the country. “This excessive show of force and administrative backlash is an unjust attempt to restrict freedom of expression” Added Imam Helmi. Students must be allowed to use institutions of higher learning for free exchange of speech and thought without threat of physical and mental harm. 

This country was built on the foundation of freedom of speech and to see such oppression take place is completely disheartening.