breaking the suffocating silence at the university of vienna around the genocide in palestine and israel's crimes (again)
never again? but for whom?
This is me documenting the censorship that I’ve experienced from professors at the University of Vienna when I denounced the genocide Israel is committing against the Palestinian people in classes I attended — also more and more aggressively targeting and using similar tactics against the Lebanese people. Both incidences lie about a year apart. We’re far from significant change regarding how Austrian universities are silencing Palestinian solidarity but the only difference I’ve experienced is that while nobody showed solidarity a year ago directly after the incident, this time some white students expressed solidarity… afterwards. One student even challenged the professor a bit during the class. For Austria — an extremely passive, obedient, “apolitical” society that still strongly normalizes racist, anti-Arab and islamophobic sentiments and prioritizes “national comfort”: This is progress. It could be…
About a year ago I interrupted a lecture of one of my professors at the department for theatre, film and media studies at the University of Vienna. I asked if I could quickly speak to the students about something very important. In the beginning, I didn’t specify what I wanted to talk about: “Just give me five minutes.” My professor said yes, but as soon as he realized that I was talking about the genocide happening in Gaza, he shut me down: “You cannot speak about this”, he said. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Study history!”, he continued. “You, study history!”, I replied. He started raising his voice. I followed by also raising my voice. I wasn’t going to be silenced. I’ve had enough. I grew up here not learning about my own history as a Black, mixed, person. I had to painfully learn while I was living in Spain that Black, mixed, people were also sterilized and sent to concentration camps. Yes, some survived and were just “sent away” after the war had ended. However, many were murdered. I had to learn that they erased everything about how Black people were persecuted by the Nazis from our curriculums. They would talk about how the Nuremberg Laws perspecuted Jews who were half-, or a quarter, or an eight Jewish but they just left out the part that the Nazis decreed the same about Black people. I had spent years — truly most of my highschool years — learning about the Shoah. Partly, because I voluntarily joined a program called Relais de la Memoire to learn even more. I felt a responsiblity as an Austrian, although Black and mixed, to learn more. We learned how women were affected, how children were affected, how disabled people were affected, how communists were affected, how homosexuals were affected — all of which were presumably white because the human norm is always white (?) *please insert a heavy dose of sarcasm* — how Romani and Sinti people were affected but Black people… silence. That silencing was traumatizing. I could so much relate to the silencing Palestinians had experienced when it comes to the Nakba as soon as I had learned about it around the same time. My illusion that Austria and Germany were so vehement about teaching about the Shoah because they cared about genocides had been shattered. What about the Herero? The first concentration camps in Namibia? Why had we never learned about that either? What else did they erase out of our history books? Intimately, I had always known that (Neo-)Nazis were a threat to Black people. I’ve been told to be careful they don’t just throw me on a train platform and try to murder me since I was a child. I had heard about (Neo-)Nazis killing Black people my dad knew in Hungary. I had heard stories of (Neo-)Nazis attacking my father. I had lived under the Nazi persecution by the police of my family for many years under false (racist!) claims.
Fuck, Austria.
“If I cannot protest against this genocide on the street, I should at least have a right to speak about this suppression of free speech at the university,” I said to my professor of Exile Film — a lecture about Jewish filmmakers who had to exile Austria. What ended up happening? Solidarity from students, you ask? Quite the opposite. The majority was completely silent and the minority — we’re talking here of a lecture hall of around 150 people — said: “This doesn’t interest us.” And even: “You’re annoying.” Some even ended up colluding with the professor and calling the security on me. The security who ended up racistly claiming that I had damaged property and whom I had to escape by running away — I’m luckily quite a fast runner (gracias a mis ancestros) — so that I couldn’t potentially get punished for a crime I didn’t even commit.
“Those of us who teach, write, and think about slavery and its afterlives encounter myriad silences and ruptures in time, space, history, ethics, research, and method as we do our work. Again and again scholars of slavery face absences in the archives as we attempt to find “the agents buried beneath”[:] the accumulated erasures, projections, fabulations, and misnamings. There are, I think, specific ways Black scholars of slavery get wedged in the partial truths of the archives while trying to make sense of their silences, absences, and modes of dis/appearance. The methods most readily available to us sometimes, oftentimes, force us into positions that run counter to what we know. That is, our knowledge, of slavery and Black being in slavery, is gained from our studies, yes, but also in excess of those studies, it is gained through the kinds of knowledge from and of the everyday, from what Dionne Brand calls ‘sitting in the room with history’. We are expected to discard, discount, disregard, jettison, abandon, and measure those ways of knowing and to enact epistemic violence that we know to be violence against others and ourselves.”
— Christina Sharpe from “In the Wake: On Blackness and Being” (2016)
Fast forward.
I’m in my advanced (!) research class for comparative literature.
The homework: Research how to advice someone how they can get a European scholarship or grant to research at an Israeli university.
Something like that.
A student asks:
“Why should we look for European scholarships if the university is in Israel?”
The professor replies:
“Because Israel is European. They have a European culture. It is great to go do research in Israel. The University of Vienna has wonderful cooperations with Israeli universities. We have a brand new institute cooperating with Israel.”
*insert vomiting emoji*
My response:
“I know I’m going to make myself unpopular here but… I wouldn’t advice anyone to go do research at an Israeli university because Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinian people. It is not okay to normalize relations with Israel. It’s a European colonial Apartheid state murdering innocent people.”
*I actually don’t even care if Palestinians are innocent or not because I don’t want to reinforce the harmful narrative that victims of violence need to be perfect.*
*GENOCIDE IS NEVER JUSTIFIED!!!!*
“It’s very interesting what you’re saying but… This wasn’t part of the assignment. The assignemnt was only to research about scholarships of how to go to an Israeli university. This is not a political debate.”
“We learned about postcolonial literature and Edward Said here, didn’t we?”
“No, we don’t discuss Israel. I think you’re at the wrong department here. If you want to discuss politics, you should study something else.”
The only student who spoke back:
“But didn’t Austria also cut relations with Russia?”
Fast forward.
I’ve delivered quite a convincing speech about the fucked-up shitshow1 that is the University of Vienna and: “This is a disgrace to the Shoah. Would you have not said anything back then either? Would you have just kept quiet? Didn’t you learn anything? You have the privilege to not say anything because you don’t have people in Gaza that you care about, because you don’t have Palestinians you care about, because you’re a bunch of (mostly) white people with white privilege whom this doesn’t nearly affect as much. Go back to being a bunch of white people with white privilege.”
*I’m the only Black (and mixed) student in this class. As in most of my classes.*
If I’m writing this in a not-so-serious tone then it’s because I don’t know how else to write about this and this is just my attempt to archive this somehow. To express what I’ve experienced because this is also allowing me to continue speaking up by processing my experiences. A year ago, I felt so disheartened that I almost wanted to quit studying altogether and I don’t know what’s going to happen next.
After I left the class, the assistant of the professor and another student ran after me. I had to start crying and they hugged me and gave me some toilet paper as a tissue paper replacement. They were kind. They were white. They agreed that it doesn’t make any fucking sense that we learn about Edward Said but then I’m silenced when wanting to speak about Palestine. They agreed that it’s messed up that the University of Vienna hasn’t issued any statement in solidarity with Palestine.
Exactly.
Another student wrote me this email after the class:
Dear (insert my official first name: Joy),
I thought it was so important that you stood up and said something and that you stand up for yourself and your values and that you are ready to speak up for them despite the opposition. I hope that I can muster similar courage at some point and I am sorry that I was not brave enough to do so today. And that underlines your point even more, because as a white woman in a "white country" I have the privilege of withdrawing and hiding in the crowd. I can go to as many demonstrations as I want and say that you are absolutely right, but I am disappointed in myself that I did not stand up and say something.
If there is anything positive to be taken from this now, then perhaps that you have started a loud wake-up call (at least for me) and that you do not have to stand up alone next time.
Continue to stand up for yourself and what you believe in! I'm sorry that you had to go through this experience today and I also know that I'm part of the problem myself. To say it again in your words: educate yourself and question things critically!! I believe that is the most important message that everyone(!) should have taken away from this lesson. Thank you for showing backbone today and thank you for having the courage to say what I didn't dare to say!
I can only be a spark but you need to be the fire.
Dear white students of Vienna,
Fucking say something!!!
You got this.
Next time.
Love,
Imọlẹ
PS: The reason I’ve started taking it more seriously that I need to find sources outside of academia and white Austrian cultural institutions to earn money is because that’s the only way I can remain this critical and still continue to speak up. If I were economically dependent on the state, I couldn’t be as vocal, which I desire to remain. I’ve lost all my desires to have a “career” in the classical sense. I don’t care. I care that when I die one day, I can say that I stayed true to my values and loved fiercely. Sign up for my sessions here. <3
PPS: How about your first Palestinian novel? Share in the comments.
From the rectorate of the University of Vienna there has been nothing but censorship when it comes to Palestine so far. Several events with Palestinian speakers have been cancelled. I’m mad and I have every right to be mad. Of course, not every single person who works at the University of Vienna silences solidarity, however, the institution as a whole is.