The Tribune

IN his open letter to Angela Davis, James Baldwin wrote, “For if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.” He was emphasizing, to the people, the relatedness of our struggles. He was showing the Black people everywhere that they could not ignore the arrest of Angela Davis and assume that they would not be put in handcuffs and hauled to a jail cell. What we allow to happen to one can and likely will, eventually, happen to all. This is only one of the reasons that we must stand in solidarity with one another and demand justice.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) tenured linguistics professor Michel DeGraff proposed a course, for the fall 2024 semester, entitled “Language and Linguistics for Decolonization and Liberation and for Peace and Community Building—From The River to the Sea in Palestine and Israel to the Mountaintops of Haiti and Beyond” that was rejected. The panel, supposedly, questioned his expertise to teach it. The New York Times reported that DeGraff “was a leading faculty voice siding with pro-Palestinian campus protestors” and their “from the river to the sea” chants were misconstrued as antisemitis.

DeGraff, a Haitian scholar, asserted that he was, indeed, qualified to teach the course. He sent a series of emails to colleagues and eventually shared the threads publicly. He has been prevented from teaching and taking on new student mentees for three consecutive fall semesters. MIT has maintained his salary while designating him “faculty at large.”

DeGraff said, “I have a right to express my views, and as a professor, I also have a right to teach about any issue that I find is germane to my expertise, which is linguistics.” He added, “In this particular case, Congress is trying to repress my teaching and my speech.”

A February 2025 letter to President of MITechnology Sally Kornbluth—signed by Yale Law School Professor Asli Ü. Bâli and University of Southern California Professor Emerita Laurie A. Brand—said, “The circumstances surrounding the decision not to approve the proposed course, and Professor DeGraff’s history of teaching in the department, suggest that the political sensitivity of a course sympathetic to Palestinian narratives, and some faculty members’ discomfort or disagreement with those narratives, may have played a role in the decision to refuse to authorize the course as a department offering.” In this way, the writers call out the anti-Palestinian roots of the decision.

Importantly, Bâli and Brand highlighted DeGraff’s expertise as well as MIT’s previous positive, even celebratory, attitude toward his political work. They wrote, “It is also worth noting Professor DeGraff’s history of teaching on social justice issues in the Linguistics Department prior to the proposed course. Professor DeGraff has taught at MIT since 1996. In addition to his published research on Haitian Creole, he co-founded the MIT-Haiti initiative, which seeks to improve Creole-language education in Haiti, and the Platfòm MIT-Ayiti pou yon lekòl tèt an wo, a database for sharing Creole teaching materials developed with a colleague in the MIT Department of Mathematics and funded by the MIT Abdul Latif Jameel World Education Lab. Professor DeGraff’s stature in the field of linguistics is evidenced by election in 2023 as a Fellow of Linguistic Society of America (LSA), the most prominent institution in the field. MIT publications on Professor DeGraff’s election suggest strong support for his engagement with contemporary political questions as well as his activist approach.”

It has been said, many times over, that Palestine is the litmus test. It is a test of basic decency and respect for human life. It is a test of our humanity. It is a test of international human rights law. It is a test of transnational solidarity. As Noura Erakat put it, “Palestine is a litmus test precisely because it clarifies what’s always been true - like myth of liberal democracies who affirm their unwavering support to Israel against the will of the vast majority of their people or the lie of “diversity of perspectives” in the corporate media landscape.” The position of any person or institution on Palestine is indicative of its true politics and its stance on key issues including gender and race. It gives a clear position on colonization and all of the harms that accompany it.

October 7, 2026 marked three years of defined, televised, and live-streamed genocide by Israel against Palestinians.

By the end of December 2023, there were 22,185 recorded murders. In the first five months, 30,000 killings were recorded. Over the past three years, 74,000 Palestinians—one out of every 30 people in Gaza—have been killed. At least 28% of the murdered were children. It is important to note that these numbers, from the Palestinian Ministry of Health, include only the hospitals-recorded and officially registered deaths. The death toll is much higher than the recorded figures, with many of the dead trapped under rubble and otherwise unrecoverable.

One of every 13 people in Gaza sustained injuries throughout the past three years. The World Health Organization estimates that 24% of them need long-term rehabilitation from life-changing injuries. The supposed ceasefire of October 2025 never took effect. Israel has attacked Gaza on an almost daily basis since then.

The genocide in Palestine—the utter brutality of Israel against both the Palestinian people and the land—is covered less by news outlets and appears less frequently on social media. This is not an accident. This reality is a function of the murderous imperialism of the Americas that shifts attention from one act of cruelty to another genocide, the manipulation of algorithms, and the general discomfort with discussing issues that are presented as controversial, even when the wrongs are clear.

Palestine is, in many ways, not alone. It has experienced bombardment and abandonment on its own, yet has the attention and solidarity of activists, advocates, academics, and journalists who refuse to turn away from the reality. There is also a less fortunate manner in which Palestine is not alone. There is Sudan. There is the Congo. There is Cuba. U.S. imperialism and the violence it uses to steal resources and dominate territories and people is getting closer and closer.

Our neighbours in Cuba are suffering today. Shipments of fuel are being blocked, there is no electricity, maternal mortality is increasing, and people are going hungry, all at the hands of the US. We are watching as the US, in its greed, tries to bring other countries to their knees. Many of us are watching, and eventually ignoring, as though there is nothing we can do, just as the first months, and now three years, of the genocide in Palestine were watched and ignored. If not before, now is certainly the time to take note: We have no protection from the claws of imperialism outside of shared struggle and solidarity.

A question for our consideration, as posed at a recent event at Mexico City’s Museum of Contemporary Art by Founding Director of the More-Than-Human Life (MOTH) Project César Rodríguez Garavito is, “What responsibilities do I have, as an inhabitant of the Earth, towards the other beings who share this living space with me?”

If they take Palestine today, if they take Cuba tomorrow, how long would it before they are on our doorstep? Who is keeping watch? Who is mounting resistance?