As I was reminded that it was time to write my monthly blog
entry, I came up with a long and exciting list that was accumulating in my
agenda. Last week, I discovered the amazing visionary artist Lynn Hershman
Leeson at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. There is another feminist artist named Niki de Saint Phalle (1930-2002) whose work mesmerized me in December and I checked out her memoirs from the library as soon as I landed here. Highly recommended for women's empowerment in the darkness we have been experiencing across the world. I also regularly
attend some innovative lectures at BAMPFA where the arts, counter-cultures, and
academia’s paths cross (http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu).
For the syllabus and the course material refer here:
Mind-provoking debates on counter-cultures in
Berkeley continue while Trump’s vaudeville makes the news every day, providing
ample daily material to Comedy Central channel and Stephen Colbert as it does to all other
humorists. Some professors give extra points to their students to watch some classical
documentaries on selected anti-government protests which took place in recent
American history. Please take a look: http://bampfa.org/program/hippie-modernism-cinema-and-counterculture
“Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia”: First comprehensive
exploration of the counterculture of the 1960s and 1970s and its impact on
global art, architecture, and design can be visited between February 08 and May
21, 2017. The students are encouraged to express their ideas in the freest
possible ways, they can attend all the events free of charge including some of
the opening receptions and parties. February 10th, I went to a lecture where
Jack Hirschman read his poetry and swore a lot to the current president in
public. The American law allows for that, as it does the burning of the
flag.
In short, I do have a lot to share from here. However, I
received an e-letter from the program director of Middle East Technical University Gender and Women's Studies (GWS) in Ankara, Turkey. The Chair encouraged all the alumni
to show solidarity to GWS students and faculty in Ankara University since several of its faculty were expelled overnight under the emergency law in Turkey. In fact, in the first
week of February, 330 academics were expelled from their positions across the country. Since
August 2016, the number of faculty fired from universities is 4.464. Cumhuriyet Newspaper, one of the oldest and the few independent newspapers
in Turkey, reported that Oxford University Professor Timothy Garton Ash (his
latest book: Free Speech: Ten Principles for a Connected World) visited Turkey last week and delivered a speech. The visit was for the
purposes of support and research. His article about this 3-day-long stay in
Istanbul will soon be published in the Guardian.
At the very end of this entry, you can read the graduate students' full statement
in English and respond/support them if you like. Here is the highlight:
The graduate students who prepared the statement below needs support. You can send them emails: (kadincalismalaridayanisma@gmail.com) or facebook messages, see the following link: https://www.facebook.com/solidaritywithacademicsfromTurkey/
Since it is the closest café to the university’s main library, I
usually take my breaks in Free Speech Movement Café, known as FSM. The Café honors Mario Savio,
who played a key role in the struggle for free speech at UC Berkeley in the
mid-1960s. Sometimes it takes several months and thousands of students to make
a positive change against the restrictions of free speech as you can read: http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/FSM/chron.html"The cafe is an educational reminder for the community that the campus freedoms we take for granted did not always exist, and in the democratic tradition, had to be fought for." (one of the many plates on the walls inside where students can see and read clearly!)
I can only hope that the students of our time who are also fighting for free speech will study the lives and practices of
role models across the world who fought and won the rights of free speech through different means.
Today’s students are standing on the shoulders of these people who had ideals
and relentless courage. However, here is the statement which may 'no longer' apply to the system in Turkey in the process and organization of the campus struggles: "in the democratic tradition". Or have we ever had such a tradition, one part of me asks.
The
Full Text composed by the Solidarity
Group of Students and Graduates of Women’s Studies Program:
As the students and alumni of Ankara University Women’s Studies
Solidarity Group, we do not accept the unlawful and unfair expulsion of our
professors from the academy!
As the students and alumni of Ankara University, Women’s Studies
Program, which has been offering graduate courses since 1996 and contributing
to the feminist theory and action for more than 20 years, we could not remain
silent in such a period of siege against scientific thought and freedom of
expression.
We could not remain silent as our professor and the Head of the
Women’s Studies Department, Prof. Funda Şenol Cantek has been expelled with
an unlawful State of Emergency Decree on February 7, Decree 686 which was
recently announced. Our professor Betül Yarar had already been expelled with
Decree 672, a similar decree in September. Moreover, our professors Alev
Özkazanç and Gülay Toksöz, who took part in the Academics for Peace group like
Funda Cantek and Betül Yarar did, were forced to take retirement due to the
austere conditions of academia in Turkey. On the 10th of February, when academic
freedom and freedom of thought were smashed under the boots of the police
forces raiding the Cebeci Campus of Ankara University, a fellow student Maryam
Ostadi was subjected to police violence and was taken into custody along with
our friend and our professor Assoc. Prof. Emel Memiş. Many public officials who
are among the students and alumni of the Women’s Studies Program were expelled
from their offices illegitimately just because they defended peace, democracy
and equality just like many other professors. Hundreds of academics at Ankara
University and other universities were expelled by State of Emergency Decrees
since September 2016. Both at Ankara University and the other universities,
similar events took place, and many academics have been taken away from
universities by the mentioned series of Decrees.
In fact, we know that Rector Erkan İbiş and his administration
is directly responsible with this process at Ankara University! During this
period, our professors who advocate peace and non-violence were criminalized
and subjected to investigation. When they became targets of the hate rhetoric of
the pro-government newspapers such as Akit and Vahdet, which declared that
gender studies is an institution of “heresy” and “perversion”, the university
administration has not only remained passive despite hundreds of complaints,
but also imposed limits to the number of acceptances to graduate programs. We
recently learned that Erkan İbiş, who has been restraining academic freedom and
restricting our living spaces at the campuses, is also responsible for the
unlawful expulsions! We ask Erkan İbiş, who is responsible for all the injustice, to resign!
Decrees mean obligatory retirements, courses that will not be
opened, students without supervisors, dissertations that are hindered, and a
department without a head administrator. Furthermore, they mean that the
academics who defend gender equality, peace, democracy and freedom of
expression are being discouraged from strengthening these values and sharing
them with their students with this purpose. Decrees mean unemployment,
precarity, and a life that is deprived of all public rights. They mean the
repression of the dream of an equal and free world, and smothering of thoughts
that go after this dream. They also mean that police brutality and arrests will
end the peace, beauty, and the spirit of life by the use of custody,
oppression, violence, fear and sorrow.
We came together in the Women’s Studies Program with our
different experiences. As a group of students with different backgrounds, it
was only the wisdom and diversity of the idea of feminism that brought us
together under Ankara University Women’s Studies Program. We experienced
standing side to side without any hierarchy: producing together and acting with
solidarity in this department. No matter what happens, they will never be able
to destroy our diversity and beauty! They will never be able to break us apart
from our teachers, friends, and our campus! We believe that our professors and
friends will return, we will struggle for their return!
No one should think that the Women’s Studies Program, which has
brought academics, activists, workers, artists and people from other various
groups together under the umbrella of feminism in Turkey, and which has
encouraged them to produce together, does need a stationary address! Being a
student at the Women Studies Program does not mean to produce in an ivory
tower, it actually means producing the knowledge of everyday experiences, the
knowledge of street and life, and to learn from life outside the academy as
well. Knowledge spreads! Life spreads! We are everywhere! As Funda
Şenol Cantek,
the Head of our Department, has recently stated: “Academy has spread into the
streets. And this will be a thorn in their side!”
Ankara
University, Solidarity Group of Students and Graduates of Women’s Studies
Program
