California State University, San Bernardino Professor Ahlam Muhtaseb On Jordanian TV: We Are Strategizing With Students To Continue Campus Protests Into Summer Break And Fall Semester

Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb, a Professor of Media Studies at California State University, San Bernardino spoke in a May 8, 2024 interview with Al-Mamlaka TV (Jordan) about her role in the campus protests. She said that she is part of a group called Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), founded in order to support the members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). She said that faculty members are conducting workshops and study groups in which they debate the long-term strategy of the protests. She said that the faculty is working on strategies to continue the campus protests into the summer break and fall semester.

Dr. Ahlam Muhtaseb: "The impact [of the protest should] accumulate for at least months, if not years. This is an accumulative process, and it depends on endurance as well. This is what we are trying to tell the students – that the strategy is important too, not only the tactics. We are trying to conduct workshops and study groups, in order to ask them: What is the long-term strategy? What are you trying to achieve in the coming months? Because this will not happen...

"Today or tomorrow, the protests might be dispersed, after the semester comes to an end. We are now at the end of the semester. At some universities the semester has ended and summer break has begun. At other universities, where the quarter system is used – where there are three semesters in a school year – they are still teaching classes, but in 2-3 weeks, the school year will end too.

"We are telling students that the most important thing now is to talk about the continuity of the movement – first of all, throughout the summer... What are the alternatives throughout the summer? Because there are not many students [at the universities]. How are you going to continue the movement in the fall? There is a very important discussion that is taking place in many universities in the U.S. with the help of the professors.

"We have two main movements in the American universities: first one is called 'Students for Justice in Palestine,' and there is also a faculty movement, a new movement that was created in order to support the student movement. It is called 'Faculty for Justice in Palestine.'

"These two movements are now trying to have meetings and to coordinate in order to create a long-term strategy. This is what we are focusing on now, because the movement will end naturally with the end of the semester and the school year."