Response to Gaza Conflict

Greetings,

I hope that this reaches you well. During our last meeting on May 20, you requested that we disclose financial investments held by our Toro Auxiliary Partners and Philanthropic Foundation by June 30. As I stated in our meeting, each of these entities is governed by a Board of Directors that manages their respective portfolios. In addition, as I stated during our meeting, I have no control over how quickly each organization can respond to this request and thus could not commit to your deadline. However, I write this email to provide you with an update.

On June 6, at the Philanthropic Foundation Board of Directors meeting, I informed the board of our discussion and requested that they and their financial committees produce a financial statement that can be shared. I made the same request at the June 20 meeting of the Toro Auxiliary Partners Board of Directors. As of today, I have not received financial statements from either organization, though I am encouraged by the conversations I had with both boards of directors. I remain committed to open communication and transparency, which is why I am sending you this update prior to the June 30 date you had requested.

I will continue to keep in touch with each board and communicate any relevant updates to you. Please let me know if you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D.
President

Greetings Toro Community,

I hope this message finds you well. In light of recent developments involving unrest at local institutions of higher education, I thought I would take this opportunity to keep our campus community informed about what is happening at CSUDH.

Provost Spagna and I, accompanied by my chief of staff, Dr. Justin Gammage, engaged in a second meeting with members of Students for Collective Liberation (S4CL) and their faculty advisors last week. The meeting was moderated by the student leadership of S4CL and lasted approximately 90 minutes. Our discussion largely centered on the demands articulated by the group in a letter distributed on April 30, 2024, during the State of Diversity forum. I must note that S4CL did distribute an email containing the same content in November 2023, though it did not make its way to me.

As a follow-up to our initial meeting, and in alignment with the group’s request for financial transparency, I provided financial documents from our foundations that addressed the demands focused on disclosure and divestment from Israel or organizations involved in the conflict in Gaza. This includes a statement that summarized assets held by the Toro Auxiliary Partners and our Philanthropic Foundation portfolios, and also included CSUDH’s Environmental, Social, and Governance investment guidelines. These ESG guidelines, which were enacted more than three years ago, are rooted in the university’s commitment to social and environmental justice.

While these foundations are independent, 501(c)(3) organizations, with their own boards, finance committees, and operational structures, I have agreed to urge the foundations to begin the process of reviewing their investments, to ensure that they are aligned with our ESG guidelines. That review is ongoing. We have also committed to creating a link on our Transparency and Accountability website to track updates and make materials accessible for the entire campus community.

To guide our discussion on divestment, we shared the statement regarding divestment that was issued last month by the CSU Office of the Chancellor. I informed the students that CSUDH remains aligned with the Chancellor’s statement, but we will continue to evaluate our ESG guidelines to ensure they remain consistent with university priorities and core principles. I will ask that the same step be taken for the Toro Auxiliary Partners and Philanthropic Foundation guidelines, with careful attention paid to the issue of human rights.

We confirmed that CSUDH does not currently hold any relationships with academic institutions in Israel. However, I emphasize that the university is committed to supporting faculty, staff and administrators in their individual academic pursuits, including those that may be formed with academic institutions in Israel. Our faculty have academic freedom to explore their research interests, and I cannot and will not restrict the individual right of a student or faculty member who wishes to study abroad or engage in a research endeavor with faculty at any institution around the world.

We continue to be receptive to the concerns of our students. I was excited to hear and discuss with S4CL their ideas around enhancing their experience at CSUDH. I was troubled, however, in our previous meeting, when members of S4CL expressed concerns about classroom incidents and campus experiences that they perceived as biased, hurtful, and inconsistent with our values. Our team in Student Health Services reached out the next day to extend their support. I want to remind every member of our campus community that hate speech, acts of intolerance, or other actions motivated by bias will not be tolerated at CSUDH.

At our meeting, the student group requested a full list of all investments held by the Toro Auxiliary Partners and Philanthropic Foundation by June 30. I could not commit to this deadline, since as previously stated, these foundations are independent of CSUDH and have their own processes and leadership, but promised to make every effort to provide this information in that timeline. The students from S4CL told me that they found this response unacceptable, and chose to discontinue the meeting prior to the agreed-upon time.

As always, I continue to look forward to constructive dialogue with all members of the Toro community, including S4CL, and I am committed to sharing the information that I have previously agreed to, beyond the requests that have already been addressed.

Sincerely,

Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D.
President

Dear Toro Family:

Somewhere I read the prophetic voice of Dr. King, who argued that “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about the things that matter.” What ought to matter is the killing of innocent women, men, and children. But, what also ought to matter is the oppression and brutality exercised on a people long made to suffer under government policies and practices that refuse to recognize their humanity. And so, from the teacher to the disciple, we also appreciate the voice of the late Congressman John Lewis, who asserted, “…a democracy cannot thrive where power is unchecked, and justice is reserved for a select few. Ignoring these cries and failing to respond to this moment is simply not an option - for peace cannot exist where justice is not served.”

Our academic institutions, particularly here at CSUDH, should be the spaces where issues, even controversial ones, become the topics of critical discourse and analysis. Consequently, I welcome the free and vigorous exchange of ideas and healthy debates that become teachable moments for all of us to learn from each other. As an example, I recently met with a group of students to discuss the horrific situation in Gaza and its implications for the safety of our university community. I applaud our students for their activism and appreciate them agreeing to sit down with me and other administrators. That initial meeting will be followed up by another in the near future as we discuss areas of convergence and divergence in our perspectives. There is no disagreement, however, regarding our shared empathy and compassion for the lives being lost and the hope for an end to the conflict and suffering people are experiencing.

The current situation in Gaza and the violence the Palestinian people are enduring is a tragic disaster of epic proportions that should not be allowed to continue without voices of condemnation. Because the incidents in the Middle East have impacted and disrupted our academic sensibilities, with statements of outrage and counter-narratives, along with protests, demonstrations, and encampments emerging from various quarters, I raise my voice to speak out against the violence of all kinds. I raise my voice to condemn the brutality, vicious killing, and slaughter of innocent Palestinians and other people of the region by the Israeli military, whose attacks have been indiscriminate and inhumane. I raise my voice to deplore the targeting of innocent Israeli civilians being maimed and killed by rockets and bombs fired by Hamas and their taking of hostages, as well. Therefore, I call for an immediate cease-fire and a halt to the carnage this conflict is exacting on human lives.

Let me be clear - my posture is intentionally directed at specific practices, policies, and behaviors. I am not intending to indict an entire nation of people or religious groups on either side of that conflict or other conflicts that are raging across the globe where innocent civilians are being indiscriminately killed. Citizens of a nation should not have to answer for or be accountable to the practices of their government or military apparatus, which they do not control or have much influence over. Let me also state for the record that the targeting of brothers and sisters of Palestinian, Muslim, Arab, Jewish, Asian, Hispanic/Latine, African American, Indigenous, or any other racial, ethnic, or faith-based tradition here in America because of one’s feelings regarding international conflicts is wrong, racist, bigoted, and scurrilous. Any such incidents on our CSUDH campus will not be tolerated, and I will act--and we all should act--to protect our students, staff, faculty, and administrators from these circumstances.

This is a time for understanding, empathy, restraint, and compassion, even as we seek diplomatic solutions to age-old problems and tensions.

I look forward to constructively engaging with members of our campus community as we find ways to navigate both this space in the time we are witnessing and in the times to come while also respecting and affirming the dignity and humanity of every member of the Toro nation who has worth and value just because they are who they are.

Thomas A. Parham, Ph.D.
President