Statement Upon the Suspension and Banishment of Professor Ramsi Woodcock by the University of Kentucky
We, the Students for Justice in Palestine at the University of Kentucky, stand in solidarity with Professor Ramsi Woodcock. Further, we unequivocally reject and condemn the actions taken by the University of Kentucky in suspending Professor Woodcock and banning him from the law building for his free speech on Israel and Palestine. Such measures not only violate his rights as a scholar and private citizen but also represent a troubling attempt to silence decolonial critique.
Decolonial analysis is not hate speech, nor does it create an unsafe environment for students at this university, contrary to what President Eli Capilouto has asserted. Decolonial analysis is a framework rooted in history, international law, and struggles for liberation worldwide. Silencing such speech, however, does create an unsafe environment by fostering fear, intimidation, and repression within our community. To describe Israel as a settler-colonial project is to situate Palestine in a long global lineage of peoples resisting occupation, apartheid, and forced displacement. Professor Woodcock’s scholarship and advocacy are part of this broader intellectual and moral tradition.
Experts agree that Israel is a colonization project that practices apartheid and is currently starving 2 million people to death in Gaza as we speak. On September 16, 2025, the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded that Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza. The Commission’s report identified that Israel has committed four of the five acts defined as genocide under the 1948 Genocide convention, including killings, causing serious bodily or mental harm, preventing births, and imposing conditions leading to physical destruction. The Commission further determined that these actions are being carried out with the specific intent to destroy the Palestinian people in Gaza, as evidenced by both actions and statements from Israeli officials.
Zionist organizations, their supporters in the Kentucky legislature, and at the University of Kentucky do not want to talk about these facts because no one likes colonization, apartheid, and genocide. So instead they attack the messenger in an effort to distract and scare Americans. Further, President Capilouto’s justification for this punitive action—that Professor Woodcock has called for war to rescue a population being systematically exterminated by Israel—is profoundly hypocritical. The University’s own School of Arts & Sciences openly solicits donations to the Ukrainian armed forces, who are engaged in resisting Russia’s colonization project. At the same time, the School of Diplomacy annually hosts joint wargaming exercises with the U.S. Army War College. Meanwhile, the administration has permitted campus events to proceed in which speakers expressed support for the colonization and genocide of Palestine and Palestinians. In one such event, which was directly supervised by university officials, a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces who is not otherwise affiliated with the university was brought to campus to speak in support of a military action that has been internationally recognized as a genocide of Palestinians. (Our objection is not to the soldier’s Israeli identity but rather to his support for participation in a racist and genocidal war against Palestinians.) The university also permitted Turning Point UKY to host a British Zionist speaker who spread hateful rhetoric about Palestinians at a university-sanctioned event. These are the kinds of actions that truly create an unsafe environment for Arab, Muslim, and Palestinian students. Why does the University of Kentucky permit genocidal rhetoric at sanctioned events–sometimes under the direct supervision of university officials—while at the same time punishing Professor Woodcock for speech that engages in legitimate academic critique of settler-colonialism and genocide?
Universities, if they are to be true spaces of learning, must protect such speech even when it is unsettling to those in power. To suppress this speech is to side with the continuation of colonial violence and to strip Palestinian voices, and their allies, of the legitimacy of their own historical narrative. Moreover, the punishment of Professor Woodcock is not only a threat to those who speak in defense of Palestine, it is also a threat to all members of the university community, regardless of their political views. If one professor can be silenced for holding what those in power deem a “controversial” opinion, then every student, staff member, and faculty member risks losing their right to speak, research, and teach freely. It is not difficult to view the University’s blatant discrimination against Professor Woodcock’s speech as a reflection of Islamophobia and profound anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab racism.
We therefore affirm:
The University of Kentucky must reverse the suspension of Professor Woodcock and end retaliatory investigations. Academic freedom and the First Amendment demand the protection of faculty who challenge dominant power structures, including settler-colonialism.
Critiquing Israel as a settler-colonial project is a legitimate, evidence-based position shared by many scholars and institutions; disciplining faculty for articulating it is an attack on scholarship itself.
Palestine is part of a global decolonial struggle. Over 80 former colonies have achieved formal independence since the mid-20th century (e.g. India, Pakistan, numerous African nations including Algeria, Ghana, Kenya, etc.). To deny that decolonial efforts should always be possible is to imply that those 80+ nations do not deserve legitimacy or recognition, a deeply untenable position. From Algeria to South Africa to Ireland, liberation movements have faced attempts to delegitimize their voices. Silencing Palestinian advocacy at our university repeats this cycle of repression.
We call on the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees to remove President Eli Capilouto from office for abusing his authority to silence protected speech, failing in his duty to uphold academic freedom, and creating an unsafe environment of repression at this university.
We call on the University of Kentucky’s leadership to choose the side of justice, free expression, and decolonization rather than censorship and complicity.
Any attempt by the administration to retaliate against student organizations for their involvement in this matter would only reinforce the perception that free speech on campus is conditional- permitted only when it aligns with the preferences of those in power.
As students, we refuse to accept the erasure of decolonial perspectives from our community. We stand with Professor Woodcock and with all who struggle for a liberated Palestine, where people of all faiths and backgrounds can live in dignity. We urge all Americans to remain focusing on Israel’s unfolding genocide against Palestinians in Gaza and throughout Palestine, not to be intimidated by Zionist repression, to speak up about it, and not stop.
This statement is co-signed by the following organizations:
College Democrats at the University of Kentucky (Instagram)
Young Communist League at the University of Kentucky (Instagram)
Young Democratic Socialists of America at the University of Kentucky (Instagram)
Intersectional Feminist Collective at the University of Kentucky (Instagram)
Media can contact the SJP through our email at lexbluesjp+media@gmail.com.
Other organizations wishing to cosign can contact us through our email at lexbluesjp@gmail.com or our Instagram at @sjpuky.