Visiting professor talks Israel, apartheid

In an event titled “The University Against Apartheid: From Baltimore to South Africa and Palestine,” guest speaker Patrick Bond, a political economist involved in global justice and non-governmental organizational work in urban communities, spoke to Hopkins students, faculty and members of the Baltimore community Monday night.

Hopkins Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) hosted the event, which was cosponsored by the Humans Rights Working Group (HRWG) and the Black Student Union (BSU).

Bond received his Ph.D. from the University’s Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering in 1993. While studying at Hopkins, he founded the 1980s Johns Hopkins Coalition for a Free South Africa.

Since 2009, Bond has been involved with the Palestinian solidarity movement and the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, which focuses on using economic and political means to achieve Palestinian goals.

Bond currently lives in South Africa, teaching political economy and eco-social policy at the University of KwaZulu-Natal.

Representatives from SJP, HRWG and BSU worked for months to bring Bond to campus. Bond, in turn, relished at the opportunity to return.

“It feels so good to be back in this neighborhood because I did most of my finest activism [here],” Bond said. “I’ll tell you a little of the experiences that might be relevant, but we lost the main struggle that I’ll tell you about in a moment.”

During the lecture, Bond utilized his economic knowledge to draw parallels between South African apartheid and the current Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also tied in the work he did at Hopkins in the 1980s generating awareness within the Baltimore community.

“We’ve got to really firm up and say Israel is like South Africa practicing apartheid,” Bond said.

At the end of the lecture, the floor was open to questions not only about Bond’s experiences with activism, but also about his opinions on the various issues.

Bond outlined the conflict for his audience and explained that his stance promoted the creation of a unitary state as the best solution for the struggle between Israel and Palestine. His standpoint contrasts the proposed two-state solution to create an independent Palestinian state alongside an independent Jewish state. 

“The right of return of the refugees from the knock by which the disaster of the 1948 deal Israelites did with the UN and the British… left about 700,000 people as refugees, so they need a right to return. That’s just a historic matter of justice,” Bond said. “The second is to stop the discrimination against those Palestinians still in Israel, and a third is to stop the occupation of the West Bank and the pressure on Gaza. Now those are the kinds of things to me [that] don’t get easily resolved in two states.”

Bond furthered his claim that a unified state between Israel and Palestine remains the geographically best solution.

“You’re probably going to need, I would guess — I am not a player in this, I’m just looking at it objectively — I think that you’re going to need to have one democratic state: one person, one vote in a unitary state,” Bond said.

Bond also discussed the role of the United States in matters of apartheid, claiming that domestic actions play a role in the conflict.

“You’ve got a history here of such a solidarity between the U.S. one percent and the apartheid regime over minerals, over geopolitics, over this deputy sheriff function.”

While at Hopkins, Bond felt the University’s attitude towards apartheid was conservative and focused on making small reforms. Throughout the lecture, he also encouraged students to combat apartheid in their own ways while attending Hopkins.

“There was definitely an undercurrent of white supremacy that is probably ‘over current’ and very evident throughout Baltimore and throughout Johns Hopkins,” he said. “Those things always have to be fought.”

Notably, he highlighted tensions that arose when a shanty he built on University property as a form of protest was firebombed in 1986. 

Bond opened the room to discussion, addressing audience members’ questions and allowing for some debate. 

“I thought it was great. He’s a really eloquent speaker and he takes very hard questions really well which I really, really liked,” freshman Muhammad Hudhud said.

The event not only attracted Hopkins students, but it drew a number of community members from the greater Baltimore area as well. Tori McReynolds, a representative from Baltimore Racial Justice Action — a Maryland group committed to social and economic means for achieving racial equity — attended the talk.

“I came to the event because this was the first time I heard anyone parallel South African apartheid with the current situation of Palestinians in Israel,” McReynolds said.