USC prides itself as a university that embraces diversity, equity, and inclusion, but so long as USC hires IDF commanders as professors, USC contradicts its own mission as it endorses and enables the inherent inequity of Israel’s apartheid system. USC ironically hung Arab American Heritage Pride month posters as they sent LAPD out to arrest its own students advocating for liberation of Palestinian people and double-gated its campus borders to prevent "outsiders" (the South Central community that it actively gentrifies and exploits) into campus. USC Marshall still has a program to send students to study abroad in Tel Aviv, which can be petitioned and learned more about here. 

USC Professor Yaron Levi has made it publicly known, via his website and CV (last updated January 9 2024), that he served as a Lieutenant Commander in the Israeli Navy Special Forces, IDF for 10 years from 1996-2006. 1996 happens to be the year that Benjamin Netanyahu, the current Prime Minister of israel, was sworn into Prime Ministry. It is hard to even imagine the kinds of violence Professor Yaron Levi engaged in leading during his time as a commander.

We as the students, faculty, and alumni who denounce USC's financial and academic ties to Israel and its militarization, stand against Professor Levi's position as a Marshall professor. To stand behind and protect someone who took an active role in leading colonial settler violence in Palestine for a decade is to take an active role in the genocide and ethnic cleansing of Palestine that continues today. We sign this petition to demand that Yaron Levi either resigns or is fired. SIGN NOW and SHARE.