Our country is especially divided today. Some of those issues have long been divisive, like abortion, climate change, and immigration. Others have grown on people’s radar these days—the destruction of Social Security, the need to stop genocide in Palestine, and how much control an unelected billionaire should have in our government. Many of us are asking ourselves how we can fix this mess, how to come together to fight for the respect, dignity, and justice of all people. Enter Sarah Schulman’s The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity at just the right time.
Schulman’s book is the perfect guide for those seeking to fight injustice and, yes, build solidarity. But the issue of solidarity is more complex than just people joining forces—an ideal that perhaps veers into the realm of fantasy. Schulman attests that we must recognize the fantasy of solidarity, which includes thinking our interventions are always effective, happen without cost, and come with gratitude or recognition. But she also wrestles with the necessity of working towards solidarity in activist movements and spaces, without which we may never see true progressive change and liberation. The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity is an essential book for our present moment.
I had the opportunity to meet Schulman at a coffee shop and talk about activist efforts at Northwestern University, boycotts, and letting go of perfectionism as we work for change.
This interview was edited for clarity and length.
Rachel León
Considering this is a Chicago-centric interview, let’s start the conversation here. In the book, you discuss your decision to move to Chicago and accept a job at Northwestern University. I was curious if you have any thoughts or observations about local activism efforts?
Sarah Schulman
The only thing I’m familiar with is Northwestern. I have a whole chapter on it in my new book. Our school has a Jewish Zionist president, and when we had an encampment, he made what I believe is the correct decision, not to bring in the police, not expel people. Instead, he negotiated, and as a result, a congressional committee called him to the televised hearing on “antisemitism.” There, born-again Christian Congresswoman Virginia Fox from North Carolina, and Catholic Elaine Stefanik—these two right-wing people who are not Jewish—accused him of antisemitism and negotiating with antisemites. I found that to be scary and humiliating.
When he came back in the fall of the year, like most college presidents, he brought with him measures that repressed speech to some extent. Now it’s not as bad as—we’re talking on the day after Columbia University let the government take over its Palestine studies program—but new restrictions on speech were put into place. Now, I am the faculty advisor to Jewish Voice for Peace. My students did an action on the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, where Jews build outdoor structures called Sukkahs. JVP built Gaza Liberation Sukkahs, and they were disciplined, but if they had done it three months before these “new” reactive restrictions, it would have been a normal, accepted exercise of opinion. These regulations have stigmatized sincere students who authentically oppose the killings while alienating them from their institutions.
At the same time, the government has falsely charged Northwestern with “antisemitism”—be clear, this is not actually antisemitism. No one is being persecuted because they are Jewish on any college campus. It’s the new name for disagreeing with Israeli policy. So while the administration is far from the worst, they need to be braver and unite with other schools in similar circumstances. However, I am proud of my colleagues because our faculty has been very vocal. They have organized teach-ins with hundreds of students. They have petitioned the Board of Trustees. They’ve met with the President. They’re putting their names out there.
Columbia, which has some of the most famous professors in the world, had a lackluster faculty response. A few people were brave enough to turn out for a demonstration, but instead of saying “Free our arrested students” or “ICE off campus,” their signs said “Protect Research.” You know, the old concept of the university is a relationship between faculty and students. But it has not been that way for a long time. The corporate universities are now top-heavy hedge funds and real estate companies that don’t have a humanistic vision for the school. The faculty are considered this annoying, whiny layer of people with no role in governance that administrators don’t know how to push out of the way. Columbia has just trashed itself. They stand for nothing. We’re not there yet, but those are the different layers—admirable students and admirable faculty, not the worst administration, but too much capitulation to false antisemitism charges and the government’s obsession with people of color and women having any agency, which they call “DEI.”.
Rachel León
I admire your work advocating for the need to stop genocide in Palestine, and I appreciate how much of this book deals with the issue. You note how you realized things would change between the time you turned the book over to your publisher and when it’d be published, so I wanted to ask what you’d add about the current state if given the chance?
Sarah Schulman
I was responding to war crimes financed by the Biden administration through endless military funding and subsequent arms sales to Israel. Under Trump, the butchering of Palestinians continues. But they have added this layer of domestic repression, with international students being arrested by ICE and schools cooperating with Homeland Security raids in dorms.
Rachel León
You tell a story about being in France with your friend, her sister, and her son. He was saying racist things, and while you tried calling it out, he wasn’t listening. You write that these are his own internal anxieties, and that section ends with how you don’t know what you’re supposed to do. I think many people struggle with how best to call things out.
Sarah Schulman
One of my things that I want to do is be self-critical throughout, revealing the mistakes that I make, or the things I’m not sure about, because I’m trying to make solidarity doable by deleting the veneer of heroism or perfectionism that keeps people from trying. I was just trying to show something I think a lot of people are experiencing, where there is fear that objecting to the complicity of our friends and communities may mean losing your relationships. So, I illustrated an example from my own life—my friend’s son is a fascist, and at some point, I did back off. I don’t think that was the right thing, necessarily, but I just wanted to show how I made that decision in the time and my own anxiety about it now that I’m not sure about it.
Rachel León
That reminds me of you signing open letters you don’t 100% agree with. You write: “I just decide my collective power is more important than my individual perfection analysis.” It makes me think of how much stronger collective power can be if we have that mindset.
Sarah Schulman
Radical democracy is the acceptance of difference with a bottom line. It’s not a checklist. So if you’re going to work with other people, you need to be more flexible.
Rachel León
On a related note, you pose a question that many of us are wondering: how do we have solidarity in the age of ignorance? I’m also wondering if we even can, if it’s possible.
Sarah Schulman
I’m really emphasizing hearing. Hearing and listening are different, right? That’s true in the particular case of Palestine. It’s been for all of these years. I’ve been in the Palestine solidarity movement for sixteen years. And for all 78 years of the occupation, it has been very hard to hear Palestine because US media distorts and ignores it. To understand how Palestinians view their own lives, and of course, they view them very differently from each other, you have to search. But unless you know what the afflicted people are saying about themselves and what they say they want, you can’t be in solidarity. So it’s about taking responsibility to try to hear people, you know, and that’s an effort. That’s why I listed some books that have come out recently that I recommend, like Adania Shibli’s Minor Detail. It is harder to hear truthful media, but there are more and more books from a Palestinian perspective.
Rachel León
I want to talk about boycotts, specifically in regard to literary spaces. You mention the boycott of Artforum, which made me think about how Guernica crumbled after publishing what many felt was a pro-Israeli piece. And there are a lot of current boycotts happening—like the recent Economic Blackout Day—something like that is so hard to orchestrate. It makes me wonder if writers have more power, at least to shape literary spaces, than, say, a national boycott of Target for dropping DEI.
Sarah Schulman
As with everything, each case is specific and different. Artforum’s editor, David Velasco, published a letter signed by 8,000 artists against the atrocities in Gaza. The owners fired him for doing his job and taking his responsibility to let such a huge sector of the artist community speak.
Writers Against the War on Gaza is asking people not to submit their books to PEN and withdraw from their conference until they take a stand against the war and arming Israel. I personally am not submitting my book at this time. If they get better in the future, you know, whatever. These prizes are elusive and don’t represent the most advanced works usually—if writers can work collectively to influence how literary organizations represent us, we should.
The 92nd Street Y in New York is a very important cultural institution—I first saw Toni Morrison there—well, they have also self-destructed their integrity over Israel. They canceled Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Viet Nguyen, author of The Sympathizer, because he had signed a letter. How can any of us read there until he is re-invited? What do people tell themselves? “Wow, I’m so important in my career, I must read at the 92nd Street, even if they are censoring amazing people in a way that I know is wrong.” We need to get a grip.
Some values are more important than the institutions. Like, why are we writers?
On the other hand, things like the Economic Blackout Day, I never understood who organized that, what the goal was, or how its success or failure was measured. A boycott is a difficult thing to pull off, and it requires communication, vision, and organization.
Rachel León
I love your motto for these coming years: “Don’t stop yourself from doing what you think is right. Make them stop you.” It’s a nice note to end on.
Sarah Schulman
I suggest that people center their hope for positive change in expanding and maintaining their own integrity. Because that is the only thing we can control.
NONFICTION
The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity
By Sarah Schulman
Thesis
Published April 22, 2025
