An Open Letter from Columbia University and Barnard College Faculty in Defense of Robust Debate About the History and Meaning of the War in Israel/Gaza:
The most recent devastating violence in Israel and Gaza that began on October 7, 2023 has had very disturbing reverberations on our campus – for all of us, students, faculty, staff, and the larger Columbia community. We write now to express grave concerns about how some of our students are being viciously targeted with doxing, public shaming, surveillance by members of our community, including other students, and reprisals from employers. These egregious forms of harassment and efforts to chill otherwise protected speech on campus are unacceptable, and we implore every person in the Columbia University community - faculty, administrators, students, alums, public safety - to do more to protect all of our students while preserving Columbia University as a beacon for “fostering critical thinking and opening minds to different points of view,” as President Shafik wrote to the community in her October 18th message about upholding our collective values.
As scholars who are committed to robust inquiry about the most challenging matters of our time, we feel compelled to respond to those who label our students anti-Semitic if they express empathy for the lives and dignity of Palestinians, and/or if they signed on to a student-written statement that situated the military action begun on October 7th within the larger context of the occupation of Palestine by Israel. We have read that statement carefully, and it is worth pointing out that the arguments it makes echo those made by both governmental and non-governmental agencies and institutions at the highest level for a number of years.
The student statement begins with language that should satisfy any measure of decency: “The loss of a human life is a deeply painful and heartbreaking experience for loved ones, regardless of one's affiliation. We extend our heartfelt condolences to the individuals and communities at Columbia University affected by the tragic losses experienced by both Palestinians and Israelis.” The statement then turns to the claim that peace and safety for all the peoples of Israel and Palestine will remain elusive unless and until the illegal Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory ends and accountability for that illegal occupation is achieved. This is not a radical or essentially controversial position – indeed, it is the position taken by many committees of the United Nations, the UN General Assembly, and respected human rights organizations. The statement also describes the Israeli treatment of Palestinians as a form of “apartheid”, and while this term is viewed as controversial in some quarters, major human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have concluded that the occupation of Palestine and the treatment of Palestinians within Israel amount to a form of apartheid, a crime against humanity with definitions provided in the 1973 International Convention on the Suppression and Punishment of the Crime of Apartheid (“Apartheid Convention”) and the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court (ICC). Indeed, Desmond Tutu, noted South African civil rights leader who was the first Black archbishop of Cape Town, concluded in 2014 that: “[Palestinians’] humiliation is familiar to all black South Africans who were corralled and harassed and insulted and assaulted by the security forces of the apartheid government.” And President Jimmy Carter has expressed the view that Israel's treatment of Palestinians "perpetrates even worse instances of apartness, or apartheid, than we witnessed even in South Africa."
In our view, the student statement aims to recontextualize the events of October 7, 2023, pointing out that military operations and state violence did not begin that day, but rather it represented a military response by a people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years. One could regard the events of October 7th as just one salvo in an ongoing war between an occupying state and the people it occupies, or as an occupied people exercising a right to resist violent and illegal occupation, something anticipated by international humanitarian law in the Second Geneva Protocol. In either case armed resistance by an occupied people must conform to the laws of war, which include a prohibition against the intentional targeting of civilians. The statement reflects and endorses this legal framework, including a condemnation of the killing of civilians.
The statement concludes with a demand that Columbia University reverse a decision to create curricular and research programs in Israel, a demand also made by over 100 Columbia faculty last year, and that the university cease issuing statements that favor the suffering and death of Israelis or Jews over the suffering and death of Palestinians, and/or that fail to recognize how challenging this time has been for all students, not just some.
It is worth noting that not all of us agree with every one of the claims made in the students’ statement, but we do agree that making such claims cannot and should not be considered anti-Semitic. Their merits are being debated by governmental and non-governmental agencies at the highest level, and constitute a terrain of completely legitimate political and legal debate.
We are appalled that trucks broadcasting students’ names and images are circling the campus, identifying them individually as “Columbia’s Leading Anti-Semites”, and that some students have had offers of employment withdrawn by employers that sought to punish them for signing the student statement, or for being merely affiliated with student groups associated with the statement. In the absence of university action, students and faculty have undertaken the burden of blocking the images and identifying information broadcast on the doxxing trucks. It is worth noting that most of the students targeted by this doxing campaign are Arab, Muslim, Palestinian, or South Asian.
One of the core responsibilities of a world-class university is to interrogate the underlying facts of both settled propositions and those that are ardently disputed. As faculty we are committed to the project of holding discomfort and working across difference with our students. These core academic values and purposes are profoundly undermined when our students are vilified for voicing perspectives that, while legitimately debated in other institutional settings, expose them to severe forms of harassment and intimidation at Columbia.
We ask Columbia University's leadership, our faculty colleagues, Columbia alumni, potential employers of Columbia students, and all who share a commitment to the notion of a just society to join us in condemning, in the strongest of terms, the vicious targeting of our students with doxing, public shaming, surveillance by members of our community, including other students, and reprisals from employers.
Sincerely,
Katherine Franke
James L. Dohr Professor of Law
Rashid Khalidi
Edward Said Professor of Modern Arab Studies
Gray Tuttle
Luce Professor of Modern Tibet, EALAC, Columbia
Jack Halberstam,
The David Feinson Professor of the Humanities, Columbia
James Schamus
Professor of Professional Practice, School of the Arts, Columbia
Alexander Alberro
Professor, Department of Art History, Barnard College
Premilla Nadasen
Ann Whitney Olin Professor of History, Barnard College
Ralph Ghoche
Assistant Professor, Architecture, Barnard College
Karen Seeley, Lecturer
Anthropology, Columbia
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
University Professor, Columbia
Mae Ngai
Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies, Professor of History, Columbia
Michael Harris
Professor of Mathematics, Columbia
Marianne Hirsch
William Peterfield Tretn Professor Emerita, English and Comparative Literature, Institute for the Study of Sexuality and Gender, Columbia
Mahmood Mamdani
Herbert Lehman Professor of Government, Columbia
Neferti Tadiar
Professor, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Barnard College
Bruno Bosteels
Professor, Latin American and Iberian Cultures, Columbia
Nico Baumbach
Associate Professor of Film and Media Studies, School of the Arts, Columbia
Susan Bernofsky
Professor of Writing, Columbia School of the Arts, Columbia
Victoria de Grazia
Moore Collegiate Professor Emerita, Department of History, Columbia
Shelly Silver
Professor, Visual Arts, School of the Arts, Columbia
Frank Guridy
Dr. Kenneth and Kareitha Forde Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies, Columbia
Zainab Bahrani
Edith Porada Professor Art History and Archaeology, Columbia
Susan S. Witte
Professor, School of Social Work, Columbia
Karen Van Dyck
Kimon A. Doukas Professor of Modern Greek Literature, Columbia
Najam Haider
Professor of Religion, Barnard College
Avinoam Shalem
Riggio Professor, Arts of Islam, Art History and Archaeology, Columbia
Christia Mercer
Gustave M. Berne Professor of Philosophy, Columbia
Catherine Fennell
Associate Professor, Anthropology, Columbia
Kadambari Baxi
Professor of Professional Practice, Barnard + Columbia Architecture
Reinhold Martin
Professor of Architecture, GSAPP, Columbia
Sheldon Pollock
Raghunathan Professor Emeritus, Arts and Sciences, Columbia
Robert Gooding-Williams
M. Moran Weston/Black Alumni Council Professor of African American Studies and Professor of Philosophy and of African American and African Diaspora Studies, Columbia
Partha Chatterjee
Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and MESAAS, Columbia
Mana Kia
Associate Professor, MESAAS, Columbia
Katharina Pistor
Edwin B. Parker Professor of Comparative Law, Columbia Law School
Martha Howell
Miriam Champion Professor of History, Emerita, Columbia University Arts and Sciences
Elizabeth Hutchinson
Associate Professor of Art History, Barnard College
Madeleine Dobie
Professor of French & Comparative Literature, Columbia
Natasha Lightfoot
Associate Professor, History, Columbia
Brian Boyd
Senior Lecturer in Anthropology & Co-Director of the Center for Palestine Studies, Columbia
David Scott
Department of Anthropology, Columbia
Bette Gordon
Professor, School of the Arts/Film
Lila Abu-Lughod
Anthropology, Columbia
Yannik Thiem
Department of Religion, Columbia
Debbie Becher
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Barnard College
Nadia Abu El-Haj
Anthropology, Barnard College
Barbara J. Fields
William R. Shepherd Professor of History, Columbia
Shayoni Mitr
Senior Lecturer, Department of Theatre, Barnard College
Josh Whitford
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Columbia
Celia Naylor
Professor, Africana Studies and History Departments, Barnard College
Teresa Sharpe
Senior Lecturer, Sociology, Columbia
Gauri Viswanathan
Class of 1933 Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Columbia
Pablo Piccato
Professor of History, Columbia
Hannah Chazin
Assistant Professor, Anthropology, Columbia
Nara Milanich
Professor, History, Barnard College
Manijeh Moradian
Assistant Professor, WGSS, Barnard College
Adam Reich
Associate Professor, Columbia Sociology
Gregory Mann
Professor, History, Columbia
Mary McLeod
Professor of Architecture, Columbia
Joseph Slaughter
Associate Professor, English and Comparative Literature, Columbia
Jennifer Wenzel
Professor, English & Comparative Literature and MESAAS, Columbia
Lydia H. Liu
Wun Tsun Tam Professor in the Humanities, Columbia
Hiba Bou Akar
Associate Professor, Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Columbia
Jean Howard
George Delacorte Professor in the Humanities, Emerita, Columbia
Sarah Haley
Associate Professor of Gender Studies and History, Columbia
Richard Peña
Professor of Film and Media Studies, Columbia
D. Max Moerman
Professor, Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, Barnard College
Stathis Gourgouris
Professor of Classics, English, Comparative Literature & Society, Columbia
Bruce Robbins
English and Comparative Literature, Columbia
Anupama Rao
History, Barnard College
Anooradha Iyer Siddiqi
Assistant Professor, Architecture, Barnard College
Jonathan Crary
Meyer Schapiro Professor of Modern Art and Theory, Art History, Columbia
Rebecca Jordan-Young, Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Barnard College
Gregory M. Pflugfelder
Associate Professor of Japanese History, Columbia
Tey Meadow
Associate Professor of Sociology, Columbia
Ashraf Ahmed
Associate Professor, Columbia Law School
Seth J. Prins
Assistant Professor of Epidemiology and Sociomedical Sciences