Amidst a tense atmosphere, 165 Columbia University faculty on Oct. 30 released a letter supporting the right of students to support Palestine and criticize Israel, free from attacks against their views, and at the same time warning of the threat to freedom of speech and debate on the campus. “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.”
“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,” they wrote in the statement. They point out that “not all of us agree” with the students’ claims, “but we do agree that making such claims cannot and should not be considered anti-Semitic.”
Columbia has seen a series of other statements and protests in the recent period over the Israel-Palestine conflict. The statement released on Oct. 30 defends an earlier statement by students who criticized what they called the “fascist, racist, and colonial” policies of Israel, and who called for the independence of a Palestinian state. In response to this and other pro-Palestinian activity on campus, slurs of “anti-Semitic” have been thrown around, and a doxing-truck has been driving around the campus donning pictures and names of those students deemed to be the most “anti-Semitic” in order to intimidate people from speaking out.
The Columbia faculty members’ sentiment was echoed today, in a New York Times op-ed written by Amaney Jamal and Keren Yarhi-Milo, the dean of the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs, and the dean of Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, respectively. In it, they emphasized the need for an environment where students “can air their opinions and even come together and hold difficult conversations without fear of retaliation.” They also usefully ridicule the idea that calls for Palestinian freedom are somehow code words for the annihilation of Israel, writing: “a majority of Palestinians have rejected this stance since the 1993 Oslo Accords and leaders of the Palestinian Authority in the West Bank have consistently called for a two-state solution.”
Perhaps the most coherent statement, however, against this atmosphere of fear and groupthink, was the one published Oct. 25 in the student newspaper Columbia Daily Spectator by Columbia Jewish Voice for Peace, which is specifically written to Jews from Jews, and hones in on the “lack of empathy” in the debate today. Evoking the best in their culture, they quote from Talmudic scholarship: “‘Anyone who is able to protest against the transgressions of the entire world and does not is punished for the transgressions of the entire world.’...
“To quote the Jewish sage Maimonides, ‘All the great evils which men cause to each other because of certain intentions, desires, opinions, or religious principles, are likewise due to non-existence, because they originate in ignorance, which is absence of wisdom.’ Ignorance is easy. Understanding is hard, and right now, there is a severe lack of understanding….
“Why are we, or frankly anyone, forced to explain the basics: that fighting for justice, against genocide, oppression, and persecution is and always has been a part of our shared Jewish culture, whether we are advocating for the Jewish people or other communities? Where is Tikkun Olam? Tzedakah? Where are you?”
In addition to the robust discussion taking place at Columbia University, LaRouche movement organizers have been actively deploying there over the recent two weeks. They have focused on injecting ideas of the universality of all people, and the policy of “peace through economic development” as proposed with Lyndon LaRouche’s Oasis Plan, as key to ending the conflict.
