Above photo: National March on Washington, November 4, 2023. Laura Albast.
Editor’s Note: The following open letter to the Columbia administration was written in response to the “Deans’ Message on Columbia and Community” signed by the deans of 18 schools within Columbia University.
Our deans state that the Columbia community should acknowledge “that hearing chanted phrases such as ‘by any means necessary,’ ‘from the river to the sea,’ or calls for an ‘intifada’—irrespective of intentions and provenance—is experienced by many Jewish, Israeli, and other members of our community as antisemitic and deeply hurtful.”
They have thus unilaterally decided that no one should rise up [the actual meaning of “intifada”] against 56 years of illegal military occupation; that Palestine should remain unfree from the river to the sea; and that the oppressed should take permission from the oppressor as to the means to relieve their oppression. They have come to this decision because hearing otherwise is “antisemitic and deeply hurtful” to some. In determining what speech is permissible and what is not, they have in effect banned the political, while acknowledging the humanitarian, such that expressing “anguish about the loss of Palestinian lives” does not make one antisemitic or a supporter of terrorism (which mouthing other words presumably does). There is no equivalence whatsoever between these two acknowledgements.
This statement amounts to a new norm that prohibits using or learning about these terms and their histories, in favor of the privileging of a politics of feeling. While perhaps appropriate to a kindergarten, it is hard to imagine an approach more contrary to the most basic idea of a university.
This statement is characteristic of a university that picks a task force nearly devoid of expertise on antisemitism and on Palestine/Israel (much of which exists among the faculty), but packed with outspoken advocates for Israel, a university that has decided that faculty expertise on freedom of speech or on language to be proscribed should be rigorously excluded from deliberations on such issues. With complete disregard for the principle of faculty governance, crucial matters like these are being decided upon by administrators, presumably with hefty input from trustees, donors and politicians, who have negligible expertise, but robust and one-sided opinions.
This is the latest instance of Columbia’s discrimination against Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and other students who support Palestinian rights, ignoring the grave material consequences they face within the university, and from a hostile political, media and corporate environment, for protesting an assault that has so far killed over 20,000 and wounded 50,000, the heaviest such toll in Palestinian history. Such a statement would have no place in a self-respecting university that cherishes and protects academic freedom and freedom of speech in the face of pressures from powerful outside interests.