The following are a selection of anonymized letters from members of MIT Faculty urging President Kornbluth and senior administration to continue to allow the peaceful protest undertaken by our students on the Kresge Lawn and to re-engage in negotiations with students. If the administration wants to end the encampment, we urge them to meet students’ demands which are modest, well-researched and morally and ethically consistent with MIT values. At the very least, we encourage the administration to continue negotiations.
The demand from MIT Scientists Against Genocide Encampment (MIT SAGE) is to end all research contracts sponsored by the Ministry of Defense of Israel.
From the ACF’s prior statement: We remind the administration that engaging police to dismantle peaceful protests can prove profoundly destructive to the students, our campus climate, and to the Institute’s reputation. This moment is an opportunity for MIT to take a leadership role in defending freedom of speech and academic freedom, and we call upon our administration to engage in constructive efforts to respond to those who are peacefully expressing moral distress in the face of an ethical and humanitarian crisis and in support for life.
Dear Admin,
It was a long day, but this is no time to complain or to decry the walking away of admin from the negotiation.
I think we all agree that without negotiations this will go terribly south. I am also sure that none, neither students nor admin wants this. Nor can any faculty fathom a police crackdown on our campus.
So let’s move on and bring the parties back to the table in good faith; without the noise, wrong assumptions and accusations that the other side does not want to negotiate, which just lead us to disaster (and this is no hyperbole).
PROFESSOR 1 and I are ready to help. As are many other colleagues who offered their help to explain and work on creating the trust required to succeed in such negotiation, including PROFESSOR 2, PROFESSOR 3, PROFESSOR 4, and many others. They will help us to go into the weeds of matching the admin’s proposal as close as possible to the students’ demand – if possible, and rationalize this process with tangible goals and means to reach them.
We are all here to help you and us all to reach this goal.
Thank you
Professor
Dear Sally,
I am writing to urge you not deploy the police, as other universities have done, in the MIT administration’s ongoing negotiations with the students who have built an encampment at the Kresge green. I visited the encampment on Wednesday afternoon and wanted to share with you what I saw: there was music playing, students working on their computers, sharing food, ideas, and knowledge with one another. They were coming and going from class, and were committed to having their voice heard at MIT. It was a diverse group of students truly reflecting MIT’s diversity: Muslim and Jewish, Black, White, and Brown. They chatted with us about the Passover Seder dinner they had hosted the previous night, how they had more food donated to them than they could consume, and how they had not anticipated how cold it gets sleeping outdoors, even on a warm Boston Spring day.
I have been teaching the history of South Asia and Africa at MIT for a decade now. All this time as I have endeavored to teach our future engineers, scientists, and entrepreneurs about colonialism, decolonization, strategies of resistance, forms of negotiation/compromise, and the possibilities and limits of solidarity I have wondered what, if any of this, would resonate with MIT’s students and how to demystify this history to make it less “exotic” (about things “long ago” and places “far away”) to them. I always ask them, would you have answered Gandhi’s call to non-violent civil disobedience if you lived in early 20th century India? Would you have been mobilized by Franz Fanon’s revolutionary fight if you lived in mid 20th century Algeria? Would you have joined Steve Biko’s student coalition of Black, Afrikaner, Indian, and Colored students to imagine a post-apartheid rainbow nation in South Africa in the late 20th century? I usually respond to their resounding “yes” with my middle-aged skepticism and cynicism, knowing that these graduating seniors were heading off to work at start-ups or start graduate school at some Ivy League. I realized on Wednesday how wrong I have been about MIT’s students.
The students at the encampment are connecting their world, MIT, to the world beyond them. Their ask – for MIT to divest from IDF/Israel Ministry of Defense funding – is not unprecedented at MIT. In the past, during my ten years here, MIT’s community has asked the administration to reconsider its financial ties to Saudi Arabia and suspended the MIT-Russia program. These students are not threatening anyone. They are not obstructing or even disrupting work or life at MIT. They know MIT’s institutional history, and they hold SHASS’s motto, Great Ideas Change the World, to be true. They want to change the world they see around them, and although they may faulter and posture as they figure out how they can change their world, please allow them the space – their encampment – to come together, to be heard, to feel visible, and to stake their claim on MIT. Please do not sent the police to clear them out.
Thank you for all you have done managing a very tense and difficult situation so far. I have been incredibly proud of your leadership that has been truly exceptional, and I know that you have our back, and we have yours. In that spirit, I wanted to share with you three photographs from the MIT archives from 1969-70. They tell both as aspirational story but also a cautionary one. The first is a photo MIT’s former president Jerome Wiesner at an anti-war march standing shoulder to shoulder with MIT’s students in 1969. The second is student protestors at the Kresge lawn in 1970. The third is of Cambridge police breaking up a protest march at MIT in 1969.
Yours,
Associate Professor
Dear President Kornbluth, and other administrative leaders at MIT:
I recognize that you are in a very difficult position and are feeling enormous pressure to clear the MIT encampment. I urge you, instead, to continue negotiations with the students.
Let me first reply to the argument you make in your message to the community. They seem to be these:
• The encampment is using space that others want to use and this is denying the others their freedom of expression.
I find this argument exceptionally weak. Just last week I held a workshop on campus and learned only 10 days before the event that the space was double-booked and we would have to move. We had over 150 people registered for the event and six invited speakers from across the country. All of our advertising included the room we had booked as the location. However, we pivoted and changed the venue. Of course it was inconvenient. But we managed. It is hard for me to believe that there are currently such pressing needs for the space where the encampment is being held that immediate removal is necessary. There are many many spaces on campus that allow for free expression, and having the encampment occupy one of them is not denying anyone freedom to speak. To suggest so, is unconvincing.
• The encampment has broken rules.
Of course rules are important, but there are two kinds of rules. Rules that are backed by substantive moral concerns, e.g., rules against cheating, lying, violence, and rules that are rules that facilitate coordination. It is inconvenient and sometimes upsetting if people break rules that facilitate coordination, but if other ways to coordinate around the good in question are available, and if there is good faith on the part of those who have broken the rule to cooperate in addressing the issues, it is reasonable to bend the rule. Those who insist on breaking coordination rules at all costs are at risk of what is sometimes considered “rule worship.” This is especially true when there is an insistence on coordination rules when there are moral issues at stake. This is exactly one of those cases. The students are calling attention to a serious moral wrong and asking that we find something within our power to speak to it. Honestly, it strikes me as a failure to appreciate the gravity of the issue to insist that our coordination rules trump their concerns.
• The students’ demands violate the academic freedom of others.
I think you misunderstand the demands. The students are not asking MIT researchers stop doing research in Israel or cut off ties with Israeli researchers. The students are demanding very specific divestment from military funding. In fact, they suggest that alternative funding be provided to those who currently receive funding from such sources. MIT has done this in other cases so to act like this could not be done is, at best, confusing. The comments about the students demands fail to appreciate the students’ sensitivity to academic freedom and paints them – wrongly, and to my mind, disrespectfully – as inconsistent.
• The encampment requires an exceptional amount of police and administrative resources.
Obviously, the current situation is also demanding an enormous amount of faculty time and effort also, so I understand this concern. However, as the faculty involved have stated, this is an educational opportunity. Learning how to manage value conflicts is essential to training global leaders in science and technology, and is also at the heart of educating students to support democracy. We are at a time of great polarization across the globe, and violence and coercion are not adequate responses. The energy spent in addressing the concerns raised by the presence of the encampment on campus – the pain and struggle that both sides are feeling – is not just a nuisance. It is called for by our mission. On my view, there is no better use of MIT’s resources than to come to a peaceful resolution of the conflicts. I realize that others want to carry on with their jobs without attention to this conflict. But students and faculty are continuing to attend classes and fulfill their responsibilities. There is no current danger that the rest of MIT’s educational mission cannot continue. I worry, though, that removing the encampment will disrupt the campus in a much more significant way, and that will compromise the mission. This has happened at other universities and has also tarnished their reputations.
I would also note that this is not the first time that there have been protests at MIT, and no doubt, this will not be the last. It is of utmost importance to find ways to undertake meaningful and peaceful resolution when grave moral concerns on both sides are at stake.
I have other concerns about the current situation. For example, I have good evidence that none of the negotiating team was present at the protest at the Marriott, and to stop negotiations on that account is unfair. Just as you cannot control everyone affiliated with MIT, the student leaders cannot control everything that those who support divestment do.
I am distressed that after all of the effort that so many people have put into negotiating a process that will end the encampment without simply clearing it, that negotiations were cut off so abruptly. I urge you to return to negotiations for the good of MIT.
Respectfully,
Professor
Dear Sally,
I have been so very proud of MIT for its recent very calm and rational approach to the encampment. You have torn this by your statement just now. You have played a card. The encampment will play card. I pray that rationality will prevail — including negotiations on the terms specified by the encampment. The alternative would be extremely damaging to the students, to MIT, and to you and your administration.
I do not understand the gravity of the presence of a few non-MIT students in the encampment. This is one movement, across the country. Trust our students to stay the course and keep the peace.
Stand up for rationality and compromise!
with my hopes and best wishes
Emeritus Professor
Dear President Kornbluth,
Over the past three days I have visited the encampment at Kresge where the students are protesting the continuing massacre of civilians in Gaza. I must say that I have never felt more proud of our students. They are disciplined, peaceful, and steadfast in their opposition to the ongoing massacre of the Palestinian civilians in Gaza.
I happen to agree with their stance, but even if I did not, I would still support their right to protest in a peaceful manner. I sincerely hope the MIT administration stands up to the principles of academic freedom and the rights of MIT community to express their views without fear.
Sincerely,
Anonymous Lecturer
Dear President Kornbluth,
I have admired your leadership since you first arrived at MIT. I also admire you for approaching the encampment situation at MIT with restraint and non-violence so far. Thank you.
I know many of the students who have joined the encampment. Some of them have quite a lot to lose, because they are low-income, first-generation, indigenous, and/or racial minorities–and yet, they are still there, bravely speaking up for injustice. They give me hope for the future, even though I have so many other reasons not to be hopeful.
I can see no good reason to cancel a negotiation 14 minutes before it was scheduled to begin. These students have approached the administration with plain intentions and acted in good faith, and I fully expect them to keep doing so. Please keep reciprocating that good faith and continue negotiating with them. Please do not escalate police response to the encampment. Please do not endanger students and the staff and faculty who are supporting them–all peacefully. To let this chapter end in police action would irreparably harm our institute’s standing, as well as our ability to move forward as a community. I believe that MIT can continue setting a good example for our country and the world through its measured, rational, non-violent response to these students’ grievances.
Sincerely,
Anonymous Lecturer
Dear President Kornbluth and other members of the administration,
Please do not send police to clear the peaceful protest camp on our campus. Continue engaging with the students. Stand above the knee jerk reactions of other university administrators who have sent police officers to violently dismantle their camps and silence their voices. Rise above. This is an incredible opportunity to set an example for all other universities around the world who are facing similar challenges as you. Sit down and talk to the students. Listen to them.
Yes, sometimes they may be loud, and yes, sometimes they may be irreverent towards you. They are young and they are frustrated. Most have had a life filled with mass shooting drills. They came of age during the #metoo movement and the Black Lives Matter protests. They are a new breed of politicized students who we should be proud of, and who should not be vilified. Do not send the police to their camp. Talk to them.
These are our students. If our university experiences similar atrocities as what has happened in other campuses, the damage will be deep and long-lasting. Sit with them.
Please listen carefully to the message that our students are sending to the administration. Do not perpetuate the same narrative that is being spread by most media and by a very vocal small group of individuals who refuse to accept and understand that these protests are not against a group of people, but against a government that seems bent on continuing the massacre of an oppressed community. They are asking not only you, but all members of our community to evaluate our values and choices.
Please also consider that some of the students participating in the protests do not have the means or privilege to post bail immediately or to simply return home or look for another university if they were to receive severe academic sanctions. Some of the students who are at the camp are not only ethnically/racially under represented minorities, but also first-generation and/or low-income students. I know this because I have had the privilege to teach and mentor some of these students.
They are students who have overcome many obstacles to be here, and whose families have had to make enormous sacrifices to send them here. They are some of our most vulnerable students, and if they were to be arrested or heavily sanctioned, you will permanently change their lives and truncate their path towards social mobility.
You still have time to come to the table. These are our students. Do not put them in danger. Do not threaten them. Listen to them.
Concerned humanities lecturer
Dear President Kornbluth, Provost Barnhart, Chancellor Nobles, Professor Fuller, and more,
I strongly urge you to not take down the encampments, not call in police to arrest students, and not extend disciplinary actions against students participating in protests for Palestine. While I understand the individual pressure you might be under from certain donors and other powerful interest groups to take harsh action against students, the rapid scale and spread of student protests against the ongoing genocide not only in the United States, but across the world is sending a clear message to national leaders, university administrators, and politicians that the usual tactics of suppression will no longer work. This is a historic moment when ‘rules of conduct’ are suspended in order to protest an unconscionable war and system of apartheid, much like student protests against Vietnam and Apartheid South Africa. Moreover, these encampments did not go up on day 1, but rather after 6 months of ongoing protests and attempts at dialogue and the killing of tens of thousands of people in Gaza and unfettered violence against hundreds of people in the West Bank. The situation is so dire that it calls for a pause of our everyday activities and deadlines to confront the tremendous moral failing of our nation.
Unfortunately, MIT administrators were on the wrong side of history during anti-Vietnam war protests and the movement against Apartheid South Africa, but perhaps you can break with your predecessors and not repeat their mistakes. You are scientists, political scientists, and historians so no one is more qualified than you to understand the intricacies of such historic moments. Short sighted tactics of appeasement might help maintain the status quo in your favor, but your legacies and intellectual contributions will forever be marred by your actions in this moment. And I’m sure that whether or not you are at liberty to publicly acknowledge it, you fully understand that these students are protesting an ongoing genocide that is funded and enabled by not only US taxpayer dollars, but also research conducted at our institute. So just as there have been rigorous reviews and even termination of research funding from China, Saudi Arabia, or from sexual predators like Jeffrey Epstein, our students are well within their right to demand a similar standard of conduct and accountability for funding from Israel or any other nation.
Sincerely,
Anonymous Assistant Professor
Dear President Kornbluth, and other administrative leaders at MIT:
As violent repression of students’ right to peacefully protest has surged around the country, I have been proud to be part of an institution that has refused to make such a shameful choice.
I have watched in shock and heartbreak the videos of police brutally corralling, beating, and arresting students, staff, and faculty at the behest of university administrators and I have been proud that no such images have yet emerged from MIT.
I have been reassured that the leadership of this University has not bowed to external pressure to resort to such violent, inexcusable, and shocking acts against students who are exercising their right to freely express their beliefs and to protest.
There are moments when leaders of institutions, such as yourself, must negotiate a difficult balance between university policy, donor interests, institutional image etc. and there are times when it is necessary to simply do what is right. We have all wondered what side of history we would have been on at key historical junctures. This is your opportunity to make such a choice, to stand up with courage and integrity and unequivocally state that MIT will NEVER request the use of force against peacefully protesting students.
Sincerely,
A lecturer at MIT
Dear all –
Forgive the mass email to all of you. But the current campus situation is deeply concerning. I know that you have been working around the clock to address it and I thank you for your efforts and I do not envy your jobs at this current moment.
Today I was very touched when a report from the Alliance of Concerned Faculty circulated that detailed how a tense situation between the encampment students and counterprotesters was de-escalated.
This report gave me hope that MIT would not repeat the mistakes of other institutions. That we would find a way to talk to each other even amidst the tensions of this current moment. Faculty on all sides of this conflict were there, at the camp, with their students, helping them to find their voices without violence and without altercations. I was not there but from the report it sounds like a truly educational moment – a moment of democracy even amidst difference, disagreement and tension.
I still have this hope. I believe we can find more of these moments.
I wanted to communicate to you that I believe it would be a sincere and lasting mistake to engage the police on our students. Our community will not heal from this quickly. It will do lasting damage to our relationships with each other.
There is an alternate path of dialogue through tension, disagreement and difference. This is a hard path but we are a strong community. We can do it together.
Thank you for listening,
Anonymous Associate Professor
Dear President Kornbluth (and the administration),
As a Lecturer and member of the MIT community, I am writing to express my disappointment in the Community Message that you posted on April 27th, 2024 sharing your view on the Gaza solidarity encampment on Kresge Lawn. I appreciate that you as President and the administration are under immense pressure from different sides. However, such pressure does not justify the threats of forcible shut-down and thereby limitation of free speech rights of peaceful student protestors by the administration.
The threats of forcible shut-down of the encampment are especially troubling (given that this scenario has led to horrific, unjustifiable violence against students and faculty at other universities).
Students are peacefully and non-violently exercising their right to free speech, and while they may have broken some bureaucratic protocols in setting up the encampment, such limited civil disobedience does not warrant the disciplinary (or perhaps criminal) measures that the administration seems to be threatening. Civil disobedience has been a key tool of the most important political struggles for justice in the United States, most notably by the Black civil rights movement and its leaders, such as Dr. Martin Luther King. These students are not putting anyone in danger, visitors are welcome into the encampment (and counter-protestors). They are educating themselves and each other, and they are exercising their rights as citizens and students. The students are working very hard to keep each other and everyone around them safe; I like many others am deeply impressed by their maturity and sense of responsibility towards each other, the community, and last but not least the countless victims in Gaza. This is a cross-section of Arab, Jewish, and other student protesters in a powerful coalition that in fact models the meaning of cross-cultural and multi-faith solidarity.
I am also very disappointed that you as President and the administration seem to have turned your backs on the students’ legitimate demands for negotiation over funding ties to the Israeli military (your message unfairly implies that the students want to cut ALL research ties with Israeli institutions, this is not true – they are specifically asking that funding ties with the Israeli military be cut).
I am a first-generation immigrant African-American. My father was imprisoned in my country of origin for exercising his right to free speech by vocally opposing dictatorship. The dictatorship that put my father in prison also classified his political expression as ‘threatening’ and ‘breaking the rules,’ and for this reason his freedom was taken away in what was an extremely traumatic and life-changing event for my family. As a result, my entire family had to leave the country. It is therefore personal to me that students are allowed to exercise their free speech rights by maintaining the encampment given that they are not putting anyone in harm’s way.
While I appreciate the emphasis on combatting antisemitism in our community, I myself have not felt very safe as a Black member of the community with a Muslim background and don’t see that the administration has been as vocal in calling out the documented instances of verbally and physically violent attacks on student protestors (primarily Arab, anti-Zionist Jewish, POC and others) who are in solidarity with Palestine.
I have remained silent partly out of fear of the aggressive retaliation and doxing that has targeted students as well as members of the administration (yourself included), and my lack of faith in the administration’s capacity to protect not only pro-Israeli voices, but also voices that stand in solidarity with Palestine. But I can remain silent no longer, especially with threats to impose potentially catastrophic measures on students. Please reconsider your message.
Best.
Lecturer
Embracing Complexity and Innovation: A Call for Progress Amidst Campus Challenges
Dear MIT Administration,
I trust this message finds you well amidst the complexities of leading our esteemed institution through challenging times. I write to you today with a perspective inspired Walter Benjamin and Donna Haraway, and the urgent need for progress amidst the current campus situation.
As we navigate the ongoing encampment on the Kresge lawn and the divergent perspectives it represents, I am reminded of Benjamin’s poignant reflection on Paul Klee’s painting ‘Angelus Novus’as portraying an angelgazing upon the wreckage of the past as it is propelled into an uncertain future. “This storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while thepile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.” Benjamin’s depiction of historical progress as unending cycles of destruction underscores the challenge we face in embracing complexity and charting a new path forward. His words resonate deeply in this moment, where the clash of opposing views threatens to obscure the nuanced realities of our shared humanity.
Haraway’s call to ‘stay with the trouble’ further emphasizes the challenges of engaging with the complexities of our world. “Staying with the trouble requires learning to be truly present, not as a vanishing pivot between awful or edenic pasts and apocalyptic or salvific futures, but as mortal critters entwined in myriad unfinished configurations of places, times, matters, meanings.” Embracing complexity requires us to be truly present. In the face of conflict and discord, let us resist the all-too-easy impulse towards polarizing narratives and the temptation to succumb to irreconcilable differences. Instead, let us chart a new, albeit potentially troubled, path forward — one grounded in compassion, collaboration, and a steadfast commitment to dialogue.
The anti-war encampment, with its myriad voices and perspectives from Jewish, Islamic, Christian, and other traditions of non-violence, presents us with a unique opportunity to challenge the reductive binaries that threaten to divide us. It serves as a microcosm of the broader challenges facing our planet, where diversity- in thought, emotion, and language- is too often sacrificed at the altar of ideological purity and intolerance.
In this historic moment, I implore the administration to seize the opportunity with courage, compassion, and a bold willingness to challenge the status quo. As an institution known for its capacity to innovate, let us redefine what “progress” truly means. Progress is not measured solely by technological advancements or academic achievements but by our ability to patiently listen, engage with nuance, and foster a culture of inclusivity and understanding.
By ‘staying with the trouble’, engaging in meaningful dialogue, and fostering a culture of inclusivity and understanding, we can forge a path towards a more just and sustainable future.
Sincerely,
Associate Professor
Dear President Kornbluth et al.,
I’m going to keep this email short, because I’m guessing that your video message update this afternoon has launched at least 1000 responses from individuals both inside and outside of the MIT community.
Here is my plea: Your warning, to the encampment, that its existence “needs to end soon” should not be a de facto prelude to physical violence against students.
Please give MIT leadership’s brilliant intellect and strong will the opportunity to shine and rise above peer pressure and, indeed, peer missteps!
Please flex MIT’s bona fides by being more inventive and pioneering in decision-making than what the world has, so far, witnessed at colleges and universities across the country.
MIT knows formulas, and the institution certainly knows by now—from observing where and how other universities have so far failed with respect to their encampment situations—that this warning-to-crackdown formula just does not work. Please decide differently!
To adapt some famous lines from Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire:
Maybe we are a long way from being perfect, but MIT–my institution–we know better! Such things as art–as poetry, music, and peacemaking–such kinds of new light have come into the world and into MIT classrooms! In our mostly STEM-focused community, some tendered feelings have had some considerable beginning that we have got to make grow and cling to and hold as our flag! In this march towards whatever it is we’re approaching, let MIT not repeat, emulate, or do one-upmanship on the various forms of brutality we have all seen being sicced on students all over the country!
Beating students into submission is absolutely not a solution commensurate with the mandate of a place of higher education. There absolutely must be a better way. There is a better way. The solution needs to be peaceful. The MIT community is counting on you to find and implement it.
Thank you for your attention and serious consideration.
Professor
Dear President Kornbluth,
I am writing as an MIT lecturer and as part of MIT’s Jewish community. As I write, there are already thirteen letters that I understand will stand alongside mine. These letters speak eloquently to many arguments that I might otherwise make here, ultimately cashing out in the common-sense request that the institute not forcibly clear the Scientists Against Genocide Encampment. The arguments are good and many. Pragmatically, I’m most struck by the fact that to do so would irreparably damage relations on our campus and affirm a position that the encampment has repeatedly and diligently refuted in word and deed—that it is disruptive and hateful. It is not. It is open, peaceful, and inclusive. There is also the argument that this is an opportunity for MIT to begin correcting its regrettable tendency to stand on the wrong side of history in times of protest (e.g., Apartheid South Africa, Vietnam). Finally, there are able rejections of the notion that the demonstrations are counter to academic freedom or free speech—the students are merely calling for divestment from the Israeli military. This is directly analogous to the termination of our research relationships with the Skoltech Institute “in light of the unacceptable military actions against Ukraine by the Russian government.” The students are letting counter-protestors walk peacefully through the camp, sing songs, eat lunch… this is emphatically not the site of vicious conflict and hate that so many are willing it to be.
These are good arguments and I agree with them. But in the interest of contributing a slightly different perspective, I will, instead, speak to the experience of one group in particular—the Jewish participants in the encampment, including MIT Jews for Ceasefire. Contrary to the general tendency to imagine these encampments as sites of antisemitism and hate, they are, rather, co-constructed through an explicitly Jewish lens (one lens among many, obviously) by the hands of MIT’s Jewish students, staff, and faculty. Anyone worried about Jewish students’ ability to safely attend Seders this Passover due to the presence of the encampment might have usefully noted the joyful, tearful Seder held in the middle of the encampment. I’ve attended Shabbats, sang songs, blessed bread, and held grief and anger with this part of MIT’s Jewish community. Many people in this community are directly experiencing deep and painful rifts within American Jewish life, being cut out from their families and synagogues. And yet, they persist. While it is tangential to the argument here, I am convinced that, far from being sites of anti-Jewish hate, the encampments that have emerged across the United States are immensely important sites of vibrant and vital Jewish renewal.
Others feel differently. I cannot tell those Jewish, Israeli, and allied students and faculty who feel threatened by the presence of Palestinian flags and pro-Palestinian slogans that their experience should be other than what it is. They are entitled to their discomfort. But, as 23 Jewish faculty at Columbia and Barnard have recently argued in an open letter to their President…
“political passion – and some of the slogans that express it – may unsettle students, faculty, and staff with opposing views. But feeling dismay is not the same thing as being threatened. Along with the free expression that is fundamental to academic inquiry and democratic society, comes the discomfort of being exposed to views that may be upsetting. […] Pro-Palestinian expression is not anti-Jewish hate speech. To label it as such requires a dangerous and false conflation[.]”
To enroll the police, campus or Cambridge, in the forced dismantling of the camp, built through the genuinely heartening collaborative efforts of, among so many others, the Palestinian, Jewish, and Arab communities at MIT, would assert in unambiguous terms this dangerous and false conflation. It would offer the institute up as an accomplice to the deeply troubling weaponization of antisemitism that is inhibiting our collective ability to perceive real threats to Jewish safety.
As a faculty member at Cornell recently argued in relation to that institution’s encampment, the camp is a “beloved community,” which is to say that it’s boldly illuminating a way of living in peace together, across and along lines of difference. The camp must be allowed to stand, and here my argument simply becomes moral: because it offers a peaceful and constructive way forward that so few are willing to imagine during these dark times.
Sincerely,
Anonymous Lecturer