Hampshire students take heart. You are part of a movement. 120 members of Columbia faculty have sent this strong letter to Columbia President Lee Bollinger blasting him for his utter silence on the Gaza slaughter and the countless other destructions of freedom in Palestine. Here's the letter in full:
On a number of occasions since becoming president of Columbia
University you have expressed your views in public on questions of
academic freedom in the Middle East. Yet you have remained silent on
the actions by Israel that deny that freedom to Palestinians.
These actions include Israel's continuing blockade of Gaza, the
imposing of barriers, checkpoints, and closures around and within the
West Bank that make academic life unworkable, the denial of exit visas
to Palestinian scholars offered fellowships abroad or invited to
international conferences, including scholars invited to Columbia, and
the recent three-week war against Gaza that included not only the
bombing of Palestinian schools and colleges, with great loss of life,
but the widespread destruction of the material and social fabric on
which academic life depends.
We, as Columbia and Barnard faculty, ask you now to make public your
opposition to these actions and your support for the academic freedom
of Palestinians.
There are great people among the signatories.
Elizabeth Povinelli, Alisa Solomon, Saskia Hamiton, Rashid Khalidi, Timothy Mitchell, Mahmood Mamdani, Nadia Abu El Haj, among others. and leading off, at number 1: Lila Abu-Lughod, who said at a Nakba commemoration last spring that she had led a quiet political life till now. Well this is a beautiful letter. Maybe it will lead to further activism? I don't think Bollinger's silence can be understood outside of the tremendous financial pressures on him from the likes of Columbia alum Robert Kraft, especially given Bollinger's dreams of a legacy in building a giant new campus in what it calls Manhattanville, between 125th and 131st Street. How much of Columbia's big gifts come from Jews who think, per Reform head Rabbi Eric Yoffie and other religious "leaders", that what Israel did in Gaza, destroying colleges, was copasetic?
(Phil Weiss)
