Sunday, October 29, 2023

"Recontextualizing" The Pogrom Of October 7th - It Was Legitimate Because The Israelis Are Really Mean Occupiers [רח"ל מאי דעתא] - Unrepentant Till The End

There are about 7,000 Jewish students at Columbia. ה' ירחם!!!! These are their evil, toxic, twisted teachers. 

Columbia receives HEAVY MONEY from people with names like Felicia A. and Benjamin A. Horowitz, Philip R. Berlinski and Britta W. Jacobson, David R. Halperin, Robert L. Friedman and Barbara L. Friedman and many other Jews. Note Leon Cooperman who gave 25 million and threatened to pull his funding. All Jews and DECENT PEOPLE should. 

Note that not only Arab and other Goyim signed but Jewish professors as well.    

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October 30th, 2023

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

Elizabeth Bernstein

Professor and Chair, WGSS and Professor of Sociology, Barnard College

Wael Hallaq

Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities, Columbia

Jo Ann Cavallo

Professor and Chair, Italian, Columbia

Zoë Crossland

Professor of Anthropology, Columbia

Paige West

Claire Tow Professor of Anthropology, Barnard College and Columbia University

Gregory Mann

Professor, History, Columbia


Paul Chamberlin

Associate Professor, History, Columbia