The faculty at Columbia University engaged in a heated war of words this week, with hundreds of them signing letters in response to the Israel-Hamas war.
Since Hamas’s deadly attack in Israel on October 7, Columbia, like many colleges, has been in turmoil. An Israeli student was allegedly assaulted with a stick in front of Butler Library on October 11, four days after Hamas’s attack. The following day, Columbia closed its campus to the public in anticipation of protests over the war. Students have reported finding swastikas drawn in campus buildings. Last week, a “doxxing truck” drove through campus displaying the images and names of members of organizations who had signed statements critical of Israel, labeling them “Columbia’s leading antisemites.”
On Monday, a group of more than 170 faculty members released a letter defending those students. “We feel compelled to respond to those who label our students antisemitic if they express empathy for the lives and dignity of Palestinians,” the letter says, linking to a pro-Palestinian statement signed by more than 20 student organizations (the students removed the names of the groups from the statement over safety concerns). The anonymous student statement places blame for the war on the Israeli government and defends Palestinian resistance movements.
“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,” the faculty letter says, “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.”
The faculty letter and those who signed it faced intense backlash, not least for characterizing Hamas’s attack as “military operations” and “a military response.”
If we can’t hold these uncomfortable conversations, then we’re abandoning a fundamental mission of what we do in universities.
“This letter is a disgrace,” wrote Jennifer La’O, an associate professor of economics at Columbia, on X. “I am disheartened and disappointed in my colleagues who have signed this.”
By late Monday night, another group of faculty members released a letter in response, condemning what it saw as an effort by colleagues to legitimize Hamas, “an organization that shares none of the university’s core values of democracy, human rights, or the rule of law.”
The clash of faculty letters demonstrated a deep divide at Columbia — one that has been growing for years. What looks to some like soft-pedaling the crimes of a terrorist organization looks to others like the principled protection of students’ right to political protest.
The initial faculty letter came together after Katherine M. Franke, a professor of law at Columbia, joined a group of students and faculty last week to protest the “doxxing truck” at the university by attempting to physically block the students’ faces displayed on it. That’s when she and her colleagues decided they needed to release a statement supporting the targeted students.
Franke, a longtime proponent of an academic boycott against the Israeli government, said students supporting the Palestinian cause have faced “well-organized and violent” harassment. “There’s a real silencing that is the impact of what seems to be a very well-orchestrated campaign to punish them for expressing a view that is legitimate in any other quarter,” Franke said.
The letter from Franke and her colleagues opens by addressing students who have been “viciously targeted,” including losing job offers. Prominent law firms threatened employment for some pro-Palestinian Columbia students, though some of them may be reversing their decision.
The letter goes on to defend the students’ statement, pointing out that it acknowledges both Israeli and Palestinian deaths.
“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 antisemitic,” the statement says. “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.”
The letter is signed by several prominent Columbia faculty members, including Rashid Khalidi, Jack Halberstam, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, and Adam Tooze.
Halberstam, an English and gender-studies professor, said he’s received several “ugly” and “appalling” emails following the release of the statement. Halberstam said one email called him a “self-hating Jew,” while another stated that Hamas “wouldn’t hesitate” to kill him, since he is transgender.
To Halberstam, the faculty letter “was clear in its condemnation of the killing and torture of civilians by Hamas,” while also providing context to the reasons behind the violence.
“The overall goal here is to educate, to think carefully about the long histories of violence that have created our current crises and a concern for open discussion,” Halberstam said in an email statement. “The letter was crafted by people who have studied the history of Israel and the occupation of Palestinian Territories and it deserves to be taken seriously and read carefully at a time when inflammatory rhetoric floods the public sphere.”
The signatories of the letter faced criticism online for not focusing on another, more radical statement from the campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. That statement, which the organizations released on October 9, does not acknowledge Israeli deaths and refers to Hamas’s October 7 attack as a “historic moment for the Palestinians of Gaza.”
Franke said many of the incidents targeting pro-Palestinian students were referencing the anonymous statement, which is why the first faculty letter addressed it.
The aim of the faculty letter was to ensure that students don’t feel alone, Franke said, and to foster a productive discussion rather than a polarizing one. “If we can’t hold these uncomfortable conversations, then we’re abandoning a fundamental mission of what we do in universities.”
Where the two faculty letters agree is on the need for “robust debate” about the war, and a university climate free of fear and intimidation. From there, they part ways.
David M. Schizer, one of the organizers of the counter-letter and a former dean of Columbia’s law school, said the language in the first faculty letter “doubled down” on defending Hamas.
“Hamas’s genocidal atrocities are indefensible, regardless of what one thinks of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” Schizer said in an email statement. “As our letter emphasizes, we are committed to free speech. But this means that speech should be answered with speech.”
We are committed to free speech. But this means that speech should be answered with speech.
To Shai Davidai, an assistant professor in the management division at Columbia’s business school and one of the signers of the second letter, incidents like the “doxxing truck” shouldn’t be denounced since it was exposing those who signed a public statement. Students have a right to free speech, Davidai said, but they should also expect to face consequences for that speech.
“Students and professors throughout the country have forgotten that they are full-fledged adults,” Davidai said. “If they are not ashamed to say these vile things, then they should also be willing to bear the social consequences.”
Davidai, who is Israeli and has not been in his office since October 7, said he was planning to return this week but decided against it after reading the initial faculty statement. Though he supports the two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict and sees himself as pro-Palestinian, he said he doesn’t feel safe in an environment with the professors who signed the first statement.
“It just broke my heart that these are professors. Several of the people that are signatories are people that I know, people that I have had coffee with, people that are, in everything else in their lives, well-meaning, good people,” he said.
This latest war of words isn’t the first time in recent years that Columbia faculty members have clashed over the Middle East.
Earlier this year, Franke and several colleagues wrote a letter in opposition to the university’s plan to open a new center in Tel Aviv. In response, several faculty members, including some who signed the counter-letter this week, released a statement in support of the Tel Aviv center. In 2019, the university faced similar faculty criticism after forming a partnership with an Israeli college to offer a dual-degree program in computer science.
Both of this week’s letters, though, concluded with a similar sentiment: The university administration needs to step up.
For Franke and other signatories of the first letter, Columbia hasn’t provided the same support to Palestinian and pro-Palestinian students that it has to Israeli and Jewish students. The statement concludes by calling on leadership, other faculty members, alumni, and potential employers to condemn “the vicious targeting of our students with doxxing, public shaming, surveillance by members of our community, including other students, and reprisals from employers.”
The counter-letter calls on the university to protect all students, including those in the Jewish community. It concludes by condemning “any bigoted comments or acts directed at Palestinian and Muslim students,” while condemning several recent antisemitic incidents on campus.
“In the same way that the university defends other groups from this sort of disgusting conduct, it is essential to do the same for Jewish and Israeli students,” the letter says. “To do otherwise would betray our ideals and the values of Columbia as a great university.”
On Wednesday the presidents of Columbia and Barnard College, its sister institution, announced the creation of a task force to combat antisemitism, “this ancient, but terribly resilient, form of hatred,” their statement said. The task force will be led by Schizer, along with Nicholas Lemann and Esther Fuchs, lead authors of the counter-letter, which has garnered more than 400 faculty signatures.
