NEW YORK (1010 WINS) -- More than 320 Columbia University, Barnard College and Teachers College faculty members penned an open letter Tuesday, partially in response to an earlier letter signed by another 130 faculty members who demanded the school cut ties with "apartheid Israel" and defended students who supported Hamas' "military action," referring to its Oct. 7 terror attack in southern Israel.
The new letter was titled "An Open Letter from Columbia University, Barnard College and Teachers College Faculty on the Campus Conversation About Hamas's Atrocities and the War in Israel and Gaza." It slammed on-campus support for Hamas, on-campus antisemitic incidents and demanded the school do more to combat the spike in acts of hate against Columbia's Jewish community, and not apply a double standard.
Taking aim at their colleagues who signed the earlier letter, the hundreds wrote, "We are horrified that anyone would celebrate these monstrous attacks or, as some members of the Columbia faculty have done in a recent letter, try to 'recontextualize' them as a 'salvo,' as the 'exercise of a right to resist' occupation, or as 'military action.'"
Acknowledging the members of the Columbia community who support Hamas -- desigated as a terror organization by the US, UK, Canada, European Union, Australia, Japan, Paraguay and other nations -- the faculty members wrote, "We are astonished that anyone at Columbia would try to legitimize an organization that shares none of the University's core values of democracy, human rights, or the rule of law."
Hamas controls Gaza; the Palestinian Authority, of which Israel is not at war with, controls the West Bank.
The letter also called out the previous letter's attempt to downplay or compare losses of life.
"Any civilian loss of life during war is awful but, as colleagues on the faculty acknowledged in the letter mentioned above, the law of war clearly distinguishes between tragic but incidental civilian death and suffering, on one hand, and the deliberate targeting of civilians, on the other." the letter reads.
"We feel sorrow for all civilians who are killed or suffering in this war, including so many in Gaza," the faculty members, who represent several disciplines, write. "Yet whatever one thinks of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or of Israeli policies, Hamas's genocidal massacre was an act of terror and cannot be justified, or its true purpose obscured with euphemisms and oblique references."
It concludes asking "the entire University community to condemn the Hamas attack unambiguously," and suggests a double standard is at play: "We doubt anyone would try to justify this sort of atrocity if it were directed against the residents of a nation other than Israel."
The letter then demands Columbia do more and be vigilent about acts of on-campus antisemitism.
"We are appalled by the spate of antisemitic incidents on campus since October 7," they write. "These incidents, which include antisemitic epithets, physical assault, and swastikas scrawled on bathroom walls, are growing in frequency and are creating a hostile and unsafe environment that impacts our entire community. 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. To do otherwise would betray our ideals and the values of Columbia as a great university."
