The Israel-Hamas war, which began on October 7, 2023 after an invasion of Israel by Hamas terrorists that murdered 1,400 Israelis, has triggered emotional reactions across university campuses in the United States. The unprecedented brutality of the Hamas attacks, the strength of the Israeli military response, and the loss of civilian life have deeply troubled the public and academics alike. At our own University, academics have signed statements such as these (Faculty & student statement, CSCL, GWSS), and rallies at the State Capitol and at the University of Minnesota have called for an end to the war.
These statements and rallies, however, have done much more than call for an end to the war. They have called for an end to the State of Israel. The Oct. 25th rally at the University of Minnesota explicitly called for an end to Zionism (the belief that the Jewish people have a right to self-determination like other people and to a home in the State of Israel, their ancestral homeland), in speeches, chants, and signs (a speech at the UMN rally stated: “The destruction of the Zionist regime is the aim. That is the goal. We must have as the aim the destruction of the imperialist Zionist regime for a successful intifada.” Chants by the crowd included “Intifada until victory! There is only one solution: Intifada, revolution!”).
We, the signatories to this letter, are deeply concerned with the rise in anti-Jewish sentiment among students, faculty and staff on US campuses, including ours. This antisemitism is largely fueled by social media hate campaigns, but is also supported by inflammatory rhetoric in statements issued by some colleagues. These statements are rife with misinformation. In accordance with a myth spread for many years in some radical academic and extra-academic circles, these statements portray Hamas as a movement of “resistance.” They make no mention of the theo-fascist ideology of Hamas, of its original charter that calls for the elimination of the Jews, and of its falsification of history. Nor do they acknowledge that Hamas has been classified by the U.S. government and by the European Union as a terrorist organization. Indeed, in the University of Minnesota Faculty Statement in Solidarity with the People of Palestine, the single reference to Hamas in the lengthy Statement was the mention of “Hamas’ attacks in Southern Israel.” This reference, devoid of any normative attribution to the attacks, was merely placed as a chronological peg to note the subsequent Israeli response. Furthermore, the signatories clearly stated that Israel and its citizens have no right of self-defense against any acts perpetrated by Hamas, including, as painfully made clear on Oct. 7, acts of murder, rape, kidnapping, mutilation of bodies, and the burning of whole families alive (many of these acts were filmed and shared on social media). We note that hundreds of international law experts have issued a statement that clearly identified Hamas’ acts of terrorism as amounting to war crimes, crimes against humanity, and “most probably” also to the crime of Genocide.
While we individually have different views about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, we emphatically agree with President Biden's characterization of this murderous attack as pure, unadulterated evil.
As educators, our mission is to explain that a reactionary movement that blames the Jews for all the ills of modernity is an antisemitic and conspiratorial movement. The statements condemning Israel fall short of one important task of liberal education, i.e., salvaging the fragility of historical facts nowadays assailed by social media and post-truth culture.
The statements also fail to recognize that what happened on October 7 is not one more tragic episode in the war between Arabs and Jews. We can all agree to disagree on who is responsible for this interminable conflict. Yet, there is no doubt that October 7 is a massacre that resonates with the most horrific religious wars, with the determination to not only kill the enemy but to desecrate and mutilate their bodies.
We praise the University leadership’s unequivocal condemnation of the totalitarian Hamas regime – a regime that uses its civilians as human shields, hides its military operations under hospitals, mosques, schools, and residential buildings, and spreads venomous propaganda and fake news. We now request University leadership to call on all members of this community to refrain from using hate speech as they voice their political commitment. Speech that calls for eliminating a nation state and its population is hate speech, which does not fall under the purview of academic freedom at the University of Minnesota.
The University should ensure equal application of university policies. It should review previous cases in which it has investigated faculty, staff or students for speech or conduct deemed offensive or disruptive, as well as incidents in which reprimands or other discipline have been imposed, and make sure that speech attacking Jews and Zionists is treated likewise.
We recognize that the University of Minnesota has students and community members from all regions and faiths, including from the Gaza Strip and Israel, Jews and Muslims. We value our diversity, and we respect the Palestinian members of our community. On our campus, we call for robust, informed debate about the war that does not call for the elimination of a state or a group of people and for the extension of similar respect to our Jewish students, faculty, and staff.
