Update: 11/22: The list is now closed. Thank you to everyone who signed! Signatories are below. Corrections or comments? Email: robatutk@gmail.com.

I hope you will consider signing onto this letter and sharing it with your UT colleagues. Please note, for now, signatories are limited to UTK faculty and staff.

Over the past two weeks, the Rock has been covered twice with hateful symbols and violent threats that directly targeted UTK’s Jewish community. Like all hateful and menacing communications, these forms of expression are intended to intimidate and sow fear. This intention is more palpable when it singles out vulnerable or marginalized minority groups. And it is rendered even more stark coming in the wake of the anti-Semitic massacre of eleven Jewish worshippers in a Pittsburgh synagogue.

Confronted with these troubling campus incidents, the Interim Chancellor expressed his disappointment and responded that “the university does not condone these actions or other acts of intimidation or intolerance.”

We, the faculty and staff of UTK recognize the need to go further: We unequivocally condemn expressions of hatred that threaten or intimidate or bring into doubt the value of diversity and inclusivity on our campus and in our city. And we express our strongest support for and solidarity with UTK’s Jewish students, faculty, and staff, and all members of our community who have been targeted by this and other similar attacks.

Free speech and academic freedom are central to a vibrant campus and rightly merit rigorous protection. But we must never allow protection of the free marketplace of ideas to prevent us from calling out forms of expression that harm rather than genuinely contribute to this marketplace. Among other reasons, such forms of expression have a chilling effect on the rights and freedoms of others, particularly when directed against minority or marginalized groups.

We all deserve a campus where hatred finds no purchase or succor. A place that not only is safe, but feels safe. In this spirit of safety and inclusion, our doors are open to you and we stand together with you.


Update: 11/15
Since opening the letter for sign on yesterday afternoon, over 250 signatures have been added. Thank you!
Please feel free to share this letter with UT faculty & staff to encourage their participation. I plan to provide an update here about when the letter will close and how it will be publicized. If you have questions, please feel free to email me at rblitt@utk.edu.

Update: 11/19
This letter is now live on Knoxville News Sentinel website: https://www.knoxnews.com/story/opinion/readers/2018/11/19/open-letter-concerned-members-ut-community/2054942002/

Update: 11/19: At the Faculty Senate meeting today, Interim Chancellor Wayne T. Davis fielded a question about why his statement failed to condemn rather than only "not condone" the incident on the Rock. He replied: “I was told at a young age that there were only two people who can condemn and those were judges and God, so I have never condemned anyone.”

Lauren Cunningham Accounting & Information Management
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Ralph G. Brockett Educational Psychology & Counseling
Amir Sadovnik Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
Bruce MacLennan Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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Isaac Sherman Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
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