October 12, 2023
Dear President Salovey and Secretary Goff-Crews,
We, the undersigned members of the Yale Forum for Jewish Faculty and Friends, concerned Yale students and faculty, and members of the New Haven Jewish community write to express our dismay at the timing and content of Yale's statements regarding the terrorist attacks on Israel and your failure to condemn the celebration of these attacks by a Yale student group, Yalies4Palestine.
While it is arguable whether a university administration need be in the business of responding to every crisis outside of its local community, the expectation has been set with so many other national and international crises that a failure to respond equally to an attack on Israel is problematic, to say the least.
The very day that Russia invaded Ukraine on February 24, 2022, President Salovey posted a
message including the following:
"I am shocked by and condemn President Vladimir Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine. Many around campus, including the Office of International Students and Scholars (OISS), have reached out to members of the Yale Ukrainian community. OISS will continue to keep in touch with them and provide support to them and other students and scholars from the region through this crisis."Where was the statement of shock and condemnation of Hamas on October 7, 2023? Your
statement came 4 days later. Notably, the statement silently appeared on the Yale website with no email blast. Where was the assurance that OISS has reached out to members of the Yale Jewish and Israeli community? Where in your statement is the word “Jewish” even to be found?
Our group sent a letter to your office on October 9, 2023, signed by 24 Jewish faculty pleading with you to be alert to and to condemn expressions of antisemitism in the wake of this terrorist attack on Israel. We have received no response. Where in your statement is the condemnation of the Yale student group, Yalies4Palestine’s protest at the New Haven City Hall, where Palestinian activists opportunistically celebrated a terrorist invasion of Israel and the gleeful slaughter of civilians that can only be described as a large-scale pogrom?
Thank you for correctly referring to the Hamas attack as a “terrorist attack.” This should not require approbation, but not everyone in your position is doing it. The beginning of your statement is strong. But the whataboutism that evolves is dangerous. You write: “Regardless of how we view the war in the Middle East, I believe in the strength of this community.” Why must you acknowledge a view that this war is anything but a counterterrorist offensive toward Hamas, a group who will never accept peace, who has as a core principle the destruction of the state of Israel, and who has prioritized its goal of Israel’s destruction over the welfare of its own people? When Russia invaded Ukraine, did you make reference to multiple viewpoints on the war? Did you ask people with different opinions on it to come together?
The
statement from Secretary Goff-Crews, dated October 9, 2023, is far more deficient. To refer to an attack by an armed throng from a known terrorist organization as “the violent events in Israel and Gaza” is to suggest an incomprehensible moral equivalency between military defense and barbaric savagery. Hamas’s brutal attack on Israel indiscriminately butchered young adults at a music festival; smoked men, women, children, and infants out of their safe-rooms, and took innocent citizens of all ages against their will as hostages, threatening on the world stage to kill them in cold blood. These facts were widely known even on the first day of the Hamas invasion.
The Secretary’s offer of assistance to “members of the community [who] may be moved to express their feelings, political positions…” is unbelievably tone deaf. Is this where Yale’s initial efforts were directed when Russia invaded Ukraine? To help those who wished to express their opinions on the political situation to find guidance on how to do so?
While it should not be necessary, let us be clear. We mourn the loss of all innocent life. The undersigned members of the Jewish community and our allies wish deeply for a just peace with Palestinians that acknowledges the necessity of coexistence in a shared homeland. In that spirit, the condemnation we ask from you is not one against Palestinians but against the terrorist group Hamas and everyone who supports them. Golda Meir’s oft-quoted truism is apropos: “If the Palestinians put down their weapons, there would be peace. If Israel put down their weapons, there would be no more Israel.”
We look forward to unequivocal statements that not only condemn terrorism but eschew both-sideism and to equally strong censures at every turn of groups and individuals that would capitalize on this tragic attack to forward their political agenda in Yale’s name.
At least one faculty member is engaging in public pro-Hamas incitement. National Students for Justice in Palestine has called for a "Day of Resistance" today, October 12, 2023. Hamas has called for a day of global mobilization tomorrow, October 13, 2023. We need urgently to hear from you that our community is safe.
Your words have power. Yale is watching. The world is watching.
We are awaiting your response.
Respectfully,
David A. Sasso, MD, MPH, Assistant Clinical Professor, Psychiatry and Child Study Center
Evan D. Morris, PhD, Professor, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
Pnina Weiss, MD, MHPE, Professor of Pediatrics
Jesse Cedarbaum, MD, Neurology
Julius Chapiro, MD, PhD, Associate Professor, Radiology and Biomedical Engineering
Robert B. Schonberger, MD, Associate Professor, Anesthesiology
Jeffrey Weinreb, MD, Professor, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
Daniel Prober, PhD, Professor Applied Physics, Director Undergraduate Studies
Andrés Martin, MD, PhD, Riva Ariella Ritvo Professor, Child Study Center
Joel Gelernter, Foundations Fund Professor, Psychiatry & Genetics
Harvey Risch, MD, PhD, Professor Emeritus, Senior Research Scientist, School of Public Health
Graeme Mason, PhD, Professor, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
Irina Esterlis, PhD, Associate Professor, Psychiatry, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging, Psychology
Douglas Silin, MD, Associate Professor, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
Stuart A Weinzimer, MD, Professor, Pediatrics
Gary Soffer, MD, Assistant Professor, Pediatric Pulmonology, Allergy, Immunology & Sleep Medicine
Michael H. Nathanson, MD, PhD, Gladys Phillips Crofoot Professor, Medicine & Cell Biology
Ada Fenick, MD, Associate Professor, Pediatrics
Naomi Libby, MD, MHA, Assistant Clinical Professor, Child Study Center
Arthur Seltzer, MD, Assistant Professor, Medicine
Darryl Zuckerman, MD, Associate Professor, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
Douglas Rothman, PhD, Professor, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
Eric M Bader, MD, FACC, FHRS, Assistant Professor, Medicine
Sten H. Vermund, Anna M.R. Lauder Professor, Public Health
Norman Ravski, MD, FACOG, Associate Clinical Professor, Obstetrics, Gynecology and Reproductive Sciences
The above initial signatories are members of the Yale Forum for Jewish Faculty and Friends
This letter is cosigned by the Jewish Federation of Greater New Haven by unanimous consensus of Federation's Executive Committee
Hilel Hagai Diamandi, Postdoc, Applied Physics
Eliaz Brumer, MD, PG-2 Resident, Pediatrics
Or Landesberg, Gibbs Assistant Professor, Mathematics
Yair Minsky, Einar Hille Professor, Mathematics
Nir Navon, PhD, Assistant Professor, Physics
Richard A Bronen, MD, Professor of Radiology & Biomedical Imaging and Neurosurgery
Choukri Ben Mamoun, PhD, Professor
Linda Broyde Haramati, MD, MS, Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
Nitzan Geva, PhD, Postdoctoral Associate, Molecular Psychiatry
Allan Hillman, BA, HD (Columbia), Spouse of Yale Professor, lawyer, former Chair of Jewish Community Relations Council and Jewish Federation
Ziv Ben-Zion, PhD, Postdoctoral Associate, School of Medicine
Gal Jaschek, Genetics
Steven Fraade, PhD, Religious Studies and Jewish Studies
Mark I. Fishman, AB, JD (Harvard), New Haven attorney
Hannah Zuckerman, JD, Community member
Henry K. Kopel, JD, Former Federal Prosecutor and Author, Counterterrorism & Genocide Prevention
James C. Graham, BA, JD (UVa), Yale College ‘77, New Haven attorney
Risa Kent, MD, Associate Professor, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
Andrew Lustbader, MD, Associate Clinical Professor, Yale Child Study Center
Jessica Zoltani, MD, Assistant Clinical Professor, Psychiatry
Karen Goldberg, MD, Pediatrician and President of Temple Beth Tikvah
Elaine Albom Braffman, JD, daughter, sister, and niece of Yale graduates
Gerald H. Braffman, JD, Retired CT Superior Court Magistrate
Irena Tocino, MD, Professor Emeritus; Department of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
Craig Hecht, MD, Yale alumnus/Yale medical faculty
Toby Moskowitz, PhD, Professor
Linda Cedarbaum, MSW, wife of Yale graduate/Yale medical faculty
Amit Oren, PhD, Assistant clinical professor, Yale School of Medicine
Daniel Wiznia, MD, Associate Professor, Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation
Mark Blitzer, MD, Assistant Professor, Medicine
Richard A Bronen, MD, Professor, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
Dana Peters, PhD, Professor, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
Risa Kent, MD, Associate Professor, Radiology and Biomedical Imaging
Lee E. Rubin, M.D., FAAOS, FAAHKS, FAOA, Associate Professor, Department of Orthopaedics & Rehabilitation
