Please fill out this form if you would like to sign this letter from TC alumni calling on President Shafik, President Bailey, Dean O’Meara, and Columbia University to protect academic freedom; support human rights; and redress/prevent further wrongful harm to community members. Full statement can be read here. 

Dear President Shafik, President Bailey, and Dean O’Meara, 

We write to you as alumni of Teachers College to express our unwavering support for the brave students who have erected the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. 

As past, current, and aspiring educators, psychologists, and health professionals, we feel a responsibility in our vocations and beyond to strive toward collective liberation. At the heart of academic freedom is the need to protect dissenting speech, which fosters the robust debate and critical thinking skills in which Teachers College prides itself. We believe in using our experience to fight against all systems of oppression, to build a world where everyone is free, and to instill the values and knowledge in all future generations that will support them in joining us in this movement.

We derive particular inspiration from the student movement, our alumni, and the Teachers College community writ large for their commitment to reflection, dialogue, and action to shape the world through collective redress. “Education either functions as an instrument…to facilitate integration of the younger generation into the logic of the present system and bring about conformity or it becomes the practice of freedom, the means by which [people] deal critically and creatively with reality and discover how to participate in the transformation of their world (Pedagogy of the Oppressed).”

Teachers College in particular purports a mission “to empower committed learners and leaders to build a smarter, healthier, more just and equitable world;" yet, to our profound disappointment, we are witnessing the active, violent suppression of opportunities for the discourse and activism that would realize this mission. We stand unequivocally behind students fighting for a free Palestine, and fully support their efforts on and off campus to speak out against the continued genocide of Palestinians. 

We echo the demands made by alumni of Columbia's School of International and Public Affairs, and urgently and immediately demand the following from Columbia's administrators: 

• The protection of students from further arrest [detention, and other threat] by the NYPD [as well as material support for those who have already been wrongfully arrested, detained, and otherwise harmed].
  
• Immediately reverse the recent suspensions of all students and student groups who expressed solidarity for Palestinian rights.
  
• President Shafik, [President Bailey,] and [Dean KerryAnn O’Meara] immediately clarify that they believe criticism of Israeli policies (currently on trial for genocide) is not inherently antisemitic.
• Proactively affirm and protect the rights of all students to express their views, organize, and protest nonviolently. Make all efforts to ensure academic freedom is protected on campus, in classes and in extra-curricular events and activities.

We will be withholding our recommendations of, financial contributions to, and engagement with Teachers College until the points above are addressed. 

Teacher's College Alumni