Disclaimer: This letter was passed to The Catalyst from faculty members on campus in response to Colorado College’s Administrative response to student protests on campus. As of Friday, May 1, the letter has garnered 92 signatures. This article was edited for AP style and grammar.
April 28, 2024
Student Protests and Freedom of Expression on Campus: An Open Letter to Colorado College President Richardson and Incoming Interim President Whitaker
Dear President L. Song Richardson and Incoming Interim President Manya Whitaker,
We, concerned faculty, are writing with reference to the all-College communications regarding student-led demonstrations against the ongoing genocide of the indigenous people of Palestine. As Faculty who are concerned that all students, faculty, and staff at Colorado College be accorded the support and respect we deserve, we, the undersigned, wish to express our deep disappointment with statements that have been issued by your office. First, the email sent in the immediate wake of the March 3 student-led library demonstration in solidarity with Palestine defamed student protestors as disruptors, violators, and as people responsible for upsetting “some members of our community”. We would like to remind you that student protestors are also members of our community who were and will continue to exercise their constitutional freedoms of expression and dissent. To defame and exile them in campus-wide communications in the name of protecting “our students’ learning environment” is a gross misrepresentation of the protesting students’ conscientious actions that put into practice the very ideals that Colorado College claims to foster. Second, in the same email, you and your cabinet claimed to have set up “support spaces for Jewish students during known demonstrations”, thereby making the dangerous and divisive insinuation that all Jewish students would be upset or offended during a demonstration held in solidarity with Palestine. By conflating Jewishness and Zionism in this way, the College administration has, in effect, made a determination as to who may be deemed authentically Jewish. Not only is the College administration not qualified to make such a determination, but doing so is antisemitic, and is deeply offensive to non-Zionist, post-Zionist, and anti-Zionist Jews. Indeed, it is not only offensive but also discriminatory and potentially actionable under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Although common in contemporary political and media discourses, it is bigoted to flatten communities that are heterogeneous and plural. For example, there have historically been and are today Orthodox Jews who object to the very existence of the nation-state of Israel on Messianic and eschatological grounds. There are scholars of religion on the faculty who, had they been consulted on this matter, would have advised the administration against engaging in such antisemitic discourse. There are also non-Zionist, post-Zionist, and anti-Zionist Jews on the faculty and staff who could have offered the same advice. There is another aspect to this issue to which the administration has been completely insensitive and wilfully neglectful: the anguish and trauma of students, faculty and staff who have been witnessing the ongoing genocide and who have attempted to publicly express their grief only to have the administration insinuate that their deeply held moral convictions are antisemitic. Several of these students, faculty, and staff are themselves Jewish! Many represent other marginalized positionalities. Some of us spoke about this at the Block 7 Faculty Meeting; yet to date, we do not know of any attempt to reach out to those of us who spoke up, individually and collectively, regarding this matter. Third, the administration’s emails contradict the very idea of academic freedom that it claims to uphold. Academic freedom includes the right to express moral and political criticisms of the policies of nation-states. In some instances, the exercise of academic freedom may include participating in protests that might offend the sensibilities of some members of the community. Participating in protests is an integral part of the experience of a college education. Indeed, the liberal arts as they exist today–relatively more inclusive of minoritized epistemologies and communities–would not be imaginable were it not for the protests led by prior generations of students. In this instance, the administration appears to be punishing students for chanting “from the river to the sea, Palestine shall be free.” We have also heard reports that the administration is investigating whether this chant is antisemitic. Indeed, there is a vibrant scholarly debate about the provenance and meanings of this chant. While it has been used to express solidarity with the Palestinian peoples’ struggle against Israeli occupation and violence, it features prominently in the founding document of the Likud Party, where it proclaims that “between the sea and the Jordan, there will be only Israeli sovereignty.” Given this complex genealogy, the administration’s response raises larger questions about the place of political speech in an academic institution. Does the administration have the unilateral right to adjudicate the meanings of words and phrases or does this right belong to the broader college community? Is it not the responsibility of the administration to promote dialog and debate on campus? In light of these misteps, we, the undersigned, call on you to (1) issue a full and sincere public apology to the non-Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews on the faculty, staff, among the student body, parents and alumni; (2) set up support spaces for those mourning and/or traumatized by the ongoing genocide; (3) pledge in the future to consult campus experts and directly impacted persons, about such sensitive matters; (4) support a climate of debate and discussion by sponsoring events and symposia that educate students and the campus community on the Palestinian struggle for freedom; and (5) vacate all sanctions against student protestors.
Sincerely,
92 CC Faculty members as of May 1, 2024