Columbia Professors Advocate for Student Expression: Open Letters

The Issue: A letter signed by Columbia professors defending students who supported Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack.

I read that more than 100 Columbia University professors signed an open letter defending their Hamas-supporting students from charges of antisemitism (“U. Too?! Profs Back Haters,” Oct. 31).

When you have morally bankrupt professors like these, the result is morally bankrupt students.

These pathetic excuses for human beings, let alone self-described “scholars,” referred to the cold-blooded Oct. 7 massacre of 1,400 innocent, defenseless men, women and children and the kidnapping of hundreds more as a “military response.”

It is clear that Columbia has lowered its standards to nonexistent both for hiring faculty and admitting students.

Aaron Rubin

Rockville, Md.

Some at Columbia University are apparently doubling down on their untenable position of defending Hamas.

The professors had the gall to demand the university protect the demonstrators from purportedly “disturbing reverberations.”

Clearly, these august educators are not in the least bit concerned by the very real and disturbing issue that Columbia’s campus, along with so many other college campuses, is now unsafe for Jewish students.

Stuart V. Rubinfeld

Manhattan

There are many legitimate criticisms one can make of Israeli policy toward the Palestinians.

It’s a horrible situation that both sides have repeatedly made worse for decades.

But for these professors to say the events of Oct. 7 “represented a military response by a people who had endured crushing and unrelenting state violence from an occupying power over many years” is sheer delusional nonsense.

If it was a military response, what conventions supported their tactics against their “opposing force?”

Hopefully, all of this finally wakes people up to what’s been happening in our institutions of higher learning. All that tuition for this?

It’s time for the parents of uber-progressive spawn to question their investments.

Gerhardie Williams

Manhattan

It is clear that the Hamas-Israeli conflict has captured the hearts and minds of college students and unleashed a wave of invigorated activism on college campuses.

Stirred by the event’s unfolding, college students are committed and invested in the cause.

To what extent this has been fueled by indoctrination is yet to be determined. But Columbia University professors have been vocal and offensive.

What we do know is that the college administrators have exerted no supervision and have allowed these protests to get out of hand.

The lack of oversight and the wider inaction by the universities makes them facilitators and accomplices in the ensuing chaos.

Ronald G. Frank

West Orange, NJ

The Columbia professors would have us believe that Hamas’ murder and taking hostage of Israeli non-combatants was a “military response” to some purported “state violence” on the part of Israel.

In war, taking enemy soldiers prisoner is permitted, but not the taking of unarmed civilians.

Hamas’ objective was in no way, shape or form military. It was pure politics and for no valid reason. What is it that the learned professors don’t understand about that?

Their self-righteous statement isn’t protected speech. It’s more akin to yelling “fire” in a theater — or an incitement to genocide.

James Evans

Worcester, Mass.

The Ivy League is nothing more than a cesspool of antisemitic, spoiled brats who need safe spaces and therapy animals over the misuse of pronouns but call for the extermination of Jews and the annihilation of Israel. This is the “everyone got a trophy” generation.

The time has come to fire these professors and let them go teach in Islamic countries.

The students who are anti-American and pro-Palestinian need to go to Gaza (or Iran) and see how their way of thinking works in those areas of the world.

Palmer Woodrow

Las Vegas, Nev.

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