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from https://www.newsweek.com/colossal-failure-our-academic-institutions-opinion-1835867

A Colossal Failure by Our Academic Institutions | Opinion
MIRIAM F. ELMAN , EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE ACADEMIC ENGAGEMENT NETWORK
ON 10/18/23 AT 11:54 AM EDT

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OPINION
HARVARD
UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN
ISRAEL
PALESTINIANS

Last week, as more details of the brutality and barbaric cruelty
perpetrated against Israeli civilians by Iranian-backed Hamas terrorists
were coming to light, University of Michigan President Santa J. Ono
joined a select club of campus leaders: those willing to publicly
condemn the atrocities and stand with their devastated and traumatized
Jewish students.

As University of Florida's President Ben Sasse later remarked, it
"shouldn't be hard" to denounce crimes against humanity.

But apparently it was.

Days of Rage
Supporters of Palestine gather in Harvard Yard to show their support for Palestinians in Gaza at a rally in Cambridge, Massachussets, on Oct 14.
JOSEPH PREZIOSO/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

I scoured university websites across the country to locate statements
that unequivocally denounced the horrific violence unleashed as Israeli families observed the Sabbath on Simchat Torah—the last of the fall
season's Jewish high holy days.

I came up empty, even though by the time I started looking many of the
horrors that had befallen the people of southern Israel had already been
widely reported in the mainstream media: entire families burned alive;
parents murdered while protecting their children; party-goers gunned
down at an open-air music festival; a baby sliced from the womb of a
pregnant woman; the young and the elderly kidnapped; and dead bodies of
women paraded on the streets of Gaza.

By Oct. 11, days after these atrocities had garnered considerable press coverage, only a handful of strong university pronouncements had been
issued. Most leaders had still not spoken out against the carnage, even
as they have been quick to respond to past crises and acts of violence
around the globe, like the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

READ MORE
Why Hamas Is a Direct Threat to U.S. Interests
We Are 75 Israeli Progressive Peace Activists. We're Dismayed With the Left
For Denouncing Hamas, Students at Northeastern Demanded I Be Investigated

A few had released anodyne and inadequate statements that failed to even mention Hamas. Take the statement issued by a senior official at Yale.
Some Yale faculty who I spoke to were also discouraged by it, reading
this administrator's reference to the "violent events in Israel and
Gaza" as suggesting an "incomprehensible moral equivalency between
military defense and barbaric savagery."

Among the worst was a downright offensive message released by President
Ava L. Parker at Palm State College, emailed to me by a professor there. Instead of condemning the horrendous attack and the immense loss of
life—the greatest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust—her ill-chosen wording seemed to equate Hamas and its unlawful attacks on noncombatants
with Israel's self-defense against those very atrocities.

How can Jewish and Israeli students on campus feel like they are
respected and belong if it's considered acceptable to make excuses for
last weekend's butchery and even to praise the deaths of Jewish children?

Last week, on dozens of U.S. campuses, student groups issued incendiary pronouncements that justified the Palestinian right to "resistance by
any means." Some even celebrated Hamas for its "creativity" and its
"historic win." Student clubs on America's most prestigious campuses and
those with large Jewish student populations hosted vigils for Hamas
"martyrs." Others organized anti-Israel protest rallies and
demonstrations, publicizing these hateful and intimidating events with
an obscene cartoon drawing of a Hamas terrorist paragliding into
Israel—an image meant to positively evoke the ambush and merciless
killing of at least 260 young revelers at an outdoor rave.

Such an utter disregard for their distraught and shaken Jewish peers is appalling. Yet, university leaders on most campuses said nothing about it.

After doing the right thing and exercising moral leadership, Michigan's president is now feeling the heat—including from some of his own
faculty. Currently circulating is a petition criticizing his powerful
Oct. 10 statement, an expression of deep concern for Jewish and Israeli students on his Ann Arbor campus and the students, faculty, and staff at Israel's major universities. Hundreds of professors there have signed it.

Fortunately, there are plenty of U.S. academics who don't share their
moral confusion and have been standing up for heartsick Jewish students.

Hundreds of professors affiliated with my organization and others have
in recent days been voicing full-throated support for Israel's right to self-defense and demanding accountably from those students who are rationalizing and justifying, and in some cases even celebrating, Hamas.

An open letter, now signed by over 350 Harvard faculty members, sharply castigates the school's 35 registered student organizations for issuing
an appalling statement that basically condones the mass murder of
civilians while "terrorists were still killing Israelis in their homes." Another, signed by faculty at the University of Southern California,
offers its support to the people of Israel and to all students and
members of the campus community affected by the "unimaginable tragedy."

These interventions can make a difference.

At Harvard, a number of student groups have now retracted their support
for the much-maligned student statement. And at the University of
Arizona, a planned protest was cancelled by the school's Students for
Justice in Palestine chapter after its "Day of Resistance" toolkit and messaging were condemned by President Robert Robbins as "antithetical to
the university's values."

On Oct. 7, Israel experienced a great and horrendous evil—adjusted for population size, the equivalent of 45,000 American deaths or fifteen
9/11 attacks in a single day. Standing in solidarity with Jews on campus
means bearing witness to this devastating communal tragedy which has
reopened wounds and deepened fears. And it means educating that some acts—like massacres perpetrated by Jew-hating jihadists—are beyond political debate or difficult conversations. They are simply wrong.

Dr. Elman is executive director of the Academic Engagement Network and
was a former Robert D. McClure Professor of Teaching Excellence at the
Maxwell School of Citizenship & Public Affairs, Syracuse University.
Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter, @MiriamElman.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

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