The following piece is an opinion and does not reflect the views of The Eagle and its staff. All opinions are edited for grammar, style and argument structure and fact-checked, but the opinions are the writer’s own.
We observe with much concern a campus climate where many students, staff and faculty face isolation, rejection and hostility. On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis and kidnapped 250 others. As a response, Israeli troops invaded Gaza. The death toll among Palestinians has risen to over 34,000, according to Gaza's health ministry. Emotions have been flying high on university campuses in the United States and here at American University. Some of the people killed, abducted and rendered homeless are relatives or friends of our students, staff and faculty. Understandably, this crisis has an influence on the way we talk and relate to each other.
The tragic situation in the Middle East offered a chance to show that our AU community was able to build bridges instead of walls. It offered a chance to lead academic discussions on the history and cause of this conflict by people with subject matter expertise. It allowed students and community members an opportunity to begin to decide for themselves what they believe, apart from the social media and advocacy spaces dominating the conversation. We had an early opportunity to show our students, prospective students and alumni what a real campus community can do while world events unfold.
Dartmouth College set a good example for a difficult dialogue conducted between campus members with different opinions. It is disheartening that we did not fully rise to the moment to teach and educate across differences of perspective and opinion. Instead, this campus — like so many others — was filled with a rhetoric full of suspicion, threats and boycotts. We must now take steps to educate across our differences.
Recognizing the suffering of the other is a challenge when tensions are high. But that is exactly where we must start. The history of Israel and Palestine has been one of shared suffering. This guest column is not the place to tell the story of this century-old conflict, but to state it is time to recognize the need to educate around a more nuanced picture instead of the black-and-white image many of us have. It is time to empathize with how the “other side” is suffering, too. Oct. 7, the day on which more Jews than at any time since the end of the Holocaust were killed and others kidnapped, constitutes a collective trauma not just for the State of Israel but for Jews all over the world and on this campus. The following months, in which more Palestinians were killed than in any other war since 1948 and many made homeless, constitute a trauma for the Palestinian people at home as well as around the world and on this campus.
The complicated truth is that in this tiny slice of land, there are two groups of victims and two groups of perpetrators, two peoples with historical ties to the same territory and two groups who too often deny the other side’s right of sovereign existence. It is time to acknowledge the suffering of the other, both in the Middle East and outside, and come together to think about how things got here and contemplate real paths of change.
It is time to speak with each other, to discuss different narratives and to disagree. What we have witnessed instead far too often is a boycott of different views, a closing up into our safe bubbles and a simplified rhetoric of aggression. Many students, staff and faculty have faced unprecedented alienation and hostility on campus.
This is not the way we should conduct ourselves in an academic environment. Faculty have an obligation to set a positive example for students on how to engage in the most difficult of dialogues. We can do better and create a coalition of people willing to make this a teachable moment. We ask everyone willing to do so to join us. We invite deep academic disagreement as part of these discussions.
To colleagues and students who call for a boycott of Israeli or Palestinian voices or who refuse to speak to each other, we urge you to consider that persuasion requires communication, not cancellation. At AU, our task is to jump right in and not be afraid to engage in a critical discourse about Israel and Palestine. Our mission is to teach classes with several points of view and listen to speakers with a broad diversity of opinions, allowing our students to form their own educated opinions. Our mission is to educate and provide students with the tools to fully understand complex problems and not to be satisfied with one-dimensional slogans.
To parents and benefactors of our University who are worried about campus antisemitism and Islamophobia, please know that we have the ability to beat back those viruses on our campus, so long as we build bridges and not walls between community members. We invite the University leadership to help us create an active dialogue between subject matter experts in classrooms and broader campus activities. To achieve our mission of education, we need to act to avoid the violent campus atmosphere that we have seen on other campuses around the country. Together, we can show what Inclusive Excellence can mean here on our campus.
Signed by:
Daniel Abraham, Professor of Music, Chair of Department of Performing Arts, CAS
Frank Armour, Assistant Professor, Department of Information Technology & Analytics, KSB
Boaz Atzili, Associate Professor, SIS
Patricia Aufderheide, University Professor, SOC
Karen Baehler, Scholar-in-Residence, Department of Public Administration and Policy, SPA
David C. Barker, Professor of Government and Director, Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, SPA
Laura Beers, Professor of History, CAS
Braxton Boren, Associate Professor, Audio Technology, CAS
Michael Brenner, Distinguished Professor of History and Abensohn Chair in Israel Studies, CAS
Amb (ret.) Piper Anne Wind Campbell, Hurst Senior Professorial Lecturer, SIS
Erran Carmel, Professor, Department of Information Technology & Analytics, KSB
Keith Darden, Associate Professor, SIS
Pasha Dashtgard, Research Assistant Professor, Justice, Law & Criminology and Director of Research, PERIL Institute, SPA
Andrew Demshuk, Professor of History, CAS
Daniel Dreisbach, Professor, Department of Justice, Law and Criminology, SPA
Frank DuBois, Associate Professor, KSB
Chris Edelson, Assistant Professor of Government, SPA
Todd Eisenstadt, Professor of Government, SPA
Michelle Engert, Senior Scholar in Residence, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology, SPA
Max Paul Friedman, Professor of History, CAS
Mary Frances Giandrea, Hurst Senior Professorial Lecturer, Department of History, CAS
Brett Anitra Gilbert, Kogod Regional Innovation Chair, KSB
Louis W. Goodman, Professor of International Relations, SIS
Gershon Greenberg, Professor of Philosophy and Religion, CAS
Tamar Gutner, Associate Professor, SIS
Brian Hughes, Research Assistant Professor, Justice, Law & Criminology and Co-founder and Executive Director, PERIL Institute, SPA
Janice A. Iwama, Ph.D., Associate Professor, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology, SPA
Thomas Kahn, Distinguished Faculty Fellow, Center for Congressional and Presidential Studies, SPA
Itir Karaesmen Aydin, Associate Professor, KSB
Dan Kopman, Professorial Lecturer, KSB
Alan M. Kraut, Distinguished Professor of History, CAS
Lisa Leff, Professor of History, CAS
Alan Levine, Associate Professor, Department of Government, SPA
Allan J. Lichtman, Distinguished Professor of History, CAS
Eric Lohr, Professor of History, CAS
Diane Lowenthal, Senior Professorial Lecturer, SPA
David Lublin, Chair and Professor, Department of Government, SPA
Garret Martin, Senior Professorial Lecturer, SIS
Michael Mass, Associate Professor, KSB
Thomas W. Merrill, Associate Professor, Department of Government, SPA
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, Professor, Justice, Law & Criminology and School of Education and Founding Director, PERIL Institute, SPA
Tomasz Mroczkowski, Professor, Department of Management, KSB
Pamela Nadell, Professor and Patrick Clendenen Chair in Women’s & Gender History, CAS
Saul Newman, Associate Professor, Department of Government, SPA
Ayman Omar, Associate Dean for Graduate Programs, KSB
Catherine Schaeff, Associate Professor, Biology, CAS
Richard Sha, Professor of Literature and Affiliate Professor of Philosophy, CAS
Robert Sicina, Professorial Lecturer, KSB
Jay Simon, Associate Professor of Information Technology and Analytics, KSB
Nancy Snider, Hurst Senior Professorial Lecturer, Department of Performing Arts, CAS
Sarah B. Snyder, Professor, SIS
Jeffrey Sosland, Assistant Professor, Office of Global and Immersive Studies
Ralph Sonenshine, Senior Professorial Lecturer and MA Program Director, Economics Department, CAS
Catalin Stefanescu, Professorial Lecturer, KSB
Lauren Strauss, Senior Professorial Lecturer in Jewish Studies and History, CAS
Jordan Tama, Provost Associate Professor, Department of Foreign Policy and Global Security, SIS
E. Andrew Taylor, Associate Professor of Arts Management, Department of Performing Arts, CAS
Elizabeth A. Worden, Associate Professor and Director International Training and Education Program, SOE
Joe Young, Professor, Department of Justice, Law & Criminology, SPA and SIS
Guy Ziv, Associate Professor, SIS
This piece was edited by Alana Parker, Zoe Bell, Jelinda Montes and Abigail Turner. Copy editing done by Luna Jinks, Isabelle Kravis and Sarah Clayton.
