On Monday, a group of dozens of faculty members at Columbia University in New York signed and published a letter supporting the right of students on their campus to protest against Israel and support Hamas. The letter caught fire in the media and plenty of people noticed. Some of those people turned out to be the rest of the faculty on the campus who had not signed the letter. They quickly realized that they were now the center of national attention, particularly after attacks on Jewish students and threats of violence were breaking out at Columbia. They hastily penned their own letter yesterday, describing how they were “appalled” by all of the antisemitism on display at their university. Will that be enough to stem the damage to the institution? (NY Post)

More than 200 faculty members at Columbia University said Tuesday they were “appalled by the spate of antisemitic incidents” on the Manhattan campus, a day after scores of their colleagues signed a letter defending students who supported Hamas’ brutal Oct. 7 terror attack.

The new letter came after Jewish students rallied on campus to blast the administration’s “inaction” on what they called an “unsafe” atmosphere in the weeks since the attack, due to at least one attack on an Israeli student, death threats and rampant hate speech and vandalism.

While the faculty members agree “there should be robust debate about complex and difficult issues” concerning the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, they say “there is no excuse for Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israeli civilians.”

As walkbacks go, I suppose this was about the best they could do. The phrase “no excuse” draws a fairly strong red line in the sand. It was perhaps somewhat weakened by the rest of the first two paragraphs where they included the obligatory support of “robust debate” over what they describe as a “complex and difficult” issue in Israel and Gaza. (Read the full letter here.)

It’s in the third paragraph, however, where the rubber truly hits the road. The group very specifically calls out their own colleagues and the students on campus who have participated in the ongoing horror show. They describe the October 7 attack as “an egregious war crime” and they spell out in gory detail the many atrocities perpetrated by Hamas. They go on to say that they are “horrified” that anyone at Columbia could “celebrate” those atrocities. They accuse other faculty members of trying to “recontextualize” the attacks as some sort of “salvo” in a legitimate military action. The letter goes on to say that the signatories are “astonished that anyone at Columbia would try to legitimize an organization” such as Hamas.

In the final paragraph, they go directly after the students who have been engaged in the worst activities. The letter says that they “cannot tolerate violence, speech that incites it, or hate speech.” They address physical attacks, swastikas painted on bathroom walls, and public threats of more violence to come. They fully condemn all of it.

As of this morning, more than 300 staff and faculty members have signed the letter. They provide a full list of all the names of the signatories. Whether this is heartfelt or simply an effort at damage control, it seems that they are trying to send a message and lower the temperature. It’s an admirable effort. Now we need to wait to see if it sinks in and the antisemitic violence at Columbia starts to recede.