“I want to make it very clear that, as an institution, we find the actions of this student to be reprehensible,” Martin wrote.

The statement that Wash. U. administration sent after the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh in 2018 was unequivocal in its condemnation of bigotry. Chancellor Mark Wrighton didn’t mince words, and that was appreciated. The Christchurch statement was nowhere near as strongly worded.

Gold Star father Khizr Khan spoke at the on-campus panel “Speaking Truth to Power,” where panelists discussed discrimination and Islamophobia in America in Wilson Hall Friday, Nov. 3.

Professor Joseph Massad of Columbia University, a veteran in the field of modern Arab politics, gave a lecture this past Thursday titled “Between Islamophobia and Homophobia: Gender, Sexuality, and Liberal Engagements with Islam,” which was well-attended by students and faculty.

“It’s like France’s 9/11,” she explained to me. “It is the worst terror attack France has seen in two decades.”

One by one, Muslim students and their peers passed the microphone to discuss past experiences with racism and Islamophobia. For many of them, these memories resurfaced when a Halloween photo of students costumed in military garb in what some argued was a depiction of Osama bin Laden, others as a stereotypical Muslim at gunpoint, surfaced on Facebook last Wednesday.