Dozens of students convened in McMillan Hall for Charlotte Korchak’s talk titled “Concepts and Misconceptions about Israel, Zionism, and Jews.” Korchak, founder and senior educator at the Jerusalem Education Institute (JEI), led the discussion-based lecture focusing on understanding Zionism and the Jewish identity on March 27.

Listen — I’m a Jewish, Islamic, and Middle Eastern Studies major, and I’d be lying if I told you that our campus climate has consistently fostered comfortable, informed areas for dialogue about Israel and Palestine. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can be better. We can have civil conversations about our perspectives and how they are informed by our individual lived experiences.

I can only imagine the fear young Jewish college students felt when they were abruptly shaken from their studies to such violent chanting by unknown strangers who had descended upon their campus.

We look forward to getting back to business, but not business as usual. After a 65-year-old man was nearly beaten to death by WUPD cops, after a hundred of us were violently arrested at a peaceful protest on our own front lawn, after the Board of Trustees has made clear it will not respect the will of student and faculty democracy, there can be no more business as usual.

New students: now that you are familiar with our recent past, it is up to you to decide our future. I cannot overstate how extraordinary that power is.

As we learn to advocate for our clients and communities, to further social justice, and to challenge institutional and systemic oppression, we find the Brown School’s silence on the genocide in Palestine fundamentally hypocritical and thoroughly in opposition to our institutional values.

To be “pro-Palestine,” one does not have to justify the horrific acts of terror that were committed on Oct. 7. To be “pro-Palestine,” one need not be anti-Israel. And being anti-Israel doesn’t make one effectively pro-Palestine.

“The WUIMC has a fiduciary responsibility to make decisions that are financially, ethically, and legally dubious (to put it nicely). The WUIMC will only seek to profit from the violation of basic human rights and dignity when the Chancellor deems it ‘socially responsible’ to do so.”

There is no genocide against the Palestinians. As journalists, you have an ethical duty to push back on statements that are probably untrue. Do better.