Professor Sahar Aziz delivered a lecture and answered audience questions about the racialization of the Israel-Hamas war, particularly by political parties in the United States. The event, titled “The Palestine Taboo: Race, Islamophobia, and Free Speech,” was the first John C. Danforth Center on Religion and Politics event of the year. Sept. 23. 

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 I think about the current situation, I wonder if the students that Chancellor Martin is deriding and threatening will have the same reflection at their reunion weekends. Then I think, with the experience they are having, would they even come?

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.

Instead of acknowledging WashU’s continued inaction on its students’ desires, Martin makes no meaningful distinction between the protesters’ political goals and the environment that enabled the egging incident.