Yale Community Calls on Administration to Reject Violence against Palestine

Voices of opposition and solidarity are being raised at Yale University in response to incidents of hate targeting Palestinian and Arab students and faculty.

A statement signed in days by over 400 members of the Yale community decries “the University’s one-sided response to the events unfolding in Palestine and on campus, predicated upon the dehumanization of Palestinians.”

Amidst thousands of lives lost due to the Israeli occupation of Palestine, large corporate donors have been pressuring universities to "Stand with Israel,” and condemn student and community groups who stand for peace.

At Yale the administration has imposed a cruel double standard, emboldening extreme right-wing rhetoric and leaving activists, Arab and Muslim students and their allies feeling alienated and threatened.

A statement from university president Peter Salovey acknowledges Israeli deaths without qualification and condemns Hamas attacks, but only briefly mentions “non-militant Palestinians.”

The administration has failed to address the endless bombings of Gazans and genocidal statements from Israeli government officials, referring to Palestinians as “human animals” and “children of darkness.”

When a Yale student displayed a hateful, violent message, “Death to Palestine,” outside their dorm room door, the administration dismissed it as simply a “political sentiment and not a personal threat.”

In addition to student harassment, an online petition calling on a Yale faculty member to resign has been promoted by national right-wing sensationalist publications, including The Daily Mail and The National Review, with minimal push back from the Yale administration.

In response, a wide coalition in the Yale community is standing up and calling on the administration to abandon its policy of “war profiteering.”

A statement signed by hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students, alumni, staff, and other affiliates, demands Yale administration take a stand against the genocide of the Palestinian people, to call on Sen. Blumenthal and Rep. DeLauro to support an immediate ceasefire, to divest from U.S. and Israel-based arms manufacturers complicit in the destruction of Gaza, and to denounce anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic hate speech on campus.

The full statement, endorsed by student Palestinian-rights organization Yalies4Palestine can be viewed here.

At Harvard, billionaire hedge fund manager Kenneth Griffin pushed that university to adopt both a statement firmly in support of the Israeli regime and an additional denunciation of its own student groups, leaving students to face intimidation, harassment, and doxxing.