The following, posted by Jonathan Alter (the American journalist and author) that he calls “Thinking Straight about the Israel-Hamas War,” was signed by more than 400 Columbia University and Barnard College faculty about the Israel-Hamas War that I would have signed in a New York minute. Alter wrote at the end: “This fine letter should be a model for statements from other institutions and communities. Higher education, in particular, must now face a reckoning. It will either retreat to the status quo ante, failing to instill the proper “ideals and values” in students or undertake a much-needed assessment of what a liberal arts education — or any education — means.”

Here is the open letter:

“There are many statements, letters, and counter letters circulating, and we have no interest in waging a war of words while an actual war is raging. Still, given what we have heard from others on campus, we are moved to write to emphasize three simple points.

First, at a great university like Columbia, there should be robust debate about complex and difficult issues, such as whether a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict is appropriate or feasible, who is to blame for the miserable conditions in Gaza, and what the wisest strategy is, going forward, to produce a just and secure peace in the region.  The signatories to this letter themselves have diverse views on these subjects. The university must foster an environment where debate on these important issues can proceed without intimidation or harassment.

At the same time, there is no excuse for Hamas’s barbaric attack on Israeli civilians, which was an egregious war crime. There is no justification for raping and murdering ordinary citizens in front of their families, mutilating babies, decapitating people, using automatic weapons and grenades to hunt down and murder young people at a music festival celebrating peace, burning families alive, kidnapping and taking hostages (including vulnerable populations of elderly, people with disabilities, and young children), parading women hostages in front of chanting crowds, and proudly documenting these nightmarish scenes on social media. We are horrified that anyone would celebrate these monstrous attacks or, as some members of the Columbia faculty have done in a recent letter, try to “recontextualize” them as a “salvo,” as the “exercise of a right to resist” occupation, or as “military action.” We are astonished that anyone at Columbia would try to legitimize an organization that shares none of the University’s core values of democracy, human rights, or the rule of law.  Any civilian loss of life during war is awful but, as colleagues on the faculty acknowledged in the letter mentioned above, the law of war clearly distinguishes between tragic but incidental civilian death and suffering, on one hand, and the deliberate targeting of civilians, on the other. We feel sorrow for all civilians who are killed or suffering in this war, including so many in Gaza. Yet whatever one thinks of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict or of Israeli policies, Hamas’s genocidal massacre was an act of terror and cannot be justified, or its true purpose obscured with euphemisms and oblique references. We ask the entire University community to condemn the Hamas attack unambiguously. We doubt anyone would try to justify this sort of atrocity if it were directed against the residents of a nation other than Israel.

Finally, the University cannot tolerate violence, speech that incites it, or hate speech. Just as we condemn any bigoted comments or acts directed at Palestinian and Muslim students, we are appalled by the spate of antisemitic incidents on campus since October 7. These incidents, which include antisemitic epithets, physical assault, and swastikas scrawled on bathroom walls, are growing in frequency and are creating a hostile and unsafe environment that impacts our entire community. In the same way that the University defends other groups from this sort of disgusting conduct, it is essential to do the same for Jewish and Israeli students. To do otherwise would betray our ideals and the values of Columbia as a great university.”