The Volokh Conspiracy
Mostly law professors | Sometimes contrarian | Often libertarian | Always independent
67 Northwestern University Law Faculty on Hamas Massacre
[UPDATE: I removed the list of signators, as a few of them have related to me that they intended the correspondence in question to be "private within the NWU Law" community. I'm not sure how an email circulated to hundreds of people by email was expected not to "leak," but I have agreed to their request.]
It's hard to get law professors, who tend to be prima donnas, to sign on to anything, so kudos to to the organizers of this letter.
One of the faculty signators, Prof. Kate Litvak, submitted the letter to the Northwestern University student newspaper, which declined to publish it. Instead, it chose to publish a letter by nine arts and science professors who described themselves as "scholars of the Middle East and North Africa." The letter, which you can google but I won't link to, includes: "To condemn Hamas's attack while ignoring this broader context is to fail to understand how we got where we are today. Decontextualized declarations dismiss Palestinians' struggle for rights and self-determination. They neglect the root causes of today's violence." I guess the good news is that the authors couldn't find many any actual experts on MENA to sign. For example, of the the nine, two are art professors, and one is an English professor.
Anyway I was thinking of reprinting the Northwestern letter here, but the editorial decision of the school newspaper made the decision easy. Streisand effect it! (Note: I've heard that some faculty declined to sign because they thought the letter was insufficiently strongly pro-Israel and anti-Hamas.)
TO: Northwestern Pritzker Law School Community
FROM: Concerned Faculty
RE: Terrorism in Israel
On Saturday, October 7, Hamas terrorists perpetrated the greatest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. The massacre took the lives of over 1300 peaceful civilians of many nationalities, including at least 20 Americans. Many children were among the dead. Adjusted for population that would be about 45,000 deaths in the U.S., or fifteen 9/11 attacks in a single day.
Celebrants at a music festival were gunned down without mercy. Homes were invaded by gunmen, who used explosives to ensure there would be no survivors. There was no military purpose to the attack, only the goal of murdering as many Israeli civilians as possible. The terrorists posted videos of their barbarous acts. Over 100 hostages were kidnapped and taken back to Gaza, evidently including two women from Evanston.
These events have affected many students and faculty, of all faiths and backgrounds, in the Northwestern Pritzker community. In Israel, 18 students from our partner Tel Aviv University are among the murdered.
As faculty members dedicated to the rule of law, we choose to make clear that we unequivocally condemn Hamas's wanton acts of terrorism, which have made the establishment of a just peace, recognizing the human rights of every community, all the more difficult to achieve.
Some have claimed that the Hamas atrocities must be blamed on Israel. What Hamas perpetrated was unspeakably evil. It is dehumanizing to blame the murders on the victims. We absolutely reject such acceptance, and near-endorsement, of terrorism.
