The below is a response to President Kaler’s email threatening disciplinary and legal action against students for their Gaza solidarity assembly at CWRU
Hello President Kaler et al.,
As a member of the CWRU and the Cleveland Jewish community, I am deeply disturbed by the rhetoric of this email which implies that there is rampant anti-Semitism at the protests and on our campus. Members of my Jewish communities have been standing in solidarity with the people of Palestine long before October 7. It is my duty as a person of the Jewish faith to employ our values of tikun olam (repairing the world) and pikuach nefesh (saving and valuing all lives). This includes but is not limited to being in solidarity with my Palestinian siblings in our community. For the past 7 months, they’ve watched in horror as their family members and loved ones abroad in Gaza face forced displacement, forced starvation, and extreme violence that we are priveleged enough to never be able to fully comprehend.
Our brave students are risking everything to stand up for these Jewish values of repairing the world and saving all lives. As a Jewish person, I am not afraid, I don’t feel unsafe, and I am not intimidated by seeing community members of all faiths (again, including the members of the Jewish community) come together for interfaith prayer, dialogue, study, and wellness activities. In fact, I think what we are witnessing is a beautiful display of students living out our CWRU mission of the “promotion of an inclusive culture of global citizenship.”
To reiterate, I am not threatened by the students singing, practicing yoga, praying, and gathering for meals together. What I am afraid of, however, is the increased surveillance and policing measures we are seeing all across campus. Acts of surveillance only seek to antagonize our students who are peacefully exercising their right to protest our institution’s silence and complicity in the horrors we are witnessing from afar.
President Kaler’s email regarding the student protests, sent on 5/2/2024 to intimidate the camp and slander its participants.
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We urge you to write your own response to the administration’s attacks against student organizers and their supporters:
Provost’s Office: provost@case.edu
Presidents Office: president@case.edu
Office of Student Affairs: katie.brancato@case.edu