Dear Editor of the Wellesley News,
Please find below a letter we, alums of Wellesley, have written to President Paula Johnson titled: We Condemn the College’s Silencing & the Resulting Harassment of Students who Speak Out for Palestinian Liberation.
Wellesley Alums put together this letter in solidarity with your publication. If it serves you and helps your call for liberation, we would love for it to be published as a letter to the editor. However, our primary goal is to support you in the ways that we can: if you think it might cause your org or any other student further vitriol and harm, please prioritize your safety at this moment and we would be okay with it not being published
President Johnson,
Last week we were inspired by the Wellesley News editorial board’s courageous op-ed in support of Palestinian Liberation and justice, a matter of transnational importance. This week, we are writing to you as Wellesley College alums who are indignant at the college’s disgraceful response in retaliation to its students’ courage.
We are deeply concerned for the safety and wellbeing of the students on the Wellesley News Editorial Board as a consequence of your statement. Since your email, misleadingly titled “Condemning Antisemitism”, in which you comment — for the very first time — on a student article and falsely accuse its authors of endorsing anti-Semitism, your students have been facing online doxing and harassment. Their names and photos are being published online, and many international and local news outlets are spreading the same false and unfounded accusations you raised. What will you do to ensure the students are safe from online harassment, doxxing, and slander?
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The reframing of calls to justice in Palestine as “antisemitism” is a manipulative diversion tactic. It is disappointing, yet not surprising, that your email, President Johnson, had no mention of Palestine or the brutality of the occupation despite the op-ed in question being entirely about Palestine. This deceitful email undermined and bastardized the calls for justice in Palestine by shifting the conversation to shut it down and, worse, made an urgent call for justice seem like an attack on a religion, which it is not. Others have spoken about the distinction between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism at great length (e.g. Human Rights Watch & Decolonize Palestine.) What will you do to properly educate yourself on the Palestinian fight for liberation and address the College’s complicity in supporting the brutal military occupation they are subjected to?
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The Mapping Project’s portrayal of Wellesley College as an anti-Palestinian institution is true. The Project simply makes obvious ties between institutions and the roles they play in the colonization of Palestine, U.S. imperialism, and violent policing, and is correct in including Wellesley. The College administration does indeed create an environment where students who support Palestine, especially those on visas, cannot express their views without consequences. Case in point? The harassment students are facing, facilitated by the College’s President, intending to silence and manipulate their support for Palestinian liberation.
The President’s email falsely claims that the project targets Jewish institutions, which is simply untrue: this false claim will not absolve Wellesley from its ethical obligations and is an affront to legitimate concerns of antisemitism. The mapping project provides a vital service: wouldn’t you like to know if any institution you are in, regardless of its mission, supports racism? genocide? apartheid? What is so controversial about highlighting that, as is the case of Wellesley, a College administration is complicit in harm when it has a history of silencing discussions on Palestine and allowing its students and faculty to be targeted? In your email, you claim to support ”individuals in our community feeling free to peacefully express their views on political issues”. Unless they’re criticizing the college? Or is it Palestine that is the exception?
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To Wellesley College: what will you do next? This is not the first time Wellesley College has stood on the wrong side of history in matters of justice. You may revisit the archives to learn about the student activism on Wellesley’s campus urging the College to divest from Apartheid South Africa in the late 1980s and early 90s. Then, as now, the College chose to punish its students for making a statement it knows donors and other stakeholders will not be happy about. Then, as now, it has everything to do with the College’s complicity and investment in the oppression of others, and has absolutely nothing to do with what is morally right.
The question remains to you, President Johnson, the College Administration, and the Wellesley community: will you make any effort to question propaganda and false talking points and instead allow for a safe environment for students to speak about Palestine without getting doxed or retaliated against by the College administration or faculty?
A heart-felt thank you to the students of the Wellesley News Editorial Board for having more courage and more clarity than the College’s President and Administration. We hope and pray that the College will do its part in protecting you and your right to express your truth, freely and safely, and hope that it takes our concern, and the concern of other BOW alumni seriously.
We demand better from President Johnson than spreading disinformation and shutting down such a critical conversation, and we strongly urge her to heed the demands made by Wellesley Students for Justice in Palestine (WSJP).
Sincerely,
Seriously Concerned Alums (choosing to remain anonymous so as to not get retaliated against).
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘19
Alum, Class of ‘22
Alum, Class of ‘20
Alum, Class of ‘16
Alum, Class of ‘15
Alum, Class of ‘14
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘19
Alum, Class of ‘19
Alum, Class of ‘17
Alum, Class of ‘20
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘17
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘19
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alumn, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘21
Alum, Class of ‘20
Alum, Class of ‘19
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘17
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘17
Alum, Class of ‘19
Alum, Class of ‘19
Alum, Class of ‘20
Alum, Class of ‘20
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘19
Alum, Class of ‘17
Alum, Class of ‘20
Alum, Class of ‘16
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘20
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘19
Alum, Class of ‘19
Alum, Class of ‘18
Alum, Class of ‘20
Alum, Class of 22
Alum, Class of ‘22
Alum, Class of ‘15
