An open letter to the Feinberg School of Medicine administration circulated over the weekend alleged that the medical school removed photos of Middle Eastern students and photos of students wearing keffiyehs.
The letter, which was posted on Instagram by the Northwestern chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and has nearly 300 signatures as of Monday morning, says that Feinberg deleted photos of Middle Eastern students from its Instagram and deleted photos of students wearing keffiyehs, a traditional headdress worn across the Middle East, from a Flickr drive for the school’s White Coat Ceremony.
“When the photos were posted on the Instagram page and included in the Flickr drive, Arab and Muslim students felt welcomed, embraced, and seen,” the letter reads. “However, this direct targeting and erasure of a minority group, especially during a time when Arab and Muslim hate is surging, has left students feeling unsafe, silenced, and disrespected by the Feinberg School of Medicine.”
The letter demands that Feinberg publicly acknowledge and apologize for the deletion of the photos, launch an independent investigation into the incident, and outline concrete steps to promote diversity and inclusion at the medical school.
University spokesperson Jon Yates confirmed to The Daily that Feinberg removed the photos in question, citing safety concerns as the motivation for doing so.
“Given previous experiences with doxing of members of our community, the pictures, which included identifying information, were removed out of an abiding concern for the safety and well-being of the students pictured,” Yates said in a statement to The Daily. “Student safety is our highest priority at Feinberg and Northwestern. We are proud of Feinberg’s commitment to diversity and inclusion.”
The open letter comes on the heels of new steps to combat antisemitism, Islamophobia and other forms of hate partially announced by University President Michael Schill last week. The administration remains under scrutiny from community members and external groups as it will be tasked with navigating potential escalations in student activism and a fraught political environment on campus surrounding the Israel-Hamas war.
A Middle Eastern medical student who was featured in the now-deleted photos said the incident was “one of the biggest let-downs of (his) medical school journey.”
The student said several Feinberg students approached the administration about the incident before launching the open letter but that administrators cited safety concerns, emails complaining about the photos and directives from senior administrators as the reason the photos were deleted.
“When the photos initially got posted, we were all very optimistic that this school year would be a year of healing and reconciliation after the tensions of last year, and those photos being taken down did a lot of harm in terms of being able to make things better on campus,” said the student, who asked to remain anonymous for fear of retaliation.
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