Dear Members of the Northwestern Faculty,
On behalf of “Free Palestine,” just days ago, in Boulder, Colorado, at a peaceful march advocating for the release of Israeli hostages, a man firebombed the crowd with Molotov cocktails and a makeshift flamethrower, injuring twelve people — including elderly participants and a Holocaust survivor.
This was not a random event or isolated incident — it was the natural evolution of the calls for a global “intifada” that continue to echo across campuses, including our own. “Intifada” is not an abstract term. It refers to specific periods of violent terrorist activity that claimed the lives of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians.
When terrorism is not named as such — when hostage-taking, rape, torture and the targeting of civilians are met with rationalizations or euphemisms — it sends a message to students that brutality is defensible if it’s framed in the right ideological vocabulary. That is not intellectual integrity — this is moral disorientation. And if this continues, we fear the distractions to a normal college life will escalate, not just for Jewish students, but for the entire academic community.
A 2023 Hillel International study found that over one third of Jewish college students feel pressured to hide their identities. In recent months, we have heard from Jewish students at Northwestern who have quietly taken down mezuzahs, removed their names from directories and silenced themselves in classrooms — not out of disengagement, but out of fear. The targeting of Jewish students is being modeled, reinforced and, in some cases, strategically incentivized by faculty whose personal ideologies have overtaken their professional responsibilities.
What we’re witnessing on this campus goes far deeper than political disagreement. It strikes at the core of what every human being deserves: safety, belonging and dignity.
We are writing to you during a time of painful reckoning. Today, Students for Justice in Palestine once again congregated at Northwestern. This is a group that has been suspended from multiple campuses across the country and has openly expressed support for Hamas and Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, both designated terrorist groups. Groups like SJP justify murder and rape, glorify death and incite hatred under the guise of “liberation.”
Their rhetoric is not a metaphor — it is preparation. And the longer they are allowed to operate with impunity, the more emboldened they become. The intifada they’ve been chanting for is no longer theoretical. It is unfolding. Because of this, we feel more compelled than ever to speak plainly.
Jewish students, scholars, donors and survivors have not only shaped Northwestern’s legacy in science, medicine and the humanities — they have supported your research, advanced your careers and upheld the very academic freedom now being used to excuse their dehumanization.
As educators, you are not bystanders to this recent climate; you are its engineers. And while your intentions may be principled, the consequences of those intentions is a tacit condonement of chaos and bloodshed.
We understand that silence can feel like safety, especially in a climate as charged as this. We understand, too, that many faculty members believe they are preserving neutrality or supporting open discourse by avoiding definitive language. But from our perspective as students of psychology, trained to observe what goes unspoken as much as what is said, the silence has begun to sound like permission.
Let us be clear: If this trend continues, it will signal that faculty at this university have aligned themselves — consciously or not — with those who seek to terrorize and marginalize the Jewish community. The alternative is simple but urgent: You must stand unapologetically against this ideological coercion, reaffirm the universal dignity of your Jewish students and return to the essential purpose of education.
We are not here to be politically reprogrammed. We came to Northwestern to study neuroscience, ethics, psychology, literature and law — not to defend our right to exist.
We can no longer pretend that calls for “intifada” are symbolic or benign. Intifada is violent by design, and your continued toleration of this rhetoric has life-ending consequences. That permissiveness has now translated into a double murder and attempted murders occurring in the span of two weeks.
These acts of violence have been publicly endorsed by some on the political left, including the Bronx Anti-War Coalition and Guy Christensen, a TikTok creator with over three million followers.
The time for ambiguity has passed. You must decide, clearly and publicly: Do you stand with your Jewish students and colleagues, or with those who glorify their terrorization? There is no third option.
Kevin Waldman and Forest Romm are students at The Graduate School studying clinical psychology. They can be contacted at [email protected] and [email protected]. If you would like to respond publicly to this op-ed, send a Letter to the Editor to [email protected]. The views expressed in this piece do not necessarily reflect the views of all staff members of The Daily Northwestern.
