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MIT JCL Logo MIT Jews for Collective Liberation

Response to President Kornbluth's May 3rd letter

/ 2 min read

President Kornbluth,

We are writing as a large group of Jewish MIT students, staff, and faculty who are calling on our school to divest from the Israeli Ministry of Defense. We are shocked and disappointed at your May 3rd letter.

After many meetings with you in which you expressed sympathy with our cause and our Jewish experiences, we are distraught that you and your communications department have, with one short letter, erased all pro-Palestinian Jewish presence at MIT and dismissed the encampment (of which we have been a part of since its inception) as a “situation” with no apparent cause or goal.

Your statement completely ignores the fact that the encampment exists because MIT refuses to divest from the Israeli Ministry of Defense and the ongoing genocide in Gaza. To claim that the encampment is the one creating an unsafe campus for anyone on MIT campus is absurd: MIT is making its Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and yes, even Jewish students less safe because of its insistence in taking the money of a genocidal government. You frame the encampment as a magnet for trouble, placing responsibility for any potential external violence or escalation on us. If MIT is serious about protecting its students from trouble, it should be more engaged toward meeting our demands.

You charitably refer to a foreign consulate-sponsored rally as being “in support of our Israeli and Jewish students” – the very students who have said we “support terrorists” and made countless antisemitic attacks against us because we dare call out Israel. Are we not your Israeli and Jewish students too?

As you urge us to be thoughtful about ending the encampment, we urge you to be thoughtful about how you represent us, the Scientists Against Genocide encampment, and other campus events in your statements. Stop perpetuating the false narrative that this is a Jewish vs Palestinian/Arab/Muslim issue. It is an issue of supporting or opposing a government that is actively committing genocide and is guilty of countless violations of international human rights law in Palestine and the broader region.

We will camp until divestment.
MIT Jews for Ceasefire