Dear new MIT students,
Welcome to MIT! We’re writing to correct the record about activism and antisemitism on campus. We are the MIT Jews for Collective Liberation (JCL)1 a group of Jewish students, staff, faculty, and alumni redefining Jewish life at MIT to extend beyond the confines of an Israel-centered identity. We are also just one group of many within the larger Coalition for Palestine, working together to end MIT’s complicity in the Israeli government’s ongoing genocide of the Palestinian people.
The Coalition for Palestine was founded out of a moment where our collective values were not represented by MIT’s actions. Our struggle to be safe and seen has always been done in solidarity with all other oppressed groups on campus because no one is safe unless we are all safe. We are writing in solidarity with the Coalition groups, which include the signatories below, and we invite you to join us! By now you may have seen an email from MIT’s President Sally Kornbluth regarding some flyers that were handed out during an orientation event. While the flyers were not from any group within the Coalition for Palestine, we want to address the President’s response, which we believe to be misguided.
The President once again missed the forest for the trees and focused on a single link while dismissing the flyer. If you are interested in learning about the link in question, you can find an interesting and critical discussion here. We would like, instead, to talk about the forest, and add context to President Kornbluth’s email.
Over the past year, as we bore witness to the ongoing genocide in Gaza, we have seen the Institute take repressive, violent action against students peacefully protesting MIT’s ties to the Israeli war machine, yet say nothing about the incessant harassment (verbal, physical, cyber) that many Black and Brown members of the Coalition experienced by some in the MIT community. In their communication, the Institute belittled and dehumanized Coalition members and erased the Coalition’s large Jewish contingent while giving an outsized platform to pro-Israel Jewish students. We saw repeatedly that anti-zionist, Diasporist Jews are not the Jews that the Institute is concerned about “feeling welcome.”
The President writes, “antisemitism is totally unacceptable in our community.” We agree. We believe it is important to discuss what antisemitism is and what it is not. We worked tirelessly last year to convey to the administration that criticism of an ethno-nationalist state is not antisemitic. We were dismissed. You can read about that in our March 18th Open Letter.
Instead of actually engaging with MIT community members, we have learned that MIT cares more about its defense and corporate partners that are profiting from the genocide in Gaza and maintaining the Israeli apartheid system than it does about its Palestinian, Jewish, Arab, Muslim students. It is racist to erase the presence of Palestinian students at MIT and Palestinian identity, to refer to the Gaza Genocide obliquely as a “conflict in the Middle East” and it is abominable to remain silent (platitudes don’t count for action) on the genocide that is personally, horrifically, affecting many in the MIT community.
MIT cannot stand against prejudice without standing against genocide
President Kornbluth says MIT wants students to “feel at home.” We, as scientists of conscience, do not feel at home at MIT when the Institute continues to conduct research that supports the genocidal Israeli regime in ethnically cleansing Gaza. We encourage you to read communications from the Institute critically. The Coalition for Palestine rises from a strong tradition of anti-US-war-machine2 and anti-apartheid3 student actions at MIT, and we will continue to fight against MIT’s complicity in the genocide in Palestine. As long as MIT profits off of racist, ethno-nationalist, genocidal projects, we will continue to fight for our Institute that “works for the betterment of humankind.”4
If you want to learn more, please reach out.
Toward collective liberation,
Signed:
MIT Jews for Collective Liberation
mitjewsforcollectiveliberation@gmail.com
Co-signed:
Coalition Against Apartheid (CAA)
MIT Alumni for Palestine
MIT Arab Student Organization (MIT ASO)
MIT Black Graduate Student Association (BGSA)
MIT Black Students’ Union (BSU)
MIT Global Indigenous Students for Justice (MIT IS4J)
MIT Grads for Palestine (MIT G4P)
MIT Reading for Revolution (R4R)
MIT Taara
Palestine@MIT
Written Revolution
Footnotes
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You may know us as Jews for Ceasefire (J4C) — we recently changed our name to Jews for Collective Liberation to reflect the scope of our goals. ↩
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On MIT student protests of the US war in Vietnam: MIT and the VIETNAM WAR; MIT’s Anti-War Protests 1967-1972 ↩
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On MIT student protests of the apartheid in South Africa: Anti-Apartheid student rally, 1986; Shantytown built in protest by Coalition Against Apartheid, 1987 ↩