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Statement of solidarity with Columbia University students from Princeton faculty and staff

A group of protestors march in front of a building with ivy.
Protestors in front of Cannon Green on Friday.
Louisa Gheorghita / The Daily Princetonian

The following is an open letter and reflects the author’s views alone. For information on how to submit a piece to the Opinion section, click here.

We, Princeton University faculty and staff, affirm our solidarity with and support for the Columbia University and Barnard College students who are continuing to demand that the university divest from Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ongoing occupation of the West Bank, East Jerusalem, and other Palestinian land. We fully support the rights of all university community members, including students, to engage in peaceful protest at Columbia, at Princeton, and on all university campuses.

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Until the following demands are met, we will boycott Columbia University and Barnard College:

First, we call upon the Columbia University administration to reinstate those students who were wrongfully suspended for exercising their constitutionally recognized right to speech and peaceful assembly. We demand that all charges be dismissed and expunged from their student records, and that all rights and privileges be restored to them immediately. All ad hoc disciplinary proceedings against peaceful student protestors must be stopped. We demand that no disciplinary action be taken against any student protesters without due process, and that no police be permitted on campus without serious consultation with the Executive Committee of the Columbia University Senate. 

Second, we call upon the Columbia University administration to remove the New York City Police Department from campus. All criminal charges that have been brought against student protestors who were arrested by the NYPD at the behest of the university administration should be dropped immediately. The cases of all students facing disciplinary action linked to their advocacy on behalf of Palestine must be channeled through established university disciplinary procedures for each campus.

Finally, we call upon the Columbia University administration to reverse the suspension of the student groups Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and Columbia Jewish Voice for Peace.

We vow to withhold our academic labor from Columbia and Barnard, not to participate in conferences and other campus events, and not to collaborate with university institutions until such time as the administration has met these demands and demonstrated its commitments to upholding the well-established norms of unrestricted scholarly inquiry and academic freedom.

Signed,

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Max Weiss, Associate Professor, History

Karen Emmerich ’00, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature

Joshua B. Guild, Associate Professor, African American Studies

Daniel Sheffield, Associate Professor, Near Eastern Studies

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Rob Nixon, Professor, Environment and Humanities, English, and the High Meadows Environmental Institute

Wendy Belcher, Professor, Comparative Literature and African American Studies

Anne McClintock, Professor, Gender and Sexuality Studies and the High Meadows Environmental Institute

Molly Greene GS ’93, Professor, History

Susana Draper, Professor, Comparative Literature

Hal Foster ’77, Professor, Art and Archaeology

Ruha Benjamin, Professor, African American Studies

Tehseen Thaver, Assistant Professor, Religion

Fadi A. Bardawil, Visiting Associate Professor, Anthropology and Near Eastern Studies

Colleen Asper, Lecturer, Lewis Center for the Arts

V. Mitch McEwen, Assistant Professor, School of Architecture

Nancy Coffin, Senior Lecturer, Near Eastern Studies

Dan-el Padilla Peralta ’06, Associate Professor, Classics

Irene V. Small, Associate Professor, Art & Archaeology 

Lorgia Garcia Peña, Professor, African American Studies and Effron Center for the Study of American

Lital Levy, Associate Professor, Comparative Literature

Gyan Prakash, Professor, History

Sara Al-Sayed, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Program on Science and Global Security

Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, Professor, African American Studies

Juan Cruz Ferre, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Program in Latin American Studies

Elise A. Mitchell, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, History

Paola Estrada, Postdoctoral Researcher, Molecular Biology 

Jessica Ng, Postdoctoral Research Associate, High Meadows Environmental Institute

Hamza El-Asaad, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Program on Science and Global Security

Barbara Nagel, Associate Professor, German

Meredith Martin, Associate Professor, English

Mostafa Abdou, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Princeton Neuroscience Institute

Spyros Papapetros, Associate Professor, School of Architecture

Frank N. von Hippel, Professor Emeritus of Public and International Affairs 

Abdelrahman Hamdan, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment

Agustin Fuentes, Professor, Anthropology

Zia Mian, Research Scientist, Program on Science and Global Security

Pedro Meira Monteiro, Professor, Spanish and Portuguese

Sergio Garcia, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Chemical and Biological Engineering

May Kosba, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Program in African Studies

James Welling, Lecturer with status of professor, Lewis Center for the Arts, Visual Art

Arcadio Diaz-Quiñones, Professor Emeritus, Spanish and Portuguese

Behrooz Ghamari, Professor, Near Eastern Studies

Rena Lederman, Professor, Anthropology

Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Associate Professor, African American Studies and Art & Archaeology

Lara Harb, Associate Professor, Near Eastern Studies 

Gavin Steingo, Professor, Music

Julia Elyachar, Associate Professor, Anthropology and PIIRS

Katie Chenoweth, Associate Professor, French and Italian 

Zahid Chaudhary, Associate Professor, English

Gayle Salamon, Professor, English

Nick Nesbitt, Professor, French & Italian 

Satyel Larson, Assistant Professor, Near Eastern Studies

Hamza M. Zafer, Lecturer, Program in African Studies

Erin Besler, Assistant Professor, School of Architecture