Press release: 168 Brown University faculty sign letter in support of arrested students

"...we must affirm the principles of academic freedom and free speech for all on our campus, alongside the rejection of hate speech including antisemitism, Islamophobia, and anti-Arab racism."

On Friday, November 10, more than 190 Brown University faculty members delivered a letter, now published in the Brown Daily Herald, to President Christina Paxson in support of the 20 Jewish Brown students who were arrested Wednesday night for staging a peaceful sit-in at Brown’s main administrative building, University Hall. The students, members of BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now, were calling on the University to do its part in promoting an immediate ceasefire and a lasting peace in Gaza. The letter calls on President Paxson to drop all legal charges levied against students, to exempt students from disciplinary action, and to open a serious campus-wide conversation on the sit-in demands - in particular, to reopen discussion of divestment from weapons manufacturers profiting from ongoing violence in Gaza, following the recommendations of the Brown University Advisory Committee on Corporate Responsibility in Investment Practices’ 2020 report “To Recommend Divestment from Companies that Facilitate the Israeli Occupation of Palestinian Territory.” 

The letter highlights the sit-in as the latest in a long history of student civil disobedience on Brown’s campus, actions protected by the right of freedom of expression. “The students in question undertook a peaceful act of civil disobedience, following a time-honored American tradition,” the faculty wrote. “Protest in the form of sit-ins is a vital part of the legacy of Brown University, of which we can all be proud. Brown’s most important historic commitments, including…partial divestment of $4.6 million of holdings from corporations ‘aiding South African racism’ (1984-85)…emerged partly as outcomes of such sit-ins and occupations by which students ‘express[ed] their beliefs on matters of conscience.’” 

“As each student was led out handcuffed from University Hall, they were greeted by hundreds of students—Jewish, Arab, Black, Hispanic, and many others—singing prayers and songs of solidarity in Hebrew,” the letter wrote. “At a time when peer universities are experiencing unparalleled levels of conflict, tension, and toxicity, Brown’s students enacted on November 8th the kind of moral courage and peaceful solidarity that we at Brown have historically cultivated and defended. Their action illustrates dramatically that Brown has a singular history and legacy.” 

Given President Paxson’s writing on free speech and censorship on campuses, the faculty letter calls on President Paxson to exhibit “moral leadership,” both in protecting the right to peaceful protest and in responding to the demands of the sit-in: “Please let what happened yesterday at University Hall be not a crisis but an opportunity for Brown to show its moral leadership and to provide a model for how a community may come together and what it may thoughtfully do,” the letter reads. Citing the op-ed published by BrownU Jews for Ceasefire in the Brown Daily Herald on November 7, 2023, faculty signers also endorsed discussion of divestment from weapons manufacturers: “We call on you, Madam President, to lead the way in proactively engaging a conversation on the important issues raised by the BrownU Jews For Ceasefire students: the call for a ceasefire in Gaza, the active and explicit protection of students’ and faculty’s right to speak up for Palestinian rights, and the call to reopen discussion on divestment, starting from the basis of the 2020 ACCRIP recommendation on divestment.” 

In the past month over 1,500 Brown University faculty and students have signed statements in support of divestment, adding their names to hundreds already signed on. In a letter published on Tuesday, 168 Brown University faculty publicly urged the university to “join the international calls for an immediate ceasefire” and to protect students advocating for Palestinian rights. This latest letter from faculty to President Paxson, in response to the BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now sit-in, will be the first time since Oct. 7 that Brown faculty will have explicitly called to reopen the conversation on divestment. 

“We urge you to exercise thoughtful, moral leadership at this critical time, Madam President, and thus enable Brown University to be on the right side of history,” the letter concluded. 

Background Information: 

Over 1,400 Israelis and over 10,000 Palestinians have been killed since the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7. In light of the thousands of innocent civilian deaths in Gaza made possible by American military aid and weapons shipments to Israel, BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now demands that Brown University work to promote lasting peace by divesting its endowment from companies profiting from the war in Gaza. The group joins a growing movement of American Jews calling for the end to this genocide.

In March 2019, as a part of the Brown University Undergraduate Council of Students’ annual election cycle, undergraduate students voted on a referendum calling upon the administration to “divest all stocks, funds, endowment and other monetary instruments from companies complicit in human rights abuses in Palestine and establish a means of implementing financial transparency and student oversight of the University’s investments.” The referendum passed with overwhelming support among those who voted. But President Christina Paxson refused to support divestment, stating that “Brown’s endowment is not a political instrument.” Jews for Ceasefire Now rejects that Brown’s financial support of weapons manufacturers who profit off the war in Gaza represents an apolitical position. 

“We are Jewish students. So many of us have lost ancestors to anti-Jewish violence: we recognize more than anyone the threat of antisemitism, but we do not feel threatened by Palestine advocacy at Brown” said Anila Marks, a member of the sit-in and member of BrownU Jews for Ceasefire Now. “It is my personal belief that the Jewish call to justice cannot be ignored. When militant anti-humanitarian forces actively threaten human lives, as they have in Gaza, we share a collective responsibility, as Jewish people, to stand behind social justice and peace.”

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