67 Northwestern University Law Faculty on Hamas Massacre

It’s hard to get law professors, who tend to be prima donnas, to sign on to anything, so kudos to to the organizers of this letter.

One of the faculty signators, Prof. Kate Litvak, submitted the letter to the Northwestern University student newspaper, which declined to publish it. Instead, it chose to publish a letter by nine arts and science professors who described themselves as “scholars of the Middle East and North Africa.” The letter, which you can google but I won’t link to, includes: “To condemn Hamas’s attack while ignoring this broader context is to fail to understand how we got where we are today. Decontextualized declarations dismiss Palestinians’ struggle for rights and self-determination. They neglect the root causes of today’s violence.” I guess the good news is that the authors couldn’t find many any actual experts on MENA to sign. For example, of the the nine, two are art professors, and one is an English professor.

Anyway I was thinking of reprinting the Northwestern letter here, but the editorial decision of the school newspaper made the decision easy. Streisand effect it! (Note: I’ve heard that some faculty declined to sign because they thought the letter was insufficiently strongly pro-Israel and anti-Hamas.)

TO: Northwestern Pritzker Law School Community

FROM: Concerned Faculty

RE: Terrorism in Israel

On Saturday, October 7, Hamas terrorists perpetrated the greatest mass murder of Jews since the Holocaust. The massacre took the lives of over 1300 peaceful civilians of many nationalities, including at least 20 Americans. Many children were among the dead. Adjusted for population that would be about 45,000 deaths in the U.S., or fifteen 9/11 attacks in a single day.

Celebrants at a music festival were gunned down without mercy. Homes were invaded by gunmen, who used explosives to ensure there would be no survivors. There was no military purpose to the attack, only the goal of murdering as many Israeli civilians as possible. The terrorists posted videos of their barbarous acts. Over 100 hostages were kidnapped and taken back to Gaza, evidently including two women from Evanston.

These events have affected many students and faculty, of all faiths and backgrounds, in the Northwestern Pritzker community. In Israel, 18 students from our partner Tel Aviv University are among the murdered.

As faculty members dedicated to the rule of law, we choose to make clear that we unequivocally condemn Hamas’s wanton acts of terrorism, which have made the establishment of a just peace, recognizing the human rights of every community, all the more difficult to achieve.

Some have claimed that the Hamas atrocities must be blamed on Israel. What Hamas perpetrated was unspeakably evil. It is dehumanizing to blame the murders on the victims. We absolutely reject such acceptance, and near-endorsement, of terrorism.

Signed,

Ronald J. Allen, John Henry Wigmore Professor of Law
Karen Alter, Professor of Political Science and Law, Norman Dwight Harris Professor of International Relations
Herbert N. Beller, Professor of Practice Emeritus
Maurine J Berens, Clinical Associate Professor
Bernard Black, Chabraja Professor, Northwestern University, Pritzker Law School and Kellogg School of Management
Sarah Megan Brown, Clinical Assistant Professor of Law
Robert Burns, William W. Gurley Memorial Professor of Law Emeritus
Steven Gow Calabresi, Clayton J. & Henry R. Barber Professor of Law
Lynn Cohn, Clinical Professor of Law and Co-Director of the Center on Negotiation, Mediation, and Restorative Justice
Charlotte Crane, Professor of Law Emerita
Jason C DeSanto, Senior Lecturer
Shari Seidman Diamond, Howard J. Trienens Professor of Law and Professor of Psychology
Stephanie Holmes Didwania, Associate Professor of Law
John S. Elson, Professor of Law Emeritus
Thomas L. Eovaldi, Professor of Law Emeritus
Michelle Falkoff, Clinical Professor of Law and Director, Communication and Legal Reasoning
Clinton William Francis, Professor of Law
Alexandra M. Franco, Lecturer, Master of Science in Law Program
Carolyn E. Frazier, Clinical Professor of Law
Ibrahim Gassama, Visiting Professor
Tom Gaylord, Associate Law Librarian for Scholarly Communications
Thomas Geraghty, Professor of Law Emeritus
Meredith Geller, Director of the Writing Lab and Clinical Professor of Law
Ari Glogower, Professor of Law
Adam Hoeflich, Professor of Practice
Rebekah Holman, Clinical Assistant Professor of Law
Allan Horwich Professor of Practice Emeritus
Elizabeth L. Inglehart, Clinical Associate Professor of Law
Michael S. Kang, Class of 1940 Professor of Law
Martha Kanter, Clinical Assistant Professor of Law
Andrew Koppelman, John Paul Stevens Professor of Law and Professor (by courtesy) of Political Science
Kate Litvak, Professor of Law
Monica Llorente, Senior Lecturer
James Lupo, Professor of Practice
Steven Lubet, Williams Memorial Professor of Law Emeritus
Thomas Lys, Professor of Law (by curtesy), emeritus
John O McGinnis, George C. Dix Professor in Constitutional Law
Ajay K. Mehrotra, William G. and Virginia K. Karnes Research Professor of Law
Marjorie B. Moss, Director, Social Work Advocacy Program Bluhm Legal Clinic
Wendy Muchman, Professor of Practice
Ellen Mulaney, Senior Lecturer Emerita
John M. O’Hare, Lecturer
Leslie A Oster, Clinical Associate Professor
Laura Pedraza-Fariña, Professor of Law
Philip F Postlewaite, Harry R. Horrow Professor of Law
Stephen B. Presser, Raoul Berger Professor of Legal History Emeritus
Laura Rankin, Clinical Assistant Professor of Law
Martin H Redish, Louis and Harriet Ancel Professor of Law and Public Policy
Leonard Riskin, Visiting Professor of Law
Daniel B. Rodriguez, Harold Washington Professor of Law and Dean Emeritus
Judith A. Rosenbaum, Clinical Professor of Law
Leonard Rubinowitz, Professor of Law
Stephen Sawyer, Clinical Associate Professor Emeritus
Max Schanzenbach, Seigle Family Professor of Law
David L. Schwartz, Frederic P. Vose Professor of Law
Seema K. Shah, Founder’s Board Professor of Medical Ethics, Lurie Children’s Hospital, Northwestern Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, by courtesy
Helene S. Shapo, Professor of Law Emeritus
Brian Silbernagel, Clinical Associate Professor of Law
Matthew L. Spitzer, Howard and Elizabeth Chapman Professor of Law, Emeritus
Sam Tenenbaum, Clinical Professor of Law
John B. Thornton, Clinical Associate Professor of Law
Amy Tomaszewski, Faculty Services and Digital Strategies Librarian
Deborah Tuerkheimer, Class of 1967 James B. Haddad Professor
Jessie Wang-Grimm, Clinical Assistant Professor of Law
Robert A. Weinstock, Director, Environmental Advocacy Center & Clinical Associate Professor of Law
Barry Scott Wimpfheimer, Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Law
Kimberly Yuracko, Judd and Mary Morris Leighton Professor of Law