37 professors sign pro-Palestine email, face pushback from colleagues

Occidental’s faculty received an email letter signed by 37 professors establishing solidarity with pro-Palestine movements Oct. 21. English professor Warren Montag sent the email to faculty, staff and student listservs. However, only faculty received the letter due to an email policy change that went into effect Oct. 9, according to Rod Leveque, Occidental’s vice president for marketing and communications. The letter faced quick pushback from colleagues over email and publicly online.

The letter recognized Palestinian and Israeli loss while citing Occidental’s Equity and Justice Agenda as evidence to support a free Palestine. The letter also called Israel a settler colonialist state, its attacks on Gaza a war crime and defined the violence in Gaza as genocide.

Two hours after the email was received by faculty, visiting assistant psychology professor Aviad Ozana sent a responding email directly addressed to Montag, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Dean of the College Wendy Sternberg, faculty, staff and students to critique what he called polarizing language used in the faculty email.

Ozana, an Israeli who moved to the US two years ago to pursue post-doctoral studies, said his intent in sending the email was to urge faculty and staff to embrace constructive discussion of the Israel-Palestine conflict. Similarly, his email response was only received by faculty.

When queried by The Occidental about the faculty letter, Montag responded via email. According to Montag, the signatories were unaware until quite recently that students did not receive the letter.

Montag said that the letter, as well as the emailed response to the newsroom, had been circulated and underwent revisions with the support and suggestions of other faculty on campus.

“Our signatories represent a wide range of identities and political positions of Occidental faculty, including those with ties to Palestine and Israel,” Montag told The Occidental via email. “As stated in the letter, we grieved — and continue to grieve — the ongoing loss of life.”

Occidental’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a student-led pro-Palestine group, shared the email on their public Instagram account Oct. 27. According to Montag, students in SJP asked for permission to post the letter and the signatories of the letter agreed to withhold their names as many of the faculty fear reprisal and harassment for defending Palestine on a public forum.

Ozana said when he opened the faculty letter he was shocked, embarrassed and ashamed by the strong language used by his colleagues.

As a former member of the Peace Now movement, which advocates for a two-state solution, Ozana said that he also supports a free Palestine. However, Ozana said that he found the faculty letter personally offensive as the language used felt one-sided.

Montag said their position is representative of committees of media watch organizations, the UN General Assembly and human rights organizations.

According to Montag, many of the letter’s signatories have had positive and productive, though at times uncomfortable, interactions with their students.

“We believe our students demonstrate thoughtfulness and curiosity; we believe that these characteristics are what draws them to Occidental College,” Montag said. “We believe that our students are ready to learn and unlearn, to engage in critical analyses that are both nuanced and necessary.”

Ozana, who is currently working as a research scientist at UC Riverside, said he particularly took issue with the use of the word “rage” in the faculty letter. Ozana said he knows people who are missing and have died as a result of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

Ozana said he is in a WhatsApp group with many Israeli scientists and academics. In the immediate aftermath of the Hamas attack, Ozana said that while he and his colleagues were mourning and traumatized, they observed people within the academic community celebrating the attack in online spaces.

In his response letter, Ozana said he included a petition that encourages members of the Occidental community to “avoid polarizing language and embrace a path towards peace,” which nine professors signed. He also said he received other messages of support from professors after he sent the email.

Professors must understand their position of power in relation to students particularly, Ozana said.

“Try to be responsible,” Ozana said. “Students see [the statements in the email] and can take them as facts. We’re turning into political players as academic communities. Radical aggressions don’t have a place in this community.”

Occidental particularly advocates a culture of inclusivity, and given the context, Ozana said, he felt the faculty letter was hostile.

“I’m not saying ‘Don’t criticize the Israeli government,’ but let’s try to do that so that no one feels attacked,” Ozana said.

Montag said the intent of the faculty letter was to address the rhetoric used in mainstream media and political discourses that has conflated the power dynamics when denouncing the violence in Palestine and Israel.

“We believe that our role as professors is to help facilitate robust inquiry into the most pressing issues of our time; oftentimes, that means working through discomfort and differences,” Montag said.

Another response to the faculty statement came from Comparative Studies in Literature & Culture professor and department chair, Jacob Mackey. In the days following the email, Mackey took to X, previously known as Twitter, sharing his worry that the letter can be interpreted as an endorsement of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel and discourages any criticism of the attack.

Mackey told The Occidental via email that he agrees with the concern expressed in the letter for Palestinian and Israeli deaths and the resulting rise in anti-Arab racism and anti-Semitism. However, he said he takes issue with many aspects of the letter.

“The statement characterizes Israel as a ‘settler colonialist state.’ This is factually inaccurate and extremely dangerous, for it suggests that Israel is an illegitimate country and that Jewish Israelis have no right to live there,” Mackey said via email.

Ozana similarly said that labeling Israel as a settler colonialist state implies that they are advocating for the removal of the entire state of Israel and its people. Using such terms, Ozana said, is a polarizing approach to the common goal of advocating for a free Palestine.

Mackey also shared his unease with the faculty letter’s claim that “to call one side’s actions ‘terrorism’ and the other ‘self-defense’ ignores decades of structural violence aided and abetted by US interest and tax dollars.”

While Mackey said he has no qualms criticizing Israeli and US policies, he interprets this sentence, given the timing, as discouraging people to call the Hamas attack what he believes it is — “an act of terror.”

Montag said the signatories’ goal was to situate the Hamas attack in the context of the long history of Israeli settlement, the 1948 mass displacement of Arab Palestinians and the struggle for Palestinian liberation.

The faculty letter does not explicitly mention the Hamas attack.

“To contextualize is not to condone Hamas’ violence; it is to try to comprehend it,” Montag said. “We also wanted to support students, faculty and staff affected by this dominant narrative that has contextualized the current crisis.”

On X and in his email response to The Occidental, Mackey said that the faculty’s letter was unclear and led him to question whether the signatories’ intent was to “rationalize, excuse, justify or even endorse” the Hamas attack. In particular, Mackey said he takes issue with a sentence in the faculty letter that states that demanding Palestinians must protest in an “appropriate” way and be “perfect victims,” “is to fall squarely into the camp of ‘both sides.”

“The most obvious interpretation [of this] is that the Hamas attack was a form of protest that should not be criticized,” Mackey said over the phone. “We have to reserve to ourselves the right to critique these acts.”

Mackey said he would leave it to his fellow faculty to clarify whether the faculty letter does, in fact, dissuade criticism of Hamas.

While Ozana said the professors have the right goals — to improve the well-being of the world — they are taking a risky and dangerous approach that could misinform and divide the Occidental community. Instead, Ozana said that advocates should set smaller achievable goals rather than setting to dismantle monumental ideas, which could lead to unintended negative consequences.

To advocate effectively, Ozana said professors cannot simply approach the issue through a black-and-white lens.

“Consider the gray areas — most people who seek peace achieve much more if you promote peace in a practical way,” Ozana said. “Try to promote a solution for everyone involved.”

Leveque said both emails were held on their way to students due to their violation of the Student Digest Policy. The policy states, among other things, that the student listserv “is not to be used for personal communications or discussions or to address controversial issues.”

The policy previously only applied to students when addressing emails to faculty and staff listservs. As of Oct. 9, the policy was expanded to include the moderation of emails sent between listservs by faculty and staff. According to Leveque, only emails sent within the same listserv will not be moderated.

Occidental’s Vice President of ITS James Uhrich announced the policy change at the Sept. 19 faculty meeting and in an Oct. 3 email to the staff listserv, Leveque said. According to the Oct. 3 email, the change is a result of transferring all listservs from the old system, Mailman, to Google Groups. The change was necessary, according to Uhrich, due to the antiquity of the previous email list system. Uhrich announced the change to the entire Occidental community in an Oct. 27 email.

Contact Mia Anzalone at anzalonem@oxy.edu

Clarification: This article was updated Nov. 1 at 10:16 a.m. to clarify a quote by Ozana.