Dear faculty of Whitman College,

This Friday you will be voting on a resolution to encourage the board of trustees to divest from corporations providing weapons and technology to countries engaged in violations of international law. As students of Whitman College graduating in the class of 2025, we believe that divestment from the military-industrial complex is a moral necessity, especially in light of Israel’s war crimes against Palestine which are primarily carried out with American weapons and funding. We strongly encourage you to support this resolution.

Since October 2023, every university in Gaza has been targeted and destroyed by Israel. Over 90% of schools in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed, many of which were being used as shelters when they were attacked. More than 625,000 students in Gaza have missed over a year of school due to the war. Over 14,000 students in Gaza have been killed, and over 22,000 have been injured. Over 850 educational staff in Gaza have been killed, and over 4,000 have been injured. This aspect of Israel’s assault has been labeled as “scholasticide” by the United Nations, which refers to the intentional, systemic obliteration of the educational system of a people. And yet this is just one part of Israel’s genocide. More than 62,000 people have been killed and 120,000 injured directly by Israel’s attacks, and tens of thousands have died from disease, starvation and other consequences of Israel’s policies. Nearly all of the two million people living in Gaza have been forcibly displaced at least once in the last 20 months. Israel’s government has made it clear they intend to ethnically cleanse all Palestinians from Gaza and annex the territory, a plan our government under the Trump administration supports. This level of present and continued destruction would not be possible without the supply of arms from American military corporations, including those Whitman College is invested in.

As members of the global academic community, you have a responsibility to help uphold the principles of equitable access to knowledge and resources. Performing academic work in Gaza has long been incredibly challenging, as academic freedom and scientific inquiry cannot thrive under conditions of siege. Since 2007 Israel has maintained a land, air and sea blockade on the Gaza Strip preventing the importation of countless resources. This has intensified in recent months with a total ban on all food, water, fuel, and medicine from entering Gaza since March 2nd, resulting in mass starvation. Among many other dire consequences, the blockade limits academics and researchers in Gaza from being able to obtain laboratory equipment, supplies for their work, and resources for education. To take science as an example, according to The Lancet, “Palestinian science faces systematic erasure to become a scientist in the Gaza Strip, you must overcome insurmountable difficulties, including water, food, electricity, and fuel scarcity; severe travel restrictions; little funding and investment in science; and substantial restrictions on both access to equipment for scientific experiments and collaborations with international scientists.” (Albhaisi 2024)

These are just the material obstacles that academics in Gaza face. There is also the trauma, terror, and grief of living under a genocide. From the testimony of Dr. Rami Morjan, Professor of Organic Chemistry and Vice Dean of the College of Science at the Islamic University of Gaza: “I cannot forget the day when I had my last conversation with one of my former students, who had become my right hand in our small research laboratory. Just eight hours later, I learned that she had been killed, along with all of her family. The only survivor was her 4-year-old daughter. She was a young, promising woman researcher. She was killed before we could publish the results of her master’s thesis. I felt as if I was losing a part of my body with every stone that fell from our universities due to their missiles, and I lost my soul when I heard of the killings of my students and colleagues.” After its destruction, the Islamic University of Gaza became a makeshift refugee shelter. According to Al Jazeera, “Families have set up tents in lecture halls and classrooms. They take books from the library and burn them in cooking fires because they have no fuel. Children run around in gardens reduced to fields of debris and mounds of earth.”

Whitman College is estimated to have at least $16,000,000 of its endowment invested in military corporations, many of which supply Israel with the weapons necessary to continue its crimes against Palestine. The exact figure and details are not known because the investment portfolio has not been disclosed. Even if it weren’t for this ongoing genocide, divesting from the military-industrial complex would still be the right choice, as we do not want our college to financially support and profit from war and oppression. For many years students have worked to pressure the board of trustees to disclose the full investment portfolio of the endowment and divest from military corporations and Israel, with their efforts greatly expanding since the start of the current war. In November 2023 students put forth a proposal for divestment to the board, and if the board adhered to Whitman College’s supposed values of maintaining academic equity and access to education, they would have accepted the proposal with ease. Instead they rejected it and have since refused any and all attempts by students to work towards divestment. At the same time, Whitman’s policies on treating student activists have become increasingly draconian. Campus security has harassed, intimidated, and called the police on students for peacefully protesting. An armed private security guard was hired to protect Memorial Hall from vandalism, violating college policy on firearms and without any prior announcement to the campus. And while the Trump administration targets pro-Palestine student activists with mass deportations, our president Sarah Bolton and other members of the administration have refused to promise to substantively push back when ICE inevitably targets students on our campus.

According to the “Statement of Academic Freedom” policy on Whitman College’s website, “The faculty of Whitman College affirm the centrality of academic freedom to the mission of a liberal arts education. We as teacher-scholars are engaged in the pursuit of knowledge and this pursuit can only flourish in a climate of freedom that encourages critical inquiry, open discussion, and the free exchange of ideas. This freedom is central to our ability to provide the best possible education to our students, and thus is central to our institution.” The two million Palestinians in Gaza do not have academic freedom. Israel and the United States are working overtime to ensure they never do. And the current administration of Whitman College – your employer – is complicit in the scholasticide and genocide of Gaza in exchange for a slightly higher return on investments. Ask yourself: how many more students and teachers need to die before the board of trustees change their mind?

Whitman students will continue to put their reputations, their safety, and their diplomas on the line to protest the disgraceful actions of Whitman’s administration. Your voices would lend tremendous support to their efforts. In the 1980s when students at Whitman College engaged in similar protests in support of divestment from apartheid South Africa, Whitman’s administration did not alter course until the United States government banned new investments in South Africa. The board of trustees was on the wrong side of history then, and still is today. When the board began the process of divesting from the fossil fuel industry several years ago, they cited the broad support of faculty, including the passing of a faculty resolution like this one, as a key reason for their decision. Some people have had concerns that resolutions such as these and divestment itself may bring undue attention to our college, but the events of recent months have made it clear that our best option is to stand up for our rights and the rights of others, not stay silent. We urge you to stand on the side of justice and academic freedom by voting yes on this resolution, and we thank you immensely for your support.

Sincerely,

Alicia Fogarty, BBMB and Classics & Classical Studies

Allyson Kim, Ethics & Society

Anna Gustafson, Sociology

Ash Barcott, Philosophy

Bailey Berger, Psychology

Carlee Allen, Art and Rhetoric, Writing, & Public Discourse

Carmel Stephan, Music History

Carsten Wallace-Bailey, Psychology and Film & Media Studies

Cecilia Camlin, History

Chloe Jackson, Sociology and Art

Clara Flesher, English

Corey Nave, Physics-Astronomy

Dora Trinkle, Biology-Environmental Studies

Dorothea Orth-Smith, English

Ella Johnson, Film & Media Studies

Elle Palmer, Politics and South Asian & Middle Eastern Studies

Ellie Cain, Ethics & Society

Georgianna Peterson, Politics and Ethics & Society

Grace Ireland, Rhetoric, Writing & Public Discourse

Henry Roller, Biology-Environmental Studies

Isabella Hill, History

Isabella Nasman, Environmental Science and Politics

Jack Moffett, Brain, Behavior & Cognition

Jenner Beutel, Physics

Jonah Rosen-Bloom, Geology

Kaitlyn Salazar, Psychology and Environmental Studies

Kate Moe, Politics

Kiara Jenkins, Theater

Kimberly Auran, English

Liv Napadensky, Brain, Behavior & Cognition

LJ Friedman, Computer Science

Loela Dickey, English

Madeline Senter, French & Francophone Studies and Gender Studies

Margaret Kanyoko, Chinese and Economics

Mark Muwanguzi-Bamusiima, Economics

Max Browning, English

Megan Marshall, Brain, Behavior & Cognition

Megan Wick, English

Mia Castrina, Studio Art

Michael Putz, Anthropology and Environmental Studies

Montana Azzolini, Biology-Geology

Nadja Goldberg, IRES

Nate Korahais, Sociology

Nazaaha Penick, English

Peter Hogan, Mathematics

Quinn Jurek, Rhetoric and Ethics

Reagan Bain, Politics

Rebecca Patterson, Geology

Rebecca “Bex” Heimbrock, Religion and IRES

Reilly Mcvay, Politics

Rocio Josephine Lybarger-Yanes, Politics and Environmental Studies

Sam Bidwell, Mathematics

Sam Stolle, Politics

Sawyer Valero, Politics

Sonia Burns, Biology-Environmental Studies

Sonia Xu, Astronomy

Sophia Bianco, English

Stella Coomes, Gender Studies

Tayva Anderson, Rhetoric, Writing & Public Discourse

Anonymous, English

Anonymous, Psychology

Anonymous, Psychology

Anonymous, Politics and Economics