Open Letter from Faculty and Staff

Faculty and Staff at Sarah Lawrence College

Photograph by Don Hamerman via sarahlawrence.edu

The Editorial Board of The Phoenix received this open letter from a group of Sarah Lawrence professors and faculty, signed below, with the request that we publish it on their behalf. The form in which it is published here is how we received it. This is the first open letter published by The Phoenix, and while this is new territory for us, we do feel it is important to allow space for this conversation to continue. We will follow this story as it unfolds, and are prepared to cover any conversations or responses that arise from the publication of this letter. This open letter is being published here in the interest of covering developing news at Sarah Lawrence College.

This letter does not necessarily reflect the opinion of The Phoenix as a news organization.

November 2, 2025

We write as Jewish faculty and staff at Sarah Lawrence College. Far from a cohesive group, we represent a diverse range of Jewish backgrounds and hold divergent perspectives on the politics of Israel and Palestine. Some of us have a direct professional connection to these issues and teach classes on them. Some of us lost loved ones in Israel on October 7, 2023. Among our ranks are those who identify as Zionist, anti-Zionist, and post-Zionist. Nor are we aligned in our reactions to the student protests that erupted on campus in the aftermath of October 7. 

What unifies this otherwise loose coalition is a steadfast commitment to providing the best possible liberal arts education to all of our students, which requires us to do everything in our power as faculty and staff to ensure that our campus remains a diverse and tolerant academic community where open discourse and debate can thrive, and where every student feels free to disagree with one another and safe to learn. Regrettably, fulfilling this most essential mission of the College has been rendered significantly more challenging in light of the federal government’s heavy-handed and disingenuous response to what many of us feel are legitimate concerns about the rise of antisemitism across the political spectrum, both inside and outside of institutions of higher education. Sarah Lawrence has received its undue share of attention in the national media, having been targeted as one of the many offending academic institutions along these lines.

As Jewish faculty and staff, we feel fatefully caught between the Scylla of acknowledging that anti-Jewish bigotry exists on our campus (as it does on many campuses across the U.S.), and the Charybdis of recognizing that admitting this truth has the unfortunate effect of feeding directly into the agenda of a federal administration that cynically exploits claims of alleged campus antisemitism to wage a wider war against higher education, which it perceives as an ideological enemy that must be brought to heel. Navigating this deep underlying tension has, just within our own group, produced a striking range of experiences of being Jewish on campus since October 7.

Whatever our differences, we nonetheless find ourselves unified by a basic set of principles and objectives that we seek to clarify here, with two discrete audiences in mind:

To those beyond our campus gates: While we acknowledge that antisemitism lurks on our campus, and that the lived experience for many of our Jewish community members has become increasingly fraught over the last two years, we staunchly reject the caricature of our campus that has been harnessed by the Trump administration and its allies to smear us across various online media. Despite its flaws, Sarah Lawrence remains a rich and vibrant intellectual community, where respectful and thoughtful intellectual exchange flourishes as a hallmark of our classroom experience. Those of us who teach courses focusing specifically on the complex histories of Israel and Palestine, or Zionist and anti-Zionist politics, have been continually impressed by our students’ ability to engage in mature and thoughtful discussions on the most sensitive aspects of these issues—conversations that exemplify our students’ genuine desire to learn from one another. These students need our continued respect and support, and they deserve the opportunity to engage in complex political and humanistic inquiry devoid of the external political pressure that stifles free, critical thought. 

Moreover, Sarah Lawrence is home to several Jewish student organizations, each of which regularly sponsors social and cultural events that are designed to appeal to a wide cross-section of our Jewish student body. Since the events of October 7, the College has also organized academic programs—such as faculty forums and a panel of outside experts on Israel/Palestine—to educate our campus community and foster meaningful and respectful dialogue around these sensitive topics, while also working through various channels to promote interfaith learning and understanding. In short, there is far more richness, diversity, dynamism, and complexity to our campus Jewish life than prevailing media characterizations would allow.

To fellow members of the Sarah Lawrence Community: We understand that we, as a community, have sometimes failed these past two years to hear each other, to support each other, and to nurture the learning environment that we all deserve. We have too often talked past each other instead of doing the hard work of listening and empathizing that is required for our campus to heal. As faculty and staff, we pledge to do better to help move beyond the impasse, and many of us are committed to organizing additional events in the upcoming academic year to educate our campus community about the knotted, intertwined histories and politics of Israel and Palestine. 

All of this requires that our campus administration continue its unwavering commitment to protect the academic freedom of every single member of the Sarah Lawrence community. As faculty members, we are deeply grateful that our autonomy as educators is still sacrosanct at Sarah Lawrence: that we are free to run our classrooms as we see fit—leading our students through difficult but necessary conversations around the most sensitive issues of the day—without fear of repercussion or recrimination. This must continue. Similarly, our students must be absolutely free to speak their minds, ask hard questions, and take the risks that are so vital for true intellectual growth, without feeling that their words and actions are under national scrutiny, or are at risk of being used as fodder in a malicious political gambit on the part of outside actors.

We pledge to do our part to foster the tolerant and open learning environment that is at the core of Sarah Lawrence’s mission. At the same time, we trust that our college administration will redouble its commitment to protecting our fundamental rights and freedoms as we continue to navigate these turbulent waters.

Neil Arditi

Melvin Bukiet

David Castriota

Melinda Cohen

Matthew Ellis

Marek Fuchs

Myla Goldberg

Myra Goldberg

Patricia Goldman

Michelle Hersh

Brian Morton

David Peritz

Rachelle Rumph

Brandon Schechter

Fredric Smoler

Joel Swanson

Carol Zoref