Dear President Daniels:

As alumni and community members of Johns Hopkins University, we are alarmed and angered by your recent surrender to the anti-Israel encampment that occupied the Homewood Beach in violation of University policies. As the encampment organizers gleefully announced, you agreed to “protect” student participants from disciplinary consequences for their actions and expedited by five months an ongoing University deliberation on divesting from companies that do business with the State of Israel. We consider your actions to have been an effective surrender to the anti-Israel mob in exchange for their promise to “not engage in further disruptions of university activities, including Commencement.” (Predictably, protesters appear to have already violated this agreement, apparently without consequence.)

Your surrender to an angry mob is especially shameful in light of the intolerable environment the encampment created for your Jewish students, faculty, and staff. 

• Encampment participants conveyed a variety of messages, some of which were clearly violent and/or antisemitic. Literature distributed at the encampment called for participants to “expel Zionist bosses.” The Jewish Students Association board (in a thoughtful and balanced letter expressing concerns about the encampment) shared reports of crowds chanting “smash Zionism,” calling for “intifada,” claiming that “Zionism upholds Nazi ideology” and calling for Palestine’s “enemies” to be “squashed” and “defeated.”

• According to WBAL, a Jewish student reported that she was assaulted on campus by an encampment participant who told her to “go back to Europe.” This was not an isolated incident for your Jewish students. WBAL reported that “multiple Jewish students told 11 News that pro-Palestine protesters have targeted them.”

• Before you capitulated to them, encampment organizers seemed to be preparing for a violent altercation, with organizers issuing what you described as a “call on social media for ‘tables, masks, chains, locks, sandbags, tents, pallets, goggles, gloves, tarps, sheets, zip ties, PVC piping, 2x4 nails, trash bags, [and] hammers.’”

• Organizers asked all participants to remain masked at all times while also inviting people unaffiliated with the university to join the encampment. As you noted, when taken together, this allowed unknown and potentially dangerous actors with no connection to the university or Baltimore communities to infiltrate the mob and escalate tensions. Being verbally or physically assaulted by fully masked protesters was a scary experience for many Jewish students, evoking memories of the cowardly hate groups throughout American history that have hidden behind masks and/or hoods.

Under any circumstances, it raises concerns about equity and nondiscrimination for the University to exempt one group of students from following ordinary University disciplinary policies. However, in light of the antisemitic messaging and violence to emerge from the encampment, your (for-now partial) surrender to its demands conveys a particularly frightening message to your Jewish students, faculty, staff, and alumni. Our concern about your ability to provide a safe and equitable environment for Jewish students is only heightened by other high-profile incidents of antisemitism on campus in recent years.

At this juncture, we find ourselves asking difficult questions about the university and our relationship to it as alumni, contributors, taxpayers, and citizens:

• Can we still recommend Johns Hopkins as a worthy school to which we’d encourage our children and community members to apply? Our concerns about recommending Hopkins to prospective Jewish students are heightened by the university’s “D” rating from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), as a result of what the ADL describes as a “deficient approach” to combating antisemitism on campus.

• Is Hopkins still an institution worthy of financial support? We are deeply impressed by the contributions Hopkins’ research and education has made to the broader world. Yet it is difficult to justify financial support for an institution that cannot provide a safe and nondiscriminatory environment for Jewish students, particularly in light of superior performances in combating antisemitism from peer or nearby institutions such as Maryland, Duke, Dartmouth, and WashU.

• Is Hopkins still in compliance with federal law? We are deeply ashamed to see our alma mater facing a Department of Education civil rights investigation into antisemitism on campus. Because our commitment to the truth and to fighting antisemitism supersedes our loyalty to the university, we will encourage anyone within our networks to share relevant information with the Department of Education.

• Does Hopkins still deserve the massive favors it receives from the City of Baltimore and the State of Maryland? Johns Hopkins currently pays the City of Baltimore no property taxes (and only a token alternative payment) on its $2.6 billion portfolio of Baltimore real estate, much of which is being used for profitable investment or economic development purposes unconnected to Hopkins’ core mission. In addition, Hopkins has the state-granted right to maintain a private police force authorized to arrest members of the Baltimore community. To protect these special privileges, Hopkins is currently the second-largest spender on lobbyists to influence the Maryland state government. These legal privileges are granted to Hopkins by state and local governments with the implicit understanding that Hopkins is a well-run institution that contributes positively to the Baltimore and Maryland communities. In light of recent events that call this into question, those of us who live in Baltimore or elsewhere in Maryland will work with our elected officials to hold Hopkins accountable.

Each of us looks back fondly on our time as Hopkins students and have been proud to be associated with America’s first research university. However, Jewish history teaches us that we cannot stand idly by as antisemitic mobs disrupt campuses or bully Jewish students and faculty. We demand that Johns Hopkins enforce its own policies in a consistent and nondiscriminatory manner and that your Administration provide a safe and equitable environment for Jewish members of the Hopkins community. Our concerns are especially urgent in light of the near certainty that the now-victorious encampment organizers will repeat or escalate their tactics as a final decision on divestment from Israel approaches. In addition to demanding total academic and financial divestment from Israel, a future encampment could issue blatantly antisemitic demands (as has happened at other campuses), including the expulsion of Hillel and Chabad from campus. Unless you are prepared to stand up to the mob, organized Jewish life at Hopkins could entirely disappear.

We believe you still have the chance to change course and provide a safe and nondiscriminatory environment for your Jewish and pro-Israel students. We ask that you meet with us as soon as possible. We would like to hear how you plan to live up to your own commitments to Jewish students who (as you report) have told you that they feel “increasingly silenced, unwelcome, or unsafe.”

Respectfully,

[Signatories’ Name and Affiliation]