Two WashU Professors have attached their names to a now-infamous letter accusing Israel of committing an “internationally supported genocide.” This letter, which is a publicly advertised and available Google Doc, is billed as being a letter of “Sociologists in Solidarity with Gaza and the Palestinian People,” and makes many accusations against the Jewish State, accusing it of committing “genocide,” “colonialism,” and “Imperialism.” Furthermore, the letter compares Israeli actions to the Holocaust (by stating that pro-Israel states are forgetting “Never Again”), which is a form of Holocaust Distortion/Denial and a form of antisemitism according to the non-partisan American Jewish Committee. It is shocking that two WashU professors have publicly affixed their names to an antisemitic and anti-Israel letter.
Luckily, the two WashU Professors involved in this, Yannick Coenders and Nadirah Farah Foley, are only assistant professors and thus lack any control over WashU’s departments. However, it is still very concerning that WashU has professors who would sign such a biased and inflammatory letter. Furthermore, Professor Foley has a very prominent public profile, and she co-wrote an article for the New York Times in 2018, where she discussed her support for the use of race in “holistic” admissions at various elite colleges, instead of running admissions based on merit and the content of one’s character. Furthermore, Foley’s website presents us with many other concerning details about herself and her work. For instance, she has taught a course called “Reconsidering Merit,” in the syllabus of which she recommends that students take the course “SAT/UNSAT” (Pass/Fail), as “focusing on grades and achievement is antithetical to the kind of grappling with subjectivity that I hope we can engage in as a class.” Furthermore, in the course she appears to portray merit as a subjective “construction,” and she explores how it interacts with concepts such as “race” and “gendered constructions.” On these points, Foley asks her students in the syllabus “How do constructions of merit, if gendered, shape opportunity and inequality for gender minorities?” and “How do racial minorities experience and conceptualize merit differently?” Thus, Foley can be considered firmly postmodern, seeking to “deconstruct” everything and turn everything into a “subjective experience” in the absence of any reality and objective truth.
Yannick Coenders, by contrast, does not have a large public profile. He does have a Twitter account, which he posts prolifically on. For instance (as shown in the below image), Coenders has retweeted the “Democratic Socialists of America” accusing Israel of being responsible for the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians. Coenders (who is Dutch) also responded to a Dutch municipality raising an Israeli flag in solidarity with the victims of Hamas by stating that he wished the action was “Israel stops the brutal violence,” thus accusing Israel of being behind the Hamas attacks on Israeli civilians.
Coenders has also retweeted another account that approvingly quoted a Palestinian activist who said “We [Palestinians] know israel is going to kill us anyways… So why not fight back and die in dignity?” This quote seems to suggest that Hamas’s terror attacks are merely dying “with dignity,” and that Israel desires the death of Palestinians (which is demonstrably false, as shown by Israel’s attempts to establish peaceful relations with the Palestinians since the Oslo Accords). That WashU has a professor who approves of such views (as Coenders appears to) should be of concern to all students, Jewish or not.
Along with the two WashU Professors, the antisemitic and anti-Israel letter was signed by six PhD students, Cinthia J. Romo Alba, Christian Maddox, Armin Sauermann, Iteoluwakiishi (Rebecca) Arigbabu, Han Koehle, and Asha Larson-Baldwin.