We, Alumni for a Fair and Just Cornell, envision a path to peace based on these concepts and initiatives:
1. Support and empower students. At Cornell and around the world, students and youth have been at the heart of the movements for peace and justice. Students helped lead the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, the civil rights movement, the climate justice movement and the opposition to the US war in Vietnam. Unfortunately, Interim President Kotlikoff has belittled students, attempted to intimidate them, suspended them without due process and threatened them with deportation.
2. End U.S. military aid to Israel. The U.S. has given more than $300 billion in military aid to Israel since 1948. Israel has used recent funding to drop more than 70,000 tons of bombs on Gaza, more than three times the Hiroshima nuclear equivalent tonnage.
3. End the U.S. veto in the United Nations Security Council, which undermines international law, and blocks a path for peace. For decades, the U.S. has abused its veto power in the Security Council to shield Israel from accountability. It has single-handedly blocked resolutions calling for peace, ceasefires, humanitarian aid and investigations into war crimes.
4. Redirect Jacobs Technion-Cornell Institute from sanitizing and enabling Israeli apartheid to helping rebuild Gaza at the forefront of environmental sustainability, powered year-round by clean, renewable energy. Cornell should divest from weapons manufacturers, and invest in life.
5. Oppose the Kotlikoff, Trump and Zionist attacks on academic freedom and free speech. Adopt the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism. Zionism is settler-colonialism and racism and not a path to peace. Stating this should not be criminalized.
6. Support the rights of Palestinians as a people to determine their future, including the right of Palestinian refugees to return to their pre-1948 homes, as recognized by international law.
7. Oppose war-mongering U.S. politicians. End U.S. military meddling in Europe, the Middle East and Asia. Build peace and prosperity at home, for people and the planet.
Barbara Lou Taam ’74
On behalf of Alumni for a Fair and Just Cornell which can be reached by email at alumni.fj.cornell@gmail.com.
