As Case Western Reserve University alumni who have spent time in Palestine, we enthusiastically support the CWRU students who are demanding free speech and the right to protest at our university. We are gratified that the faculty at CWRU School of Law have unanimously affirmed this right, noting that the administration’s new policies to severely restrict student protests in support of Gaza represent a denial of the students’ free speech. The CWRU administration must reverse course. It must meet openly and fairly with official student groups and negotiate in good faith, which has not occurred.

We were present when dozens of CWRU students blocked Euclid Avenue to protest the National Guard killing students at Kent State University in 1970. They were driven back into the Student Union by Cleveland Police on horseback swinging nightsticks. History now credits such nationwide student protests as a turning point in ending an unjust Vietnam War. Today’s student protests are mild by comparison and deserve to be encouraged, not blocked by CWRU’s administration.

We hope the administration can now play the role of an “honest broker” as college students and society at large struggle with the paramount human rights issues of our times.

Thomas Kim Hill 1973

Janet M. Loehr 1974