How many wounded, starving and murdered Palestinians do we need to bear witness to before those in power actually take action? As Tufts University community members, as activists and scholars and as human beings, we are horror-struck by the ongoing genocide being perpetrated against Palestinians by Israel. Our horror is further compounded by Tufts’ silence and refusal to implement any concrete measures to end its complicity in the genocide.
Silence is complicity, and Tufts is failing its community.
We refuse to accept the current reality that our beloved university, which claims to uphold values of ‘inclusion’ and ‘diversity,’ has today actively chosen to remain silent as an entire people are being forcibly starved and massacred by Israel, a state many identify as ethno-nationalist. We have collectively witnessed months of death, destruction and starvation, with entire families and cities erased.
We expect more from our role models and authority figures.
As of Sept. 2, 2025, Israel has killed at least 63,633 people in Gaza since the genocide began. The true casualty rate is almost certainly much, much higher. This grim data, alongside overwhelming evidence of genocidal intent, confirms what scholars, lawyers and human rights campaigners have been crying for months: genocide.
This week, the world’s largest academic association of genocide scholars passed a resolution declaring that Israel's actions in Palestine meet the legal criteria to be formally considered genocide. So why is Tufts not acting accordingly?
As community members and alumni, we have approached Tufts leadership three times with concrete demands to end their complicity in the genocide. Our community letter, circulated in March 2025, garnered 3,441 signatures from concerned community members, and included demands related to divestment and the protection of students in the wake of Rümeysa Öztürk’s arrest. On April 1, 2025, we formally submitted our demands to the Tufts administration.
To date, and despite escalating horrors, we have been met with total silence in the face of our demands. Our ongoing attempts to end the University's complicity with Israeli crimes have until now failed to convince the Tufts leadership to act. Inspired by the calls from Palestinian civil society asking for an end to our complicity in these crimes, we are launching a pressure campaign against the University until our demands are met.
Our most recent updated demands are as follows:
- To cut all academic ties with all institutions, universities, grants or projects that receive funding or support from the state of Israel.
- To divest immediately from all the companies that the UN Special Rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territory has identified as as being complicit in genocide.
- To refrain from receiving as a student, staff or faculty member, or from allowing on campus, any individuals sought in connection with legal issues stemming from alleged atrocity crimes in the occupied Palestinian territory (the Gaza Strip and the West Bank) after Oct. 2023.
Our demands are far from unprecedented. Tufts University, like all elite institutions in the United States, has been called upon to reckon with its own historical ties with colonialism and slavery. And Tufts has, in the past, demonstrated its capacity to take a strong stance on the side of what is right.
In 1989, Tufts withdrew all investments from businesses operating in apartheid South Africa. Of Tufts’ $110 million endowment, $8 million came from businesses in South Africa. William Meserve, head of the Board of Trustees at the time, noted, “This is a symbolic act in many ways. It nevertheless is an important statement about what we believe about equality and civil rights.”
Tufts’ bravery was all the more salient given that it was juxtaposed by the United States’ then-support for South Africa’s white supremacist apartheid.
We see echoes of this past in our present moment of genocidal, colonial violence in Palestine.
In Tufts classrooms, we learned about human rights, international law, health, security, social inequalities and conflict resolution. Yet now, in the time when it is most needed, this same university refuses to embody these values. At what point does silence become violence? Why are we forced to differentiate between what Tufts claims in theory and what it does in practice?
Given the complete silence from Tufts in response to these demands, we call upon current students, alumni, staff, faculty and members of the academic community. We call upon you to take up individual action, such as refusing speaking or lecturing opportunities at Tufts, ceasing donations and returning any honors or prizes received from Tufts.
Yet, this once again places the expectation of activism and civic duty on the individual, while Tufts as an institution neglects its core responsibilities.
Tufts still has time to do the right thing. It’s not too late to speak out and support these concrete, actionable steps going forward. We call upon Tufts to live up to its ideals. We call upon Tufts to courageously take a stand that would ensure that its legacy is not forever tarnished by the fact that in a time of utmost injustice, the university sided with the perpetrators. To quote two of Tufts’ own luminaries, “the time for half-measures has passed.” We will act as our moral obligation demands. We only hope Tufts acts in kind.
As time passes, the silence will only grow louder.
