Dear Madame Mangelsdorf,
My father’s father was a seemingly wonderful man, who planted cherry trees for his sons and brought his wife flowers in the spring. But I was 18 before I ever saw a photo of his face. My family burned all the photos of my grandfather.
Because my grandfather was a Nazi and there is a wall of names of the people he killed.
There are also names missing from that wall, of the people he saved. He had Jewish friends, colleagues, and acquaintances, and as the highest ranking Nazi in his town he would warn them before the Gestapo came to drag them away. Because of this, I don’t think he fully believed in the genocide, but it was too good of a financial opportunity to pass up. To improve the finances of local farmers, my grandfather had all their creditors killed. Bankers, butchers, and moneylenders were dragged out of their homes at gunpoint because as they went up in smoke, so too did the farmers’ debts.
As we speak, children’s limbs are being ripped apart by explosions. Journalists are eviscerated in the streets like hunted animals. Fathers carry the bloody rags that enshroud all that remains of a child after a bomb.
Like my grandfather before me, I profit from the slaughter of human beings.
And I stand paralyzed and afraid.
This school has made me afraid to speak out against genocide.
If I sit in, heavily armed officers will gather like navy-clad vultures. If I camp out, I will be suspended and tossed into academic limbo. If I speak or write, I know that nothing will happen because the call of money is louder than my words. So let me say something that might reach your ears.
Manglesdorf, you remind me of my grandfather. You remind me of a Nazi who didn’t believe in the ideology backing genocide, but nevertheless found a way to profit from it.
I understand that like the protests, this comparison will make you feel uncomfortable, anxious even. But you have more power than I could ever dream of, more money in the university endowment than I could spend in a hundred lifetimes. You could make change and you chose to make profit.
But we are not stupid. We will not forget how your administration silenced our voices, lied to protestors, even removed flags from the quad on the first day of the semester. We will not forget the new policies that make protest almost impossible, requiring University approval for any gathering, and even prohibiting prior publication of events.
For now, I am powerless, but someday, I’ll likely be rich.
And I cannot, will not, support an organization that silences its student body like this. Nor do I think I am alone. So, this is my promise. Lift the restrictions. Let us speak, and let us make you uncomfortable. Or, in the future, we may choose to support an institution that respects and values its students’ voices.
