For weeks, I have watched the opinions and outrage roll in over the appointment of professor Susan Ostermann to be the director of the Liu Institute. The outrage over a qualified professor’s personal beliefs on abortion and reproductive health raises many questions for me. While professor Ostermann has now decided to step back from the opportunity, I am left to wonder about this university’s priorities.
Where was this outrage, this anger, over the last 873 days as our university has supported an actual genocide? Where were the Op-Eds, the protests, the news coverage? Where was your outrage over 70,000 brutally killed? Where was your care for the 50,000 children Israel killed or injured?
Our university directly supports and likely invests in such companies as Lockheed Martin, RTX (formerly Raytheon), Northrop Grumman and Boeing, which have fuelled the genocide. While University investments are not publicly disclosed, the university has not denied investments in these partners. Our university also partners with Tel Aviv University and Hebrew University, which are direct associates with the genocidal regime. So, where have you been?
Is your empathy so limited? Why is this not the cause of your outrage? I sincerely hope you can reevaluate your priorities. We must support a diversity of opinions at this University. We must support the dignity of all people to express their views and beliefs. But we must also press this university to end its complicity in continual destruction and killing. That is where our outrage should lie.
Linnea Barron
Class of 2026
Feb. 26
