I was editor in chief for the Justice during the 2020-2021 school year. It was the pandemic, which was a crazy time to be editor, but that’s not what this letter is about. 

For the 75th anniversary edition, Justice alumni were asked to reflect on our time on the paper. Some of my best memories from Brandeis take place in that little office on the second floor of the Shapiro Campus Center, eating chips in my pajamas on production night and trying to balance getting my work done with chatting with my fellow Justice staffers late into the night. 

That is why it saddens and sickens me to my core to see the university administration’s inhumane response to this most recent escalation of the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Of course, this has been an issue at Brandeis for many years. But I didn’t know that when, at age 17, I chose to attend Brandeis. I and many of my peers felt we were lied to by our school, which touts “truth, even to its innermost parts.” 

The truth is that many Black and brown students—especially those who speak out about issues that matter to them—do not feel safe or heard on Brandeis’s campus. The truth is that Brandeis lies to its Jewish students about Israel. The truth is that Brandeis calls the cops on its own students for peacefully advocating for a free Palestine. The truth is that Brandeis uses the concept of social justice as a brand to sell itself to well-meaning high schoolers who jump at the chance to grow academically in a place where they can supposedly help change the world.

I saw the university’s fraught relationship with social justice with my own eyes while covering protests and advocacy movements for the Justice. I heard about it in interviews with students. I read about it in emails from my own university president, who maintains that Brandeis stands by Israel, even as its leaders and its military carry out a genocide against Palestinians. 

I am grateful for my time on the Justice because it gave me a platform to tell the truth when my own university would not. I know this made a difference because now, two years out of college, I still read the Justice to get information about campus happenings—information that University President Ron Liebowitz conveniently leaves out of his pro-genocide email communications. Unfortunately, I have not successfully gotten myself off of that email list.  

As a Justice alum, I was proud to read the paper’s coverage of the March vigil in the SCC for the thousands of Gazans killed by Israeli forces. As a Jewish alum, I was proud to read in the Justice that a Jewish student led vigil attendees in reciting the Mourner’s Kaddish that day. It is crucial that people know that not all American Jews support this genocide, and I am pleased to see that the Justice does not shy away from making this known. 

I am now a news reporter for a local paper, and I recently covered an event in my town where a local rabbi named Brian Walt spoke against the genocide in Palestine. 

“I ask myself, what does it mean even at this time to be a rabbi?” Rabbi Walt said. “What does it mean to affirm Judaism when the Jewish state is engaged in genocide and when its leaders quote sacred texts—our sacred texts, the Torah, the Jewish bible—to justify this horrendous act?”

In the same vein, I ask myself: what does it mean even at this time to be an alum of Brandeis’s student newspaper? What does it mean to reflect on my time on the Justice when members of the Brandeis community I once called home pervert stories of Jewish suffering—our Jewish suffering—to justify this horrendous act?

To current Justice staff who, like me, were tricked into attending Brandeis, do not despair. Your commitment to seeking the truth and reporting it has value, especially in a community where facts and information are stifled in pursuit of a more comfortable narrative. What you do matters. Keep it up.