The Hamas terror attack on Israel and the subsequent military action in Gaza by Israel has exposed how antisemitism runs deep among Islamists and left-liberals. This has been seen in massive anti-Israel and pro-Palestine protests across Europe and North America, where the Hamas terror attack is being contextualised by blaming Israel.
Amid this, an open letter by around 2000 ‘Sociologists’ has emerged, where professors and students of various universities have come together in solidarity with Gaza and Palestinians. In the letter, the signatories accused Israel of genocide, claimed that Israeli officials used ‘dehumanising language’ for Hamas terrorists, and tried to contextualise and justify the horrific Hamas terror attack in Israel on 7 October.
Many sociologists who have signed the letter have used social media platforms to urge others to sign the same. Several Indian names can be seen in the list of signatories, which includes Nandini Sundar, wife of The Wire founder Siddharth Varadarajan. Professions, research scholars and students in various universities and colleges across the world appear as signatories of the open letter. Names of several elite universities appear in the list, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, Brown, Berkeley etc.
The Open Letter was published as a public document on Google Docs, and anyone could sign it, using any name, using the Google Forms feature. While it ensured that the letter got a large number of signs, it also meant that it was vandalised by some people. This was evident in some of the names that appeared as signatories.
The most prominent name that appeared in the letter was Adolf Hitler, a clear sign of vandalism. The name appeared as Adolf Hitler, professor emeritus, Sociology, University of Austria. Although Hitler was born in Austria, he was not a professor at any stage of his life, as he never studied beyond secondary education.
Hamas Has Adolf Hitler's Endorsement Alongside 1,700 Prominent Sociologists pic.twitter.com/IcCuE6xS9N
— Brandon P (@Brandopinione) October 24, 2023
Another such seemingly fake name in the list is Dr. Josef Mengele, which is the name of an infamous SS officer and doctor better known as “Angel of Death”, because of the deadly experiments he had conducted on the prisoners at the at the Auschwitz II concentration camp.
The sociologists who published the open letter calling for the public to "contextualize" Hamas terror accepted and then removed "Dr. Josef Mengele" as a signatory. Good work, academic sociologists! 👏 https://t.co/1EqYJZhvUu pic.twitter.com/0FcvafQeQ8
— Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ (@realchrisrufo) October 24, 2023
Josef Mengele’s name appeared as Dr. Josef Mengele, University of Munich, which is technically correct as he received his PhD from the University of Munich. He did his preliminary medicine education at the University of Bonn and did his MD at University of Frankfurt.
After such unusual names were discovered by netizens and posted on social media, it seems the people who created the document started a clean-up job. The problematic names are now gone, which means the moderators have removed the obviously fake names, including Hitler and Mengele.
It also seems that the signing of the letter has been restricted now, and someone is verifying the names before they are added to the list of signatories. Although the Goole Form to sign the open letter is still available, submitting a name there does not result in the automatic addition of the name to the list, as was the case earlier. As a result, while the number of signatories was gradually increasing earlier, now it is stuck at 1922.
However, such moderation was not present in the open letter earlier, which allowed people to add any name they wanted. This means, there is no way to know if someone signed multiple times using different names.
In the meanwhile, Israeli sociologists have written a letter in response to the pro-Hamas open letter, urging them to withdraw the letter. They said the lack of recognition for a tragic event and one-sided perspective was presented in the open letter.
