Opinion | Advice to Protesters, and History’s Echoes


Richard Stever-Zeitlin
Hyattsville, Md.

To the Editor:

Relationships break down when people stop talking. Brown University seems to have found a solution to campus unrest by continuing talks with protesters. This is good news! I recommend that university leaders meet with students, close the doors to the room and come out when you’ve reached an agreement. Keep talking!

Ronald Yarger
Morris Plains, N.J.

To the Editor:

Re “How Protesters Can Actually Help Palestinians,” by Nicholas Kristof (column, May 2):

Recently I began to total up in my mind what the students have spent to be comfortable, appropriately dressed, fed and able to produce new protest signs every day. ​They have spent millions of dollars on themselves while demanding that colleges and universities rethink their investment strategies. Those are millions of dollars that could have fed, housed, clothed and healed millions of people in Gaza.

I hope students read Mr. Kristof, and begin to understand that they have the power, and perhaps the obligation, to help ease the lives of those caught up in a tragedy. Their protest will be successful if it moves everyone to take a moment to rethink their “investment strategies.”

Elaine Hess
Bethlehem, Pa.

To the Editor:

Spot on, Nicholas Kristof. It’s unbearable to watch the wrong-turn activism turn people away from the rightness of this justified protest. So much more could be accomplished — helping “real people in desperate need,” as Mr. Kristof puts it — by raising funds or putting educated boots on the ground.

Maggie Hill
Queens

To the Editor:

Re “On Campus at Columbia, in 1968 and Now,” by Serge Schmemann (Opinion, April 30):

I second Mr. Schmemann’s view of the benefits of college demonstrations. Sixty years ago this December, I was part of an 800-student sit-in at Sproul Hall on the University of California’s Berkeley campus.



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