Martin Putnam '71: Letter to the Editor

Photo Courtesy of The Library Company of Philadelphia

To the editor,

As a member of the Class of 1971, I am proud that so many Swarthmore students are raising their voices against the ongoing genocide in Gaza. In speaking out, they are refusing to be complicit, and they are challenging the complicity of others. I read reports of their protests, and I tell myself that the Swarthmore I knew is still there.

But I do not recognize Swarthmore in the actions of the current college administration. According to reports that I still can scarcely believe, the College is threatening to expel eleven students for the offense of protesting genocide just a little too loudly. It seems that they used a bullhorn, as protestors have done for generations.

It should go without saying that protests are noisy by design. If you are not heard when you speak softly, it may be time to raise your voice. If this makes a listener uncomfortable, it is because protests are meant to dislodge people from their comfort zones. Civil disobedience inconveniences people. It has to. If it is to be effective, civil disobedience must disrupt the routine.

The current administration seems to have forgotten all of this. It apparently has lost touch with the College’s Quaker legacy of social justice and opposition to war, by peaceful protest when called for and by civil disobedience when necessary. It seems not to remember that an essential part of “the meaning of Swarthmore,” according to the College’s own website, is “Speak Truth to Power.” I never thought I would see the day when students would be marked for expulsion for speaking truth to power on a matter of the utmost moral urgency, precisely because they did so in a way that communicated that urgency. It is these students, and not the administrators now in office, who have the better grasp of the meaning of Swarthmore.

For these reasons, I will not donate to the College, and will ensure that not a penny for the College is included in my legacy, until this administration, or a future administration, finds its way back to the College’s founding principles.

Martin Putnam ’71; J.D. Harvard Law School 1981

Oakland, CA

November 4, 2024

Martin Putnam

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