To the Editor:

SUNY Potsdam students, faculty, and staff of color are now threatened by another extremely vicious and hateful death threat slipped under a professor’s door. We are outraged that they should have to address such a fundamental challenge to their safety and focus.

Our students and colleagues need and deserve security against this vile and reprehensible threat.

Meanwhile, we will not slow down our work to understand, challenge, and reject intolerance in all of its manifestations. We believe that is an important role of any institution of higher learning, which should promote civil society and civil discourse based on truly informed and respectful understanding of our differences.

We will continue to try to create an environment in which cultural sensitivity is explored, cultivated, and respected. We believe that this is the way to help build communities that can meet their challenges and solve their problems – not those which retreat to hate, threats and violence. For these reasons and more, we are thankful for the diverse student body we have at SUNY Potsdam, a group with the potential to build new kinds of understanding and to learn new ways to fully acknowledge each other’s humanity.

We will not allow the latest hate crime to obstruct our learning or our work towards more just communities. We will not allow hate to win. We will not allow violence to encroach further on civil society, as it takes form on our campus. Instead, we will passionately engage in thought-provoking discussions about important issues, including race and sexual orientation, and the freedoms that a democratic society promises.

We encourage educators on our own campus and throughout the North Country to take time to discuss these essential issues with each other and with your students. Look at challenges that our world and our community are posing us, like it or not – challenges involving security, violence, hate, respect, and learning.

We would welcome the opportunity to create cross-age conversations about these challenges. Every one of us has a role to play in fostering social equality and nonviolent communication about that effort. Our colleague has been targeted for doing nothing more than that, and we stand with him.

SUNY Potsdam Faculty members Jennifer Mitchell, Sheryl Scales, Matt Lavine, Libbie Freed, and Nancy Lewis.