As American scholars and higher education administrators, we are deeply committed to the pursuit of truth, justice, and the common good—both in our classrooms and research, and in the broader world we engage with daily. Since October 2023, the Biden-Harris administration has failed to uphold fundamental human rights and the principles of knowledge, truth, and humanity. Their material support for genocidal atrocities has devastated entire communities in Palestine, leading to the loss of countless families in Gaza over the past year, and undermined the core values the United States professes to uphold globally. Under Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic Party’s nominee for President, every university has been bombed and destroyed in Gaza, more journalists have been killed than in any other conflict in recorded modern history, and the death toll is projected to exceed 186,000 according to The Lancet. Under Biden-Harris, the International Court of Justice (ICJ) has prosecuted violations of the 1948 Genocide Convention, and declared Israel‘s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, unlawful, along with its associated settlement apartheid regime.
This election, on November 5th, the Democratic Party—once again with Kamala Harris at its center—has repeatedly sought our votes by positioning itself as the „lesser evil,“ urging us to abandon our moral convictions out of fear of a second Trump term under Republican leadership. Let us be clear: there is no „lesser evil“ when both parties are complicit in the same atrocities. And there is no lesser evil when they are complicit in genocide. Kamala Harris has actively funded and endorsed genocide, and we cannot reward such leadership with a Harris-Walz ticket. While the Republican Party under a Trump-Vance ticket offers no meaningful alternative, it is the Democratic Party, under Kamala Harris, that has actively supported and sanctioned these international crimes against humanity since October 2023. They must not be rewarded.