A Message from Chancellor Nancy Cantor About the Violence in Israel and Gaza

Dear Rutgers University – Newark community members,

President Holloway’s statement this week about the violence in Israel and Gaza underscores the intense impact that even distant conflicts may have on the university community.

Here in our community, many among us are immigrants, or our family members are, so we may feel barely removed from family homelands around the world—places distant in space, perhaps, but where pieces of our hearts and minds continue to reside. Our identities are inextricably intertwined with those places and our people who remain there. So, when they are threatened, we feel it viscerally. When they are subjected to violence, we are stricken with horror. When those threats and violence are identity-based, it can shake our own personal sense of security.

It does not take a direct connection to the violence that the world is witnessing in Israel and Gaza right now to make us feel the need for support. If you are feeling that way, please do not hesitate to reach out for support. Students may contact the Counseling Center at 973-353-5805; employees may contact University Human Resources/Faculty Staff & Assistance Program at 848-932-3956.

We expect the coming days to continue to be difficult for us to process as the conflict continues to unfold, stirring both our basic human compassion for people who are suffering and our basic human impulse to find solidarity in our groups. As we seek to make meaning of these events, I urge us all to be mindful that the convergence of many complex identities here at Rutgers-Newark is among our greatest strengths.

In sadness,

Nancy Cantor

Chancellor