On Wednesday, April 16, The Daily Campus publicly released 670 pages of emails from within the University of Connecticut’s administration. These emails, obtained through the Freedom of Information Act, centered around communications to and from President Radenka Maric regarding the university’s handling of the impact of the Israel and Palestine conflict following the Oct. 7, 2023 attack in Israel. The emails cover “communication between UConn administration documenting questions regarding free speech on campus, plans to raise funds for academic partners in Israel and confirmation that the university was in contact with the FBI regarding surveillance of on-campus activism,” according to The Daily Campus.
To begin, The Editorial Board strongly encourages all students to read through these documents. As students at UConn, it is both our right and duty to watch what the leaders of our school are doing, and there is no better way to understand their inclinations than by reading their own words.
It is also worth noting that these emails are by no means the end of what communications happen between administrators and other actors regarding the ongoings of this school. As one of the emails from UConn donor Jerry Lieberman explicitly mentions, he advocates that there are certain matters which Maric shouldn’t discuss on her official email. Especially since these emails contain such important matters to the UConn community, it is important to understand that these are only those that we were able to see. This university administration has long had problems with transparency, and it is clear that these emails reflect a continued lack in this area.
One clear example is Maric’s passing reference to the fact that that Hans Rhynhart, associate vice president of public safety and chief of police for UConn, was actively collaborating with the Federal Bureau of Investigation to surveil student protesters. The fact that this has never been publicly acknowledged, especially in the current political context wherein the federal government has been using pro-Palestinian activism as a basis to deport students, is an injustice to the community. UConn students deserve to know exactly what our administration has done with the FBI.
As for other communications, the many different figures attempting to catch the ear of Maric, and the subsequent responses to these petitions, illustrate a growing divide between the university and members of its community depending on their position on this issue.
In these emails, it was revealed that there had been a newly created UConn-Israel Partners Fund through the UConn Foundation, which Maric directed Global Affairs Vice President Daniel Weiner to solicit funding for. This fund was meant to help facilitate UConn’s support for Israeli academic institutions. Despite the fact that all universities in Gaza have been destroyed, there was no mention in any of the emails received of supporting the education of Palestinians affected by this war.
In other emails with significant donors, such as Lieberman, who has contributed hundreds of thousands of dollars to support various UConn initiatives, Maric responds to direct calls for annihilation in Gaza. He said, “I would give unarmed woman, girls, boys below 17 and men over 45 years old 48 hours to leave Gaza and then level the whole City assuming that whatever can be done, if anything, to save the hostages was attempted,” according to The Daily Campus. She responded by thanking him for his generous gifts to the university and affirming that terrorists should be wiped off this Earth. It is worth questioning the influence that donors like these have on this university and whether the school should be purposefully associating with those advocating for removing “by violent and terror-inspiring means the civilian population of another ethnic or religious group from certain geographic areas,” otherwise known as the United Nations’ definition of ethnic cleansing.
In further emails with donors who threatened to pull their funding if the university did not take a stronger stance with Israel, Maric emphasized her support for Israel and mentioned how she had spoken at a pro-Israel rally in West Hartford. In other emails she directly stated to one concerned UConn Medical School alumni that, “Israel is our land!”
From this communication, it is also clear that Maric has a priority to appease donors, with her communications with donors and other students/faculty remaining distinctly different. It is not the place of the president to put donor interests over students, and the ears of this school’s leaders must remain open to all those in UConn community. When others have reached out or attempted to talk with Maric regarding her actions, specifically from a pro-Palestinian perspective, she has been much less receptive. She said that Muslim doctors and students at UConn Medical School were attacking her and that she “was already proclaimed dead, and my obituary was written!” The claim of “threatening messages” that she levied against Muslim students for their advocacy was never applied to other groups. Even more importantly, many emails from concerned students criticizing the lack of support for Muslim students simply showed no response from Maric — a stark difference compared to the active and frequent communications with others.
The difference in material and internal vocal support for those depending on the side of this issue is made clear through these emails. This administration has shown that it has a clear bias in who it seeks to appease, what it seeks to support and — given its previous actions towards those who demonstrate for Palestine — who it seeks to suppress. These communications are completely inappropriate and unprofessional for the leader of this university to be having and are an indictment of how this school has handled the influence of this conflict on UConn’s campus.