Stand together

"I write this morning with a heavy heart upon news of yet another set of terrorist bombings, this time in…" begins the email that Larry Moneta distributed to the Duke student body. Expectedly, Belgium was the word that followed. Without doubt, the pure indiscriminate violence inflicted upon civilians is atrocious and reminds us of the worst side of man's inhumanity to man. The attacks should be condemned, and rightly so. Specific mention of Duke's Muslim community in a particular and a discussion of several resources that could be used if members of our community feel threatened was a fantastic way to reinforce that we are all one Duke, and that prejudiced hatred will not be tolerated.

About three hours later, I was surprised by another email: this one expressing sympathy regarding "... the tragic bombings that occurred in Turkey last week." Presumably, this email was referring to the March 13 Ankara attack that occurred slightly more than a week ago which claimed dozens of lives and left more than 100 people injured. News of this attack flooded the mainstream media. Of course, the key word in Moneta's email is the plural "bombings" which may indicate that in addition to the March 13th attack, his email may also be referring to the March 19 bombing in Istanbul that left 3 Israelis and 1 Iranian dead, injuring many more. It may also be referring to the March 22 Nusaybin bombing where a member of the PKK murdered Turks near the Syrian border. While it is undoubtedly true the March 13th bombing was the main attack referenced, Moneta's use of the plural "bombings" may have shown that he and the administration are aware that this terror is not singular, but is a regular occurrence and threat for many who have relatives or friends in other regions of the world.

Regardless of whether the word "bombings" was deliberate, the statement on recent tragedies was still dreadfully inadequate. His email did not refer to the 13 policemen killed in Egypt March 20. It did not refer to the nearly two dozen humans murdered by Boko Haram during their morning prayer in Nigeria on March 16th. It did not refer to the American Vanderbilt student killed and 11 Israelis (both Jewish and Arab) stabbed along a beach boardwalk in Jaffa, Israel, on March 9 while Vice President Joe Biden was less than one mile away. There was no mention of the bus bombing in Pakistan, the tourists gunned down in Tunisia, or the massacres in Iraq and Syria that have occurred every several days. Even after Larry Moneta's follow-up email, there is a wealth of global tragedies that have ties to American citizens, Western countries, Muslim communities and Duke students that have been ignored.

We all want Duke to be "a place of safety and comfort." and I have little doubt about Moneta's authenticity and heartache when he thinks of the students personally affected by events the world over. But can these emails ever truly be enough?

If it isn't apparent by now, I will spell it out; there are countless global tragedies, and Larry Moneta will never be able to address them all. This comes from the raw numbers and sheer scale of violence in the world. Why do 32 deaths in Belgium and 37 deaths in Turkey receive administrative responses, but hundreds of deaths in Iraq and Syria receive little mention? Have we grown accustomed to them?

Even still, when American citizen Taylor Force was murdered, and there is a direct link to the United States, the administration was silent. A single death caused by indiscriminate terror anywhere may have significant impact on a student in Duke's community. It is difficult to place a threshold on how much carnage must transpire for the incident to qualify as severe enough for Moneta to send out an email reminding us of campus resources.

Ultimately, we must stand together and condemn terror no matter where it may occur, whether it happens to Westerners or non-Westerners, to Christians or Muslims or Jews, and to hundreds of people or to just one. As Vice President Biden said just two days ago in Washington, D.C., "... there is no excuse for killing innocents or remaining silent in the face of terrorism.”

We need to rise above divisiveness and stop insisting the administration issue an email every time an act of terror occurs; it would happen far, far too often. For logical consistency, we would need to require the administration to either send an email every time an act of terror occurs or else never send one. Instead, whether the violence is in Belgium, Turkey, Paris or Israel, we must stand together as members of the Duke community and recognize that their struggle is our struggle.