Dear fellow Lawrentians,
I would love to simply welcome you back for spring term but again world events have taken center stage in our lives. The break gave me, and probably many of you, time to contemplate the horrendous acts of savagery that took place in New Zealand at the end of finals week. As the days unfolded, I watched with respect and admiration that country’s efforts to mourn and respond. Fifty people died and as many were wounded by a gunman who invaded two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand and shot congregants engaged in Friday prayers. Sadly, these two attacks on innocent people singled out for their beliefs and identity reminded us of the many terrorist attacks that have come before, both in this country and around the world. We dare not grow numb to this violence.
The people of New Zealand have shown us that we are all victims of these acts: we need to respond. As Gamal Fouda, an Imam of one of the target mosques, said at a prayer vigil of over 40,000 held one week after the attack, “This terrorist sought to tear our nation apart with an evil ideology that has torn the world apart – but instead we have shown that New Zealand is unbreakable.”
In her responses to this tragedy Jacinda Ardern, Prime Minister of New Zealand, echoed Imam Fouda’s call for a universal view of these events. In a comment soon after the attacks she said, “Many of those who will have been directly affected by this shooting may be migrants to New Zealand; they may even be refugees here. They have chosen to make New Zealand their home, and it is their home. They are us.”
The Lawrence community will gather this Thursday at 5:00 p.m. in the Warch Campus Center’s Esch Hurvis room to commemorate the lives lost in the attack and to join other communities around the world in a clear statement that this violence has no place in our community and in our world. As Prime Minister Ardern said, the response must be a “global one.” “This [terrorist] was an Australian citizen, but that is not to say that we do not have ideology in New Zealand that would be an affront to the majority of New Zealanders, that would be utterly rejected by . . . the vast majority of New Zealanders. But we still have a responsibility to weed it out where it exists, and make sure that we never create an environment where it can flourish.”
I look forward to seeing you on Thursday and around campus in the coming weeks.
Yours,
Mark