Open Letter Condemning the Purge of Academic Institutions in Turkey

Associate Professor, University of Windsor, Canada

Professor, Women's Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University, India

Turkey is in danger of being set back 100 years.

Professor, Queen's University, Kingston, Canada

This is an abusive action.

An open secular society based on human rights and pluralism is a healthy society. Shutting down critical examination of oneself leads to hubris and catastrophe. The powers of today need the humility of history.

Associate Professor, Tulane University, USA

Center for Urban Research, Graduate Center, City University of New York

University of Ottawa, Canada

This is not what democratic regimes do, where is the due process, the evidence, the rights of the accused? Reminds me of the haymarket labor martyrs in Chicago. No due process.

Associate Professor of Feminist Studies, University of California at Santa Cruz (USA)

A civilization as revered and important as the Ottoman Empire surely knows the importance of the free and open exchange of ideas, and that this must be able to occur at its universities. Targeting academics and other intellectuals undermines the respected place of Turkey in the history of civilizations.

Adjunct Professor of Philosophy and Politics, New School for Social Research

History repeats. But instead of targeting minority groups Turkey does it to itself. Where were the Turkish intellectuals when the govt was doing this to its minority groups in the last 100 years. Now they need the worlds help as their own government turns on them. How ironic.

Assistant Professor of Comparative Literature New York University

Postdoctoral Fellow, Academia Sinica, Taipei

University Professor of the Humanities and Professor of History, New York University

Visiting Assistant Professor Ohio Wesleyan University

Assistant Professor of Economics Graduate Business Administration Benedictine University, Lisle, IL, USA

These moves will ensure Turkey will be a weaker force internationally in terms of its research and science and so Turkey's enemies will be delighted. Coups are never good but the fact that this is happening under this government's watch is a sign that they have completely failed their people and that they should step down immediately. After all, what other than to serve its people is a government for? There is no place for power, government is about servitude alone.