To Pepperdine University Administration:

With unwavering resolve, we — students and alumni of Pepperdine University — assert our unequivocal opposition to Pepperdine’s complicity in the Israeli state’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Unfathomable death tolls and gruesome visuals of utter devastation leave no room for misinterpreting the ongoing plight of the Palestinian people. In an extension of its illegal 75 year occupation, Israel has murdered upward of 40,000 Palestinians in the past seven months, a magnitude of cruelty enabled solely by American propaganda, funding, and weaponry. While the beaches of Malibu are a long way off from the rubble that lay atop lifeless Palestinian limbs, Pepperdine University’s hands are not absolved of blood.

Pepperdine is guilty of neglecting Israel’s barbaric ethnic cleansing campaign and preserving institutional practices that contribute to Palestinian dispossession. University spokespeople have issued several public statements condemning Hamas’ October 7th attack, promoting harmful misinformation in the process, including the since-debunked claim that Hamas raped Israeli women en masse and beheaded countless babies. However, Pepperdine officials have refrained from uttering a word acknowledging the infinitely greater destruction inflicted by Israel’s unrelenting attacks on Gaza for the duration of its illegal occupation, particularly following October 7th. Additionally, the University indirectly profits from the ongoing genocide by receiving donations from individuals affiliated with defense contractors, such as Raytheon Technologies and Northrop Grumman, that produce the weapons decimating Gaza. Many of Pepperdine’s largest donations come from individuals and foundations that operate in Israel, openly endorse Zionist rhetoric, and monetarily support the settler-colonial regime. The University also offers the Brendan Mann Summer Internship Program in Israel, which deploys students to work in institutions that form the infrastructure upholding the Israeli state’s brutality.

In light of Pepperdine’s blatant investment into materially and ideologically sustaining Israel’s occupation — and, therefore, the extermination of Palestinians — we demand the following:

Disclose: Provide a transparent breakdown of Pepperdine’s investments and funding sources.

Divest and Sever Ties: Divest from companies and institutions with ties to Israel and/or profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide, and occupation. Sever ties with Board members who have affiliations with Israeli institutions.

Academic Boycott: Terminate the Brendan Mann Internship Program in Israel and cut ties with all Israeli academic institutions, which are crucial in upholding the occupation.

Solidarity: Issue a statement that denounces the ongoing genocide in Gaza, calls for an immediate end to Israeli aggression, and affirms Palestinians’ right to political self-determination.

While all academic institutions are morally obligated to stand in opposition to Israel’s crimes against humanity, Pepperdine’s Christian mission imposes additional responsibility to actively stand in solidarity with the afflicted. Pepperdine vocally professes Jesus of Nazareth as Lord, a radical Palestinian Jew whose political disobedience — manifested through countercultural care for the systemically oppressed — led to his lynching at the hands of state forces. Prior to being crucified, Christ proclaimed, “Whatever you did for the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me” (Matthew 25:40 NIV), jarringly equating Himself with society’s downtrodden. Those in Gaza epitomize “the least of these,” beckoning a crucial question: what has Pepperdine done for suffering Palestinians (and therefore, the living God Himself)? Until this point, Pepperdine has answered this question by obscuring the ongoing annihilation of Gaza, promoting pro-Israel propaganda, and receiving donations from individuals, companies, and foundations that benefit from Israeli occupation. According to our Savior’s equivocation of Himself with “the least of these,” a Christian university profiting from Palestinian death — including the destruction of sacred Christian communities in Gaza and the West Bank — is akin to Judas’ betrayal of Jesus for 30 silver coins. In fact, had Jesus been born 2000 years later, Pepperdine may very well be capitalizing from His very execution, as He lay beneath the ruins of Gaza awaiting resurrection.

Pepperdine University, what is the Gospel to you? Will you stand in solidarity with “the least of these,” renouncing your affiliation with individuals and institutions tied to the genocidal Israeli regime? Or is the lure of 30 silver coins too seductive for you to attend to your bleeding, bombed Savior? What master do you serve, God or (blood) money? Your reply to these demands will answer this question; we fervently await your response.