With the introduction of Clarissa O’Conor’s “From Palestine to Penn” column, The Daily Pennsylvanian has demonstrated an irresponsible act of editorial malfeasance.
The column, entitled “The Problem with Band-Aids,” willfully misrepresents facts about the State of Israel and exploits its soapbox to advance a blatantly obvious political agenda.
It is a true privilege that we attend a University with such a diverse array of strongly held opinions, and the DP is the perfect medium to share these views. But not every view, however passionately argued, is worthy of publication. The editorial staff at the DP has the journalistic obligation to fact check any column that appears within its pages. The statement that Israel’s “modus operandi is and always was policies of ethnic cleansing” is false and hateful rhetoric, and has no place in a responsible publication.
Furthermore, establishing O’Conor’s opinions as a biweekly column implicitly grants legitimacy to her views, as if the DP is endorsing her as someone with a fresh or unique perspective, when in fact she is merely repeating inflammatory lies driven by a personal agenda. The reputation of the DP has been impugned by being associated with such a distasteful political rant. I sincerely hope that the DP will cancel O’Conor’s column and enact new editorial policies to ensure that the opinions it publishes are properly in line with the advancement of vibrant discourse on Penn’s campus.
Jonathan Wieder is a College sophomore. His email address is jwieder@sas.upenn.edu .
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