After a horrific terrorist attack against Israeli civilians and now a horrific war in Gaza, American students, organizations, and average citizens have responded—by penning and signing open letters.

Some of these letters have been thoughtful and measured. Others have been outrageous and offensive. Still others have said barely anything. Nearly every day, new ones pop up.

The sheer volume of these open letters, though, has not tempered their consequences. Prominent editors have lost jobs; students have lost offers of employment; employees have resigned; student organizations have been banned on ostensibly liberal campuses; young people have been doxxed and harassed. Perhaps some of the letters have changed hearts and minds, although there’s no evidence that’s true, and there are many examples of open letters simply pissing people off, extracting significant costs, and encouraging retrenchment into one’s previously held ideas. And not a single one seems to have changed U.S. policy toward Israel or Israel’s actions in this war.

So what’s the point?

Open letters can be powerful advocacy tools. The sheer volume of open letters related to this conflict, most of them voicing support for Palestinian freedom and many demanding a cease-fire, sends a clear, collective message that culture-makers, writers, and academics are watching and demanding a more humane response from both Israel and the U.S. The fact that these letters have elicited such severe consequences suggests, too, that they hold some power. (Otherwise, why would anyone care?)

But open letters can also be simplistic shortcuts, or blunt instruments that suck the color and nuance out of the signatories’ likely more complex and specific opinions. Because they are often not too specific—needing, after all, to pull in a variety of people with a variety of views—but also awash with activist or academic jargon, they are easy to misinterpret. They can create strength in numbers, but also guilt by association, and guilt by not associating. The absence of a name on an open letter can be just as telling as a signatory. And that, in turn, can create a climate of pressure and fear: Sign your name or suffer the presumption that you disagree with the letter writers’ broader cause, or that you don’t care about what your professional or social group has deemed the most pressing issue of the day.

This kind of pressure has no doubt led to many smart and thoughtful people signing some of the........

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