On the 26 January, the United Nations\u2019 highest court in The Hague, the International Court of Justice, found it plausible that Israel\u2019s violence in Gaza amounts to genocide<\/a>. This ruling corroborated what Gazan journalists had been documenting for months at immense personal risk<\/a>, and what genocide scholars<\/a> had been warning. At the time of writing, the situation has become even more acute: famine<\/a> has taken hold of large swathes of Gaza, a ground invasion of Rafah<\/a> is imminent, and newspapers continue to report daily horrors<\/a>.<\/p>\n Throughout Europe and the US, students have been protesting their universities\u2019 positions on Gaza. Many universities have avoided taking a stand, often parroting the positions of their governments. Their students see the moral salience of the situation more clearly. They are not wedded to pragmatism. Their moral sense is acute and they expect the world to be structured according to what is right, not what is opportune.<\/p>\n But instead of commending the political consciousness of their students, universities have cast students\u2019 outrage as disorderly and dangerous. At my own university, officials have called in the police to close down protests<\/a>. In opting to criminalise protestors in this way, universities misrepresent their students\u2019 anger.<\/p>\n Image: Alisdare Hickson \/ Source: Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n Angry protests are often misunderstood. It is easy to see why. Conventional wisdom tells us that anger is volatile, \u2018prone to excess\u2019 as the moral philosopher Martha Nussbaum<\/a> has put it.\u00a0Nussbaum is largely pessimistic about anger, which she believes is always about vengeance. Indeed, revenge is often motivated by anger and the belief that righteous violence can balance the scales of justice. This, Nussbaum argues, is a form of \u2018magical thinking\u2019 driven by \u2018metaphysical ideas of cosmic balance\u2019. Our violence can never undo the harm done to us.\u00a0Harms do not cancel harms.<\/p>\n If we accept Nussbaum\u2019s view, students are protesting because they want payback. They are out to get the academic community and their protests and disruptions are aimed at \u2018counterbalancing\u2019 harm. Besides the obvious moral problems with payback, this perspective makes the students\u2019 anger seem misdirected and irrational. Vengeful anger is typically directed at whomever has caused harm, but universities are hardly causally responsible for the events in Gaza.<\/p>\n This view, however, excludes other forms of anger, even if it registers one of its most prevalent forms. Anger can also be about communicating wrongs and expressing the need for accountability. I am angry when someone with whom I stand in a moral relationship contravenes that relationship. Anger expresses my belief that a wrong has occurred and articulates itself through protest. In fact, according to P.F. Strawson<\/a>, emotions such as anger and outrage are constitutive of our moral responses. To be affectless in the face of abject violence is to be missing a part of one\u2019s humanity.<\/p>\n Audre Lorde<\/a> once described anger \u2018as a libation\u2019, an offering to the one that suffers, an act of solidarity. She found herself defending anger partly because the anger of the oppressed classes is often dismissed by the ruling classes as violent and destructive. This kind of anger, Lorde argued, is distinct from hatred and contempt, which are indeed purely destructive.<\/p>\n But whether we understand anger as a form of solidarity, or an expression of moral indignation, in both cases we acknowledge that it can be productive<\/em>. Here is how the philosopher Jeremy Bendik-Keymer describes<\/a> anger\u2019s moral core:<\/p>\n It makes a complaint and seeks moral repair \u2013 of the relationship primarily and, at the least, of the standing of the one who has been momentarily erased by the moral wrong. If the wrongdoer(s) will not own up on their own, the community that hears the protest can at least reinforce the standing of the one wronged \u2026 The public nature of angry protest affirms something that is morally considerable, and thus calls on solidarity since it appeals to moral accountability.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n This account of anger puts the anger at the heart of student protests in a different light. The student protestors feel a combination of grief and anger at the violence they see on their screens or, often if they are Palestinian, inflicted on those who are close to them. They are angry at their universities because they perceive these institutions to lack moral consistency.<\/p>\n Student protestors in the Netherlands have told me they think Dutch educational institutions are practicing double standards with respect to wars and violence. While other atrocities have been vociferously condemned, most notably the Russian aggression against Ukraine, Dutch institutions have called for neutrality when it comes to Gaza. But upholding neutrality as a value is cynical, the students believe, when it is employed selectively and perpetuates the marginalization of the powerless.<\/p>\n Let\u2019s assume that there is some substance to the idea that universities should remain neutral. The University of Amsterdam, for instance, has banned all \u2018expressions of a cultural, political, and\/or religious nature<\/a>\u2019 in its house rules for campus buildings, appealing to the role of the university as a neutral place of learning. A safe space for everyone, university officials suggest, is one which is apolitical. If we accept this notion, then the students\u2019 anger can indeed be seen as misdirected: it does not belong at universities.<\/p>\n But if we want universities to maintain neutrality in the face of atrocities, we should ask ourselves what exactly we mean by neutrality. Many things that academics and scientists study exist on multiple planes. Take white phosphorus. On the one hand, white phosphorus is the stuff of objective scientific curiosity that we might study in a chemistry lab; on the other hand, it is a chemical used in munitions banned by the Geneva Conventions because it causes third-degree burns that reach to the bone and can lead to multiple organ failure. Amnesty International has shown<\/a> that the Israeli Defence Forces have illegally used white phosphorus in Gaza.<\/p>\n Not only do objects of science exist on multiple planes, but universities are also normative and political spaces in a more direct sense. They make evaluative judgments about what matters in science. They receive and give funding on the basis of normative assessments. They have been involved<\/a> in colonialism and slavery. Far from pristine and neutral grounds where knowledge proliferates untouched by the world, the university is political through and through. And it cannot be otherwise.<\/p>\n We can ignore this reality, but then we ourselves are making a normative choice: to ignore the human reality, which structures and motivates our intellectual pursuits, and the world in which the objects of science have sense and significance.<\/p>\n Protesting students refuse to ignore the world in which their education is embedded.<\/p>\n Now, it might be argued that because universities are not directly or causally responsible for the horrific situation in Gaza, they cannot be held accountable. This would again mean that student anger is misdirected: it targets the wrong institutions.<\/p>\n To understand the sense in which universities are <\/em>responsible, it is crucial to separate two forms of responsibility: causal and political. I am causally responsible for an event if it occurred as a result of my agency. But as philosophers such as Iris Marion Young have argued<\/a>, this common-sense view of responsibility applies only to a narrow range of cases.<\/p>\n Responsibility, according to Young, goes far beyond cases where the responsible agent is the one who caused the harm. Even if individuals and institutions are not causally responsible for injustices, they are nevertheless \u2018politically responsible\u2019. That is, they are in the position to behave in a \u2018morally appropriate way\u2019 with respect to injustices, for instance by taking steps to counter them. From Young\u2019s perspective, while universities have not caused the violence in Gaza, it is still their responsibility to do something about it. Just as we, as voters, policymakers, students, faculty, administrators and so on, are capable of ensuring that the right \u2018outcomes obtain\u2019.<\/p>\n Put in simple terms: if you have fallen off your bike because someone pushed you, I am not causally or directly responsible for your fall. But I am responsible for helping you off the ground.\u00a0This sort of responsibility is woven into the fabric of our social relations. It is why universities cannot forgoe their responsibilities towards injustice simply because they are not causally responsible for it. As long as universities are in the position to do something to improve the situation, they remain politically responsible.<\/p>\n Take the Dutch case. While universities in the Netherlands are not directly involved in the war in Gaza (unlike the Dutch state, which has illegally been selling parts for F35 fighter jets to Israel<\/a>), they are politically responsible. They can, for instance<\/a>, suspend ties with Israeli institutions and corporations, while supporting Palestinian students and institutions that are under attack. As powerful institutions of learning that occupy an important place in the national and international landscape, universities take can make a difference by taking moral stances. This is the responsibility students want them to recognize.<\/p>\n At the same time, it\u2019s true that anger has its limitations. Fixating on our own emotions<\/a> as witnesses of atrocities is self-regarding, in that it foregrounds ourselves rather than the atrocities. Furthermore, as Nussbaum points out, outrage and anger alone do not effect change: they are often short-lived. I recall the persistent indignation about the treatment of migrants in Europe at the height of the \u2018migrant crisis\u2019 in 2015: in newspaper headlines, in frequent protests, and in classrooms. Now migrants suffer unbearable conditions <\/a>in various camps across Europe and continue to die en masse at Europe\u2019s borders<\/a> \u2013 <\/u>all this, while the hateful far-right scores political victory after political victory. Gone are those vocal protests for migrants when they are needed most.<\/p>\n Outrage is temporary; what is needed are permanent and structural commitments to justice. As stable institutions and communities, universities can be the bases for these commitments.<\/p>\n As students or teachers, we are bound to each other not exclusively as members of an academic community, but also as members of a moral community. In what relationship, I wonder, do we stand to our fellow Palestinian academics in Gaza when we fail to condemn their decimation? Israel has destroyed every university in Gaza<\/a> through airstrikes and planned demolitions<\/a>. According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor<\/a>, Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza has killed 94 university professors \u2018as well as hundreds of lecturers and thousands of students\u2019. This is not to mention the fate of schools in Gaza and the pupils who once attended them, thousands of them now starving, thousands of them maimed, and thousands of them dead.<\/p>\n We should not fear the anger of students who hold their institutions to moral standards. What we should fear is morally hollow institutions that fail to take political responsibility in the face of atrocities.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.eurozine.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/04\/Gaza_Ceasefire_Now_-2_53648779649-1024x682.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAnger and protest<\/h2>\n
\n
Neutrality<\/h2>\n
Responsibility<\/h2>\n
Solidarity<\/h2>\n
![Wikimedia Commons<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\nAnger and protest<\/h2>\nAngry protests are often misunderstood. It is easy to see why. Conventional wisdom tells us that anger is volatile, \u2018prone to excess\u2019 as the moral philosopher Martha Nussbaum<\/a> has put it.\u00a0Nussbaum is largely pessimistic about anger, which she believes is always about vengeance. Indeed, revenge is often motivated by anger and the belief that righteous violence can balance the scales of justice. This, Nussbaum argues, is a form of \u2018magical thinking\u2019 driven by \u2018metaphysical ideas of cosmic balance\u2019. Our violence can never undo the harm done to us.\u00a0Harms do not cancel harms.<\/p>\nIf we accept Nussbaum\u2019s view, students are protesting because they want payback. They are out to get the academic community and their protests and disruptions are aimed at \u2018counterbalancing\u2019 harm. Besides the obvious moral problems with payback, this perspective makes the students\u2019 anger seem misdirected and irrational. Vengeful anger is typically directed at whomever has caused harm, but universities are hardly causally responsible for the events in Gaza.<\/p>\nThis view, however, excludes other forms of anger, even if it registers one of its most prevalent forms. Anger can also be about communicating wrongs and expressing the need for accountability. I am angry when someone with whom I stand in a moral relationship contravenes that relationship. Anger expresses my belief that a wrong has occurred and articulates itself through protest. In fact, according to P.F. Strawson<\/a>, emotions such as anger and outrage are constitutive of our moral responses. To be affectless in the face of abject violence is to be missing a part of one\u2019s humanity.<\/p>\nAudre Lorde<\/a> once described anger \u2018as a libation\u2019, an offering to the one that suffers, an act of solidarity. She found herself defending anger partly because the anger of the oppressed classes is often dismissed by the ruling classes as violent and destructive. This kind of anger, Lorde argued, is distinct from hatred and contempt, which are indeed purely destructive.<\/p>\nBut whether we understand anger as a form of solidarity, or an expression of moral indignation, in both cases we acknowledge that it can be productive<\/em>. Here is how the philosopher Jeremy Bendik-Keymer describes<\/a> anger\u2019s moral core:<\/p>\n\nIt makes a complaint and seeks moral repair \u2013 of the relationship primarily and, at the least, of the standing of the one who has been momentarily erased by the moral wrong. If the wrongdoer(s) will not own up on their own, the community that hears the protest can at least reinforce the standing of the one wronged \u2026 The public nature of angry protest affirms something that is morally considerable, and thus calls on solidarity since it appeals to moral accountability.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nThis account of anger puts the anger at the heart of student protests in a different light. The student protestors feel a combination of grief and anger at the violence they see on their screens or, often if they are Palestinian, inflicted on those who are close to them. They are angry at their universities because they perceive these institutions to lack moral consistency.<\/p>\nStudent protestors in the Netherlands have told me they think Dutch educational institutions are practicing double standards with respect to wars and violence. While other atrocities have been vociferously condemned, most notably the Russian aggression against Ukraine, Dutch institutions have called for neutrality when it comes to Gaza. But upholding neutrality as a value is cynical, the students believe, when it is employed selectively and perpetuates the marginalization of the powerless.<\/p>\nNeutrality<\/h2>\nLet\u2019s assume that there is some substance to the idea that universities should remain neutral. The University of Amsterdam, for instance, has banned all \u2018expressions of a cultural, political, and\/or religious nature<\/a>\u2019 in its house rules for campus buildings, appealing to the role of the university as a neutral place of learning. A safe space for everyone, university officials suggest, is one which is apolitical. If we accept this notion, then the students\u2019 anger can indeed be seen as misdirected: it does not belong at universities.<\/p>\nBut if we want universities to maintain neutrality in the face of atrocities, we should ask ourselves what exactly we mean by neutrality. Many things that academics and scientists study exist on multiple planes. Take white phosphorus. On the one hand, white phosphorus is the stuff of objective scientific curiosity that we might study in a chemistry lab; on the other hand, it is a chemical used in munitions banned by the Geneva Conventions because it causes third-degree burns that reach to the bone and can lead to multiple organ failure. Amnesty International has shown<\/a> that the Israeli Defence Forces have illegally used white phosphorus in Gaza.<\/p>\nNot only do objects of science exist on multiple planes, but universities are also normative and political spaces in a more direct sense. They make evaluative judgments about what matters in science. They receive and give funding on the basis of normative assessments. They have been involved<\/a> in colonialism and slavery. Far from pristine and neutral grounds where knowledge proliferates untouched by the world, the university is political through and through. And it cannot be otherwise.<\/p>\nWe can ignore this reality, but then we ourselves are making a normative choice: to ignore the human reality, which structures and motivates our intellectual pursuits, and the world in which the objects of science have sense and significance.<\/p>\nProtesting students refuse to ignore the world in which their education is embedded.<\/p>\nResponsibility<\/h2>\nNow, it might be argued that because universities are not directly or causally responsible for the horrific situation in Gaza, they cannot be held accountable. This would again mean that student anger is misdirected: it targets the wrong institutions.<\/p>\nTo understand the sense in which universities are <\/em>responsible, it is crucial to separate two forms of responsibility: causal and political. I am causally responsible for an event if it occurred as a result of my agency. But as philosophers such as Iris Marion Young have argued<\/a>, this common-sense view of responsibility applies only to a narrow range of cases.<\/p>\nResponsibility, according to Young, goes far beyond cases where the responsible agent is the one who caused the harm. Even if individuals and institutions are not causally responsible for injustices, they are nevertheless \u2018politically responsible\u2019. That is, they are in the position to behave in a \u2018morally appropriate way\u2019 with respect to injustices, for instance by taking steps to counter them. From Young\u2019s perspective, while universities have not caused the violence in Gaza, it is still their responsibility to do something about it. Just as we, as voters, policymakers, students, faculty, administrators and so on, are capable of ensuring that the right \u2018outcomes obtain\u2019.<\/p>\nPut in simple terms: if you have fallen off your bike because someone pushed you, I am not causally or directly responsible for your fall. But I am responsible for helping you off the ground.\u00a0This sort of responsibility is woven into the fabric of our social relations. It is why universities cannot forgoe their responsibilities towards injustice simply because they are not causally responsible for it. As long as universities are in the position to do something to improve the situation, they remain politically responsible.<\/p>\nTake the Dutch case. While universities in the Netherlands are not directly involved in the war in Gaza (unlike the Dutch state, which has illegally been selling parts for F35 fighter jets to Israel<\/a>), they are politically responsible. They can, for instance<\/a>, suspend ties with Israeli institutions and corporations, while supporting Palestinian students and institutions that are under attack. As powerful institutions of learning that occupy an important place in the national and international landscape, universities take can make a difference by taking moral stances. This is the responsibility students want them to recognize.<\/p>\nAt the same time, it\u2019s true that anger has its limitations. Fixating on our own emotions<\/a> as witnesses of atrocities is self-regarding, in that it foregrounds ourselves rather than the atrocities. Furthermore, as Nussbaum points out, outrage and anger alone do not effect change: they are often short-lived. I recall the persistent indignation about the treatment of migrants in Europe at the height of the \u2018migrant crisis\u2019 in 2015: in newspaper headlines, in frequent protests, and in classrooms. Now migrants suffer unbearable conditions <\/a>in various camps across Europe and continue to die en masse at Europe\u2019s borders<\/a> \u2013 <\/u>all this, while the hateful far-right scores political victory after political victory. Gone are those vocal protests for migrants when they are needed most.<\/p>\nOutrage is temporary; what is needed are permanent and structural commitments to justice. As stable institutions and communities, universities can be the bases for these commitments.<\/p>\nSolidarity<\/h2>\nAs students or teachers, we are bound to each other not exclusively as members of an academic community, but also as members of a moral community. In what relationship, I wonder, do we stand to our fellow Palestinian academics in Gaza when we fail to condemn their decimation? Israel has destroyed every university in Gaza<\/a> through airstrikes and planned demolitions<\/a>. According to the Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor<\/a>, Israel\u2019s assault on Gaza has killed 94 university professors \u2018as well as hundreds of lecturers and thousands of students\u2019. This is not to mention the fate of schools in Gaza and the pupils who once attended them, thousands of them now starving, thousands of them maimed, and thousands of them dead.<\/p>\nWe should not fear the anger of students who hold their institutions to moral standards. What we should fear is morally hollow institutions that fail to take political responsibility in the face of atrocities.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n[ad_2]\nSource link <\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"[ad_1] On the 26 January, the United Nations\u2019 highest court in The Hague, the International Court of Justice, found it plausible that Israel\u2019s violence in<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":226189,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_uf_show_specific_survey":0,"_uf_disable_surveys":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[154],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226188"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=226188"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/226188\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/226189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=226188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=226188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michigandigitalnews.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=226188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File:Gaza_Ceasefire_Now_-2_(53648779649).jpg\"){kind=link}