I am sorry my posting has slowed down a little. Currently, my job is taking up almost all of my time and I am also writing a book on the side. This has naturally led not only to a lack of time to dedicate to the substack but also a tiredness which does not lend itself to original thinking or good writing. Thus, I have tried to provide fewer articles in the hope they are of better quality. This is a quick note to hopefully satisfy your appetites until the end of the week when I will post a longer article on why I’m not voting in the next set of elections :)
Israel and Gaza are still at war, Russia still has its foot on Ukraine’s neck and the DPRK still exists as little more than a slave state. Yet, we are talking about student protests. US universities have come under significant pressure for their actions towards the protesters- such as sending in the police, expelling their students and even tear-gassing some of them. These are all extreme actions, only warranted in the most severe of cases, which has helped cause yet another moral panic on Twitter.
But they are not exactly without historical precedent. Anti-war protests in the 60’s and 70’s were marked by violence and intimidation from both sides. In 1970 four students died from wounds when the Ohio National Guard opened fire on them. Rather than being a new form of oppression the protesters and police are both walking in the footsteps of their fathers and grandfathers. The students are protesting in an area they deem to be safe wielding no influence except causing mayhem at their place of learning and the police are doing what the police tend to do… use coercion when negotiation has failed.
Ultimately, the university is wrong. It does not matter if the students are shouting rubbish and are ill-informed, after all, that is almost always the case with these kinds of protests. Yes, the nuance and humanity of the other side get lost and slogans rule the day as a feel-good ‘revolutionary’ feel comes about. But neither are the students at universities currently threatening anyone with much of anything. Tents in parks, occupying buildings, and shouting are all just normal protest behaviours. Unless the university has a good reason they shouldn’t be going beyond letter writing and politely reminding the students to exit the building, the park and to return to class.
Simply being objectionable is not enough to stultify speech or the acts which come from expressing one’s thoughts. I have in the past defended those accused of blasphemy and bigotry, not with their views, but with their right to express such views. Without our voices our thoughts mean nought- this is what John Stuart Mill was pushing in On Liberty and why he is not a newer version of John Locke. Universities are in a lot of ways supposed to be indulgent of their student body, the campus and our teaching is ultimately for them after all, by bringing police in they are not producing a new era of violence of unprecedented horribleness but they are repeating the mistakes of the past.
Yet it can also be said the students involved are certainly learning something. They are learning perhaps more lessons about power than they otherwise would from reading Foucault. This is not to diminish reading Foucault but the protective shelter campuses provide for students shielding them from the real world always has trade-offs. On the one hand, we enhance the student’s ability to participate in an experience they will likely never again have. On the other hand, it does limit personal growth and maturity. This is why academics and I include myself in this, sometimes come across as especially petty or immature compared to our peers. We have been pickled in such an environment living out both its best and its worst traits.
A good example of this can be seen from a PhD student demanding food be brought to them even when no one has said it can’t be. The roleplaying as starving citizens is as grotesque as it is childish. This is not resistance or revolution, it is playing at both. It is especially insulting when there are people who cannot merely leave a hall and go to the local Walmart for supplies. Taking away any amount of coverage from that fact should be condemnation enough to drive attention away from the protests and onto the actual conflicts which matter in the world.
Thus it is possible to say all at once, nay we should all be saying, that universities should not suppress speech or acts of speech unless they physically interfere with other people. That the protests themselves are oftentimes ill-informed rants which can even descend into grotesque acts of cosplaying which paradoxically undermines the cause they seek to support. Finally, we should be focusing on the bigger picture depriving them of the media coverage they currently enjoy.
I don’t mind if students protest, as long as they are not violent or do not hurt or threaten people. I do object if they stop students who want to learn from coming on campus, or from attending classes. I think there has to be a compromise where protest is balanced against the role of a university as a learning institution. If they stop the very reason for existence of the university, then I think we have a problem. They can do what they do, as long as they let other students who don’t want to protest continue to learn.