The rapid spread of student protests and encampments across the US provokes inevitable comparisons with the student anti-war and anti-imperialist movements of the 1960s. There are solid grounds for comparison. Solidarity with a long-oppressed people infused with youthful enthusiasm and energy has put university administrations and governments on the defensive. They have responded with a confused blend of police repression and negotiations that tracks the fault lines of contemporary America, exposing yet again its crise de conscience in the post-George Floyd era: is America still the indispensable country, the shining beacon on the hill, or is it a racist police state, the destroyer of dreams, the graveyard of hopes?

The federal government and Democratic-led states are especially trapped. Their oath of office swears them to uphold the constitution (in which freedom of speech is sacrosanct) and their left-posturing commits them to support “social justice” struggles. On the other hand, worries that the Right wing amplification of particular examples of obnoxious rhetoric will succeed in pushing moderates into the arms of Republicans pushes them towards repressive action. University administrators (for whom I do not generally feel sympathy) are in an even more precarious political situation. Young activists are incautious and say dumb things. In an age where mistakes will be recorded and repeated endlessly, unthinking and overzealous sloganeering (“Zionists don’t deserve to live“) is immediately weaponized to discredit the entire Palestinian solidarity movement. At the same time, the solidarity movement is a movement, it is not the university, which, as an institution, cannot become a vehicle for any partisan project. Since many Jewish students feel understandably threatened, the administration cannot simply ignore them, because their function is to administer the university as a whole.

Nevertheless, however difficult the situation they face, they must resist calls from the right and wealthy donors to violently dismantle the encampments. Fortunately, the 1960’s has not repeated itself in all respects, yet. No one has blown up or burned down ROTC offices and the National Guard have not been called in, as they in fact were against student protesters in 1970 at Kent State, resulting in the killing of four unarmed students and a national student strike that closed hundreds of universities and colleges. University administrators would do well to review the lessons of this dark chapter of the 1960’s anti-War movement.

As university administrators, their primary duty is to protect the integrity of the institution, but the integrity of the institution depends upon academic freedom, not police repression or worse. Without academic freedom there is no unconstrained exchange of ideas and arguments, and therefore no chance for the better argument to emerge from a process of intellectual contestation. Academic freedom involves the right to publicly manifest one’s ideas, not only in academic papers, but in the popular press, on blogs and social media, and, yes, in an encampment in the quad as well. Arguments are not just verbal; visual manifestations and symbolic representations can express premises and conclusions (as my former Provost and now President of Trent University , Leo Groarke, has long argued). An encampment is a political occupation, but it makes an argument: the situation that we are protesting is so egregious that the public must be directly and daily confronted with opposition to it. If the public cannot ignore the situation they must join the protestors in opposition, or become complicit with the oppressors.

The right will not decode the political argument beneath the visible symbols of occupation. They will not patiently engage but will demand direct repressive action. What about the chants, “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free” they say? What about the overt support for Hamas, Hezbollah, and Iran? The answer is that chants are chants, they are meant to arouse political passion; in themselves they are not objectively harmful. Maoist students chanted “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, the NLF is going to win” in the 1960s and entertained hair-raisingly naive positions about what was happening in the Cultural Revolution. What was happening was an anti-intellectual terror campaign– which no one left the safety of American campuses to join. It is easy to entertain illusions when one is not in the thick of the fight. Brandishing a sign about the al-Qassam brigades is different from brandishing an AK-47. Serious people would go and join, but just as no US students signed up to fight for the NLF, none that I know of are signing up for the armed struggle they claim to support.

The conclusion: these are not terrorists in training but excited young people whose tongues sometimes get ahead of their brains. The correct response is to engage in serious political argument. That is one reason why universities are worth supporting. But Jewish students feel threatened, a critic will further rejoin. I can understand that some might, (others have joined the protests). Nevertheless, feeling threatened and being physically threatened are distinct. (A lesson that the campus left must learn as well). Where there is sharp opposition each side will make the other feel uncomfortable: to wish otherwise is to wish away political conflict. But there will be political conflict until its underlying causes have been solved. People have been trying to diagnose those causes since Plato, so …

… they probably will not be resolved anytime soon …

… which is why I am skeptical that the most radical of the protestors will be able to maintain much less build momentum. Protests cannot generate self-sustaining energy but have to be fed by the superogatory commitment of the the protestors. A logic of escalation cannot succeed unless it draws massive numbers of people into the fight, but in a period of relatively low levels of political consciousness, radicals tend to isolate themselves and lose connection with the majority of people who would have to come on board in order to sustain the struggle. Exhortation only goes so far and movements run the risk of succumbing to the law of political entropy, as Black Lives Matters street demonstrations proved a few summers ago.

Unsurprisingly, given the self-absorption of Americans, the actions of a few thousand college students have detracted attention from the real action: on the ground in Israel and Gaza. There, something potentially ground-breaking has happened. Khalil al-Hayya, member of the Hamas politburo, stated that the group would be willing to disarm and transform into a civilian political movement in return for a two state solution, with Israel defined by its 1967 borders and a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza. What motivated such an announcement and how sincere it was remain open questions, but even if it were being floated to make Hamas appear more reasonable in Western eyes in order to continue to increase pressure on Israel, it proves that they can be politically reasonable, despite the maximalist demands for the destruction of Israel in their 1988 Covenant. (The 2017 Charter accepts the principle that the 1967 borders will form the basis of a future Palestinian state. Thanks to Ali El-Mokadem for drawing my attention to the difference between the two documents.) The politically rational response would be to seize upon this opening– thin as it may be– and build from there towards comprehensive negotiations. One can be certain that the present Israeli government– and no doubt harder-line factions in Hamas– will not do the politically rational thing. But the very airing of the suggestion shows that negotiations are always possible, even with groups who start out saying that they will never negotiate.

As always in human history, one is left to lament that political rationality emerges only after the deaths of 35000 in Gaza and 1200 in Israel (and probably more to come). Nevertheless, Hamas opening the door to comprehensive negotiations– fraught as they would be, given the many structural obstacles to a just and lasting peace between Israel and Palestine– proves that history is not only the slaughterhouse of nations (Hegel) but a school from which even the most purportedly irrational and intransigent groups can and do learn. The most important lesson that anyone involved in the struggle against oppression can learn–as I have been arguing in previous posts– is that modes of struggle which leave as many people as possible alive to enjoy the liberated future are superior to heroic military actions which salve the desire for revenge on one side but stoke it on the other. Peace is not so much a moral as it is a practical imperative, the most fundamental social condition of universal life-protection and life-enjoyment.