Protests & Universities
“A university is special to the extent that it is a place where teaching and learning replace fighting and grandstanding.”
That’s Agnes Callard (Chicago), writing at The Point.
Are protests a good way to manifest political concern on college campuses? Do the purposes universities serve—or are supposed to serve—in society give us a reason to think there’s something unfitting about them being sites for protests?
Callard writes:
The protesters believe that they are entitled, by the justice of their cause, to ignore and disrupt the university’s normal pursuit of its mission. The university believes it is entitled, by its own principles, to resist this disruption. Each side uses force to get what it wants, and the details of these disruptions—exactly how much force is permitted, by which party, and when—are hotly disputed by the media as well as on campus. And yet the real scandal lies in all the ways in which this disgracefully anti-intellectual debacle gets normalized and gilded. When we use force to manage our disagreements, we are admitting that this place is nowhere special, that the ethos of the classroom cannot be the ethos of the university as a whole. There is no deeper insult to an intellectual community than the suggestion that, when its conversations drift onto a topic that really matters—when, as the saying goes, “push comes to shove”—they have to stop talking and start pushing and shoving.
Callard isn’t claiming that universities should be free of politics. What has no place on campus is political action that aims to change minds through coercion.
[Donald Judd, untitled]
I imagine some people will respond to Callard with accusations of preciousness about universities, or of callousness in prioritizing the flourishing of ivory towers over expressions of solidarity with the suffering. But keep in mind the following.
First, Callard’s arguments are just about particular kinds of political activity (“coercive” kinds) at universities, and do not speak to other kinds of expressions of political concern or political action on campus, or to students, professors, and other members of the university community engaging in demonstrations and protests that take place off campus.
Second, most of us think we’re morally permitted to prioritize, to some degree, people and institutions that are especially valuable to us, even when doing so entails foregoing actions that would produce a greater amount of good from an impersonal point of view. (You think it’s okay to buy your kids presents for their birthdays, for example, even if you could have donated the money you used to buy them to a charity that could have then inoculated some additional children from a deadly disease.) That’s worth taking into account, even if you think the marginal benefits of the kind of on-campus political activity Callard’s criticizing outweigh their costs.
Third, Callard is not calling for university administrators to forcibly shut down protests.
* * *
Meanwhile, back in the world of details, the following was brought to my attention by Matthew Smith (Northeastern), who has argued that American philosophers should condemn the war in Gaza. According to his university’s administration, in a document published last month:
Faculty and staff members who wish to organize and participate in demonstrations on Northeastern’s campuses must seek approval from the Office of the Provost.
Is there a similar policy at your university?
Discussion welcome.
I am trying to discern the practical yield of the stance (with which I agree). If “Callard is not calling for university administrators to forcibly shut down protests,” are protesters supposed to read her piece and be moved to talk reasonably instead? You reap what you sow, so after decades of enacting a Pedagogy of the Oppressed, a return to rationality and composure seems unlikely…
What is a “pedagogy of the oppressed”?
A book by Paulo Freire
Thanks! And it is advocating anti-rationality?
Maybe you could read it and decide for yourself. It’s not exactly an obscure book or reference.
I think perhaps Julian was engaging in a Socratic fashion to draw out the fact that the book does not advocate anti-rationality. So, saying “read it and decide yourself” might be a bit like Euthyphro telling Socrates to go figure out piety on his own time.
(Note also that we’ve gone a little astray, as David points out below. Julian asked what is “a” pedagogy of the oppressed, mirroring the original comment, perhaps looking for an elucidation that would make sense of this phrasing. Daniil’s reply that it’s Freire’s book ignores the phrasing, since his book is The Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I think Julian was trying to get Marc to explain what he thinks we’ve been doing for the past few decades that has turned our students into people who allegedly cannot behave in a rational and composed manner. Such an explanation would probably help us get at the relevant issues, which the ensuing discussion has not, in large part because it’s bypassing the request for an explanation in favor of pointing out that Freire wrote a book with the same title as Marc’s bete noire)
It’s not very flattering or charitable to the OP to make their remark out as if they’re Euthyphro and the respondent is Socrates. But I agree we digress.
Yes, that’s clearly what Julian is doing; Kav also clearly knows this and is calling his bluff. The former should just state his objections and get on with it, not deign to educate us dialectically in the process. Or perhaps the best response to his last question is: “yes, it is advocating anti-rationality! Any more perfectly innocent questions?”
I kinda really want to know what on earth Marc is on about.
More specifically, whether “Pedagogy of the Oppressed” is just some malappropriated boogeyman like “CRT” or “DEI”.
Thanks! And once he explains what he means—in all likelihood, I agree, a boogeyman—your impartial curiosity will be satisfied and you’ll be on your way?
Yes of course, Euthyphro, I shall not bother the good sophists of Athens any longer.
Fwiw “a return to rationality and composure” in Marc’s comment presupposes an answer to your question re whether Freire’s concept is “anti-rational”. Sounds like you were just targeting the (false) presupposition that it is, which I appreciate.
Well we can’t exactly enact a book, so Marc’s usage of the phrase could still serve to be clarified.
Mother Jones has made a pretty good list of “US university protest policies changed between May and September of 2024”.
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2024/09/new-university-rules-crack-down-on-gaza-protests/
I have no idea what Callard is talking about. What is the coercion that is prominent on campuses? Is a protest coercion? Is Callard referring to sit-ins or lock-ins? Without this being clarified this argument seems to rest on a strawman.
“Is a protest coercion?”
The effective ones, yes. Conversations don’t come with demands or threats. When demands or threats are made in them, they cease to be conversations. Some issues and contexts call for discussion, others for coercion. That’s why debates over methods invariably collapse into debates over the first-order issues in play.
demands can be made without coercion. granted, some protests involve coercive threats, but many do not. I’ve participated in many protests, but I don’t think I’ve been involved in a coercive protest.
I guess it’s possible in theory for a demand to be non-coercive, but it seems a little strange.
If I demand that you do a certain thing, and I even go as far as to say that it’s a demand, then it’s reasonable for you to wonder what will happen if you don’t comply with my demand. Presumably, the idea is that if you don’t comply, I’ll do something to make you wish you had, and that my making the request as a demand now is meant to help you see that it would be in your best interest to do my bidding.
Is it possible that the demand is just elliptical for, ‘I demand that you do X [and if you don’t do X, I’ll be sad that I didn’t get my wish but that will be that].’ But then it seems odd to call it a demand.
The thing that is threatened to continue if the demands aren’t met is the surely the protest. Not everything threatened is coercive.
Take another example: I go on hunger strike. I give a list of demands. The implicit ‘threat’ is that I will continue to go on hunger strike. Are hunger strikes coercive?
It’s a thought-provoking question, David: thank you.
In the first case — if the threat behind the demand is that the protest will continue — I think it probably is coercive. If my friends and I protest outside your office, harass people going to your classes, etc., and say that we’ll keep it up until you cave in to our demands, then I’d say that you gave in to coercion if you meet the demands on that basis.
The hunger strike case seems trickier to me. My private decision not to eat until something happens, in itself, does not seem to be coercive. But suppose there’s something I wish to ensure that you do. You’re not motivated to do that thing, and you don’t think I have provided you with any good reason for doing it. But I happen to know that, if I stage a public hunger strike, a number of people will take my side and put pressure on you to do what I wish you to do. If the hunger strike goes on for a few days without your doing the thing, your reputation will suffer more and more, and you may permanently lose your status and even perhaps your means of earning a living. I stage the hunger strike for this reason and, for that same reason, you eventually succumb to the pressure and surrender to my wishes.
That sounds like coercion to me.
The purpose of the hunger strike example was to point out that making demands does not imply coercion in many cases. It was a counterexample.
The fact that you can construct examples of hunger strikes that are not counterexamples by imagining the right kind of intent and social circumstances is besides the point.
Someone can plausibly refuse to eat out of protest, give a list of demands articulating the conditions under which they will cease the hunger strike and they and no other reasonable agent have any expectation (nor intent on the part of the hunger striker) that the subject of the demands will face the kinds of consequences you describe. They may be expecting, instead, that something like conscience will be a motivator rather than threatening social consequences. That would constitute a form of protest that involves demands and is not plausibly construed as coercive and it is not at all to odd to call the list a list of demands.
Demanding something just implies you think that thing is owed. It need not imply a threat of coercion. This is not in the least bit an edge case. People demand what they or others are morally owed all the time without threatening coercion.
Anyone interested in whether hunger strikes are coercive might start with some of the recent work on the topic: Delmas’s “The Right to Hunger Strike” and Aitchison’s “Fragility as Strength: The Ethics and Politics of Hunger Strike.” Both cite much previous work on the topic.
In its well-known (in some circles) decision from the late 1960s, Tinker v. Des Moines School Dist., the Supreme Court used the phrase “substantial disruption” to indicate the sorts of activities that would justify curtailment of students’ free speech rights — which the Court recognized they had — in public schools.
I would think that when student protests on college campuses are not substantially disruptive (some are but some are not), they should be viewed as expressive rather than coercive. So some distinction-drawing between different kinds of protests seems indicated. On the basis of an admittedly quick run through Callard’s piece, she doesn’t seem to do that (though I might well have missed something).
Genuinely non-coercive, merely expressive activities that still count as protests sound a lot like grandstanding. Or at least they are poor at both protest and public discourse. It is reasonable to wonder if that’s the best we can do, or the best that we can encourage.
Expressive protest is not a substitute for reasoned argument and discussion, but I’m inclined to think it may have some value in certain cases. I’m not sure, however, I could articulate precisely what that value is off the top of my head in a comment box, other than that it can call wider attention to an issue. My guess is that some philosophers have written about this question at some point in the past 60 years, say (or before that).
isn’t one value of expressive protest simply the public display of moral outrage? that’s calling wider for attention, sure, but it is also a way making something that for some may not be an issue of concern recognizable as an issue of concern. this would seem to be the basis of thoreau’s (and thus perhaps ghandi’s & king’s) view of civil disobedience. might be worth going back to thoreau’s essay if we’re looking for articulations of this kind of value.
Agreed.
The first rule of University Fight Club, is Nobody talks about University fight club.
The coercion is the suppression of the objections of the protestors. The attempt to reverse the blame, putting it on the protestors for doing things like occupying a quad, or blocking traffic, fail, since they do not have the institutional power to even get a rational discussion started.
Look, like any other good person I don’t enjoy quoting obnoxious poets. But reading philosophers on Gaza always makes me think of that line: “the trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed.”
Reading comments like this always makes me think of this line (from Justin’s comment policy):
“ seated next to you is a child, who you brought with you for a lesson on how to discuss various subjects—including controversial issues—with strangers.”
I have two kids and I do tell them how, in the last 12 months, my colleagues have been outraged about everything except genocide against our people. Never too young to learn, but you gotta break it to them with a little humor. Too scary otherwise.
The problem with this comment is that spicy blog comments do not actually stop genocides. There is no causal pathway from dunking on David Wallace to peace in Palestine.
On the other hand, saying edgy stuff about university professors getting bombed makes your movement sound violent, which makes it harder to build a big-tent coalition for peace.
In your rush to tone-police WiseGuy speaking about the genocide of his people, you seem to be somehow misinterpreting him as wishing that university professors and their cities get bombed which can’t be further from the intended meaning of Charles Bukowski’s quote and WiseGuy’s use of it.
The whole point of the double negative – the “trouble” is that they “haven’t been bombed” – is that it’s playing with the idea that bombing them would be a good thing.
Uhm.. we could pretty plausibly interpret that not as “the trouble [in general, that needs to be fixed]” but as “the trouble [for any attempt to take their opinions on this matter seriously].” The intended meaning seems clearly to be that these people talk a lot without substance, not that they need to be bombed (the latter reading seems to me to stress common sense and to beat the principle of charity out back with a bat, because people who feel targeted when accused of having nothing worthwhile to contribute love to accuse the accuser of something, anything, as if that makes the accusation go away).
I know the intended meaning. I just don’t believe that, in political discourse, “intended meaning” is all that matters.
Do you?
Hm, one imaginary child vs 11,000 actual dead children – tough call
I mean, I don’t think there’s any value in being able to disagree politely about whether, e.g., the Armenian genocide was a good thing either.
Ah, you see here is the thing. Many of our enlightened colleagues deny the Gaza genocide, so the comparison with the Armenian genocide does not hold for them. Of course such genocide denial is unrelated to decades of dehumanization of Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims in Western mainstream media and culture, but is rather due to *nuisanced* philosophical arguments that are miraculously only ever made when the ones doing the slaughtering are Western/Western-allied.
Nuanced*
“the trouble with these people is that their cities have never been bombed.”
And also that they did not have friends, or friends of friends, who were recently brutally massacred en masse in an act of remarkable and intentional psychological cruelty to them and their families, by a political organization that has vowed to keep doing that again and again until members of the target ethnicity has been purged from the region.
The consideration cuts both ways.
To clarify, you’re talking about Israel’s actions against the Palestinian people in Gaza and the West Bank, right?
You make me wonder whether, behind your smart-assery, you are capable of weighing the harms done by Israel against the harms done by Hamas, or whether your ideological commitments make that impossible. That particular moral impairment (being unable to weigh moral harms against each other because harms are only allowed to be counted on one side) is sadly typical of the degraded academic moral discourse of the last decade or so.
The Gaza genocide is by every single metric, whether you like it or not, far far worse than the 7 Oct attacks. And most importantly, it is still ongoing until this moment. Anyone who tries to justify it, deny it, or minimize it by employing whataboutisms will be confined to the dustbins of history.
I said nothing about whether it is better or worse, or whether it is ongoing or not, or whether it is justified. I merely pointed out that one cannot evaluate these things by looking at one side only, which is what it seems PhD Candidate seeks to do by limiting the discussion to what Israel has done and not factoring in what Hamas did and threatens to do over and over again.
It’s quite possibly true that by every single metric you’ve considered, the Gaza genocide is far worse than what Hamas did on October 7th last year. But even if were worse in every way, period, this is a philosophy blog, and thinking people who know actual moral theory will not presume that that would be decisive, even if it were true. For instance, if a gang of ten people vow to slaughter a family of five, and begin by killing one innocent person, then is it beyond question in ethics that the remaining members of the family of five cannot be justified in killing more than one gang member in self defense? Of course not. If snipers among the gang members hide behind innocent people while they attempt to shoot at and kill more of the family members, is it beyond question in ethical theory that the family members have to just accept their fate and wait to be shot, because it is never permitted to take an innocent life even in self defense? Of course not. No serious student of ethical theory would think so. Of course there are philosophers whose ethical views entail these results, but there are plausible alternative general ethical views that have not been defeated.
Note, please, that I am not saying that these considerations exculpate Israel. It is consistent with everything I have said that Israel is clearly in the wrong. My point is merely that when people consider only one side, or dogmatically insist on sophistical moves like reasoning from the fact that there were more casualties on one side that that the other side is in the wrong, the philosophical discussion is degraded to the point where no fair-minded person can take seriously the upshot of what should have been a proper ethical discussion of the issue. I find that a shame.
The whole enterprise of analytic moral philosophy with its decontextualized toy examples (like the one you provide in your comment), ahistoricity and inability to engage with concepts like colonialism is ill-equipped to deal with the Gaza genocide and the Palestinian anti-colonial struggle in general. You are free to consider whatever you want as “serious” philosophy, but let’s not pretend it’s the only way to do philosophy and everything else is just irrational and anti-intellectual propaganda and not a “proper ethical discussion”.
What you call the ‘decontextualized toy examples’ of analytic moral philosophy are not just some accidental feature of ethical reasoning: they are useful ways of testing our cherished moral principles in the abstract. And that, in turn, is needed because of our strong tendency to let our biases run ahead of us when these questions are on the line. It is precisely in cases like the Israel/Palestine issue, where there is so much emotion invested on both sides, so much angry dogmatism, so much at stake, and so much pressure to conform to the socially accepted beliefs of one’s peer group, that the ability to think abstractly and carefully is most important.
If you are proposing a way of approaching these questions that does away with the testing of the moral principles you seem to cherish (like the principle that the rightness or wrongness of an attack can be measured by a mere body count), and that does not do its best to consider the relevant facts on both sides before rendering a judgment, then it may be effective activism, but it is very poor philosophy. Yes, any number of definitions of ‘philosophy’ are possible, but that can be said for any term.
Moral principles cannot be “tested” in the abstract as if they were scientific phenomenon that can be isolated and tested in a lab. Moral judgments are inseperable from both history and sociopolitical factors. The failure of moral analytic philosophy to acknowledge this is *precisely*the reason why we have seen pathetic attempts by “esteemed” philosophers (some of those have appeared on DN) to justify the Gaza genocide. On a side note, I do not actually cherish the principle where ” the rightness or wrongness of an attack can be measured by mere body count”. On the contrary, I am totally against such ways of “weighing up harm” that proponents of analytic moral philosophy are so fond of. My comment above was merely rhoterical stating that even by such cherished standards of “weighing up harm” and doing some weird calculus to quantify suffering, the Gaza genocide was way worse than the 7 Oct attacks that any comparison of the two was insulting.
“Moral principles cannot be “tested” in the abstract as if they were scientific phenomenon that can be isolated and tested in a lab. Moral judgments are inseperable from both history and sociopolitical factors. The failure of moral analytic philosophy to acknowledge this is *precisely*the reason why we have seen pathetic attempts by “esteemed” philosophers (some of those have appeared on DN) to justify the Gaza genocide.”
Wait — you say you don’t think that moral principles can be tested in the abstract. But if you are right about that, then how can we have any knowledge of what the correct moral principles are?
Somehow, you seem to have arrived confidently at moral judgments on this matter. Presumably, you would say that you achieved this by looking at the historical and sociopolitical factors you allude to. But so have others who disagree with your moral judgments on this matter, and so have all sorts of people (Maoists, Nazis, etc.) who insist that they, too, are justified in waving aside moral questions because of historical and sociopolitical factors they could point to.
One would imagine that the moral errors so many people have committed would serve as a reminder of the importance of making sure that we have an accurate and balanced understanding of the historical and sociopolitical factors, and also of checking to make sure that we are applying plausible moral principles to those non-moral factors.
And yet, I was the one who stressed the importance of considering all the non-moral factors (including both Israel’s actions and Hamas’s actions, etc.), and also the one who suggested that the moral principles invoked be tested against counterexamples, and haven’t you dismissed both those things as useless?
If so, could you please tell us what justifies your thinking that you are able to see clearly what you feel these esteemed philosophers have missed in their ‘pathetic attempts’ to comment on Gaza? How can you be so sure that you’re not in error, if you refuse to consider objections against principles you seem to rely on? Or, if you will say that you aren’t relying on any moral principles, then how are you extracting your moral judgments from the mere historical and sociopolitical facts?
You assume that the *only* way to have knowledge of correct moral principles is to test them in the abstract. I simply do not buy into this science-imitating assumption. And I suspect most people who are not analytic moral philosophers also do not buy it. I assume that you are from the US. A country that employs a jury system. Do you think that juries would pass a similar verdict on two teenage girls who have brutally murdered their fathers, but one of whom was sexually, physically and mentally assaulted by him for years while the other girl’s father was an example of a loving and kind parent?(assuming both girls come from similar racial and economic backgrouds, to eliminate bias).
You might say that this is nothing other than taking the “actions” of both the father and the daughter into consideration, something that you and analytic moral philosophers already take into consideration in the case of Israel’s genocide in Gaza. But I have never seen you or any of the analytic moral philosophers writing about this actually bringing up the “actions” *before* 7 Oct. And this is exactly what I mean by the missing historical and sociopolitical factors. If you want to call it “actions” then be my guest, but you have to take it all into consideration and not just act as if history started on 7 Oct. It would be equally absurd in the case of the abused girl comitting patricide to not consider the “actions” in the days, months and years preceeding the murder.
This is a strawman.I have never suggested that we should push away moral judgements at any point in favour of historical and sociopolitical factors. What I have been saying is that such factors are an integral part of any moral judgement and cannot be seperated from it.
I would be content if you and other analytic moral philosophers have considered the “actions” before 7 Oct (again, what I refer to as historical and sociopolitical factors) into consideration. Sadly, you have failed to do so. Not to mention the utter failure to even take into consideration many events *after* 7 Oct (For example, I have seen no philosophical account talking about the systematic rape and torture of thousands of Palestinian hostages, tens of whom have been killed so far). This is why such analyses are useless.
See all the above.
P.S It is curious that none of the decontexualized toy examples employed by esteemed analytic moral philosophers portray the man-made famine in Gaza (which got so bad that yesterday the US gave Israel one month to “improve” on the threat of an arms embargo). Maybe because a man-made famine situation, even in a decontexualized toy example, looks really bad and would just lead to….”undesirable” conclusions? Hmm, a man wonders..
“But I have never seen you or any of the analytic moral philosophers writing about this actually bringing up the “actions” *before* 7 Oct. And this is exactly what I mean by the missing historical and sociopolitical factors. If you want to call it “actions” then be my guest, but you have to take it all into consideration and not just act as if history started on 7 Oct.”
I must say, this is one of the strangest attempts I have seen to complain about analytic philosophy. I say ‘attempts’, because this is so far out that I you seem to be lashing out against some other target entirely: I don’t know where you get the idea that what you complain about has anything to do with analytic philosophy.
Obviously, anyone who maintains that it is relevant to consider the events that provoked Israel’s attacks against Hamas must also be prepared to consider the events and circumstances that provoked the Hamas attacks — and also the circumstances that provoked those events and circumstances, and the circumstances that provoked those circumstances, and so on.
Any sincere analytic philosopher who accepts that morality is a matter of applying context-sensitive moral principles will first try to determine, as fairly as possible, the relevant facts, and will then attempt to make a moral judgment by applying the relevant moral principles to the situation.
I don’t know what has led you to think that analytic philosophy requires one to ignore the background non-moral facts of a case. In fact, the very point I was originally making was that one cannot form a fair judgment in the Israel/Gaza situation without considering the actions on both sides that led to that situation. That must include the October 7th massacre. Of course it is also fair, by the same token, to consider what led to the October 7th massacre, and what led to the things that led to the October 7th massacre, etc. I have never said or implied that this obvious fact is not the case. Neither, as far as I have seen, has any analytic philosopher or any part of the practice of analytic philosophy.
Good. I am yet to see a single moral analytic philosopher refer to “relvant facts” like colonialism, occupation, oppression, apartheid or ethnic cleansing while discussing the Gaza genocide ( I am happy if you can point out someone that I might have missed). Maybe this is a failure of the philosophers themselves rather than the methodological approach they follow. But if that’s the case, then these philosophers are definitely not “sincere”, unless you don’t consider the above as “relevant facts”. In such case, 1) you just prove my point about moral analytic philosophy/philosophers, and 2) this discussion is over.
Moral analytic philosophers refer to this stuff all the time. Some examples:
https://dailynous.com/2024/02/08/american-philosophers-should-condemn-the-war-in-gaza-guest-post/
https://dailynous.com/2023/12/05/israel-hamas-and-blowback-guest-post/
https://dailynous.com/2023/12/20/disproportionate-and-intended-harm-to-innocents-in-israels-war-in-gaza-guest-post/
https://dailynous.com/2023/11/08/there-is-no-military-objective-in-gaza-guest-post/
Thanks, Daniel. I have already seen these pieces when they first appeared on DN. Only Khalidi explicitly mentions any of the relevant facts I mentioned above. But his piece is not arguing for a normative position, so he is not really doing moral philosophy there. He is rather doing a political and historical analysis to argue that Israel has no military target in Gaza (which I agree with).
Hi again, Yazan.
I haven’t been reading what analytic philosophers, specifically, are saying on the matter, but it seems that most or all of these considerations apply to all reasonable and fair conversations about the situation in Gaza, and certainly all the ones that form a proper part of discussions at a university.
Such a discussion depends on our engaging with our interlocutors to form a fair assessment, first of all, of the facts in the case, and then of the reasonable moral judgments and the right thing to do, given those facts.
However, what you point to as ‘facts’ that you apparently think everyone needs to agree to in order to join the discussion are very controversial, at least.
The ‘facts’ you mention are: colonialism, occupation, oppression, apartheid, and ethnic cleansing. I have seen many people argue that Israel is guilty of all those things, and I have also seen many people argue that Israel is guilty of none of them. These people do not seem to be simply ignorant of all the material facts: there are complicated questions in making these assessments.
Take, for instance, ethnic cleansing. This is the “the expulsion, imprisonment, or killing of an ethnic minority by a dominant majority in order to achieve ethnic homogeneity” (Brittanica). Before we can characterize Israel’s actions this way, we would need to know that the aim of Israel’s policies and military actions is to achieve ethnic homogeneity, and not to respond to a clear and persistent threat by an external group that has vowed to eradicate Israel and has vowed to repeat the October 7th massacres over and over again. We would also have to consider whether Hamas aims at ethnic cleansing: the central claims made openly by that very organization will be useful to consider here. What exactly is the intended fate of the Jews currently living in Israel, according to Hamas’s openly-stated plans?
It would, at the very least, be shockingly premature to brush all that aside and just call it a fact that Israel, and not Hamas, aims at ethnic cleansing or has recently pursued the goal of ethnic cleansing. No minimally informed person who’s interested in basing policy on facts would make such a move.
Many of the other things you refer to as ‘facts’ depend on further questions about whether the establishment of Israel was legitimate or not. And there again there’s a forest of arguments and counter-arguments to sift through. Which ethnic group defeasibly belongs there? How is that to be decided? I have seen prima facie impressive arguments for radically different conclusions on this point, all by people who point to a long list of historical factors. Naturally, each side presents its own actions as merely operating in self-defense against a violent and evil enemy, and naturally each side also dismisses the other side’s causal claims by insisting that we look at what caused its favored side to make the attack in question (but of course without looking at the cause of that cause, which would be more inconvenient).
The only people I have heard from who confidently portray the Israel/Palestine conflict as one in which one side has done nothing wrong and the other side has done nothing right are people who have decided the issue before considering the opposing arguments — or, more often, people who have no idea what the opposing arguments even are, because they live in echo chambers.
The intellectual discipline required by analytic philosophy does make it harder to confidently march around shouting out popular and simplistic slogans, and making extreme accusations without adequate consideration. I don’t see why that’s a bad thing.
I’m not sure that at this point in the history, “analytic philosophy” is a sufficiently well-defined methodological category to be an intelligible object of any sweeping criticism (or praise). Likewise, I’m not sure what “toy examples” are–as opposed to just simplified hypotheticals which are (hopefully) shorn of distracting detail and which help to isolate the moral relevance of various features.
That said, and perhaps this is what Yazan was saying, one of the real dangers with simplified hypotheticals *which are meant to capture morally relevant features of actual moral situations* is that it’s very, very easy to construct a “simplified” scenario which omits morally relevant features of the actual world or smuggles in via presupposition false or contentious assumptions about the actual world.
Some of the examples Justin mentioned fall into this category.
“For instance, if a gang of ten people vow to slaughter a family of five, and begin by killing one innocent person, then is it beyond question in ethics that the remaining members of the family of five cannot be justified in killing more than one gang member in self defense? Of course not.”
–In this example, it is strongly suggested that the gang’s killing a second, third, or fourth family member is imminent. Is there any reason that Hamas is actually in a position to carry out another 10/7, whatever they might say? One might think not–for the simple reason that 10/7 was only possible because of a catastrophic (and uncharacteristic) defensive intelligence failure on the part of the Israelis. And if so, one might think that fact morally relevant.
–Likewise, this example omits the fact that there are a lot of non-gang members who would have to be killed in order to get at any one gang member with confidence. That too seems relevant.
–This example also omits the fact that the entire population of Gaza was living in an open-air prison on 10/6. You might (or might not) think that’s relevant, primarily as to the point about recurrability, on some theories as to the question of whether 10/7 was entirely offensive or in part defensive.
–And this example omits the fact that approximately 1/3 of the 10/7 fatalities were soldiers.
Another example Justin mentions: “If snipers among the gang members hide behind innocent people while they attempt to shoot at and kill more of the family members, is it beyond question in ethical theory that the family members have to just accept their fate and wait to be shot, because it is never permitted to take an innocent life even in self defense? Of course not. No serious student of ethical theory would think so.”
–Similarly, as a model for the actual strategic and tactical dynamics at issue in Israel-Gaza, this dramatically overstates the degree to which Israeli citizens are *actually* at risk. The alternative to not bombing Gaza is not actually “wait[ing] to be shot;” there have been vanishingly few casualties in Israel since 10/7. That might be thought relevant.
–Likewise, this misrepresents what appear to be the actual dynamics in terms of targeting within Gaza. As has been documented, the majority of Hamas militants appear to have been killed in their family homes at night–not while engaged in active combat “shooting at” Israeli soldiers or civilians. And that’s to not even get into the many, many, many examples of civilian infrastructure apparently being deliberately targeted as such.
I realize these examples were tossed out off-hand so perhaps it’s unfair to dwell on them so. But I think there’s a deeper point here about the limitations of superficially “analogous” “simplifying” models for actual moral situations–perhaps especially actual moral situations characterized by extreme asymmetries of power, which are often edited out in simple two- or four-person cases.
Thanks for the thoughtful comments, Daniel.
I was not the one who introduced the terms ‘analytic philosophy’ or ‘toy examples’ into this conversation, and I’m happy to do without them both (especially ‘toy examples’, which I feel has a pejorative ring to it).
I take it that, when people make sneering remarks about ‘analytic philosophy’ nowadays without much detail, what they oppose is the approach that expects clearly-stated premises and conclusions, that does not aim to use emotive yet imprecise language, that does not rely on appeals to ‘theory’ (meaning a body of assumptions that have never been argued for in a fair environment but that everyone is expected to accept without question), or resort to ad hominem attacks or similar dodges. I would be very happy to just call this ‘good philosophy’, ‘actual philosophy’, or just ‘philosophy’: perhaps those would all be preferable to ‘analytic philosophy’.
The thought experiments that philosophy uses (sometimes referred to dismissively as ‘toy examples’) are often used to test principles that some interlocutor takes for granted in order to examine it more carefully.
You make a number of moves here with the intention of calling the thought experiments I mentioned into question by filling in more details that you feel are apt. All those moves you have made are part of the methodology of proper philosophy, of course. I did not present the parallel cases I did because I thought that they were decisive refutations of the anti-Israel position: in fact, as you will see if you reread what I have said, I have not been trying to argue for Israel’s side at all here. My point in raising those thought experiments was merely to show that the simplistic moral principles often relied upon in these discussions (like the simplistic principle that one can work out the moral acceptability of a military response by looking at the number of civilian casualties on the two sides) are inadequate. Whether you are right in complaining that your more complicated thought experiments would be fairer, or whether those thought experiments plausibly establish the verdict that Israel is clearly in the wrong, are good questions that would take much time to resolve, but I’m not sure this is the place for that.
Either way, what you are doing here is working within the methodology of actual philosophy, rather than pointing to any inadequacy in that methodology. And I approve.
Thanks for your approval.
It will be interesting to see how these sorts of discussions about Gaza age. I have a feeling that any attempts to grapple with what’s really going on by diverting attention from what’s really going on to sanitized hypotheticals will in retrospect seem childishly grotesque once the full reality –a genocide, and an unprecedented exercise in collective torture–is obvious to more people.
I predict a quite different result. Let’s check back in one or more decades.
Why make the assumption that it is possible to articulate a general principle for a university’s stance towards political events? Callard may be right or wrong that “neutrality” is a stance like any other, but does that mean that constructive engagement is *not* a stance like any other? I can think of times as a student protester where I felt that we were facing vested interests, not Greek dialecticians, and trying to engage with them was meaningless. In the present case, what the university is facing is a movement that explicitly endorses the aims, slogans and symbols of a terrorist organization, and does so with some degree of violence themselves. Their demand is not that the university issue some policy statement, but that they align themselves with the BDS movement, which might be taken to imply endorsement of that movement’s rejection of Israeli sovereignty. This is not in the university’s sphere of obligation with regard to moral engagement. Negotiating with the protesters and neutrality on the issues both seem like bad choices. They could issue a statement of concern that Israel is responding to serious human rights violations with extensive violations of its own, and deal with disruptions of campus life per the usual protocols.
Vested interests, extremist views, competing moral values, religious differences… You don’t get past this by observing that everybody should sit down and be rational. If that were going to do it there would have been a Middle East peace accord a long time ago.