One of the things that I missed most when I was confined to quarters and teaching from home during the pandemic were chance encounters with colleagues. One of the best things about working as an academic are the brilliant people from other disciplines with whom one works. What other job let’s you talk to a chemist on one pathway, an artist around the corner, and a historian in the quad? The university concentrates the historical and systematic development of the human intellect in a few city blocks.
Learning is not confined to classrooms on campus: the entire space is an opportunity for pedagogical path-crossings. A conversation with a student as we walk together after class is just as philosophically important as what I said during the lecture. The university, indoors and out, is a learning commons.
Learning happens in lectures, seminars, labs, and chance encounters, but it also occurs at demonstrations and protests. The university has long been a space for political education, too. There have been dozens of rallies during my time at Windsor, including quite loud demonstrations earlier this year during the early days of Israel’s invasion of Gaza. Those demonstrations included the “From the River to the Sea, Palestine will be free,” chant that has become notorious, but I do not recall anyone lodging a formal complaint with the administration or the media even bothering to cover the campus marches.
But the student encampment movement was not so ephemeral as a march and attracted mainstream and social media attention across North America. Unlike other universities, Windsor’s administration decided to negotiate in good faith with the small band of student occupiers and recently reached an agreement to end the occupation. The language of the agreement is mostly promissory and platitudinous, but it does contain commitments to expand its Scholars at Risk program to Palestinian colleagues and students, to review the University’s investment policy, and to ensure that its academic relationships conform to its own existing ethical guidelines.
The condemnation was as swift as it was predictable. Jewish students, the B’nai Brith, the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, and local Jewish leaders have claimed that the University gave in to intimidation, an illegal occupation, indulged in one-sided and unfounded condemnation of Israel, and capitulated to a distorted understanding of that history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Critics are free to criticize and the University will have to answer for its commitments, but I had not heard any complaints until the agreement was signed that the encampment was viewed as intimidating to Jewish students or anyone else. I do not know what law the protestors were violating. I would argue that the encampment was a form of political argument and therefore a legitimate action if we view– as we should– the whole campus as a learning commons. Even if one does not adopt that view and argues, like other universities have, that the campus is private property, the law of trespass only applies if the property owner files a complaint. It is a dubious application of the law to claim that the administration is like a private property owner vis-a-vis campus space, but in Windsor’s case the administration never made that move, so the encampment violated no law.
Moreover, the existence of the encampment in no way impeded critics from organizing counter-protests, criticizing the protestor’s claims, or even setting up their own encampments. Classes continued as usual, people came and went to their offices and the library, no buildings were occupied, campus life continued without interruption. The students behaved as students should behave: engaged, putting their learning to work in the “real world” that everyone loves to say university students ignore, trying to make a difference by demanding an end to a horrific conflict.
The Preamble to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights protests against the actions that “shocked the conscience of mankind” during the Second World War. The suffering of the Jewish people during the Holocaust was the centrepiece of a six year slaughter that killed 60 million people. The agreement that the University signed with the students includes a commitment to add a clause to their ethical investment policy that ensures that companies whose stock the University buys are not human rights violators. Is it contrary to the interests of the Jewish community, here, in Israel, or anywhere, to demand that corporations comply with human rights? The University also agreed not to enter into any partnerships with Israeli universities, unless the partnership was agreed to by the Senate. All major inter-university agreements have always been voted on at Senate, so there is really no departure from past practice here. Moreover, Senate has turned down partnerships before– most recently, with an Egyptian school, about 10 years ago, because there were concerns about the human rights situation and academic freedom. Viewed in light of the historical practice of the University, Israel is not being singled out. Finally, the agreement notes that individual academics remain free (as they must) to work with Israeli colleagues.
People who are committed to peaceful resolution of conflicts should celebrate the peaceful resolution of this conflict. Other universities have disgraced themselves by letting the police loose against peaceful protestors. The Windsor encampment was far less militant than the anti-Netanyahu protests organized by the families of hostages in Israel have been. Opposition to the policies of a particular government is not a racist attack on a whole people; defending the internationally recognized rights of Palestinians to national self-determination– the same right Jewish people acted on in 1948 to establish Israel– is not to support Hamas’s murderous methods. Political arguments are always polarizing. One cannot win an argument by deciding that the other side’s position is illegitimate from the get go. Educators must listen and respond to the reasons and evidence presented. The agreement that the University reached is in keeping with the vocation of members of an institution of “higher education.”
Instead of condemning the University and trying to mobilize the power of the federal and provincial governments to undermine it (would that not be a gross violation of the academic freedom critics claim to be upholding?) critics should demonstrate, carefully, and with evidence, not with sweeping dismissal, exactly what institutional principles the university has violated in the agreement. If there has been actual, illegal intimidation, there is a legal system to deal with such complaints. But mere feelings of discomfort cannot be grounds to silence campus movements. If discomfort were grounds for silencing, all universities would have to close, since where there is learning there is growth and where there is growth there are growing pains.
Sadly, this agreement will not solve the real problem, the war in Gaza. However, it should serve as a source of minor inspiration that argument and negotiation can produce agreements. The key is to talk, not fight.