Let the students protest

Cambridge, Massachusetts—A stone’s throw away from where I am writing this, students are encamped inside Harvard Yard to protest the war on Gaza and to demand that Harvard—the world’s wealthiest university—divest from companies that profit from Israel’s war. Defying threats of disciplinary action and suspension, students have been staging the protest for nine days now—with tents, placards, and keffiyeh, including one that at one point adorned John Harvard’s famed statue.

Similar scenes are playing out in campuses all over America, as I also saw days ago at University of Pennsylvania and what has been the ground zero of the protests: Columbia University in New York. In Columbia, students have been threatened with suspension and explosion, but instead of backing down, they have even taken over an entire building—Hamilton Hall—which they renamed Hind’s Hall after Hind Rajab, a 6-year-old girl who was killed in Gaza earlier this year alongside her family.

As expected, the protests have provoked strong and sharply divided responses along the same polarized views on Israel and Palestine. For many conservatives, they are yet another confirmation of the “wokeness” and anti-Semitism of elite universities. Some have also questioned the focus on divestment. For young people themselves—including some of the college students I talk to—it is the least that they can do. “Our ever-expanding physical presence is a testament to an ever-apparent collective understanding: We cannot, in good conscience, remain silent as Palestinian life is extinguished en masse, on Harvard’s dime,” as student Violet Barron wrote on The Crimson.

Having grown up, studied, and taught in three University of the Philippines campuses—Los Baños, Manila, and Diliman—I am no stranger to rallies and protests. Unlike the rousing rallies in Katipunan, however, the “sit-ins” are mostly subdued affairs that have roots in the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Still, youth protests in the two sides of the Pacific share similar elements, from creative protest art to the conviction of fighting for something that’s important enough to put their education (and perhaps more so in the Philippines, their very lives) on the line.

Media outlets and politicians are predictably highlighting a side of the protests that supports their narrative—with Republican representatives quoting students who have called for the destruction of Israel or amplifying isolated episodes of violence. More liberal-leaning media outlets are emphasizing—in the words of Vox—that “[the] vast majority are peaceful protestors who have been overshadowed by a minority of bad actors, some potentially not even affiliated with the universities where these demonstrations are taking place.”

Personally, I am in no position to adjudicate the limits of free speech and civil disobedience, especially amid the ever-present threat of hate and violence—including anti-Semitism. Neither do I hold answers as to the most effective form of protest. However, I believe that, whether in the United States, the Philippines, or elsewhere, maximum tolerance for student protests should be exercised, if nothing else, because it is their right to do so, with the right to speech and assembly the most fundamental of democratic freedoms. The world is watching, and deploying the police to silent largely peaceful protests can empower similar—or worse—draconian measures in supposedly “weaker” democracies around the world.

Moreover, as the Vietnamese-American novelist Viet Thanh Nguyen and Filipino-American cultural critic Karen Tongson wrote in the student newspaper of the University of Santa Cruz, the protests are a “teachable moment,” offering not only “lessons about war and conflict, justice and genocide” but reminding us that “silencing those we disagree with can end up silencing everyone.”

It is also worth adding that student protestors are often vindicated by history when they act on such an unprecedented scale, whether in the civil rights movement in the 1960s, the anti-apartheid movement in the 1980s, or in recent calls for climate action. Such vindication seems forthcoming for today’s protestors, in light of the reason they are protesting in the first place: Israel’s brutal invasion on top of its longstanding occupation of Palestinian territories, as well as the US’ uncritical loyalty to Israel, notwithstanding the overwhelming consensus—from international organizations to independent journalists—about the grave human rights violations and the sheer inhumanity that is taking place in Gaza.

Universities and governments alike may act as if suspending students is more urgent than suspending arms shipments; as if stopping them from occupying buildings is more important than stopping one country’s settlers from occupying another’s internationally recognized land. But ultimately, we cannot escape the obvious fact that the students themselves point out: The far more important question for us today is not whether students should be allowed to protest, but whether a nation should be allowed to perpetuate genocide—and whether the rest of the world can afford to do nothing.

—————-

glasco@inquirer.com.ph