| In his book The Battle for Justice in Palestine, Ali Abunimah has an entire chapter titled ‘War on Campus’. In this chapter, the author describes centres of social science and the humanities in American universities turning into hubs of Palestinian solidarity and resistance. He describes how these institutions of higher education have become crucibles of academic and political churning. The fractious Israel-Palestine conflict is played out in and outside classrooms, inside seminar halls and on the streets.
Abunimah cites numerous incidents of faculty members and students in prestigious institutions like the universities of Columbia and California putting their careers on line rallying for the Palestinian cause. Teachers are refused tenure for protesting Israel's occupation of Palestine; students are arrested and dragged to court; a general atmosphere of fear is created. But the Boycott Divest Sanction (BDS) campaign against Israel continues to gain momentum.
The author offers an interesting argument framing these events on campuses, an argument fundamental to the cynical discourse over the relevance or the irrelevance of the humanities. Many of us often wonder how the humanities, which seek to understand the complexities of politics, society and human relationships, can be considered passé, especially as our lives become more complicated and disturbing and as politics and society seem to be in a continued churn. And political violence gets normalised across the world. We need to understand and grapple with these processes to survive, to not yield to the temptation of embracing insanity. The humanities are the crutch we hold on to for surviving this increasingly violent world. These disciplines spawn political resistance and morality which propel students to participate in political actions even if they are fraught with risks. |