Safetyism doesn’t belong on campus Conservatives have adopted social-justice tactics

Though Columbia hogged most of the headlines, many other universities had encampments too. Visiting Cornell to give a talk, I saw its version: a huddle of tents, cringe-inducing artwork, and earnest placards in a corner of the main quad, sporadically erupting to the sounds of loud hailers and chanting. One of the main spokespeople for the Cornell protest was 30-year-old Momodou Taal: a British postgrad and veteran of many previous media interviews, who also happens to be the great-grandson of former Gambian President Sir Dawda Jawara. (Here I should declare a personal connection: it was on Taal’s podcast last year that philosopher Judith Butler first aired the perfectly sane theory, later prosecuted in her new book, that the Pope, Vladimir Putin, J.K. Rowling, and I are the four horsemen of the “anti-gender” apocalypse.)

Back in November, a CNN report about the impact of the war upon US college students included an interview with Taal, and described how he was tired of being questioned about whether he supports Hamas or not. As a black Muslim, he said, he “felt like there was an implicit presumption in the question that he supports terrorism”. Granted, an unfair connection with his race and religion might be the best explanation for the presumed association: or maybe it was Taal’s tweet from 7 October, still publicly available, which stated: “Today has shown us what is possible when you are organised… It’s not about the numbers. But how you organise and execute”.

In short, then, the past week served up ample material for riotous mirth or contemptuous eye rolls. Though many students are sincere and well-intentioned in their objections to what is unfolding in Gaza, watching self-appointed leaders role-playing at Left-wing radicalism in the hope of future glittering career prizes will never not be ludicrous. Equally, approaching a bloody war like a rabidly partisan football fan on matchday, as Taal seemingly does — automatically primed to deny atrocities committed by your favoured side, and to downplay the devastating effects on opponents — is hardly a sign of moral sainthood, albeit that the phenomenon is now near-ubiquitous.

But there are more alarming aspects to this situation other than the presence of narcissistic millennials. Scorn should also be reserved for those supine university bosses who — having spent years positively incentivising an entire generation to think of themselves as pleasingly disruptive social radicals, acting on behalf of a variety of oppressed victim classes — have now swung to the other extreme without missing a beat, and are cracking down excessively on behaviour they used to tolerate or even encourage. At Columbia, university president and member of the House of Lords Minouche Shafik eventually gave up on negotiation and brought in police against protestors, resulting in more than 100 arrests. At the University of Texas in Austin, riot gear and pepper spray were employed against those camping out; the encampment at UCLA was also flattened by law enforcement, with 200 arrested there. There have also been large-scale arrests at Dartmouth, George Washington University, Massachusetts Amherst, Wisconsin-Madison, and other places too.

It is often remarked that the modern liberal quest to free both self and society from traditional cultural norms and boundaries tends to coincide with increased acceptance of state surveillance and authoritarian social control. Even so, it is rare to see institutions openly inciting both liberation and repression at the very same time. Small wonder that susceptible young people are confused. “I thought that this university accepted me because I am an advocate, because I am someone who will fight for what they believe in, no matter what,” mournfully recounted one Vanderbilt alumnus, originally lauded by faculty and administrators for making a stand against perceived oppression, but now expelled for the very same thing. You can laugh with enjoyable schadenfreude at the naivety; but you should probably also be horrified at the unprincipled ease with which Frankenstein has set the dogs upon the pious, guilt-ridden young monster he had a hand in creating.

Equally depressing has been the way that many conservative commentators, normally professional scourges of wokeness, have become apparent fans of safetyism for Jewish students (please note — not safety, but safetyism). Just as the modern Left either tends to cheer or stay silent as Right-coded views are eliminated from the academy either by stealth or by force, many on the supposedly freedom-loving modern Right apparently have little to say about the violation of the basic right to peaceful speech and assembly, when it comes to defending the perceived interests of Palestinians. (Though some of the university protests sought illegitimately to impose a heckler’s veto upon the free speech or movement of others, many did not.)

There has also been relatively little pushback against the sort of hyperbole purporting to justify aggressive managerial and police interventions on campuses; even where its format and tone vividly reminds one of the activist guilt-tripping of which the modern Left is so fond, and the Right normally so critical. Many cultish identitarian tics familiar from social justice activism turn up in pro-Israel discourse about the protests, and yet remain uncriticised from the Right. These include: a total failure of charity when it comes to construing the various motives of pro-Palestinian and anti-war activists, collapsing all of them into a single simple narrative of “hate” towards Jewish people, despite evidence to the contrary; exhortations to move from subjective perceptions of antisemitism by particular Jewish students or groups of students to immediate protective or punitive action (or both); the glossing over of reasonable disagreement between Jewish students on, precisely, whether the protests are antisemitic or not; and accusations of confusion and self-hatred towards those who dissent.

The emerging rubric seems to hold that when those with whom you have little political sympathy complain of intense feelings of threat, in response to still objectively small levels of risk on campus overall, you can minimise and scoff away with impunity; yet when your own family, friends, or political allies do it, we are suddenly plunged into the sort of dramatic counterfactual territory also beloved of King-Slutzky and her ilk. No doubt such sympathy-dependent reactions are understandable wherever they are found, and particularly in those Jewish people deeply worried about antisemitism; but the whole point of rights to free speech and assembly is that they are supposed to be rigorously maintained even as polarising emotions swirl around society, demanding that they be partially rescinded for some particular group on the basis of imaginary future scenarios.

Often in thrall to the American cultural landscape, elite UK campuses such as Oxford, Cambridge, and UCL now have their own, somewhat more repressed, versions of the Ivy League protests. And here too, there are influential voices urging us to take all or most such protests as evidence of deep-rooted antisemitic hatred. Only yesterday, Education Secretary Gillian Keegan told Sky News that: “What we don’t want is our campuses becoming unsafe environments for students or staff and going down the route that you see in other places like the US” — as if it was obvious that US campuses were now unsafe places for students, simply in light of the protests there. And as in the US, UK university bosses are being exhorted by some to prioritise the subjective feelings of certain Jewish students over the feelings of others — including those of other Jewish students participating enthusiastically in the protests, or who feel unaffected by them.

A Times column by the Prime Minister on Wednesday suggested he is committed to rooting out genuine antisemitism from universities, while preserving freedom of speech and the right to protest, including against Israel; and of course, that is exactly what he and others in power should be doing. But the task will be fiendishly difficult, requiring nerves of steel to avoid hastening the slide of our academic institutions towards the suppression of lawful speech, all in the alleged interests of certain identity groups. In attempting this, perhaps it will help to remember that, whatever the ideological struggles to come on manicured college greens, in elegantly appointed quads, or in scruffy common rooms, they will have almost nothing to do with what is happening on the ground in Gaza.

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Kathleen Stock is an UnHerd columnist and a co-director of The Lesbian Project.

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