With all the coverage of student protests taking place on university campuses, it is easy to overlook the fact that most universities — the vast majority of them — do not have active, ongoing protests. I teach at one of those universities.
It is not that my students are uninterested in U.S. foreign policy or lack empathy for Palestinians in Gaza. On the contrary, they are very interested, more or less informed about what is going on, and many have strong opinions on what ought to be done. But instead of protesting, they are doing what students ought to be doing: talking about it, asking questions, debating, listening, learning.
In some of my classes, we have been discussing the ethics of protesting. When is a protest justified, and when is it not? If somebody asks you to join a protest, how do you decide whether to say “yes?” The first thing to determine is what the protesters are trying to accomplish.
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Protests that take the form of a rally or a march are generally trying to influence public perception by demonstrating both the depth and breadth of support. That can lead observers to think, “Oh, I guess more people care — and care more deeply — about this than I realized.”
Protests that take the form of speeches usually advocate for some kind of change in policy, law or behavior through the persuasive power of words. This can challenge how people think about things, perhaps leading them to change their minds about the reasonableness of a cause.
Protests that take the form of civil disobedience draw attention to the injustice of an existing law or practice by visibly breaking those laws and accepting the consequences. This can lead to increased respect for those who are willing to suffer for the sake of their convictions.
These forms of protest frequently overlap or are used together to magnify the impact. But effective protests are always more than just expressing an attitude or taking a stand. Effective protests always connect means and ends.
What makes the current round of protests so perplexing is the incoherence of the protesters’ aims. What is the point of large encampments, blocking entrance to buildings, and shouting hateful slogans? Do those methods draw people in or turn them away from the cause? And what exactly do the protesters want, anyway?
One of the chief demands is that universities divest from the 430 multinational corporations that do business in Israel. The top 10 are Intel, Nvidia, Google, Microsoft, Hewlett-Packard, Applied Materials, IBM, Philips and Apple. The complete list includes a large portion of companies comprising the Dow Jones and S&P 500. These are the companies that are included not just in the typical university portfolio but also in many individual investment and retirement accounts. They produce many of the products we use daily.
I wonder whether the students participating in the protests have thought carefully about what they are demanding. Do they understand that they are calling for divestment from the companies that make the very tools they are relying on to carry out their protests? Are they prepared to surrender their iPhones and HP laptops? Are they prepared to stop using programs such as Microsoft Word and Excel? In short, are they prepared to make the sacrifices they are demanding of others?
These are the sorts of questions that need to be asked in order for the protests to have integrity. They are the sorts of questions leaders like Martin Luther King Jr., Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela asked of their followers.
Without strong leadership, protests inevitably lose focus. The protesters forget that the means must be connected to the ends. They begin to think the protest is all about themselves, not the cause for which they began protesting. They start talking more about their own right to protest than the rights of people they are protesting for.
We can see that happening before our eyes. Every day the protests go on, they claim more media attention for themselves, and less attention is given to what is taking place in Gaza.
For my part, I am urging students to reflect on the following four principles of ethical protest:
- Having a just cause.
- Stating clear, obtainable goals.
- Using persuasion, not force, as the means of obtaining those goals.
- Being grounded in truth.
The last principle is the most important and the most difficult to satisfy. It is difficult because there are so many competing sources of information, so many different perspectives on what is happening, that knowing who and what to trust seems nearly impossible at times. It is easy for a skilled influencer to manipulate those who are passionate about a cause into believing what they want them to believe.
Protesters like to claim they are “speaking truth to power.” That’s both noble and heroic. It is also rare, because speaking the truth requires knowing the truth. And knowledge is gained not by joining the crowd chanting slogans but by taking time to talk and to listen, questioning, debating, reading, and reflecting. It is a slow, arduous and ultimately rewarding process. It is called education.