Pro Palestine protest and encampment in White Memorial Plaza in Stanford University in late April 2024, during the Israeli Hamas War. Suiren2022, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
Thomas Plante (@ThomasPlante) is the Augustin Cardinal Bea, SJ University Professor, professor of psychology and, by courtesy, religious studies at Santa Clara University and an emeritus adjunct professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine. He has been a scholar of the Markkula Center for over 25 years. Views are his own.
College campus protests regarding the Israeli-Gaza conflict across the country last Spring made dramatic daily national news. While most of the media attention focused on several high-profile elite universities such as Columbia, Stanford, Harvard, USC, UCLA, among others, numerous universities throughout the country have been challenged by disruptive campus protests. These events have included tent cities built in high profile central locations on campus, administrative building takeovers, graduation ceremonies disrupted or cancelled, and problems with both anti-Semitic and Islamophobia rhetoric, threats, and aggressive discriminatory behaviors. Progressive students conflicted with wealthy and conservative university trustees and donors clashing with anxious university administrators in a combustible mix. Additionally, both social media and mass media focus on eye-catching images and stories bringing these protests into our lives in daily attention-grabbing ways. Congressional hearings on campus disruptions allowed politicians to grandstand and earn political points that were then highlighted on national television and most especially in politically motivated cable news reports, as well. Overall, college life was a complete and utter mess on many campuses.
Certainly, student protests on college campuses are not new. These more recent events are reminiscent of the campus protests during the Vietnam War during the late 1960s and early 1970s as well as the more recent Black Lives Matter protests of 2020. While free speech is a right that has been embraced in the United States for several centuries, ethical issues about the process and limitations of free speech and protest behavior are in question and are debatable.
Ethically and legally, we tend to endorse the rights of individuals and groups to make their views known and thus protect free speech. However, free speech has important limits. We tend to limit speech that is hateful or restrict protesting behavior when it interferes with the lives of others. For example, calling for genocide or violence against those who we disagree with or shutting down access to public or private buildings, roadways, and bridges impact the freedom of others. In essence, your right to protest and express your views does not trump the rights of others to safely live their lives and go about their daily activities. Strong passions, outside agitators, and emerging group think combine to create volatile situations that can turn peaceful protests into disturbingly hateful and violent events, as we have witnessed on many campuses.
So, how can we use ethical reflection and decision-making to think through the best ways to protest the escalating warfare and tragic deaths in the Israeli-Gaza conflict? First, we should embrace humility in that the conflicts between the Jewish and Palestinian populations in the region go back thousands of years. The relationships between people and the land there is very complicated. This is not a conflict that is easily resolved or understood. Second, we all should be deeply disturbed and outraged to see innocent civilians killed or harmed as well as hostages taken against their will. The ongoing destruction of Gaza as well as the 1,200+ murdered and over 200 hostages taken on October 7, 2023, are both horrific and are ethically unacceptable. Third, while we all are entitled to our opinions and various points of view, we should be informed before we express our views and secure the relevant facts before we express ourselves. For example, a recent survey found that the vast majority of protestors chanting “from the river to the sea” did not understand that the popular Pro-Palestinian slogan called for genocide and the elimination of all Jews in the region. Curiously, while campus protests focus solely on the Israeli-Gaza conflict, other major conflicts affecting even more people in equally horrific ways in Myanmar, Sudan, and elsewhere are completely ignored. Finally, we should be careful not to victimize, demonize, or harm others while expressing our views in protest. One does not seek peace and understanding through violence and one does not stop atrocities by calling for more atrocities.
There are many approaches to ethical decision making that can help better inform us about how we might consider the Israeli-Gaza conflict. Here at Santa Clara University, we highlight our virtues of competence, conscience, and compassion (i.e., the 3 C’s). If we embrace the three C’s that define who we are, then we should filter our thinking and behavior through the lenses of these important virtues to come up with helpful strategies for ethical decision making. Competence suggests that we turn to experts to learn as much as we can about the history of the regional conflict as well as ways to best deal with the current war. Experts in geopolitics, history, sociology, and religious studies can all help to inform us about how the conflict evolved over time and what might be some thoughtful strategies to resolve it moving forward. After all, education is what universities embrace as their primary mission. Thus, we should take an educational approach to the conflicts that have now resulted in campus protests. Conscience speaks to ethical considerations that might include working for the common good and for the health and wellness of all. Conscience speaks to the ethical problem of taking innocent hostages and killing non-combatants, especially children and other vulnerable victims. Conscience demands that we think critically through an ethical lens to maximize the common good as well as safety and security for all. Compassion speaks to the need to be empathetic and caring to all who suffer and who are in harm’s way of the conflict. Compassion means that we connect with those who suffer in solidarity and kinship. The 3 C’s can be a helpful guiding light to assist us think through reasonable and appropriate ways to understand and act especially when it involves such an emotionally laden conflict.
In my view, treating others with respect, compassion, and reverence goes a long way in managing ethical issues and conflicts. While there may be plenty of blame to go around in the Israeli-Gaza conflict over many years and even centuries, everyone should be treated with respect, compassion, and reverence. We should humbly remember that conflicts such as these are not resolved with bumper sticker slogans or 200-character tweets. They are also not resolved by putting up camping tents on university campuses thousands of miles away from the actual conflict. They are also not resolved with statements condemning one side or another among people who are not in harm’s way or have direct expertise about the conflict. Additionally, we should be humble in that those of us living thousands of miles away from the conflict do not have the same skin in the game as those who must dodge bullets and bombs on a regular basis. War is horrific and we feel for the victims in compassion and solidarity. Ethics can help us figure out how to respond in a way that underscores our virtues and principles that we claim that we hold near and dear. The Santa Clara three 3’s may be an excellent place to start our conversations and decision-making process.