CAMPUS PROTEST AND THE PERILS OF IDEOLOGICAL REDUCTIONISM

The nature of protests on college campuses raises the issue of whether ideology is replacing critical thought, open discussion, and applied ethics.

I return to a theme I have written about before and which continues to disturb me greatly. The current example is the confrontations on college campuses occasioned by the Israel-Hamas war. They are representative of a broader problem that has infected sectors of the Left, which leaves me alienated and concerned about the foundations that anchor not only civility but a democratic society. As a child of the 1960s, and a committed progressive ever since, I witness activism in the name of a progressivism I cannot recognize.

That the war in the Middle East would arouse passions and loyalties is no surprise. It is the way in which this activism is expressed that leaves me perturbed and rattled. The awakening of antisemitism is foremost. Antisemitism, always extant but until recently relatively dormant, has awakened from its slumbers with uninhibited vitriol. As an American Jew, at the moment I observe this fretful phenomenon with discomfort, but not yet with imminent fear. If I were in Europe, a Jew in Germany or France, I have little doubt that the fear would be visceral.

With the exception of overt white supremacists, college campuses are the primary venue for such antisemitic expressions. I need to be clear as to where I stand. Despite its government moving far to the right, I staunchly support Israel's right to exist. That this right should be doubted goes beyond anti-Zionism to veer into antisemitism. No other nation has its very existence questioned. It is sometimes raised that, as a Jewish homeland, Israel privileges one ethnicity over others. This is true and it brings its problems. Israel discriminates against the twenty percent of its Arab citizens, and this is a misfortune. I believe Israel has been foolish in not leveraging greater equality for its minorities. But these citizens remain citizens. They vote, they have their representatives in the Knesset, a member of the Supreme Court is an Arab, and Palestinian Israelis are well represented in the professions. True, with few exceptions Jews and Arabs live in separate communities. This can be partially explained as a legacy of the millet system, which prevailed when the Ottoman Empire ruled the region.

Israel's most comprehensive violation is the occupation of the West Bank since the territory was captured in the 1967 war. As I have written elsewhere, the settlement movement is a cruel and humiliating imposition. Yes, it is a form of apartheid and it needs to end. It is also a poison that corrupts Israeli society in many sectors. It has insinuated itself into the Israeli government at its highest echelons, its administration, and even into the upper ranks of the military. The greatest threat to Israel's security may come from within. Yet despite these major abuses, I can only wonder why such nations as Saudi Arabia, where there is not a single church or synagogue, which is homophobic and structurally misogynistic, get a pass from the Left. And we should not forget that every nation, including our own, has failed to resolve its problems with minorities in its midst. Yet, Israel is repeatedly treated with singular scorn and opprobrium by the international community and with renewed vitriol by sectors of the Left. While criticism of Israel is appropriate, given the millennial perdurance of antisemitism, it is impossible to believe that the oldest prejudice is not a factor in the disproportionality of condemnation the world's only Jewish state receives.

The war has gripped the minds of students, especially at the elite universities and large public colleges. Criticism of Israel has spilled over into antisemitism, leaving Jewish students feeling insecure. The college campus has become an ideological battleground. My conclusion, which has been noted by others, is that today's students have imbued a doctrine of post-colonialism, which sets the stage for a moral reductionism whereby the previously colonized are worthy of uncritical support and colonizers have been and remain the oppressors. It is a dichotomous, morally simplistic worldview that enhances one's sense of righteousness and provides the relief that comes with pointing an excoriating finger at the unqualified malefactors.

Needless to say, one cannot avoid holding to account the exploitation of European colonialism that oppressed and often murdered in great numbers the inhabitants of non-European nations for centuries. It was expressed by myriad institutions, large and small. There needs to be moral accounting and a reckoning.

However, the problem with contemporary post-colonialist ideologies is that, in their reductionism, they over-valorize the victims and virtually make a fetish of victimization. But they also discount underlying facts, details, and nuance that are unique to each specific circumstance. They conveniently bypass complexities. And the histories of Jews and Palestinians in the same land are very complex. Like an avalanche, ideologies smother all that lies beneath them while bringing certainty and virtue to those who fervently hold to them. The Israel-Hamas war is too readily framed within this ideological dichotomy, and such framing is fallacious.

A recent piece by David Brooks in The New York Times notes the following:

“Universities are supposed to be centers of inquiry and curiosity — places where people are tolerant of difference and learn about other points of view. Instead, too many have become brutalizing ideological war zones, so today the most hostile place to be an American Jew is not at some formerly restricted country club but on a college campus.

How on earth did this happen? I’ve been teaching on college campuses off and on for 25 years. It’s become increasingly evident to me that American adolescence and young adulthood — especially for those who wind up at elite schools — now happen within a specific kind of ideological atmosphere.

It centers on a hard-edged ideological framework that has been spreading in high school and college, on social media, in diversity training seminars and in popular culture. The framework doesn’t have a good name yet. It draws on the thinking of intellectuals ranging from the French philosopher Michel Foucault to the critical race theorist Derrick Bell. (For a good intellectual history, I recommend Yascha Mounk’s recent book, “The Identity Trap.”)

The common ideas associated with this ideology are by now pretty familiar:

• We shouldn’t emphasize what unites all human beings; we should emphasize what divides us.

• Human relations are power struggles between oppressors and oppressed groups.

• Human communication is limited. A person in one group can never really understand the experience of someone in another group.

• The goal of rising above bigotry is naïve. Bigotry and racism are permanent and indestructible components of American society.

• Seemingly neutral tenets of society — like free speech, academic freedom, academic integrity and the meritocracy — are tools the powerful use to preserve their power.

There are many teachers and administrators who believe that they best serve society not by being open and curious and searching for the truth but by propagating this ideological framework.”

No doubt, this phenomenon is not characteristic of the university as a whole. But to the extent that it is, it remains troubling and undermines the humane values that we assume emerge from the college experience and environment at their best.

As I have written before, this ideological mode of thinking emerges from identity politics gone amok. As implied by Brooks, the values that underlie liberal democracy, such as free inquiry and the salience of the interplay and diversity of ideas held by individuals, are lost. It is groups, especially if they have been victimized or marginalized, that allegedly have a special claim on the truth, and any opposition is readily discounted as the expression of the power interests of those who are asserting those opposing positions. Again, facts, details, and complexities are assumed ab initio to be irrelevant. 

What's also lost in identitarian politics and its parochialism is a commitment to universalism that has always lay at the center of progressive political activism. Conventionally progressive movements centered on universalism and embraced a commitment to economic justice and equality extended to the deprived and oppressed everywhere. Demanding justice for one's group, ethnic, racial, or gender-oriented,at the exclusion of others or in contention with others has abandoned the commitment to universalism that embraced compassion and justice for all.

Identity politics expresses power struggles wherein each group competes for a piece of the pie. Underscoring the victimization of one's group is a tool in the arsenal of competitive struggle. There is little that is edifying in proffering such narratives. Abandoned is a universal commitment to the betterment of all people and politics guided by a vision of common humanity. It is this humanistic sensibility that is dramatically absent in the vitriol and hatred expressed on college campuses that has been occasioned by the harrowing violence and human suffering wrought by the war between Israel and Hamas.

Social media, which for younger generations is a major source of information, no doubt plays a prominent role in exacerbating unnuanced and extreme positions.

This December 10th marks the 75th anniversary of the proclamation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. On November 6^th, I had the privilege of interviewing the noted journalist, Jonathan Alter, who has authored a magisterial biography of Jimmy Carter. My interview was centered on Carter's human rights policy. After the interview, which was held at the New York Society for Ethical Culture, we walked together up Columbus Avenue. As we did, Alter shared with me his apprehension about the campus protests. We came away discussing how wealthy alumni who have withheld their gifts to the universities were doing so not primarily because of the political views expressed by the protesting students. Rather, we speculated how it is because they think that the universities are failing to adequately teach the current generation critical thinking and applied ethics.

If so, such education and the sensitivities it would optimally inspire have been another casualty of the ensnarement by the ideological tropes that greatly concern me. Brooks is not the only ones raising these concerns about what is conveyed in the halls of higher learning. Perhaps the current clashes will cause the universities to take a hard look at what is transpiring in the classroom.

But the problem is society-wide. The American population is riven by tribalism, extremism, and division. Antisemitism, Islamophobia, white supremacy, and rampant xenophobia are among their expressions. And our democracy is standing at the precipice. A commitment to a pluralistic society based on tolerance, respect, and appreciation for difference needs to be explicitly articulated by those who can influence public opinion. A renewed appreciation for critical thought and applied ethics is wanting not just in the academy but in society at large.

How to instill these processes of mind and character, at the moment eludes us. But if civility is to be restored and democracy endure we must find ways.