A letter to students

Dear Students,

Please excuse me for addressing you via my blog, but I want to reach not just those of you whom I happen to know through my teaching, but also those whom I merely see in the streets and on news channels. Since I’m mainly based in the Netherlands and Germany, I’m mostly thinking of you as situated in these countries. Currently, there is (especially on social media) a lot of talk about the so-called pro-Palestine protests in which many of you seem to be involved. If you do or were to study philosophy, I would perhaps be teaching you or I even might have taught or might be going to teach you. Although I try to confine myself to teaching what I promise on the syllabus, I often use this blog for spill-overs of reflections on what I should be teaching or how I should go about it. And since it is common to reflect on current “issues”, I often thought – with some trepidation – about how I should respond if pertinent discussions or protests would reach my classes in some way or another. This has not really happened so far, but since I’m about to leave Groningen for Hagen while the protests are still going on, this time might be as good as any to share some thoughts with you. – On my teaching evaluations, I sometimes get the request to distinguish more clearly between “core issues” and “side issues”. OK, then: My main topic is responsibility. While we’re probably all fairly good at placing responsibility or blame on others, it’s harder to say what it means, for that other person or group, to take responsibility and what it means to take responsibility oneself. My core issue, then, is a question: What does it mean to take responsibility? Especially in the contexts of the current protests. But let me begin with some side issues perhaps.

My mother was a smoker. Not a heavy one, though. She even hid in the bathroom to smoke secretly. When my seven-year-old self asked her about that, she said that she didn’t want to be seen smoking by others. You might think that she did not want to be seen by her children in particular, but the reason she gave was that it was “unsuitable for women”. Such small exchanges had long-lasting echoes. One is that, unil roughly ten years ago, I have been a smoker myself. Was she responsible? Of course, my mother did not make me smoke and she even listed numerous reasons against it, but I felt, only half-consciously, for a long time that it was fine to smoke because my mother did it, too. I wouldn’t hold her responsible, but I also recognise that children learn by imitation and that what people with authority do seems to lend legitimacy to our own deeds and habits. So whom could I hold responsible for becoming a smoker? Well, at the end of the day I have only myself to blame. – I like this little example because it is at once simple and sufficiently muddled. We might argue that we shouldn’t be bad role models, as a matter of standards, but perhaps hiding behind a door (for the wrong reasons) is sometimes the best we can do. We might have very high standards, but we have very different histories and lots of imperfections. Being a free and responsible agent is not difficult because we might lack standards. It’s difficult because we’re muddled and mostly not alone. Going by moral standards alone, you can report on the deeds of your day as a chain of hypocrisies. Why don’t you do that then? I guess (1) because moral consistency cannot (always) be your top priority and (2) because there are (often) lots of other people to blame, too. (Interestingly, people for whom moral consistency is a priority mostly seem to focus on blaming others, but that’s for later.)

Faced with the protests, I feel, not like an omniscient narrator, but rather a bit like my mother might have felt: I try to hide behind a door (figuratively), try to say things that ring true, but perhaps not for the right reasons. Luckily, I’m not your parent.

But I am – or could be – your teacher. It’s this sense of priority that makes me write this. I’m not a friend or administrator or mere political citizen, I am a teacher. In this capacity, it’s my responsibility to be “open to dialogue”, as one of the sayings goes. I try to be, but the current situation makes that a bit more difficult. As noted, there are many pieces about the protests, good and bad. What hits home for me most is that, as a teacher, I have a duty of care towards all my students. What does this duty of care involve? It’s not easy to say. I have read many pieces by thoughtful colleagues. One of the strongest arguments comes from Eric Schliesser, who suggests that we might treat campus protests as “falling under academic freedom”. I really like this idea, not least because it emphasises the great educational potential that might outweigh all too quick calls for order. However, having seen footage of the recent vandalism in Amsterdam and of Jewish students being turned away under odious chants in Groningen, I fail to see this idea being put into practice, to put it mildly. What’s more, though, is that granting academic freedom or at least freedom of expression (these two are not the same) requires granting it to everyone involved. The moment one particular group shouts down or even intimidates others, you have the responsibility for ensuring respectful treatment of your fellow students. Especially as protesters or occupants, you have to take that responsibility. What I have seen happening, instead, is that protesters show solidarity with those supporting their particular cause. That’s low-hanging fruit indeed. But the point is to behave responsibly to your opponents. There is a battery of ethical arguments for that, but I’ve forgotten their names. What’s in a name, though?

In the light of attacks against protesters themselves, I have seen numerous discussions of open letters and missives supporting protesters. Especially among philosophers you will find intriguing and instructive hermeneutic moves about particular terms and legal responsibilities of administrators etc. I don’t know what precisely you think, but I’d probably feel great if I were to see a letter, signed by an enormous number of professors, who support my cause or at least support my right to protest. One such letter (in German) made many rounds because it said that students should be “under no circumstances … subjected to police power.” As you might imagine, the particular phrase I just quoted caused some upheaval. While calling the police should be a last resort, it should by no means be ruled out completely – for perhaps obvious reasons. What I find problematic are not so much the particular legal considerations, but the idea that actions of a particular group (i.e. of protesting students) should have no consequences. It is of course understandable that you should want to evade being punished. It is equally understandable that your teachers feel a duty of care to prevent you from being arrested by the police. The problem is that this duty of care must be extended to all students, but is in the current circumstances only extended to a particular group – a group that may well be seen as intimidating fellow students. The message that I see being conveyed (implicitly) to you is that you don’t have to take responsibility for your actions. That would mean overprotection.

However, maintaining social rules and enforcing them through the police, if need be, seems to emphasise the status quo. My insistence on social order can be met with the objection that I don’t just want people to behave nicely, but that I want to maintain, at any cost, the current powers. (It’s a stronger variant of what is known as the “tone argument”, if you like) That point sits uneasily with the fact that many of you take yourselves to protest against irresponsible agents and institutions. (Believe it or not: online, people even quoted Martin Luther King at me to make this point.) So if the status quo is taken to rest on irresponsible behaviour, how can I convince you by falling back on the status quo? – But I’m not asking you to maintain the status quo. I’m pointing out that, if you need to make your point by intimidating your fellow students or by behaving like a hooligan, you should, for the time being, have no place at a university. My point is not about order but about your responsibility to fellow humans around you. ­– Now, a common response to this charge is that the hooligan behaviour we could witness was coming from “outsiders” and that the actual protests were peaceful. That is a strange response: For if these vandalisms were indeed acts of outsiders, I would have expected at least equally visible attempts at prevention and vocal distancing from this kind of behaviour, rather than finger-pointing at others who supposedly started it. That is one way of what it could mean to take responsibility. And someone who cannot take as much responsibility is certainly not fit to organise a protest, let alone occupy part of a university. All of this goes back to the basic point of having to take responsibility for what you do – as much as you can – and especially on behalf of those who might get hurt. Remember, you cannot be morally consistent on all levels. No one expects that. But your priority should be to treat respectfully those around you, most of all your fellow students. The attempt to put the blame elsewhere, hide behind face coverings, avoid speaking to the press, let alone to opponents, is an avoidance of responsibility. In turn, I find attempts to justify such conduct infantilising at best.

Of course, the teachers’ duty of care should not just comprise all students but also allow for making mistakes. In this sense, we need to see the situation as an ongoing one where we all have to learn new things. Since most of the current protests are what is called “pro-Palestinian” and since this is perceived as the most vocal group, it is fairly clear that their voices are being heard most of the time as the loudest. What I find particularly alienating is that, while the situation is evolving, most of what I hear are repetitions of the same chants and insults over and over, often copied straight from earlier protests at US American universities. Apart from the lack of dialectic development, I also find it problematic that those of you who belong to the most vocal protesters don’t seem to be open to reflect on other voices. In the light of this stale situation, I found it particularly helpful to read this passage in a rather balanced piece by Naika Foroutan (in German):

“For the legitimacy of the protests, it would be central to include the trauma of October 7th and the need for protection of Jewish and Israeli students who feel threatened or unsafe on campus in the protest logic – before the next protests take place.”

I’d have more to add, but I think I’ve already taken too much of your attention. If you want to bring down my ramblings to three simple points they are the following: Don’t easily trust people who come with easy overviews and clear-cut definitions, let alone chants. We’re all in the process of learning. Take responsibility for your fellow students, whatever you make of their (supposed) convictions.

Take care!

All best wishes, Martin Lenz