“This Is What a University Looks Like”
Students and faculty from Columbia University recently held a “25-hour speak-out” in support of academic freedom. Some of the remarks made during the speak-out are published at Rise Up, Columbia: part 1, part 2.
Turkuler Isiksel, political science professor:
Like other scholars in my discipline, political science, I think a lot about how in recent decades, elections have come to be used for authoritarian ends.
Many countries that hold regular elections, where leaders come to power through a competitive struggle for the people’s vote, are nevertheless authoritarian. But how can that be? Aren’t elections the same thing as democracy?
Well, elections in authoritarian regimes are a kind of window-dressing: authoritarian incumbents win elections because they ensure that they cannot lose: by restricting media freedom, manipulating information, intimidating civil society leaders, jailing dissidents, banning opposition parties, outlawing rallies and demonstrations. Once in power, they typically try to conquer 5 key social institutions:
- The press
- The bureaucracy
- The military
- The judiciary
- Universities
Why these institutions?
First, because they answer to a different authority than whoever happens to be in political power. Their activities are guided not by whoever happens to be in power, but by its own professional ethic.
- journalism is guided by a commitment to informing the public,
- the bureaucracy is guided by an ethic of professionalism and public service,
- the military is guided by respect for the chain of command and political neutrality,
- the judiciary is guided by the ethic of impartially applying the law, and
- universities like ours are guided by the search for truth.
In scholarly inquiry, disciplinary standards have priority over other metrics (profits, power, glory, public opinion). Political non-interference is a precondition for our scholarly and teaching mission.
In short, the third law of thermodynamics does not change because the commander-in-chief doesn’t like it. So these institutions present an obstacle to political and social control.
James Schamus, film & media studies professor:
I’ve been asked to speak briefly today as part of a specifically Jewish cohort of Columbia faculty. And the request as always surfaces in me two contradictory immediate reactions. The first reaction is simple: Who cares what Jews think? A genocide is a genocide is a genocide; ethno-state fascism is ethno-state fascism. The false and dangerous conflation of criticism of Israel and Zionism with antisemitism as a cover for Israel’s crimes and the fascist repression of our universities here in the states is obvious now to all: Jews have no privileged perspective from which to add to those obvious facts.
My second reaction is also simple: This genocide in Gaza is being enacted in my name, supposedly on my behalf; the destruction of American universities is being enacted in my name, supposedly on my behalf. So I am indeed called to speak out, to fight back, and to work to create alternative forms of community and identity to counter the false claim that Israel’s depredations and Trump’s destruction of my university are somehow in my interest.
(thx, joe)
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