Some questions about campus protests and the role of civil disobedience in democracy

They’ll say we’re disturbing the peace, but there is no peace. What really bothers them is that we are disturbing the war. – Howard Zinn, “Speech Against the Vietnam War on Boston Common”

On university campuses in the United States, the UK, and now Canada, student protestors have established encampments to call for the transparency of endowments, and the divestment of funds from Israel. In Canada, McGill University students face a court injunction, while those at the University of Calgary were forcibly removed on Thursday. These protests bring forth an important conversation about how we think philosophically about civil disobedience in democracies.  

It strikes me that we do not wish to do away with civil disobedience completely, as this will quickly descend into legalism, the idea that morality is based solely on the legal status of a given activity. Nowhere in history do we find law identical to morality. It’s also important to note that civil disobedience is, by definition, peaceful (or it is definitionally not civil.)

These campus protests should not be seen as surprise. When people feel that their institutions are not carrying out the will of the members, because they are unable to or simply don’t care to, then people resort to other means.  

So how did we arrive at our current position? For one, we have failed to acknowledge the inherent violence contained within the status quo approach. We live under the impression that it is only change that is violent. Campus protesters see this differently. To do nothing is not necessarily more peaceful.

There are some who will say students do not have a say. They will compare universities as institutions to businesses, whose customers should simply find another place to frequent if a values disagreement arises. But students definitely have a say. If the student body at a secular university discovered that the institution was funding a religious enterprise, they would have the right to lobby for change. They would not be expected to except the status quo. The university would be recognized as in the wrong. What makes this values disagreement markedly different?  

We should also not dismiss this activism as purely performative, because even if it is, that does not speak to the validity of the protester’s claims.

If we allow ourselves to put cynicism to the side for a moment, we can ask why students have become so involved in this issue. I suggest it might be for the same reason others have changed their position on this issue: they’ve seen footage. We saw this sea change when Aljazeera obtained footage of an Israeli attack against an unsuspecting group of men simply walking down a road, and when food shipments by the World Central Kitchen were bombed, killing the humanitarian aid workers (who had clearly marked cars and had communicated their route in advance.) Now, over 100,000 people have been forced to evacuate parts of Rafah, as Israel promises to proceed regardless of international backing. And access to Gaza by aid groups remains heavily restricted despite many claims that the area is already experiencing a famine. Then we ask why protests have continued to gain momentum? Should we not stop to consider what has got us here? Or is there no breaking point that we could possibly conceive of as enough to motivate this action?

The Prime Minister of the UK, Rishi Sunak, remarked this week that students should not be engaged in “unnecessary disruption,” as campus protests spread to Oxbridge. Unnecessary according to whom, may I ask? And is this behavior unnecessary in all instances of profound moral disagreement?

In Alberta, an encampment at the University of Calgary has been dispersed, while an encampment has just been started at the University of Alberta. In Calgary, protestors were not met with dialogue; only tear gas. Again, there is tremendous energy expended to uphold the status quo.