All my readers will be aware that university campuses in many parts of the world, but most strikingly in America, have been animated and energised in recent weeks by tremendous student protests regarding the Gaza massacres. University administrations and managerial elites at Columbia, UCLA and other universities and colleges have reacted in the most retrograde and authoritarian manner, calling in metropolitan police forces to clear their campuses. These clearances have often proceeded with violence. Cops stood by at UCLA while the Palestine encampment was viciously attacked by 200 non-student, non-academic pro-Israel outsiders, who beat students and launched fireworks at them. The position of the authorities has been very clear - students are trash whose only real importance lies in the exorbitant fees they pay; the issues they conscientiously raise are irrelevant; powerful donors can exert profoundly undemocratic and illiberal leverage over institutions that still wrap themselves in the mantle of humane learning, independent research and education. One hopes that American student protest will not peter out, as the semester comes to an end, but that the vital energies released will find issue and expression elsewhere.
In Ireland, staff and student protest has been intense as the months of the Gaza killing have ground on. Teach-ins, protests, demonstrations, readings, walk-outs. But mostly Irish universities have not reacted to these actions. Only the University of Galway, under pressure from students and staff, has had the courage and the moral honesty to make a commitment to reviewing its links with Israel and with Israeli universities and defence industries.
But in the last few days, a student protest and encampment at Trinity College Dublin has scored a very significant victory, in a lesson for the other Irish colleges and educational institutions everywhere. A camp over five days, including a blockade of the Old Library where the priceless Book of Kells is held, has resulted, after negotiations, in TCD making significant responses to student demands. These include a review of investments, support for students from Gaza, and a review of academic links to Israeli institutions.
Not merely this, but students held their ground, amidst some disgraceful and cynical commentary - from Alan Shatter, former minister for justice (lampooned so gloriously as Count Dracula), who is a self-appointed 'expert on the Middle East' but has no credentials in this area at all apart from arrogance; from many journalists, commentators and politicians, whose only response to a group of students powerfully gripped by an ethical political position was to sneer at their youth, naivety, 'idealism', supposed ignorance, supposed privilege and supposed self-regard. In fact the self-regard, ignorance and privilege all applied to the crass commentators - Gerard Howlin of the Irish Times, Brendan O'Connor of RTE, and Brenda Power of the Irish Daily Mail, all of whom should be ashamed of themselves.
My brilliant friend and comrade David Landy has been important in all of this TCD action. David has an excellent article on the story at the Jacobin website: we have much to learn from it and from him and his TCD allies.
Conor
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