Gaza and Protest

Today the president is taking credit for a cease-fire in Gaza. But who, in America, was first in calling for that exact thing? Students on campuses. And what happened to them? They were banned from their own public spaces, all over the country. So the president should be thanking them for their foresight. And he and all of his supporters should naturally be calling for campus bans on public assembly to be lifted. I would be very happy to hear such voices! But I fear we won’t. If we don’t, we will see that those bans were never about Gaza or Israel or any one issue. They are about silencing young people, in general, as a first step toward silencing the rest of us. I recognize that things were said and done on campuses (often by people from outside the schools) that should not have been said and done. Antisemitism is a very real and sadly a growing problem in the US and around the world. But the presence of individual actors and of undesirable acts was never a good reason for broad bans on freedom of speech and assembly on campuses. Freedom of speech has a point. It is there so people can speak truth to power. Often that truth is spoken first by young people. What student protestors said about a cease-fire early became the mainstream about eighteen months later. And what if they hadn’t been silenced? More freedom of speech on this issue would have been healthy for everyone — including Israel, whose image has suffered hugely. And it would have saved many, many lives in Gaza. When we as Americans are trained to think that suppression of speech is normal once, in a major area of life such as college campuses, we take a step towards agreeing with authoritarianism in general. So for those who support the president, a challenge: thank the students and give them back their freedom to express themselves. For the rest of us, another challenge: gather to speak about all of our freedoms. (This is not a transcript of the video— just me quickly putting together the thought in a different way. Please share this.) Thinking about... is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit snyder.substack.com/subscribe