Response to ccstudentsforpalestine, and Next Steps

The following letter was written and submitted by Professor Andrew Pessin and is in response to the CC Students for Palestine statement on the Board of Trustees’ decision opposing divestment.

On Feb 26 ccstudentsforpalestine posted, then plastered over campus, its statement on the Board of Trustees’ decision not to use the College endowment as (in the Board’s words) “a vehicle for expressing views on world affairs or any particular issue.” One must admire students for taking activism seriously, and so must consider seriously what they say; but doing that requires subjecting what they say to critique, and there is very much here to critique (though I offer here only an abbreviated version).

The immediate context is their regularly stated belief that Israel is perpetrating “genocide” against Gazans. I get it: if I believed that a genocide were ongoing I too would get worked up, try to get the attention of my institution, try to coopt it to stop the genocide, etc. But while there is indeed a terrible war going on, there is in fact no “genocide”: that label, that allegation, is a lie, a blatant lie, an easily demonstrable lie, a lie designed to delegitimize the Jewish people’s defending themselves from their actually genocidal, jihadist neighbors who started and continue to prosecute the war. I have demonstrated the blatant falseness of this lie elsewhere. To be clear I am not accusing the students of lying: they are likely gripped by the “genocide” delusion that saturates their echo-chamber infosphere. But take away the moral panic of the “genocide” allegation—cure oneself of that delusion—and the current manifesto dissolves away. Since this is not the place to slug out those details, let’s examine what’s left of the statement apart from the allegation.

“For over a year we met with the Board,” so the Board’s decision was a “dismissal of over a year of our conversations.” Why is it a “dismissal’? Is it not possible that the Board was simply not persuaded by their case? Is the Board obligated to agree with everyone who converses with it? What happens when they have conversations with multiple parties who disagree? And what if they have access to relevant information to which the students do not, not to mention responsibilities the students do not have, which necessarily inform their decision? For the record, an alternative response to the Trustee decision was (and still is) available: “Though we are disappointed at your conclusion, thank you for entertaining our case for so long and giving it serious consideration.”  

“In exchange for their promise of continued conversation and transparency, we silenced ourselves and promised we would not be ‘disruptive.’” “Silencing” doesn’t seem the right word for all they’ve had to say on social media and on campus this past year, not to mention the thirteen-lecture-and-counting “Hate Israel” series here that has started to create a hostile work environment for those who do not hate Israel. But more importantly, wait a minute: are they saying they threatened to be “disruptive” unless they got their way? Do what we say or else? Isn’t another word for that tactic, “extortion”? Is that seriously the way one should behave at an institution of higher education, in a diverse community with many diverse opinions?

The sense of entitlement pervades the piece. The Board does not owe them anything more than that initial conversation at most, much less a year of conversation. The Board certainly does not owe them automatic agreement with their opinions or demands. Whatever exactly “shared governance” means, it surely does not mean that students, much less some subset of students, get to dictate school policies on anything, much less on such important matters as investment policy. 

They sometimes frame their campaign as being against investing in weapons in general. So should a college never invest in any aspect of any defense industry? I’m not sure, but if they think that stopping such investments will somehow stop all wars across the globe then “naïve” would be the right word here. Do they seek to undermine the United States defense industry, perhaps a major component of the portfolio? I’m no fan of war per se, either, but in a world filled with hostile armed actors I’m also not sure it’s wise to undo our defense industry. One wonders if these folks have actually thought these matters through. (Or is the “we’re against all weapons” claim just a ruse to obscure the fact they are actually targeting only the one Jewish state in the world, aiming to render it defenseless while it is being attacked on seven fronts?)

They say it’s “clear that the Board believes higher education to be a business, not an ideal.” Are the students unaware that the college is currently in a serious financial crisis? If so, that is a strong reason not to entrust them with our financial policy; if not, if they are aware, that is an even stronger reason. Very simply, you cannot pursue your “ideals” if you do not exist to pursue them. Had the Board chosen any investment principle other than their fiduciary responsibility they would directly be threatening the survival of this place. Ideals (and activism) are for the individual stakeholders to pursue as they see fit; the Board’s job, and the College’s, is only to make it possible for the individuals to pursue their ideals, not to do so themselves. (I have laid out the case against divestment in far more detail here; see especially the section on Williams College’s forceful rejection of divestment, because they laid out the many reasons quite fully in contrast to our own Board’s more concise statement.)

The students demand the Board “take political positions” in order “to enact our supposed values.” What they actually want is for the Board to take their political positions and enact their own values. But that is a totally inappropriate thing for the Board to do, because (a) there are many stakeholders here with diverse positions and values, and (b) because the Board is neither authorized nor even competent to pick a side in a complicated 100-year-old political-military conflict half a world away. (As for the allegation that by “not picking a side” they are de facto picking a side—there is so much wrong with that that I cannot engage it here.) In any case I suspect that had the Board come out and said, “We agree we should take political positions, and so we shall direct our endowment to invest massively in Israeli self-defense to protect the Jewish people from the global genocidal campaign currently being waged against them,” these people would be singing a different tune. 

“The Board does not seek to represent what the students want, but they forget that the students are the College.” No they aren’t. The College is a complicated entity with many constituents and stakeholders, collectively possessed of many different opinions about many different things. The Board should not represent what any single subset “wants,” much less a subset of that subset, but instead focus on what, in their opinion, is in the best short, medium, and long-term interest of the institution as a whole. That claim strikes me as very nearly tautological, and anyone who challenges it is in fact challenging the entire educational enterprise that is our alleged mission.

As for what’s next: The students gave it a valiant shot, an impressive shot, they attempted to persuade, they had a year to persuade, doing things precisely the way things should be done at an institution of higher education, but did not succeed. That happens; God knows how many people I have failed to persuade over the years, and even just this past week. It’s probably happening right now. But now the Board has spoken. There is no higher authority here, I believe, so the decision cannot be reversed for the foreseeable future. So what, exactly, would be the point of further “action,” of more “do what we say or else,” of “disruption” to the educational experience that some students are shelling out $85K a year for, of, in a word, extortion? Don’t other students have any rights, too, particularly for that kind of money? Are we now to be terrorized here, because they did not get their way? With “actions” that are likely to harm the reputation of this College, shrink donations, drive away prospective students, perhaps draw federal attention of a negative sort—and accelerate the current financial crisis perhaps to its fatal conclusion?

“Show up and prepare to be loud”: combined extortion and tantrum?

Not a good look.

Or can they maybe find their way to a “Though we are disappointed, we thank you for your serious consideration, and we shall carry on in our quest to persuade this community, by argument and evidence, of the beliefs that we hold dear”?

You know, the way it should be done?