Fallout from Gaza: An academic community’s responses to the situation in Palestine

Few regional conflicts have had as much of a global impact as the conflict between Israel and Palestine. Outbursts of violence, like the terrorist Hamas attacks and taking of hostages of October 7 and Israel’s massive retaliatory attacks since then, have sparked strong responses everywhere, including in our academic community at the International Institute of Social Studies. Having experienced those dynamics for two months now, it is time for some reflections. I offer mine, as rector of ISS, but obviously also as one human being among all.

Feeling

The first layer of responses in our academic community post-October 7 were emotional in nature. A number of students, PhD-candidates, and staff were not simply shocked or “uncomfortable” about what they saw. They were enraged by the sheer magnitude of the Israeli military response and the enormous humanitarian consequences for the Gazan population, including for so many children. This sense of rage stays on until today, fueled by what they regard as a lack of responsibility by other countries, by international organizations, and also by universities, including the ISS. ‘Why’, they asked, ‘do universities not explicitly condemn Israel’s actions that punish the whole Palestinian population in response to a terrorist act, speak out against genocide and apartheid, join the BDS-movement (boycott, disinvest, sanction Israël), and choose the side of the Palestinian victims of oppression?’

For me, this emotional layer is an important one, because it deals with our gut feelings, our moral intuitions, our fundamental stance when human dignity is trampled upon. It cannot be dismissed as ‘mere feelings’. It is also important because it signifies that we are all affected as human beings. To a degree we are experiencing a form of indirect and collective traumatization, which means that we don’t respond only rationally, but also from our fundamental instincts. Just like we cannot expect people in Gaza and Israel to respond in a purely rational manner to a life-threatening situation, we cannot expect those within our academic community to be fully rational when the foundations of morality and security are shocked.

Hence, the first thing we needed at the outset, to process this rage, was care and safety, not debates and fights. This holds true for those who have been personally affected because they have family and friends who have been living in Israel and Palestine. As university leaders, we immediately reached out to our staff, PhD candidates and students who we knew had a direct connection with the region. For example, we learned that one member of our academic community has lost more than 45 members of their family in Gaza in the past two months. We obviously missed a few people, because we didn’t always know each other’s connections, and this is something for us to reflect on for the future.

Thinking

Offering care for these feelings is not enough. As an academic institution, we are called to bring our knowledge and insight to a troubled and complex world. We have supported our scholars who have engaged in public appearances, for example on humanitarian issues and international rights and who have published opinion pieces. We organized a Teach-In just two weeks after 7 October at both our Hague (ISS) and Rotterdam (Woudestein) campuses, in which lecturers shared their insights on trauma, human rights, the position of children, the political economy and also the role of media in filtering information. These Teach-Ins, held at Erasmus University and other academic institutions, in which our faculty members also participated, helped not only to share knowledge. They also helped to transform a primarily emotion-driven response into one that also incorporated an academic and analytical attitude. By engaging with psychological, legal, humanitarian, historical, developmental and economic insights, we moved to a second layer of responses in which we asked ourselves how academics can contribute to thinking about a meaningful way of coping with the tragedies and cruelties we witness in the world.

The Teach-Ins were valuable, but not easy. The process of challenging each other to reflect, academically was not self-evident. Emotions still played a major role in framing peoples’ responses within our community, but also triggered a plea for institutional action. Here we faced a dilemma in that many of those participating in these and similar events shared a particular perspective on the situation in Gaza; this made the opportunities for dialogue less diverse and inclusive than they could have been. Students and staff who might be inclined to sympathize with Israeli population or to critique Palestine leadership were less visible. Some students approached me at different moments asking why we showed less interest in other conflicts, oppressions, and human rights violations in the world. They felt excluded that events focused only on Gaza, especially when accompanied by strong moral messaging. This remains a dilemma: how to accommodate and support, on the one hand, our community members who feel that we should speak out and act, and on the other hand, respond to members who feel that attention should also be given to Yemen, Sudan, Azerbaijan, Ethiopia or Myanmar.

Acting

That brings me to a third layer of responses: action. This took shape already in the early days of the post-October 7 surge of violence when students protested on our doorstep and remained visible in posters and messages distributed among our community. It was presented to the ISS leadership in the form of a request to issue explicit statements and break ties with Israeli institutions. Anything less than that would be understood by a substantial part of our community as neglecting our moral responsibility as an institution devoted to social justice. At the same time, we had to look critically at the role of academics and institutions in the midst of massive disinformation that sometimes also limits our potential to reach conclusions about what is happening.

Navigating these demands, it was clear for me and colleagues  in university leadership positions that we indeed needed to act. Neutrality in the face of violence is not an option. But we were also very clear that our role had to be knowledge-based and that our primary task was and remains to preserve academic freedom and to facilitate our scholars – from students to professors – to contribute their academic insights to society. We are grateful for the courage of all our scholars to do so and for the wisdom they bring to the world. We have witnessed how they have condemned the Hamas atrocities and also addressed Israeli atrocities, including violations of humanitarian law, and especially the cruelty of punishing an entire population with – as they argued – genocidal intent.

As an academic institute, we exercise restraint in speaking out by way of performative statements, especially because the protection of academic freedom is necessary to safeguard the space for our scholars to speak the truth. When the university itself defines what counts as true, just, and right, that immediately restricts the freedom of other academics. We do not remain neutral because we are afraid to take a stand. It is absolutely clear that as an institution committed to researching Global Development and Social Justice, we stand for the protection of human rights, for the assertion of humanitarian responsibilities, and for the need to ensure peace, justice and accountability. However, the Institute refrains from speaking out beyond these general principles. This will always remain a balancing act between saying too much and saying too little.

The fallout from the present tragedy in Gaza will continue to affect us. It leaves us with dilemmas on how to act. We will continue to organize care for the members of our community who are suffering. We will facilitate learning and nurture critical thinking. We will build our networks internationally and stimulate joint academic contributions towards a just world. We will not be unaffected. Indeed, we feel there should be more done than what we are capable of doing as academics. And when we operate as an institution with this kind of restraint, we are aware it will not be enough in the eyes of a substantial part of our community. But, we may be most effective if we contribute what suits our role: universities protecting academic freedom, so that scholars can share their knowledge and insights with the world, and scholar-activists take the firmer stand. The dialogue between those roles can hold us together in working toward a peaceful future.

Opinions expressed in Bliss posts reflect solely the views of the author of the post in question.

About the author:

Prof. dr. (Ruard) RR Ganzevoort is the rector of the International Institute of Social Studies in Den Haag (part of Erasmus University Rotterdam) as well as professor of Lived Religion and Development.

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