A recent op-ed by Jacob Markman ’27 claims that the “anti-Israel movement” is “coercive,” “illiberal” and overly antagonistic to students with Zionist and pro-Israel attitudes. In it, Markman argues that student protesters should engage in “open conversation and discussion” rather than “sign-waving and name-calling.” Throughout his piece, Markman seems to treat the movement as if its goal is to create happy spaces for pro-Israel students to chat with pro-Palestinian students, wherein the former can be comfortable in their support for Israel’s war in Gaza while agreeing to disagree with those who support Palestinian life.
Thus, according to Markman, the protest movement fails insofar as pro-Israel students feel uncomfortable with demands for divestment from the Israeli government’s human rights abuses, have their perception of Israel as a civil, democratic country challenged or encounter “hostility” from energized student protesters. In Markman’s eyes, student protesters should stick to carefully moderated class or community discussions and away from real protests, lest they make students of his particular political orientation uncomfortable.
Yet this kind of ‘discussion’ is not, and has never been, the goal of any serious student protest movement looking to make a real and immediate change on campus. The goal of such movements is just that — to create change, or in the case of pro-Palestinian protesters, to secure Dartmouth’s divestment from Israeli apartheid, a thoroughly documented system of racial subjugation recognized by the world’s leading human rights organizations.
Such change is impossible to achieve without real protest and disobedience to the status quo. Could one imagine civil rights-era Dartmouth protesters sitting in a room with segregationists and having a heart-to-heart? No — in fact, the opposite occurred. Take, for example, in 1967, when George Wallace, then-governor of Alabama and an ardent and open supporter of segregation, visited Dartmouth to give a talk as part of his presidential campaign on a strict segregationist platform. In an act that shocked campus, student protesters not only chased him off the stage but went as far as to follow him back to his car and pound on the doors, rocking it back and forth as he sat inside.
What were the goals of these protesters, who, by Markman’s logic, we would have to condemn today for not engaging in dialogue with the pro-segregation part of campus? In the words of one protester, Robert Bennett ’69, “Our agreed-upon objective was … to compel the national news media (which we knew would be at the speech) to report on our protest nationwide, so that Black people nationwide would know that we [at Dartmouth], too, were committed to the then-fierce struggle being waged across America against the racism and fascism that George Wallace advocated.”
Notice that Bennett does not take into account the feelings of pro-segregation students or how uncomfortable such an action might make them feel. Instead, the protesters were entirely committed to struggling against the racist system of segregation in which Dartmouth was complicit, and on making it clear that segregation ought to have no place on campus. Would anyone today suggest that they ought to have heard Wallace out instead?
To be clear, I am not bringing up the Wallace protest to suggest that student protesters should be rocking the cars of pro-Israel politicians or chasing them off campus. I am bringing this history up to demonstrate that, for movements taking on institutions of systematic persecution, the tactics of protests must necessarily involve real, uncomfortable and often disruptive actions to achieve the movement’s goals.
Many other episodes from Dartmouth’s history echo this truth. It is impossible to imagine Dartmouth divesting from South African apartheid in the 1990s without the student shanty town movement on the Green, which provoked a violent dispersal of the encampment by pro-apartheid students and disrupted campus life to the point where then-president of the College David McLaughlin had to cancel classes. Similarly, it is impossible to imagine Dartmouth dissolving ROTC during the Vietnam War without the forcible occupation of Parkhurst Hall, during which students took over the building and nailed the doors shut in the act of radical protest. Even though both of these movements today are widely regarded as standing on the right side of history, the beneficiaries of such systems at the time decried them in words reminiscent of those Markman uses: “coercive” and “illiberal,” obstacles to “dialogue” and “nuanced and thoughtful” conversation.
Indeed, for someone whose politics benefit from the status quo, the word “dialogue” — monitored by those with the authority to dictate the terms of the conversation — is the ultimate tool to quell dissent. So-called “dialogue” of this sort is antithetical to real change — it aims to replace the outrage and horror that students feel at our College’s continued associations with a murderous war machine with a feel-good, Kumbaya feeling as we all sit down at the same table and nod our heads to the empty words of smiling College administrators. With this kind of “dialogue” in mind, it should come as no surprise that Markman, an outspoken supporter of Israel and its war in Gaza, has previously written in glowing praise of College President Sian Leah Beilock for her decision to request police assistance at a protest in the spring — resulting in the arrests of 89 peaceful protesters. In fact, Markman even goes out of his way to laud her for this commitment to “open dialogue.”
Again, let me be clear: I am not opposed to creating authentic spaces of discussion, debate and learning on the question of Israel and Palestine. To the contrary, I support spaces, such as BridgeUSA, that give students with opposing views a chance to talk and come to understand each other. I personally have gone out of my way to create such spaces: throughout my time as president of the Palestine Solidarity Coalition, I poured countless hours into organizing a plethora of different talks, panels and discussions for our campus to which all students, regardless of their political views, were invited to come and engage in conversation on conflict Israel and Palestine. The PSC has had speakers ranging from Omar Shakir, the Human Rights Watch Israel and Palestine director, to government professor Bernard Avishai, a former West Bank settler, and we hope to be able to continue to contribute to ongoing campus discussions.
Yet, even as we aim to contribute to such discussions productively, the student protest movement cannot — and must not — sacrifice its absolute moral clarity on the issue of Palestinian liberation and its reason for protesting in the first place.
We do not protest because we want to make those who support the destruction of Gaza happy. We protest because we support the unconditional right of Palestinians to life and self-determination in the face of an Israeli government that would deny it. We protest because this government has massacred more than 40,000 Palestinians in the last year alone, after decades of the continual dispossession, destruction and erasure of their people and the unending settlement of their land. We protest because, even in the face of all these atrocities, Dartmouth still refuses to divest from this well-documented system of apartheid and the human rights catastrophe it has created — for both Israelis and Palestinians.
Until the goal of divestment from apartheid is met, students must continue their strategy of protest and civil disobedience — even if it makes some on campus uncomfortable.
Opinion articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
