June 12, Jill DeTemple, professor of religious studies at SMU Dallas, for a piece challenging the position that what faculty members teach incites students and community members to protest. Published in the Dallas Morning News under the heading Blaming faculty when protests erupt ignores how we teach: https://tinyurl.com/3c533a9p
Student protests in support of Gaza have captured the attention of Congress, editorial writers and everyday citizens. Some have expressed solidarity with protesters, characterizing them as “invest[ing] in what’s happening in the world,”or “exercising their fundamental human rights.” Some have condemned them as “disruptive,” “uninformed,” “antisemitic” or “violent.”
Any of these descriptions could be true to a degree as the protests, like the conflict to which they respond, are complex social phenomena happening in the midst of profound political and social instability. Students demanding divestment, chanting slogans, and responding to death and destruction have themselves lived through the prolonged disruption of a global pandemic, a nation at war for the vast majority of their lives, and political polarization at a level as high as it’s been since the Civil War.
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