Education is all about provocation. Without being provoked even young minds can remain stuck in old tracks
The most important thing I teach my students is to seek out people who disagree with them.
That’s because the essence of learning is testing one’s ideas, assumptions and values. And what better place to test ideas, assumptions and values than at a university?
Apparently, Columbia University’s president, Minouche Shafik, does not share my view. Last week she prostrated herself before House Republicans, promising that she would discipline professors and students for protesting against the ongoing slaughter in Gaza in which some 34,000 people have died, most of them women and children.
The following day she summoned the New York police department to arrest more than 100 students who were engaging in a peaceful protest.
Can we be clear about a few things? Protesting against this slaughter is not expressing antisemitism. It is not engaging in hate speech. It is not endangering Jewish students. It is doing what should be done on a college campus – taking a stand against a perceived wrong, thereby provoking discussion and debate.
Education is all about provocation. Without being provoked – stirred, unsettled, goaded – even young minds can remain stuck in old tracks.
The Israel-Hamas war is horrifying. The atrocities committed by both sides illustrate the capacities of human beings for inhumanity and show the vile consequences of hate. For these reasons, it presents an opportunity for students to re-examine their preconceptions and learn from one another.
