Mick Hartley

Belgian philosopher Maarten Boudry at the JC on the forced Gaza genocide ‘consensus’ across European universities.

Not a week passes without another open letter from academics – often amassing hundreds or even thousands of signatures within days – denouncing Israel in the strongest terms. Across Europe, dozens of universities have now severed ties with Israeli institutions, citing alleged complicity in genocide – or at the very least, systematic war crimes.…

In reality, the accusation of genocide is as obscene as it is absurd. Netanyahu and his far-right cronies may be guilty of many things, but there’s no evidence whatsoever that Israel intends to exterminate Gazans, and abundant evidence to the contrary. The eagerness of Western intellectuals to nonetheless accuse Israel of genocide is by now depressingly familiar, as is their blindness to Hamas’s cynical war tactics and the extraordinarily difficult conditions under which Israel has had to pursue its legitimate aims of defeating Hamas and freeing the hostages. In my latest book, Het verraad aan de verlichting (The Betrayal of Enlightenment), I trace this reflex to a postcolonial ideology that casts the West as perpetual oppressor and anti-Western forces as inherently virtuous victims.…

In the Low Countries, where I live, my stance on Gaza has left me increasingly isolated within the ivory tower. The rector of my alma mater, Ghent University, declared that any academic questioning the genocide in Gaza can no longer rely on the protections of academic freedom: “This is a line that cannot be crossed.” Five professors have called on the previous rector to discipline me for my “Zionist-tinged” views. I’ve also been deplatformed twice at the University of Amsterdam for my view on Israel.​

It’s not that Boudry is alone in his views. Many, in fact, share his views but are afraid to speak out.

And yet, for the past two years, I have been receiving regular emails from academic colleagues that can be summarised as follows: “I completely agree with you and am glad that you’re fighting this battle, but please keep it quiet – I don’t want to get into trouble.” The social pressure to condemn Israel has become so intense that many “dissidents” no longer dare to speak out.

This reluctance to speak up gives rise to what psychologists call pluralistic ignorance: people mistakenly assume that they are alone in holding a dissenting opinion and therefore either remain silent or misrepresent their own views, inadvertently perpetuating the illusion of consensus and raising the social cost of dissent, as Steven Pinker notes in his book When Everyone Knows That Everyone Knows.

So he asked academics to share their anonymous views on Gaza and Israel.

A senior lecturer at a Dutch university writes: “I’m afraid to share my thoughts freely with my colleagues and feel restricted in my freedom to speak openly about this.” A philosophy professor describes the academic debate on the war in Gaza as effectively “impossible”, writing that “Critical voices are silenced through exclusion, dismissal, and sometimes even violence. In such circumstances, I don’t feel compelled to express my critical thoughts openly.” Another Dutch lecturer admits: “I certainly keep my mouth shut about my views to my colleagues.”

A colleague at my own faculty calls the accusation of genocide “sickening” and a form of “cynical manipulation”, yet she is terrified of speaking out. She avoids the topic in conversations with colleagues and students, confessing to “self-censorship” to protect herself. Another academic explains why: after signing a petition opposing the anti-Israel boycott, he was “shunned for weeks by colleagues in our department”. Yet another professor said he received a warning “to be careful what I say around certain colleagues”. In today’s academic climate, speaking out in support of Israel is widely regarded as tantamount to “academic suicide”.

A grim read.

The “Gaza genocide” accusation is a baseless claim that signals ideological allegiance precisely because it defies logic and evidence. Deep down everyone understands that it’s nonsense, but that is precisely what allows it to serve as an ideological litmus test. Breaking the spiral of silence will require more people to step forward and call out such nonsense, thereby lowering the social cost of dissent.