As the Palestine-Israel conflict arouses strong feelings on campus, Peter Ramsay explains why we should care for each other and for our community by caring for the quality of our arguments

Ramsay, Peter

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Peter Ramsay October 20th, 2023A community of argument: why academic freedom matters0 comments | 17 sharesEstimated reading time: 10 minutesAs the Palestine-Israel con ict arouses strong feelings on campus, Peter Ramsayexplains why we should care for each other and for our community by caring for thequality of our arguments.The renewed con ict in the Middle East arouses strong emotion among members ofthe LSE community. Thousands have been killed or wounded in Israel and Gaza.Some of our students and staff members identify strongly with one side or anotherin the long-running con ict. They may have family members in the region. Some willalso have genuine fears about the impact of the passions aroused in the UK on thesafety of people they love.The arguments this con ict generates are  erce. Some participants summarise theircause with the slogan ‘Palestine must be free from the river to the sea,’ others willclaim that ‘Israel has a right to self-defence.’ In the current context, each of theseideas could be construed as an apology for genocide, although most peopleexpressing one or the other of these will have reasons for saying they are not doingthat. Still, if someone believes that is the effect of the idea, then that will cause angerand anxiety.So how should we at LSE handle the arguments and the passions that this majorinternational crisis arouses when they arise in classes, lectures, or public events?We should approach the con ict in the spirit of what we are: a university. LSE’sprevious Vice-Chancellor, Minouche Sha k, explained what that means when,The World Turned Upside Down, a sculpture by Mark Wallinger on the LSEcampus/Marina Franchidrawing on the words of LSE’s founders, she described us as “a community ofpeople and ideas founded to know the causes of things for the betterment ofsociety.”A sceptic might say we cannot be much of a community, if we are riven by the harsh,adamantine con icts like that between Israel and the Palestinians, or indeed otherdisputes that seem equally intractable. But in truth, communities of all sortsfrequently  nd themselves at odds. And we may often  nd that we disagree stronglywith someone on one disputed question only to agree as strongly with them onanother. We can hold our community together by keeping its mission at the forefrontof our minds.That mission requires  rst and foremost that we maintain our staff and our students’freedom to research, to think, to write, and to speak about the crisis, its effects, andits causes. This is true of our engagement with all disputes about society, butacademic freedom is never more important than when traumatic events arousestrong passions.academic freedom is never more important thanwhen traumatic events arouse strong passions.To understand why academic freedom is so critical to our existence as a communityof learners we need to think about what it is that LSE does in the effort ‘to know thecauses of things’ so that society might be bettered. Some academics collect dataand seek to interpret it; some seek to offer theories that explain the data; some of usread the existing literature reinterpreting the ideas of earlier thinkers; some of uswork on the methods and tools we use to do the other things. Most of us do morethan just one of these activities at least some of the time. But all of us engage inargument about who has got it right on any of these matters.Most of us also teach students about what has been discovered so far and thearguments that we are engaged in. Teaching students is not merely a question ofpassing on knowledge or ideas from teacher to student, but also of students learningthe ways of thinking and arguing that researchers, theorists, and scholars use todiscover the best explanation of the causes of things. It is through practising theseways of argument that students learn how to develop their own independentperspectives on controversies, to gain the con dence to be able to engage in thecollective argument through which we work out what is going on, and to acquire acritical understanding of its results.Arguments are essential to the whole process of higher learning because the causesof social things — of the structures, processes, and ideas through which humansociety is organised and through which it changes and develops — are notnecessarily obvious. If they were obvious, there would be no need of the socialsciences or of higher education in order to know them. The data, its interpretationand its theorisation are all complex and multifaceted. Moreover, these arguments arefurther complicated in the social sciences because the varying interests of humangroups are at stake in any attempt to explain social phenomena. As a result, one typeof argument that we always have to deal with is the extent to which theories andexplanations mask particular social, economic, or political interests.Most of what we do in order to identify the causes ofthings involves disagreement.Which brings us back to Israel and to Gaza. The  rst implication of LSE’s need toensure freedom of argument is that what LSE cannot do is take a side in the politicaldispute as an institution. Most of what we do in order to identify the causes of thingsinvolves disagreement. The freedom to disagree is necessarily threatened if theschool takes an o cial position on one side or the other. The school wisely chosenot to take a position on the Russian invasion of Ukraine despite many other HEinstitutions doing so. Following this precedent, LSE is not now open to the charge ofinconsistency if it takes no side in the violence in the Middle East.The second thing we must do is acknowledge the fear, fury, and sorrow, but insistthat these emotions cannot be allowed to limit our discussion of what has occurred,why it has occurred, and what its consequences may be. To allow that would be toabandon our duty to ourselves as a community because we would risk closing downarguments that must be heard if we are to identify the nature of the problem aboutwhich there is so sharp a disagreement.Thirdly, we must then do the most important thing that a university can. We shouldencourage each other to present the arguments in such a way as to shed as muchlight as we can on what is happening, while generating as little heat as possible. Therightness or wrongness of a position – or its good or bad faith – cannot bedetermined by the strength of feeling behind it. We need to rely on evidence andlogical argument, and to test out the claims that all of us are making by thesemeans. We should care for each other and for our community by caring for thequality of our arguments.The rightness or wrongness of a position – or itsgood or bad faith – cannot be determined by thestrength of feeling behind it.When discussion is heated, neither teachers nor students nor event chairs shouldtolerate threats or incitement to violence against other students or staff. However,while direct threats should not be tolerated, we cannot prohibit words or politicalarguments just because they make people feel offended, uncomfortable, or ‘unsafe.’To do that would be to make understanding a dispute as polarised as the onebetween the supporters of Israel and those of Palestine essentially impossible.Teachers and students should be encouraging each other to express themselvescarefully and, therefore, as clearly as possible, and to remain civil throughout.Teachers must be careful not to abuse their authority by insisting on the truth of aparticular view to the exclusion of counterarguments. They must allow students todissent. In public events and debates there is bound to be more passion becausepeople will inevitably seek to persuade rhetorically. But here, too, chairs shouldencourage calm re ection and ensure that all are able to listen to what is said.In this blogpost, I have focused on my institution. No doubt colleagues at otherinstitutions will recognise much of what I am saying. But the feelings and anxietiesthat are generated by real-world traumas and the challenge these present to how welive and work together are not experienced in the abstract. We need to keep in mindthat higher education cannot be reduced to a private exchange in which the student-consumer pays for the opportunity to increase their human capital and is, therefore,entitled to feel comfortable while accessing this service. If higher education is reallyinvolved in knowing the causes of things and bettering society, then it is necessarilya public activity of sharing and disputing knowledge, and of risking our pride and ouridentity for the public bene t. And, for students especially, this essential, ifchallenging aspect of university life happens in particular places such as theclassrooms, lecture halls, and corridors of LSE.The LSE Academic Freedom network was formed by LSE staff to help sustain thisidea of our community – not to promote different sides shouting past each other onemotive and contested topics, but to enable the possibility of learning, and possiblyeven of discovering some common ground._____________________________________________________________________________________________This post is opinion-based and does not re ect the views of the London School ofEconomics and Political Science or any of its constituent departments anddivisions.   _____________________________________________________________________________________________ Main image: Marina FranchiAbout the authorProfessor Peter Ramsay is Professor of Law at the LSE Law School and Co-Chair of the LSE Academic Freedom network.Peter Ramsay

A community of argument: why academic freedom matters

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A community of argument: why academic freedom matters

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