Like many colleges and universities across the nation, my own campus of Dartmouth College, in the sleepy town of Hanover, New Hampshire, has been reeling with unrest over the war in Gaza.
On Wednesday, May 1, the college’s new president called in local police and state troopers with riot gear to arrest 89 students, faculty, staff and community members who were peacefully protesting the war. The protest took place on the college green across the street from the building that houses the president’s office.
Organizers of the protest had gone to great lengths to ensure that the proceedings would be peaceful. “This is an exclusively peaceful protest,” a senior wrote on behalf of the Dartmouth Gaza Solidarity Camp. “Violence, threat of violence, and discrimination of any kind will not be tolerated in the camp. All involved parties appreciate Dartmouth’s concern on this issue and want to cooperate to make sure that hate speech of any kind is unequivocally condemned.”
Nevertheless, the president summoned the police.
Dartmouth’s president, Sian Beilock, had previously won praise for forestalling the kind of turmoil that had afflicted other campuses like Harvard, UCLA, the University of Southern California, Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania. She had been credited with establishing what she called “brave spaces” where parties on all sides could discuss their differences.
Despite Beilock’s overreaction in calling in law enforcement, the notion of brave spaces remains an idea worth pursuing.
Two faculty members were arrested in the police action. One was my departmental colleague, Christopher MacEvitt, who is also a house professor. He contends that he was checking on the welfare of his students but was “arrested and charged with trespassing in the course of fulfilling my duties as a house professor.”
The other faculty member arrested was a 65-year-old history professor, who is also Jewish.
One of the humanities courses I currently teach studies the 1960s. It covers everything in that transformative decade, from history and politics to art, music, fashion, and religion. One of my purposes in devising the course was to highlight an era when students cared about matters beyond law school admission or internships on Wall Street.
For that reason, I have no objection to campus protests; I think they are healthy, and colleges should celebrate the fact that the education they offer is producing students willing to stand up for their convictions.
In the course of a faculty meeting the week following the crackdown, most of the faculty who voiced opinions condemned the president’s actions. Several Jewish professors, however, expressed relief and appreciation for the crackdown. One faculty member, an outspoken Zionist, said, “There is another, whole group of students who feel a lot safer because of what President Beilock has done.”
At a meeting of the Arts & Sciences faculty on May 20, we voted to censure the president for her reckless actions on May 1.
I don’t in any way want to minimize anyone’s sense of danger or beleaguerment, and I think it applies to both sides of the current debate. But here is where I see an unrealized opportunity.
The current protests, with each side airing their grievances, are misdirected. So here’s my proposal to recalibrate campus dissent.
It seems to me that both sides, pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian, should be able to agree on one thing: The war in Gaza should end immediately.
At the risk of pressing the matter, both sides should also be able to agree that what Hamas did on October 7 was heinous and worthy of condemnation. In addition, it should also be apparent that Benjamin “an eye for an eye” Netanyahu has more than exacted his revenge.
But as Mohandas Gandhi observed, an eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind. It’s time for the war in Gaza to end.
That should not be a controversial proposal, one that should find support on both sides.
Imagine the prospect of campus demonstrations with pro-Palestinians and pro-Israelis demonstrating side by side to end the war in Gaza. That would be a powerful statement, one that would reverberate around the world.
They needn’t agree on everything – they don’t, and they won’t – but both sides surely can agree that the carnage in Gaza must cease. A joint demonstration to end the horrific war in Gaza would be the ultimate “brave space” that the Dartmouth president has advocated.
An Episcopal priest, Balmer is John Phillips Professor in Religion at Dartmouth College and the author of more than a dozen books, with commentaries appearing in newspapers across the country. He is a contributing correspondent at Good Faith Media.
