Student Protesters Do Not Have the Right to Sow Chaos in Universities
Trinity College Dublin’s Students’ Union has recently made headlines due to its controversial campaign to disrupt visits to the Book of Kells, one of Ireland’s most precious national treasures dating back to around 800 A.D. On May 4th, TCD Student Union President László Molnárfi posted this message to X: “The Book of Kells is now closed indefinitely. No business as usual during a genocide. @tcddublin cut ties with the genocidal state of Israel!”
The campaign to shut down access to the Book of Kells follows in the footsteps of a string of similar student protests across the United States, which have become increasingly disruptive and provocative in recent months. Students have the right to express themselves and mount public protests. However, this does not give them a blank cheque to sow chaos on university campuses.
While students are perfectly entitled to raise awareness of human rights issues and engage in anti-war protests, the tactics we have seen employed by student activists in recent years push the idea of legitimate protest beyond breaking point. Many of the more radical protests, whether against white supremacism, trans discrimination, or Israel’s actions in Gaza, are influenced by the Marxist-Woke idea that social justice can only be secured by aggressively disrupting the West’s leading educational institutions and making their internal operation impossible. Tactics have ranged from occupying university buildings and shouting down lectures to camping on university campuses and campaigning to have ideologically “unacceptable” university professors fired.
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Many of the more radical protests, whether against white supremacism, trans discrimination, or Israel’s actions in Gaza, are influenced by the Marxist-Woke idea that social justice can only be secured by aggressively disrupting the West’s leading educational institutions and making their internal operation impossible. Tactics have ranged from occupying university buildings and shouting down lectures to camping on university campuses and campaigning to have ideologically “unacceptable” university professors fired.
The question is, which of these tactics are morally responsible and acceptable on university campuses? Has the TCD Students’ Union crossed a line when they chose to block off access to a national treasure hosted at Trinity College Dublin? Are Woke activists justified in shouting down lecturers for the sake of drawing attention to a political cause? Are anti-war activists justified in disrupting normal campus activities such as lectures, as a way of pressuring universities to condemn Israeli actions in Gaza? Where do we draw the line between legitimate political protests on university campuses and unacceptably disruptive behaviour?
It is not easy to define such a line in the abstract. To say that students should always obey the law is not an adequate answer, because there is a time-honoured tradition of civil disobedience in democratic societies, according to which citizens may disobey laws they conscientiously consider unjust if they publicly face up to the consequences. In any case, one would hope that students’ behaviour would not be constrained exclusively by the law. There should be some sense of civil decorum and respect on university campuses that goes well beyond following the law of the land.
Generally, students must check their political zeal with a sense of responsibility toward the university community, toward their fellow students, and toward the broader society. More particularly, student protests cannot become so “radical” that they directly attack the institution of the university or bring its cultural and educational mission to a standstill. Otherwise, they are literally biting the hand that feeds them. Nor should students attempt to blackmail universities into submitting to their demands by putting their primary mission, the vigorous and sincere pursuit of truth and the transmission of knowledge and understanding across generations, in jeopardy.
Yet that is, in effect, what the TCD Students’ Union is doing, at least if the words of its president, László Molnárfi, are anything to go by. He is reported on RTE as saying that “a protest on the grounds of the university in opposition to the Gaza war will continue "indefinitely until our demands are met".” Said protest includes, on his own admission, an ongoing campaign to paralyze visits to the Book of Kells, a precious remnant from 9th century monastic Europe currently hosted at Trinity College Dublin.
I assume Mr Molnárfi believes that blockading one of Ireland’s national treasures and preventing other students, citizens and tourists alike from viewing it is a way to pressure the university into “cutting ties with the genocidal state of Israel.” Pragmatically, this makes sense. However, irrespective of the merits of Mr Molnárfi’s moral stance on the Israeli-Palestinean conflict, we must beware of the sort of fanaticism that puts a political cause ahead of preserving public access to education, history and culture.
If we accept Mr Molnárfi’s logic, and that of many of those praising his decision to barricade the Book of Kells, then it would apparently be worth sabotaging almost any aspect of a university’s educational and cultural mission, so long as you can grab a headline or raise publicity for a cherished cause. But this is a dangerous form of fanaticism, that subordinates the intellectual and professional life of universities in a radical way to the political causes of their students.
Of course, students may engage in political speech, including controversial speech, and they are morally and legally entitled to stage public protests. But they cannot indefinitely paralyse a university’s normal activities. Student protests must have a sense of proportion and they must show respect toward the institutions that host them. They cannot hijack those institutions or insist that they cease to function normally until they meet a certain set of political demands. That is the sort of behaviour one might expect from a hijacker or terrorist, not a student.
For students, by joining a university, are tacitly signing up to the university’s mission, which is to vigorously pursue the truth and foster the transmission of knowledge from generation to generation. A student who turns a university upside down and effectively paralyses or impedes its educational mission brings dishonour upon himself and upon the cause he purports to serve.
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