From the unceasing airstrikes on Gaza to militant groups attacking Israel, a geopolitical conflict is dominating social media. Students are flooded with heart-wrenching videos of the war’s repercussions that are instigating political polarization and mass protests across western nations.
The deadly Hamas attack on October 7th has created the conditions for the spread of religious hate crimes and propaganda across digital platforms. While political extremism makes it difficult to seek a common ground for a healthy, pluralistic discussion, York University’s free speech expert, Daz D’Orazio, offers a number of solutions. He says the importance of rendering students the opportunity to explore the rationale of dissenting views is an effective way to foster effective and persuasive arguments.
“Why do people think differently? Why is it or how is it that there are countless other individuals that have the completely opposite view? How do they come to reason that? Or is it a lack of reason in your mind? That is how you ultimately challenge someone and it is a good intellectual practice to be able to do that.”
For students across university campuses, ideological extremism and apprehension has impeded efforts to foster an open dialogue. “I think we get lost in the propaganda, in the misconceptions and the lies.” Said Hend Zaitun, a fourth-year Palestinian student in the Psychology program at Guelph-Humber University. “I think one of the biggest challenges in having a productive discussion is putting aside biases and putting aside what has been previously taught to you.”
Hend says educational institutions have an immense duty to safeguard autonomous speech amongst students and educators without fear of being penalized. But for fourth-year Israeli student at York university, who has requested to remain anonymous, he feels the need for a productive dialogue is not equally desired on both sides.
“The problem with simply saying that there needs to be dialogue implies that there is, I guess, an equal hunger for dialogue on both sides, and for my experience that is simply not the case.” says the fourth year student during our video call. He says Hillel, a student Jewish group at the York campus, had attempted to elicit an open dialogue with three Palestinians groups who rejected their invitation. “I just think that it is tragic because so long as there continues to be people that are just outright against discussions, there will never be peace.”
While accepting diverse views is a necessary cornerstone to promoting an open discourse, some educational institutions are responding to contentious political sentiments with punitive measures. Yet, D’Orazio feels there are better solutions for professors and students to handle unproductive discussions.
“The first thing to do is to tell students that they are not necessarily tipping the scales of an existing debate, but that your interest as an educator is to allow them to develop a very confident and persuasive position.” Says D’Orazio during our video call. He says there is an important emphasis on professors to inform students that disagreement is a natural consequence in the arena of political debates.
“From the position of an educator, someone who constantly grapples with controversy in the political spectrum, is to say here are the boundaries of disagreement”. D’Orazio says educators should outline a broad gamut of ideas that could be contradictory to their students’ personal biases and the logical discrepancies which condition such opposing views. The role of an educator is to help develop the critical reasoning skills necessary to engage in a pluralistic political dialogue on campus.
“Not every debate is just some sort of objective, detached, intellectual exercise. People have real material: physical, emotional, cultural, and religious connections to this issue” He says a change in one’s knowledge and perception of the long-standing geopolitical conflict when exposed to individual experiences is a normal stage in the dialectic process.
According to D’Orazio, while some stakeholders of the ongoing warfare may avert controversial expression as it may feel the debate is imposing a dire threat to their ethnic legitimacy and existence, he mentions an underlying issue at play.
“The major tricky thing is that not all expressions that cause harm are necessarily illegal. If you look at a student code of conduct, the Ontario Human Rights Code, and the Criminal Code, there are lots of expressions that could not pass those thresholds, but still cause harm amongst students and in between faculty members”. Thus, approaching the issue with delicacy and care is a crucial building block to avoid unproductive discussions.
“It is not a stretch to say university campuses, particularly in the west, are almost like a front in the conflict itself, at least in the battle for the public mind.” Says D’orazio. While reiterating the importance of scholars and educators in promoting pluralistic ideologies, he says professors should also encourage students to accept and thrive from their argumentative shortcomings.
“If you want to teach your students to be epistemically or intellectually humble and curious, you have to tell them that it is totally okay to make mistakes. It is not the mistake that matters, it is how they grow and progress after that.”
