Should universities respond to geopolitical conflicts?

A debate has been raging in the South African higher education sector regarding how academics should engage with or respond to global geopolitical conflicts, as well as whether universities should issue statements or pass resolutions on pressing matters of a political nature when there is no consensus among staff and students.

The debate is based on a commentary, ‘Should our universities respond to geopolitical conflicts around the world?’ by Nithaya Chetty, a physics professor at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, published in the latest edition of the South African Journal of Science.

Chetty’s proposition on the matter is primarily grounded in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, a highly volatile and divisive issue which has resulted in protests on campuses worldwide and one that appears to have forced university administrations to take positions that have not pleased any of the rival factions.

Preserving academic integrity

In this regard, Chetty advises universities to proceed cautiously, resisting pressure to issue official statements on the matter and preserving academic integrity in the face of polarising global events, thereby creating an environment in which differing viewpoints can be heard. “Universities releasing an official statement on the Israeli-Palestinian matter is not a matter of academic freedom,” according to Chetty.

He argued that, although academic freedom is a right accorded to academics, that freedom should be exercised on an individual basis. “We practise academic freedom as independent critical public voices,” he said in his commentary.

For Chetty, it would be contrary to the principles of academic freedom for the university to impose a ruling on an essentially political matter from the top when differing views exist among staff and students.

By university, Chetty refers to the university council, the senior executive committee, the university forum, the university senate, the faculties, schools, institutes, university departments, the alumni association, and other bodies that make decisions within universities.

Condemning all human rights violations

However, Chetty believes that a timeless official statement, condemning all human rights violations and calling for peaceful dialogue in times of conflict, would be well-suited for universities, enabling them to focus on their core missions.

In that direction, he proposes a set of guidelines that would outline the circumstances under which universities can issue a public statement on a geopolitical matter and then act conscientiously without giving preferential treatment to any geopolitical conflict.

In this regard, he advocates that universities should refrain from making statements of a geopolitical nature if there is little consensus or general agreement among staff and students or if such statements would cause divisions within the university and harm the institution.

According to Chetty, universities should refrain from making statements of a geopolitical nature if the situation has only a minimal bearing on the university’s mission, operations or lacks a positive influence.

He emphasised that reputation matters greatly for universities, and academics take pride in their standing among their peers. He asserted that, if an academic becomes known for being less than reliable with the truth, being less critical and more political, they will be denigrated by their peers.

Independent individual thinking

For Chetty, there should be no collective rationalisation in matters of academic freedom, and he has insisted on independent individual thinking. He argues that academics should rely on personal judgment and reasoning to form opinions and decision-making rather than accepting others’ views blindly.

He noted that, under the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa, 1996, the Bill of Rights guarantees citizens the freedom to express their views freely, even if they do not adhere to the truth, provided they do not incite hatred or violence.

However, he pointed out that academics should speak critically about their subjects and more about societal matters, basing their arguments on verifiable evidence. “I would like to encourage academics to speak up on this matter in their individual capacities,” stated Chetty in his commentary.

‘Avoid populist decisions’

He also calls on universities and his fellow academics to avoid making populist decisions or jumping on the bandwagon. Chetty wrote that, just because some competitor universities have made particular decisions, “it should not automatically mean that we at our university must follow suit”.

By the time Chetty’s commentary was published, at least six of the 26 South African public universities had severed ties with Israeli institutions as part of the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign. These universities are Nelson Mandela University, the University of Fort Hare, the University of the Western Cape, the University of South Africa, the University of Venda and the University of Cape Town (UCT).

University of Cape Town

The controversy that prompted Chetty to express his strong opinions on how scholars and universities in South Africa should respond to geopolitical conflicts stems from two senate resolutions on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in Gaza adopted by the council of the University of Cape Town on 22 June 2024.

The two resolutions, that are being challenged in the Western Cape High Court in South Africa by Adam Mendelsohn, a professor of history at UCT, in part condemn the destruction of the education sector in the Gaza Strip and the massive scale of killing of teachers and university staff in the current conflict.

Nevertheless, the controversy in South African academia had been simmering as early as 14 November 2023, when the UCT senate passed a resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire, the passage of humanitarian aid and the return of all captives as a result of the 7 October 2023 Hamas attack on Israel in which about 1,200 people were killed.

Subsequently, an African Humanities Association (AHA) meeting at UCT a few days later (in November) failed to take a joint stand to condemn Israel over the death toll in Gaza. The AHA is a body that promotes research and publications in the humanities, social sciences and arts in Africa.

Statements about conflicts in Africa

According to Professor Suren Pillay, the director of the Centre for African Studies at UCT, the proposal to condemn Israel’s robust military action in Gaza never moved beyond the discussion stage in the executive committee, despite the high death toll and destruction that included the demolition of educational institutions and the killing of university academic staff and students.

Scholars opposed to a joint communique in solidarity with the Gaza people, according to Pillay, cited the lack of similar resolutions and joint political statements regarding conflicts in African countries.

However, revisiting the issue in an opinion article published by Al Jazeera on 14 January 2025, Pillay argued that not standing in solidarity with Gaza because of the need to make African conflicts visible is the wrong approach to humanising African lives.

However, Pillay suggests that some AHA delegates may have had Christian-Zionist-motivated solidarity with Israel, although he pointed out that such an alliance was not openly articulated at the conference.

Probably, some AHA delegates from other African universities, or even some from the South African academic community, felt they had no obligation to form a beeline behind the UCT senate resolution.

Nevertheless, although Chetty appears to reject the follow-the-leader effect in which academics would vote unanimously on critical geopolitical issues under the guidance of enlightened leaders, he accords tacit support to efforts to comment on essentially every other major human rights catastrophe.

“I wish to stress that, if we want to become a university that speaks out on human rights matters, let us do so consistently and sincerely,” said Chetty.

In this regard, he appears to challenge scholars and universities that have been pushing hard for resolutions in favour of Gaza, while they have given only limited attention to African conflicts. “To the best of my knowledge, many of our South African universities have never previously established a principle of getting involved in such conflicts,” pointed out Chetty.

‘Whataboutism’

Subsequently, Chetty has been accused of supporting a ‘whataboutery’ or ‘whataboutism’, which is typically a tactic of discrediting an argument by raising a charge of hypocrisy or double standards.

In philosophical perspectives, ‘whataboutery’, a term which has been absorbed into the vocabulary of fields of study such as communication studies, political theory and diplomacy, is a strategy of responding to an idea with an alternative opposing argument rather than putting up a defence against the original proposition.

However, recognising the challenges in reaching collective decisions on geopolitical conflicts, Chetty suggests a scenario in which universities and academics could create an environment in which different voices, opinions and ideas can, not only coexist, but also tolerate each other.

Amid efforts to make the current debate wide open on how and what academics and universities should respond to, the South African Journal of Science invited academics to react to Chetty’s commentary, given the heated discussions in South African universities on the ongoing Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

A reminder of ‘histories of exclusion’

Leslie Swartz, the editor-in-chief of the journal and a professor of psychology at Stellenbosch University, noted in an editorial that the debate was about complex issues in South African academia.

“In our South African context, we should be aware of histories of exclusion from knowledge and science systems on the basis, for example, of race, gender, disability, class and geographic location,” said Swartz.

In this context, the conditions for responding to geopolitical issues, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, as suggested by Chetty, often fall short of expectations.

For instance, should South African academics and their counterparts elsewhere on the continent remain silent about developments in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict simply because there is no consensus, it could cause severe divisions within the universities, or because it is not an African conflict?

Citing Hannah Arendt (1906-75), the German-American philosopher and one of the most influential political theorists of the 20th century, Swartz argued that the survival of the knowledge spectrum depends on the pursuit of truth, justice and an understanding of reality.

According to Arendt, the story of the conflict between telling the truth and politics is a complicated one, and nothing would be gained by simplification, ignoring it or merely moral denunciation.

Consequently, if Arendt were living in South Africa today and teaching at one of the universities there, would she have remained silent or raised a ‘whataboutery’ instead of responding to the atrocities and human rights violations committed in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict?

However, as academics in South Africa continue the debate based on Chetty’s views, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict has sharply divided them, and there appears to be no consensus in sight on whether universities and their staff should be neutral and remain silent or choose sides in the conflict.