I’m writing in response to the latest Students for a Free Palestine Wespeak (April 9), but what I’m finally motivated to say has been seething a long time. I almost never give voice to what’s bothering me.
I also attended the lecture by Mr. Walid Shaobat. While I was fascinated by his personal story, I agree that his speech was a manipulative attempt to polarize the issue against Palestine. It’s a shame, because instead of finger pointing and forecasting doom, solutions for peace might have been considered by a room stuffed with highly educated people. But I don’t blame Mr. Shaobat, the Kol Israel group, or the Wesleyan Administration for this failure of communication. I blame myself and all of u—he students of this university.
I sat behind the one student in the crowd who dared challenge Mr. Shaobat on his views during the Q&A. As the student asked his question, I thought, “Yeah! Ask him the questions I don’t have the balls or composure to ask myself!”
He was quickly cut off, but I was thankful that he gave it a shot. If only a few more of us had the audacity and a grasp of the facts, we could have engaged Mr. Shaobat in a dialogue, and the event would have turned out to be “academically valuable” after all. So my question for the writers of the SFP Wespeak is this, “if you were there and so troubled by what Mr. Shaobat said, why didn’t you stand up and ask a question that might expose what you disagreed with?”
When I left the event, I followed through on my typical response to frustrating lectures: I went home and bitched and moaned to my friends. They in turn complained to me about some pompous disgorging of academic jargon they’d recently sat through at another guest lecture. Having vented for about five minutes, we were again complacent.
A few days later I talked on the phone with my father, who graduated from Wes in 1972. I told him that despite all the talk about free speech, students here rarely ask provocative questions at lectures. We disagree so often with the people who are paid with our tuition dollars to give us their theories and opinions in class or at prestigious venues. But we say nothing back, so nothing changes. My father’s response was simply “What are you gonna do about it?” He told me how back in the day, teachers and guest lecturers stepped onto this campus with a fear of the students, because they knew that no bullshit would slide, and even good arguments would be challenged for the sake of debate.
I hope this apparent failure of ours is just my experience due to my own ambivalence and fear of publicly voicing opinions. I hope I’ve just missed all the lectures where there has been real dialogue on a deadlocked issue, or where a student has respectfully informed a self-absorbed academic that their theories are lousy or make no sense.
Please help make my education less superficial and boring. Next time you endure a lecture you don’t agree with, stand up and ask the toughest question you can think of.
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