On December 12, Jonathan A.C. Brown, associate professor at Georgetown University's Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, spoke at a thought-provoking session titled "Academic Freedom and Activism in Wartime Palestine" in the Sociology Department Meeting Room.
A.C. Brown made an important contribution to the ongoing debate around academic freedom and activism during the war on Palestine, allowing the audience to examine the evolution of Israeli-Palestinian discourses on campuses and emphasizing the vital role of academic freedom and activism during the Palestinian War.
Significantly enriching the complex dialogue around free speech and activism and illuminating the complexities that arise when navigating the intersection of academia and advocacy, Brown begins with an exploration of Israel-Palestine advocacy on campuses in the US and the West, In an in-depth exploration of the paradoxes of "classical" and "social justice" prevalent in education, A.C. Brown emphasized the basic framework of power and allegiance, where Islam is often considered the loudest voice of the global subalterns and Palestine is seen as a flyspeck for colonialism, racial capitalism and global northernism.
A.C. Brown went on to address the "anti-awake" tendency prevalent in educational institutions at the management level, noting that this phenomenon often leads to a defense of the current social and political status quo.
The thought-provoking session ended with a striking question as to whether such tendencies reflect hypocrisy or securitization in the context of academic discourse and activism.
