I want to focus on the ethics: why some students (and non-students) think they have a moral right – or even a duty – to disrupt universities to force them to do certain things.
Here is my best effort to reconstruct the reasoning behind these occupations.
Premise 1. The Israeli government is doing terrible things in Gaza and should stop
P2. If there is something I can do to make a terrible thing stop then I ought morally to do it
P3. This university in my city has a student exchange programme with some universities in Israel
P4. If I disrupt the operations of this university sufficiently, they may agree to end the exchange programme in exchange for ending the disruption [Intermediate goal]
P5. Ending the exchange programme would [by some mysterious means] make the Israeli government stop doing terrible things [Final goal]
Conclusion. Therefore, I ought to disrupt the university
I think there are three major ethical failures in this argument.
- Odious ends-means reasoning (P4)
- Lack of legitimacy (P2)
- Narcissistic causal reasoning (P5)
Note: Although I am focusing on the case of anti-Israel protestors, the same 3 general ethical failures will apply to other cases, such as the student protests demanding bans on cooperating with fossil fuel companies.
