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In her first major work published in 1951, The Origins of Totalitarianism, Hannah Arendt noted that totalitarian rule works best when its subjects are unable to distinguish fact from fiction, or truth from falsehoods.
This insight comes to mind as the London School of Economics’ Middle East Centre plans to host a launch event next week for Understanding Hamas And Why That Matters. In describing the book, the publisher OR Books said that “the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas has been subjected to intense vilification”.
How did we get to a point where one of Britain’s most distinguished universities considers it as an example of academic excellence to discuss whether a totalitarian, antisemitic terror group that live-broadcasts the sadistic murder, torture, and rape of men, women, children and babies, has been “demonised”?
In a statement to the JC, LSE Middle East Centre director Michael Mason said they simply “endeavour to provide a platform to facilitate discourse on contemporary matters by encouraging critical debate”. Sure, would LSE also hold an event on whether the SS or slave owners have been unfairly “vilified”?
The question is not whether LSE has the right to hold this event. Free speech and academic freedom are key foundations of liberal democracies and modern research universities.
It is precisely the lack of such freedom – certainly when it comes to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – that is the problem at many British and Western universities. The dominance of anti-Zionist views and increasing intolerance for any disagreement with this prevailing orthodoxy have radicalised many Middle Eastern departments. With the checks and balances of opposing views missing, this break with civilisational norms was perhaps predictable.
Unfortunately, it is not the first time that Western academics, often thought to be particularly immune to totalitarian ideas, have succumbed to them. At a time when German universities were the best in the world, university graduates were vastly over-represented in the Nazi movement, both before and after Hitler came to power. For example, 25 per cent of NSDAP members had attended university, while only about 3 per cent of Germans in general did. The “common man” had more common sense.
Given the prominent role academics have historically played in paving the way for fascism and later justifying, denying or obscuring the crimes of Stalin, Mao, or Pol Pot, universities, and certainly those receiving public funding, must be subject to public scrutiny.
In line with our journalistic standards, we note the publisher’s response to criticism of the book. Understanding Hamas “explicitly does not endorse Hamas, it attempts to investigate what it is as an organisation and why it should be taken seriously”, OR Books said.
We are happy to hear the authors wouldn’t vote for the Islamist terrorists in the next by-election. But the publisher did also say in describing the book that “branding it (Hamas) as ‘terrorist’ or worse, this demonisation intensified after the events in Southern Israel on October 7, 2023”.
This newspaper stands for free speech. So we say: let LSE go ahead with this book launch. Light is the best disinfectant. But in the spirit of free speech and transparency, we call for full access for journalists to this seminal event. Let the cameras roll and allow probing questions. Let the public then judge whether LSE remains true to its founding mission of “the betterment of society”. Let British parents, and those from abroad paying even higher tuition, see LSE in all its wonderful diversity and decide whether this is the education they want for their children. Finally, let the government assess whether LSE, particularly at a time of economic difficulties and painful spending cuts, is still worthy of state funding.