Earlier this week, Israel bulldozed the UNRWA headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem. It’s reported that at the very least 477 Palestinians have been killed since the ‘ceasefire’. Naturally, of equal, if not greater, importance to the University of Edinburgh seems to be the paint that appeared on one of its lecture theatres this week.
Staff of the University were seen power-washing the Gordon Aikman Lecture Theatre to remove the word ‘genocide’, which had been written as a replacement to the word ‘Edinburgh’ in the logo. If you were to look at their policy on vandalism, then yes, the University is acting in a straightforward and reasonable way. But this argument, particularly in a climate where institutions claim high morals but will turn a blind eye to unthinkable acts of violence, doesn’t seem to cover it. Moreover, it’s difficult to censure desperate means when the bureaucratic nightmare set up to process concerns about university investments is completely incompatible with a situation which has seen, on average, 88 new deaths each day since the beginning of the genocide. Could you blame students for taking it upon themselves to reinforce urgency?
The crucial point here is that by placing itself in opposition to fact, the university discredits itself more and more. As has been established by experts in the field, the use of the word ‘genocide’ isn’t a case of asserting opinion but of verbalising a fact. As such, an institution supposedly dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge makes a mockery of itself in choosing to hide this reality. Apparently, fact is only of any value when it does not compromise profit. This instance regarding graffiti only serves to reinforce the embarrassing level of evasiveness which has been displayed by the university in the past two years. Ceasefire or not, the university has failed to act at a time when it was most crucial they did. Regardless of what is happening now (continued violence representing ongoing genocidal intent), complicity in a genocide is unequivocally part of the university’s history. This recent behaviour clearly represents how the university functions as first and foremost a business, as opposed to an institution which celebrates knowledge and, by association, truth.
Its ongoing intolerance towards protestors is just a continuation of the university’s cowardly behaviour. To anyone with even a speck of perspicacity, it demotes the University of Edinburgh from an omnipotent Russell-Group-membership-wielding symbol of knowledge and status to a spineless cog in an out-of-date machine. Your own efforts to boycott since the beginning of the genocide might start to feel redundant when you remember the thousands of pounds you pay in tuition fees. But I would urge you to keep in mind, when you earn your degree, to credit your own intelligence; not an institution which is so fearful of losing profit that it can’t acknowledge its own disaster of ethics.
Image by Imaan Shamsi for The Student.
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Why is Graffiti Less Tolerable than Genocide?
Earlier this week, Israel bulldozed the UNRWA headquarters in occupied East Jerusalem. It’s reported that at the very least 477 Palestinians have been killed since the ‘ceasefire’. Naturally, of equal, if not greater, importance to the University of Edinburgh seems to be the paint that appeared on one of its lecture theatres this week.
Staff of the University were seen power-washing the Gordon Aikman Lecture Theatre to remove the word ‘genocide’, which had been written as a replacement to the word ‘Edinburgh’ in the logo. If you were to look at their policy on vandalism, then yes, the University is acting in a straightforward and reasonable way. But this argument, particularly in a climate where institutions claim high morals but will turn a blind eye to unthinkable acts of violence, doesn’t seem to cover it. Moreover, it’s difficult to censure desperate means when the bureaucratic nightmare set up to process concerns about university investments is completely incompatible with a situation which has seen, on average, 88 new deaths each day since the beginning of the genocide. Could you blame students for taking it upon themselves to reinforce urgency?
The crucial point here is that by placing itself in opposition to fact, the university discredits itself more and more. As has been established by experts in the field, the use of the word ‘genocide’ isn’t a case of asserting opinion but of verbalising a fact. As such, an institution supposedly dedicated to the pursuit of knowledge makes a mockery of itself in choosing to hide this reality. Apparently, fact is only of any value when it does not compromise profit. This instance regarding graffiti only serves to reinforce the embarrassing level of evasiveness which has been displayed by the university in the past two years. Ceasefire or not, the university has failed to act at a time when it was most crucial they did. Regardless of what is happening now (continued violence representing ongoing genocidal intent), complicity in a genocide is unequivocally part of the university’s history. This recent behaviour clearly represents how the university functions as first and foremost a business, as opposed to an institution which celebrates knowledge and, by association, truth.
Its ongoing intolerance towards protestors is just a continuation of the university’s cowardly behaviour. To anyone with even a speck of perspicacity, it demotes the University of Edinburgh from an omnipotent Russell-Group-membership-wielding symbol of knowledge and status to a spineless cog in an out-of-date machine. Your own efforts to boycott since the beginning of the genocide might start to feel redundant when you remember the thousands of pounds you pay in tuition fees. But I would urge you to keep in mind, when you earn your degree, to credit your own intelligence; not an institution which is so fearful of losing profit that it can’t acknowledge its own disaster of ethics.
Image by Imaan Shamsi for The Student.
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