When an award-winning filmmaker produces a rave-reviewed documentary on a controversial subject, you would expect the film to be widely disseminated — especially on college campuses where the issue has been taken up by many students.

Syracuse University film organizers unfortunately did not live up to this expectation, where the possibility of upsetting some students lead to silencing of a critical discussion. As chronicled by The Atlantic’s article “How Political Correctness Chills Speech on Campus,” filmmaker and New York University adjunct professor Shimon Dotan was invited to screen his documentary “The Settlers” at an SU-led conference “The Place of Religion in Film.” He was later disinvited by religion professor M. Gail Hamner for fear of pro-Palestinian protests.

Dotan was reinvited by Vice Chancellor and Provost Michele Wheatly, who cited the university’s ideals of free expression as her rationale in an email to the university community. Still, the initial disinvitation leaves in question the culture of openness that the school prides itself on. With this incident, SU has written itself into the next chapter in the ongoing discourse of free speech versus “hate speech” on college campuses. But it is also about much more than that.

Whether you believe Israeli settlements violate the sovereignty of the hopeful Palestinian nation or they allow Israelis to return to land they occupied before, it is undeniably a serious issue that requires an equally serious conversation.

Discussions on Israeli settlements in higher education do have real-world applications: there were roughly 120 government-recognized and 100 unrecognized settlements as of late 2013. That houses about 550,000 people, according to B’Tselem, the Israeli Information Center for Human Rights in the Occupied Territories. Of course, these estimates vary, with each party putting forward their own biased numbers. Notably, the U.N. has said the settlements violate international law and President Barack Obama has cited the expansion of settlements as a contributing factor to failed peace talks in 2014.

Though this real estate tug-of-war is taking place overseas, Americans are connected to this issue through cultural ties to Israel or Palestine, and our global position in the U.S. Mehrzad Boroujerdi, a professor and chair of the political science department in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, spoke to how the U.S. plays an outsized role in diplomacy between the two nations in conflict.

“Both [Israel and Palestine] consider the U.S. indispensible to eventually resolving this issue,” Boroujerdi said. “There is no other estate that can be the interlocutor, the mediator, that has the resources and the political prestige.”

Could a peace agreement lead to greater stability and freedom in the region?

“I’m not holding my breath,” Boroujerdi said. But that does not mean this issue is not worth renewed attention and energy, something that requires the newest generation of U.S. voters to openly discuss — and debate — the conflict.

With the Dotan controversy in particular, it’s important to remember that Hamner doesn’t deserve all of the disapproval she has received in the media and from the community. This question of how universities educate their students outside of the classroom is one that many face. It’s vital that institutions educate students now to produce lasting changes in the future, which cannot be done if the issue isn’t even being discussed on campuses.

Screening a documentary like “The Settlers” on SU’s campus presents students with an opportunity to spark debate and constructive discussions on the subject of Israel and Palestine. No staff or faculty member affiliated with the conference should have been afraid to confront this topic head-on. Regardless of possible protests that could arise should the conference show the film, it is still necessary to help students develop informed opinions on world issues.

More often than not, the freedom of speech debate on college campuses deals with student-to-student opposition. A similar argument against total free expression was made at Yale University last year when conflict arose over politically incorrect Halloween costumes. Unlike the Dotan incident, that instance of a university administration stepping in to curb free expression was more reasonable. Giving up your culturally insensitive Halloween costume to protect students from misrepresentation isn’t nearly the same as cutting off student access to crucial intellectual information.

Politically-engaged professors, administrators and students alike must be more open to non-violent discontent on college campuses. It is not simply the free expression of perspectives but also the passionate debate of those ideas that leads to progress. And it is this progress — fashioned out of the failures and successes of our past — that can lead to lasting change.

Cole Jermyn is a sophomore environmental resource engineering major and economics minor at SUNY-ESF. He can be reached as cdjermyn@syr.edu and followed on twitter @Cjermyn8.

Published on September 11, 2016 at 9:58 pm