In last Thursday’s McGill Daily, Sana Saeed wrote a General Assembly follow-up column in which she boiled down the cause of passions over the Middle East conflict to identity politics, and claimed that clampdowns on campus debate amount to a second front of the conflict here at McGill. I’m really happy she wants to talk about identity politics and divisions on campus. Let’s talk about it, but this time, let’s be honest. (Full disclosure: I am the president of Hillel McGill.)

Let’s talk about bringing the conflict to school. About how Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights would not have included those references to the Palestinian Territories in their Winter GA motion “The Defence of Human Rights, Social Justice, and Environmental Protection” if their true intention was to create a Corporate Social Responsibility committee. Because if they knew so much about identity politics, they should have known the effect those clauses would have.

Let’s talk about honesty. About how the preamble of that resolution was incendiary and part fabrication: The UN Charter and Covenants don’t take positions on current events, and the resolutions they listed may have declared certain Israeli policies illegal but didn’t mention “illegal occupation.”

Let’s talk about the atmosphere on campus. About the student who wanted to ask a professor who had opened his classroom to SPHR canvassers how he felt about the motion, but was interrupted by three people from SPHR who intervened in the conversation to defend the motion. About how the student took off his yarmulke before approaching, because he thought his Judaism would be an obstacle to being taken seriously on this subject.

Or maybe we can talk about how many phone calls I received the day of the GA because swarms of walking billboards had made campus an unwelcome place for supporters of Israel. Or how passing, unsupported allegations of genocide and insinuations that every opponent of the motion was somehow linked to the deletion of a Facebook group merely stigmatize differences of opinion.

Let’s talk about bringing peoples together. About how writing an article that completely demeans one side – supposing that all supporters of Israel are passive victims of cultural determinism rather than people with legitimate opinions – is not the way to promote dialogue. How, in one hypocritical breath, a writer can ask us to close the “second front” of the conflict and engage in non-militarized politics beyond identity, and follow up by calling for struggle against the black-and-white evil that is supposedly Israel.

And finally, let’s talk about the GA. Let’s talk about how when people upset with the Israel references tried to amend the whereas clauses – because we thought it was better to deal directly with our grievance instead of bringing the whole motion down – pro-CSR students voted against the amendment. Let’s talk about how that moment shattered any illusions that the motion was about anything other than Israel. And let’s talk about how the ensuing 45 minutes of procedural wrangling and personal attacks on the speaker made us understand exactly why we didn’t want this in the GA and why we voted the way we did.

The reason we organized against this motion is also one of the reasons students like myself organize against Israeli Apartheid Week. It’s because we’re concerned about the students on this campus. My heart breaks for people suffering all across the world, but it also shatters when I see students on this campus emotionally destroyed because they feel targeted. Let’s talk about politics, but not at a GA where the stakes are too high for anybody to be frank and genuine. Let’s talk to each other, not at each other. First, let’s try seeing each other as human beings. Let’s try making our first priorities a tolerable atmosphere on campus and achieving understanding.

The problem with debate in high-stakes situations, with propaganda that takes the conflict out of a comparative perspective, and with mean-spirited op-eds is that they achieve exactly the opposite of what they intend. All they do is reinforce fear and animosity. All they do is strengthen the very thing that Saeed is trying to move past – identity politics.

Over the past four years, I have alternated between feelings of repulsion and uncertain excitement when thinking about graduate school. After attending the department of English Symposium – an event where English professors present the papers they have been working on – I experienced these feelings side by side and learned that conflicting feelings, if they had a colour, would be the baffling tint of ashy water.

I’ve also learned that thinking about graduate school – in the humanities, no less – makes you want to insert poetic flourishes wherever possible. Maybe that’s evidence that I love studying English, and that I shouldn’t stop. Or maybe it’s evidence that I should stop now.

Like many, I pursued an undergraduate degree in the humanities because the discipline allows students to study existence broadly. Humanities education can’t provide answers to my questions about death, god, or love, but it has equipped me with the skills needed to approach such complex, cloudy issues.

For example, my English degree has exposed me to individuals who struggled with similar existential concerns. As J. D. Salinger wrote, “Many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them – if you want to. Just as some day, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. It’s history. It’s poetry.”

Salinger’s words suggest an ambition that I believe all of us harbour: a desire to record our troubles and share them. Academia, of course, approaches “our troubles” differently than Salinger’s modus operandi – fiction – but it still provides an opportunity to engage in questions about the meaning of existence, with the hope that some answers may be found.

But I have idealized the humanities too much in my description. Many suspect that the discipline has become obsolete, that the humanities have devolved into a self-involved community of intellectuals who like to pat themselves on the back – and sometimes, in rare moments, deign to pat the backs of others.

Internationally renowned linguist Steven Pinker argues that the decline of university humanities programs is linked to the “denial of human nature” that began in the early 1900s. He describes how modern art shunned an appeal to the human senses because such art was said to be “kitsch” or “gaudy” and instead deliberately focussed attention on the ugly and the unpleasant to shake us out of our apparent intellectual complacency.

Pinker goes on to argue that humanities programs have also forgotten the human need, desire, and love of beauty. He cites literary scholar Judith Butler as an example of an academic who has ignored the importance of aesthetics in her critical writing, and instead writes sentences that disgust, repulse, and give students headaches. In 1998, the scholarly journal Philosophy and Literature even awarded Butler first prize in the “Bad Writing Contest.”

The humanities have betrayed their original purpose. The discipline is supposed to reach out to us so that we can begin to understand who we are, where we have come from, and where we are going. No other discipline focusses solely on reflection and evaluation of our lives and of the beauty around us. For such a discipline to become inaccessible, and to alienate most of the population, appears counterintuitive to its purpose – and tragic for those of us who can no longer benefit from it.

In truth, though, it would be inaccurate to declare all humanities education a failure. Clearly, I am still thankful for the opportunity it gave me to think about the world. And I was surprised when, in the Symposium, I realized that I understood and was interested in the papers that the professors presented. Here was an intellectual world I could engage in.

But still I am not sure about the humanities. And I don’t think I am the only one who worries that graduate school will turn out to be as soulless and detached from reality as I suspect it might be.

Has history not taught us anything? Aren’t we the ones who hold our predecessors accountable for the human rights atrocities that occurred due to their complicity in events such as European anti-Semitism, the centuries of slave trading, and most recently, the Rwandan and Darfur massacres? How contrite do we feel that past generations stood idly by and permitted Apartheid in South Africa?

Better yet, why do we still slip into a vacuum of radical nationalism that blinds objective thinking? It’s as though we have yet to learn that this road will only lead to self-destruction – but somehow we keep submitting to this primitive train of thought.

I sometimes wonder if the brightest minds – those who eventually go on to become influential societal figures – represent the majority of the university student body. I still subscribe to the idea that academics are the ones who most uphold the ethical and moral values that the world is sometimes devoid of. However, what occurred during last Wednesday’s Students’ Society Winter General Assembly suggests otherwise.

I would like to address, of course, the outcome of the motion “Defence of Human Rights, Social Justice and Environmental Protection.” (Full disclosure: I am the vice-president information and research for the McGill chapter of Soliarity for Palestinian Human Rights, the organization that authored this motion.) For those who are not aware, this motion called for the creation of a Corporate Social Responsibility committee in order to investigate McGill’s links to unethical corporate practices. As an example, the preamble cited the illegal occupation of the Palestinian Territories as a region where profit from human rights abuses would be deemed unethical.

Due to the fact that the motion merely mentions the human rights of Palestinians, it triggered an outcry amongst some of McGill’s Jewish community and prompted Hillel McGill to embark on a campaign fueled by radical ethnic nationalism. Under the guise of protecting Israel, masking the illegality of the occupation, they managed to rally enough students to vote to strike the paragraphs that made reference to the occupied Palestinian territories from the motion.

It is not unusual that criticism of Israel will hit a nerve amongst some proponents of Israel, but that does not make it morally acceptable. As an Arab-Canadian, I feel compelled to explore the wrongdoings of Middle Eastern countries, not defend them blindly. I am fervently opposed to the plethora of human rights violations across the Middle East – from women’s rights in Saudi Arabia to the inhumane treatment of migrant workers in the oil-rich Gulf. I am even more critical of the Canadian mining industry’s involvement in human rights abuses in places such as the Porgera gold mines in Papua New Guinea. Violations such as these, and those occurring in the occupied Palestinian territories, should invite constructive criticism, not defensive complicity and dismissiveness.

Nonetheless, I am satisfied with the eventual creation of the CSR committee. But the manner in which the motion was passed, the nationalist radicalism displayed on a university campus, and the eventual silencing of any mention of Palestine is disappointing. Actually, it’s deplorable.

It’s clear there is radical antipathy to the word “Palestine.” However, instead of remaining silent on this horrid issue that inexplicably causes discomfort and sensitivity, perhaps a medication of some logic and reason is needed. We are university students after all. We only diminish our role as young citizens by inciting ethnic divide whenever this issue arises, further contributing to the dehumanization of Palestinians.

In closing, I would like to congratulate Hillel on a successful campaign against “demonizing Israel.” Well done. Hopefully we will not fall into the same category as our parochial predecessors. Also, rejoice – the mention of the occupied Palestinian territories will no longer offend your eyes and ears in regards to that motion. Unfortunately, though, it is still a stark reality that persists.

Jamal Daoud is a PhD candidate in biomedical engineering and the VP information and research for the McGill chapter of SPHR.