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Secularism, free speech and the public university: student engagement with Israel-Palestine in a British campus
Author(s): Sheldon, Ruth
Editor(s): Aune, Kristin; Stevenson, Jacqueline
Date: 2016
Topics: Students, Israeli-Palestinian Conflict, Politics, Main Topic: Education
Abstract: This chapter explores how a hegemonic model of secular free speech shapes the fraught politics of Israel-Palestine in British universities by offering a case study of a campus debate about the academic boycott of Israel. It is argued that this event realised dominant secular norms of speech, defined in distinction from a pathological religious other, in ways that silenced students’ voices, and so subverted espoused academic values. The chapter concludes by learning from the creative responses of particular students who, drawing on Islamic and Jewish traditions, enacted alternative ethics of free speech within the public university.