Afrasianet - Zeinab Barjawi - Why is resistance suddenly redefined when it comes to certain peoples?
At Harvard, where slogans are raised about intellectual freedom and academic openness, the catastrophe is no longer war, famine, or police repression, but has become a small poster on a student's computer. The phrase: "When people are under occupation, resistance is justified." A brief phrase that puts the mind before an obvious question: Do humans really need a justification to resist the occupation?
But this poster sparked institutional panic: students are being "hurt," professors are being called upon to "contain," and the administration is preparing scenarios to address this "crisis," as if we were facing an ideological bomb, not a seven-word sentence.
Double standards: from "Give me freedom or give me death" to "remove the label immediately"
The irony is that the university itself, like all American cultural institutions, celebrates the memory of resistance when it is American. The slogan "Give me freedom or give me death" is taught as a model of heroism and redemption in the face of British occupation. Glorifying the colonial revolt against the Great Empire is at the core of modern American identity.
But once the face of the occupation changes and the phrase sheds light on the present – any occupation other than the one that ended two centuries ago – the rule is reversed: resistance becomes a dubious word, even classified as "anti-Semitism." Is emancipation an absolute value or just an eclectic card used when it serves the narrative of empire?
Resistance as a universal human value
The idea of resistance is not exclusive to a culture or a people. From Vietnam to Algeria, from South Africa to Palestine.
So why is resistance suddenly redefined when it comes to certain peoples? Why does the word turn into an intellectual crime that the university administration needs emergency plans to deal with?
Answer: Because the contemporary empire – with its military, media, and academic faces – does not allow the concept to be used against it. Resistance is legitimate only if it is against the "other" that America antagonizes. If it is directed at its strategic ally, it is incitement, hatred, and a threat to academic security.
From Freedom of Expression to Censorship of Labels
The scene in the classroom reveals a deeper crisis than just student sensitivities. Harvard, a symbol of academic freedom, is now training its professors to:
1. How do they ask students to remove stickers.
2. How do they call administrative offices to "partner" in addressing harm?
3. How do they turn the discussion from the content of the idea (is resistance justified?) to a procedural issue (how do we remove the sentence from the computer?).
It is a soft censorship, starting with the small details, but it reveals the transformation of universities from a space for free debate to an ideological control apparatus. Censorship here is not in the name of the law, but in the name of "protecting students' feelings." But isn't academic freedom itself based on the possibility that we will encounter ideas that bother us or oppose us?
When the victim becomes an accused
It is remarkable that the person who raises the poster is not the one who is summoned to investigation or accountability, but the person who is hurt by seeing him is the one who grants full legitimacy. Thus, the statement of defending the oppressed has turned into an accusation against its owner.
This brings us back to an old equation: the victim is not even allowed to call herself a victim or to declare her right to resist. She is forced into a double silence: silence in the face of the occupation, and silence in front of universities that describe themselves as "platforms of truth."
Harvard and the "Veritas" Logo: Which Truth?
The university's historical motto is "Veritas" – the truth. But which truth is at stake here?
When the word "resistance" becomes synonymous with "anti-Semitism," it means that truth is no longer an open search but a conditional contract: you are free to say what we want, not what you see.
Therefore, it is correct to modify the slogan to read: "The truth... provided that the empire agrees to it."
The Role of Universities: A Laboratory for Freedom or a Regulatory Body?
Universities are not just lecture halls. They are a laboratory of free ideas. If they become an organ of intellectual censorship, they lose the essence of their message.
Universities are required to teach their students how to discuss, not how to suppress. To turn disagreement into an opportunity for reflection, not a crisis that needs to be "risk management." It should stand at a distance from the state's policies, not turn into a soft extension of its security apparatus.
The most important lesson: Freedom is indivisible
The contradiction revealed by a small poster in the Harvard Room sums up the crisis of the entire West: Freedom has a conditional value, which is given to its people and withdrawn from others. Resistance is heroic when it is American, but it is an accusation when it is Palestinian.
This is not just a duality of discourse, it is the essence of the modern empire: the monopoly of the definition of justice, the monopoly of the definition of freedom.
A simple poster on a Harvard student's computer reveals a profound truth: that the battle of ideas today is not only fought on the battlefields, but also in universities, in language, in the definition of words.
Resistance, the umbrella word for all liberation movements in history, is turned into an accusation in the discourse of the great power. Freedom, from which America was born, becomes a privilege that is distributed selectively.
But no matter how much universities try to hide this contradiction under the guise of "protecting students," the poster will continue to remind them: when people are under occupation, resistance is justified.