Last week the venerable Leipzig University staged an embarrassing spectacle that should be unprecedented in academia.First they canceled a conference by the Israeli historian Benny Morris and then they published a statement unworthy of a university. WELT author Deniz Yücel rightly criticized this as an example of rampant cancel culture – and accused those responsible of cowardice and incompetence. But the case demonstrates even more, how a university silently abandons its mission out of fear of some wild activists.
Morris is a scientist who sits between all the stools.Not a nice position, but a position that promotes knowledge and deserves the special support of the university as an institution.Morris was one of the left-wing “new historians” in Israel who took a critical look at the official historiography of Zionism. he himself researched mainly on the 1948 Arab-Israeli War,for which he was heavily attacked in Israel,mainly from a moral and not scientific point of view. He has been insulted, among other things, as an “Israel hater.”
By canceling the conference,the university failed to present itself to Morris as a scholar,which would have been her job. And worse, the statement appropriated the attacks on Morris in a way that defies science. Morris has expressed “views that can at times be interpreted as offensive and even racist,” it says without any evidence.On the other hand, “protests” are described as “understandable” without saying which ones or why they are “understandable”. Such entries would not pass in any task.Clarity is considered a scientific ideal Explanation the university is trampled upon.
They do not want to establish a “cancel culture,” the statement reads, even though that is exactly what they have done. This performative contradiction can also be interpreted benevolently in the sense that the organizers of the “Traditions and Present of Antisemitism” conference series themselves did not support the cancellation of the conference and therefore constantly contradict themselves. This,however,raises the question of weather the university management exerted pressure and therefore intervened in the schedule of its professors,in this case the jewish-Israeli professor of Judaic studies Yemima Hadad and Gert Pickel,professor of church and religious sociology and anti- Commissioner for Semitism. This too would be a scandal.
What was the university afraid of? Before the protests, which so far could only be heard publicly on Instagram? or a case like the one that happened at the university just a few weeks earlier? An event criticizing prostitution was severely disrupted by a protest groupthat the police were called and the protesters arrested. Such implementations in a university need not be supported. But canceling events out of fear cannot be the solution. We must be able to expect a university to defend free discussion, especially when it is indeed supposed to be prevented.
It seems that Leipzig university has wholly succumbed to groups like “Students for Palestine” in terms of content and association.In a statement, an alliance of Leipzig groups and people in solidarity wiht Israel draws attention to the fact that as 7 October 2023 these same groups are setting the tone for the student portrayal at Leipzig University and are becoming increasingly aggressive. Events organized by student initiatives to criticize anti-semitism have already been cancelled. For the alliance, Morris’ refusal is the result of clear anti-Israel sentiment at the university.
Leipzig University has embarrassed itself. First with the cancellation of a lecture by a controversial but renowned historian, that too on a topic from which this country’s amateur Middle East experts could surely have learned something. She embarrassed herself afterwards with the explanationwhich in its general tone condemns what it together seeks to justify, namely a rejection out of fear of activist groups who forcefully and aggressively defend their past
However, protecting worldviews is not one of the tasks of a university, quite the opposite.