It’s not hard to become disillusioned with academia in the age of late neoliberalism — especially if you are, like myself, an “early career” academic hopping from one temporary contract to another. The rat race of job and grant applications is exhausting and often demoralizing. Pressure builds to write as many papers as possible — only to give them away for free for the benefit of publishers’ obscene profits.

The underwhelming efforts to challenge that — even by established academics who would be in a better position to do so — is nearly as disheartening as the exploitation itself. So is the alienation from fellow “early career” academics who compete over the same jobs, grants, publications, and recognition.

It all speaks of the market logic that has come to define and confine contemporary academia. The community of peers engaged in the enlightened pursuit of knowledge has given way to an industry like any other under neoliberal capitalism — primarily driven by profit maximization and increasingly reliant on a precarious, atomized workforce.

This is the context in which we need to understand the stark institutional failure to take a principled stand against the monumental tragedy unfolding in Gaza. The overwhelming majority of universities and other academic institutions (from research institutes to specialist associations to journals) have met what the International Court of Justice (ICJ) ruled could amount to genocide with cowardly silence, if not outright repression against whoever is brave enough to speak out. Not that most professions have fared much better (mainstream media comes to mind). But most professions do not make strong normative claims about their mission. Most professions do not have elaborate documents and training courses emphasizing their commitment to every ethical value under the sun, from democracy and freedom to equality and inclusion.

Take the head of my own institution. At her investiture as vice-chancellor of the University of Oxford in January 2023, Professor Irene Tracey summed up rather eloquently one of the university’s key missions:

What is the point of a university like Oxford if we don’t have the boldness, integrity and confidence to think differently, to think deeply, to speak truth to power, and to teach our students how to recognise truths and untruths in a world of increasing complexity, short attention spans and disinformation?

Truly uplifting words. Yet, when it came to speaking truth to power over Gaza, by calling out Israel’s atrocities and the role of Western powers — including the UK — in abetting them, the University of Oxford (like most universities) chose to stay silent. When challenged over that silence by the student protests, the management refused any dialogue and took the path of repression (just like its Ivy League counterparts in the United States).

It is only the outstanding resilience of those protesters and the staff members supporting them that eventually forced the administration to engage in a dialogue with them. It remains to be seen whether this will result in the kind of victories scored by student protests at other universities, although the recent demolition of the student encampment would suggest otherwise.

As it stands, Oxford pledges to give more scholarships and fellowships to Palestinians fleeing Gaza — but not to address in any way the violence that causes them to flee in the first place. That includes defending Oxford’s ties with companies that are part of the “supply chain of violence.” Take Barclays, the banking giant that caters to the university’s “complex financial needs.” According to a recent investigation, it “now holds over £2 billion in shares and provides £6.1 billion in loans and underwriting to 9 companies whose weapons, components, and military technology are being used by Israel in its attacks on Palestinians.”

The moral failure to “speak truth to power” is also conspicuous at a discipline level, particularly so in my own field of political science. A case in point is that of the European Consortium of Political Research (ECPR), one of the largest and most visible associations of political scientists. In the past, it took a stand on various political developments, including Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine or the crackdown on civil liberties following the 2016 failed coup attempt in Turkey — and rightly so. However, when in April over 450 political scientists signed an open letter asking the ECPR to do the same on Gaza, the answer was negative. I have dealt with the reasons behind that answer elsewhere and none of them stands scrutiny. It is simply a case of double standards and a capitulation from basic normative commitments.

One of ECPR’s key arguments is that “as an organisation devoted to the advancement of political science as a discipline, we should retain the focus on our core mission.” But what could that mission possibly involve if it cannot accommodate — indeed demand — condemnation of the killing of thousands of children? Is that in line with the “advancement of political science” only when the perpetrators are not Western powers or backed by them? What is left of ECPR’s self-stated commitment to “academic freedom” if it fails to call out its own institution members for clamping down on the freedom of students and staff to voice their support for Gaza? It is a capitulation of basic ethical values that will taint the political science community for years to come.

Surely, things are not all so desperately bleak. There have been important exceptions, all the more important given this context: individual or groups of scholars have courageously voiced their criticism of Israel’s military operation in Gaza. The head of the European University Institute, Professor Patrizia Nanz, even found the moral courage to back the students’ right to protest over Gaza, decrying how “encampments and most of the protests have been largely peaceful, yet they have at times been brutally repressed.” As she correctly added, that “reveals a deep rift between students and administrations, [as] the latter have grown hugely over the past decades and become massive bureaucracies, also generating their own corporate interests.”

But even Nanz fell short of decrying the actual violence that the students are protesting over and the complicity of Western corporations and governments in that violence. She inadvertently confirmed her own point about “corporate interests.” Academic institutions have largely failed to take a stand on Gaza not necessarily because they support Israel, but because they do not wish to jeopardize their lucrative, and hardly transparent, financial ties with those who do, from rich donors to defense companies and state authorities. As the other sectors of society captured by the logic of capital, academia puts profits before basic moral values. The latter are upheld only as long as they do not risk undermining the former.

Hence, there is not a single academic institution that has taken the initiative to cut ties with Israel since October 7 by its own accord. All the universities that have done anything remotely in that direction have only done it under pressure from below, thanks to the collective efforts of those with the least power in academia: students, PhD candidates, and staff on temporary contracts.

It has overwhelmingly been these categories that have been putting their bodies and career prospects on the line to do the right thing. Even in the case of the aforementioned open letter to the ECPR, full professors made for only 13 percent of its signatories. The deep rift that Nanz was talking about is between those with power and those without.

As many times before, students are yet again on the right side of history. They are teaching their teachers a lesson in moral courage and political clarity. Let’s hope more join them — and even now, it’s not too late to do so. As a famous slogan of the Latin American left goes, “Only the people can save the people.” That is just as true of neoliberal academia as of society at large.