It is offensive that public money — any amount — goes to universities to fund the self-actualization of professional activists masquerading as academics, but that is what is being supported. Too many professors twist and abuse their status to push whatever progressive cause they care about at the moment. It is an unforgivable use of tax dollars.
No one has destroyed the reputation of experts more than the so-called experts themselves, who expect their opinions to be given greater weight because of their credentials, even when they are spouting obvious gibberish.
Academic reaction to Israel’s war against Hamas has made it plain just how unsalvageable universities, as publicly-funded institutions, have become. Professors just can’t help themselves from making arguments that seem to sympathize with those responsible for the October 7 massacre of 1,200 people — mostly civilians, mostly Israelis.
A year later, their defence of Hamas has grown bolder, but hardly more sophisticated.
After Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar, who ordered and planned the October 7 attack, was killed by the Israel Defence Forces last week, York University law professor Heidi Matthews lamented how he was killed.
“There is good reason to believe that Sinwar was, in fact, murdered by the IDF,” she posted on X on Friday. “Canada should be demanding that Israel comply with an independent investigation into the circumstances of Sinwar’s death.”
It’s possible for an expert in the laws of war to conclude that Sinwar was in fact, as Matthews put it, “hors de combat,” or “no longer in the fight,” and that, therefore, his killing was “illegal.”
I say it is possible, but making that case requires engaging in some seriously flawed reasoning, even by the standards of law professors on social media. Even one of the sources (the Guardian) that Matthews quotes approvingly to arrive at her conclusion contradicts her arguments.
After a tank round had been fired into the building where Sinwar had fled, he “threw two grenades from the second floor,” according to the Guardian, which cited Israeli media sources. Soldiers then sent a drone to investigate, and footage shows Sinwar throwing a stick at it.
It was very clear, based on this report, that the terrorist leader was still in the fight, but Matthews barely acknowledges this. She claims in one of several follow up posts that because, as the Guardian further reported, the IDF shot another tank round into the building “to make sure he was dead,” this constitutes what she describes as “double tapping,” which is illegal.
However, this isn’t a credible analysis. It isn’t as if Sinwar was lying helpless and completely incapacitated from his injuries. He was still throwing explosives, a point that Matthews merely nods at when she writes that “some accounts mention grenades.”
She cites the Guardian when it reported that a tank round was fired to ensure Sinwar was dead, yet all but ignores the same story describing Sinwar throwing grenades moments before the second round was fired.
Matthews even romanticizes the stick Sinwar threw at the IDF drone as a “resistance tool.”
That some university professors have left-wing politics, or use progressive theories in their work, is not, in and of itself, a problem. Problems arise when rigour is thrown out the window.
Even if we give Matthews the benefit of the doubt and assume she is simply applying her expertise to the circumstances of Sinwar’s killing, her emphasis on international law appears to evaporate when crimes are being committed against Israelis.
The day after Hamas’s October 7 incursion into southern Israel, Matthews wrote on X that there was “a lot of obfuscation going on about what the right of resistance looks like in brutally asymmetrical contexts.” When she was challenged on that point, she replied, “I think I’ll leave it to Palestinians to let us know what resistance looks like to them.”
It isn’t entirely clear what Matthews’s point was, but given the timing of her post — the day after the massacre — it isn’t unreasonable to conclude that she was arguing that the targeting of civilians for slaughter and rape falls under the “right of resistance,” a doctrine that posits that a people who are occupied have a “right” to violently resist their occupiers.
After facing online outrage, she did try to clarify or walk back her comments multiple times. A few days later, for example, she posted, “The right to resist doesn’t mean the right to commit crimes. But history tells us these crimes are much more likely to occur in a context of brutality. This fact doesn’t justify those crimes.”
In any case, when taking the right to resist on its own terms, it still wouldn’t justify October 7. For one, Israel was not occupying Gaza, as it had withdrawn from the Strip in 2005. More importantly, so-called resistance movements must adhere to the laws of war, which prohibits civilians from being deliberately targeted. No professor should be discussing the “right of resistance” in the context of Hamas’s wanton slaughter of civilians.
Academics who trade rigorous standards for progressive politics are hardly unique. Whether it is the dozens of professors who supported or participated in illegal anti-Israel encampments, or those whose “expert” opinion on the legality of protests changes with the politics of the protesters, the search for truth is all-too-frequently pushed aside in favour of left-wing dogma.
There is only one solution to this nonsense: defund the professors.
National Post