About Kafka’s great story, “A Hunger Artist,” Richard A. Posner observed, “The hunger artist is tormented by his inability to convince an indifferent world of his artistic integrity.” So, too, Princeton’s recent hunger artists’ professed anguish that the University had not endorsed their cause.
Princeton’s hunger artists have decamped their recent performance protest on Cannon Green, but their hunger strike created a void that lingers still. In hopes of bending the University to their will, 13 Princeton students had deployed a public hunger strike. Further, 70 or so of Princeton’s faculty signed an open letter of clarion support for these students’ self-flagellating efforts to impose their demands. Rather than urge these students not to harm themselves, the faculty letter histrionically condemned the unmoved University administration.
Princeton’s venues for reasoned advocacy offer better ways to engage contentious issues, but these students and faculty idealize and employ a problematic method. Rather than persuade, they endanger their own bodies in an attempt to hold University administrators hostage-by-proxy. This can prove counterproductive and lead to unintended consequences, possibly including inadvertent promotion of suicide. More importantly, these measures are antithetical to Princeton’s central purposes, as stated in Rights, Rules, and Responsibilities, the University’s guide to its policies: “the pursuit of truth, the discovery of new knowledge through scholarship and research, the teaching and general development of students, and the transmission of knowledge and learning to society at large.”
Consider the following instructive example: Troops from Country A launch a massive surprise attack of annihilation against Country B. A’s forces target and slaughter not simply B’s troops but particularly B’s civilians. After Country B stanches and repels the invasion, it sends its own troops into Country A to conquer it, replace its leadership, and ensure that Country A never again invades Country B. I refer, of course, to the example of Nazi Germany’s Operation Barbarossa and Russia’s Great Patriotic War, its eradication of Hitler’s Nazi leadership in Berlin, and its subsequent occupation of Germany.
Consider further three hypothetical advocacy groups at Princeton: Group X supports Country A. Group Y supports Country B. Group X demands that the University boycott and divest from Country B. Vice versa for Group Y. Group Z, opposing both X and Y, demands that the University adopt a stance of “institutional neutrality,” by which the University would protect individual expression and promote viewpoint diversity by refusing to take institutional positions on public issues of the day.
Should Princeton’s faculty members (or anyone else, for that matter) urge the University to choose among these contending groups by having students engage in mortal combat? Alternatively, how could dueling hunger strikes possibly elucidate which side, if either, the University should support? As the longtime (and perhaps clueless) alum that I am, I say Princetonians should advocate with information, reason, and earnest debate. Princeton’s faculty – I once thought – would take the forefront in this proposition.
But no, some 70 Princeton faculty have lionized students’ use of self-harm to pressure the University’s trustees to do their bidding. The faculty letter seeks to condemn the University administration for “sacrificing its moral sense and its purported affiliation to human decency” because it has not yet met the students’ demands. These faculty are not disinterested observers who care only or even chiefly about the strikers’ wellbeing. They, too, demand that President Eisgruber “call on every university president in the country to call for an immediate and permanent cease-fire in Gaza and across the lands of Palestine/Israel.” In short, these faculty exploit these hunger-striking students to further a set of ends they themselves seek.
The Atlantic recently published a profile in which one of the hunger artists said, “There’s something very powerful about being able to use your body to show that commitment.” That may be true. But commitment to starve oneself does not establish the merits of one’s cause. For example, this particular student was happy to assert the “dire” nature of “the forced famine that’s happening in the Gaza Strip.” The protestors appear unwilling to consider the possibility that this “famine” is a result not of Israel’s moral failings but of Hamas’ interception of aid. These are disputed matters, on the relative responsibilities of Hamas and Israel and on the efficacy of “divestment” as a solution, yet it does not seem that protestors are even willing to have these discussions.
Depriving one’s body to show commitment does not further the understanding of these issues. These acts of self-deprivation for divestment in fact press non-sequitur solutions to an undiagnosed problem.
Famous instances of threatened and actual suicide by Gandhi, Stockdale, and Thích Quang Duc come to mind as counterexamples. I believe they can be distinguished from Princeton’s divestment hunger strikers. Others may disagree with me on this. I suggest that in any attempt to persuade me otherwise, they do so by proffering information, reason, and earnest engagement rather than by subjecting themselves to starvation.
Another danger of the recent hunger strike revolves around questions of mental health and its relation to self-harm, Princeton has openly acknowledged its tragic problem of student suicide. Yet the glorification of self-harm for political advocacy may have contributed to the self-immolation suicide by Hamas/Israel war protestor Aaron Bushnell. The National Institute of Mental Health warns, “For people with suicidal thoughts, exposure, either directly or indirectly, to others’ suicidal behavior, such as that of family members, peers, or celebrities, can also be a risk factor.” I pray that hunger strikes and the glorification of self-harm do not contribute to future suicides at Princeton.
Two years ago the University fired a tenured faculty member for reasons analogous to the issues arising from Princeton’s current protests. Then the University found that to further goals that violated University rules this faculty member had encouraged a student to experience further distress. The University justified itself by claiming, “These actions were not only egregious violations of University policy, but also entirely inconsistent with [the fired professor’s] obligations as a member of the Faculty.”
This statement finds an echo today in the words of the faculty letter, “[Such] disregard for our students’ health and well-being would be appalling in any context.” Yet the very signers of the faculty letter celebrate and encourage students to engage in action detrimental to their health to achieve ends the faculty themselves seek. Similarly, some of these signers recently encouraged students to violate University rules through the occupation of Clio Hall. The University’s words from two years ago apply equally to the faculty today: “These actions were not only egregious violations of University policy, but also entirely inconsistent with. . . obligations as a member of the Faculty.”
Princeton professor of politics Keith Whittington offers this sharp criticism: “I think faculty should not be encouraging or facilitating or participating in violation of University conduct rules and how expressive activities occur, and there ought to be disciplinary consequences for faculty, just like there are for students for violating those rules.” But, as Lenin said, “What Is To Be Done?” I urge the vanguards seeking action by the University relating to the Hamas/Israel War to pursue informed and reasoned advocacy in the multiple forums available to them and to abide by the University’s time, place, and manner and related restrictions on expression. These forums include paper handouts, publication of writings, podcasts, and videos on social media forums and their own websites, and the submission of opinions and analyses to third parties, such as the Daily Princetonian, Princeton Tory, and Princeton Alumni Weekly. Additional options include letters and petitions to relevant University authorities.
I have done almost all of these myself the past year and a half. Going forward, Princeton’s would-be hunger-strikers would better serve the University community – if not also themselves – by doing likewise.
Bill Hewitt is an alumnus from Princeton’s class of 1974. He writes commentary on Princeton University on his Substack, Tiger Roars.
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