Genocide in My Classroom

‘If you’re going to advocate genocide, please do it respectfully.” That’s what I tell my students at the start of my course on war crimes. I’m not sure it would have gone over well in the recent congressional hearings on campus antisemitism. But it could hardly have gone worse than the actual hearings, considering how difficult it was for some university presidents to answer Rep. Elise Stefanik’s question on whether “calling for genocide violates university’s policies” and how badly their apologies played—the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania have since resigned.

The line gets a laugh, but students know I’m serious because I say it in a speech about difference, discourse and the reason they are in that classroom. Which isn’t to commit genocide—or to stop it. They aren’t there to do anything besides learn: what the law is and isn’t, how to prosecute or defend war criminals, what works and doesn’t. What they do with that knowledge is up to them. Some defend corporations. Others liberate oppressed communities by any means necessary. Some become military judge advocates, while others oppose America’s wars. On Israel and Gaza—you can imagine.

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