Contribution short abstract:

In light of the silencing of anti-genocide voices within neoliberal academia, researchers can either, as organic intellectuals, raise political consciousness against hegemonic state narratives and find modes of collectively working towards societal change or succumb to the oppressive status quo.

Contribution long abstract:

Knowledge production in the neoliberal university is not neutral as the very edifice of bourgeois academia serves certain hegemonic interests, is built on furthering one’s career and creating academic works that garnish university positions and (state or private) funding. Currently, academics who raise their voice in solidarity with the Palestinian people are faced with banishment from the ivory tower, as repressions and silencing campaigns have increased. This was made transparent by the Stark-Watzinger scandal that saw the German minister of education attempting to find ways to cut the funds of scholars who signed an open letter opposing police violence against anti-genocide protesting students at a university in Berlin. Hence, academics and institutions who stand behind the German state’s “Staatsräson” see themselves on the “safer side” of academia, while simultaneously there exists an environment of “self-silencing.”

Yet, if we conceive of our responsibility as researchers and as anthropologists (with anthropology’s despicable history of serving to legitimize colonialism), to work towards alleviating societal ills, then it is our duty to not remain silent in the face of injustice. In light of the systematic silencing of anti-genocide voices within German academia, researchers can either, as organic intellectuals in the Gramscian sense, utilize their position to raise political consciousness against hegemonic state narratives and find modes of collectively discussing and working not only against repressions but against war, militarization and genocide; or succumb completely to the status quo, remaining comfortable and complicit, thus denoting any lip service to “critical research” void of meaning.