The Good Column | The dead eyes of the Ruhr area

A friend of mine, Lydia, is a university lecturer. She works at a university in the Ruhr region. She recently described the following interesting experience with students: Some of those political activists who—as seems to be fashionable among students these days—have successfully replaced thinking with the shouting of pathos-laden slogans, complained to the university administration that their official statement on the massacre perpetrated by Islamist terrorists in Israel on October 7, 2023, was "too one-sided" and demanded that certain passages be "revised."

Lydia told me that the activists were offended by the fact that the statement in question did not adequately identify the raped, mutilated, and murdered civilians as Zionist oppressors, nor the rapists and murderers as upright, militant resistance fighters. For, to the extent that the willingness to think has declined among students who devote their free time to improving the world and train to become volunteer international law experts, the preference for indignantly raised fists, blood-and-soil chants, flags waving solemnly in the wind, ethnic folklore, and other kitsch seems to have increased.

"Yes, we wanted to blow up the Knesset. We also submitted a request to carry out an attack, but the Israeli government said we couldn't."

Well, be that as it may: A professor on the university's administration patiently listened to the political activists' complaints and then made what I consider an excellent suggestion: that they should simply hold a public protest, to which the university administration could then respond accordingly. The leader of the political activists is said to have replied: "Yes, we wanted to. We also submitted an application to hold a protest, but the university administration said we weren't allowed to."

That's a very nice answer, which clearly shows that we're dealing with German political activists here. One spontaneously wishes that Hamas terrorists would have a similar understanding of authority: "Yes, we wanted to blow up the Knesset. We also submitted a request to carry out an attack, but the Israeli government said we couldn't."

In any case, it would be desirable if the enormous amount of energy currently spent in this student milieu on carrying around bedsheets with obscene inscriptions and flags of dubious reputation, and on writing convoluted and unreadable appeals, were used on something more meaningful. For example, on the activity to which they should actually devote most of their time, had the world not gone mad some time ago: reading.

But reading—as mentioned above, originally an activity not uncommon at universities—is a skill that has virtually disappeared among students today. Admittedly, it is a complex process that involves both recognizing symbols (letters, punctuation marks) and understanding their meaning. It requires a minimum of concentration, which is not easy to muster for people who have never learned ancient cultural techniques such as opening books and turning pages.

My theory is that if someone doesn't read, you can tell by the way they speak. Recently, one afternoon at the lakeshore, I overheard something happening between three students that vaguely resembled a conversation. One student said, "I went to bed super late and was super stoned, and then I had to get up super early and was super annoyed, but the party was super awesome." I'm only quoting this passage for the sake of clarity. In fact, it went on like this for quite some time.

"They are dead eyes looking at me. They are the eyes of dead people." This is how Lydia, the professor mentioned at the beginning, describes the reaction of her students when they are asked to summarize the three and a half pages of text they were assigned to read the previous week. Or perhaps it would be better to say: suggested. The explanations for why they haven't read the measly three pages are varied: "No time." "Too much text." "Too exhausting." "Is there a movie?"

"Sometimes I just show films. The shorter and simpler, the better. That's just about acceptable in terms of attention span," Lydia tells her. "It's a shame," I reply, "that there isn't an episode of 'Sendung mit der Maus' (The Mouse Show) where antisemitism is explained simply and in a way that's suitable for students."

I am not sure whether, in a better future, universities and their libraries should not be open to all people without exception, including those who read of their own free will and with pleasure.

One thing is certain: spontaneous revolts, uprisings and other acts of resistance in Germany will not necessarily have to be applied for with an authority or the government in the future.