Description
This paper situates the recent surge of campus and academic mobilisations against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza within the broader landscape of social movements contesting global order. While often treated as isolated protests, these mobilisations represent a transnational solidarity movement linking Gaza with civil society activism across Western democracies. Student encampments, faculty petitions, and advocacy campaigns have challenged not only Israel’s actions but also the complicity of Western institutions, exposing the fragility of liberal values under geopolitical pressure. Drawing on Michel Foucault’s concept of power–knowledge and Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony, the study argues that Zionist lobbying, donor leverage, and securitised narratives converge to suppress dissent, creating what has been termed a “Palestine exception” to free speech. Empirical illustrations include the rescinded job offer to Steven Salaita in the United States, disciplinary measures against pro-Palestinian students at Columbia and Harvard, and police-led crackdowns on encampments across the UK. In both contexts, universities—traditionally celebrated as bastions of free thought—function as arenas of ideological conformity where civil society actors face surveillance, sanction, and criminalisation.
Theoretically, the paper contributes to debates on social movements by reframing these protests as alternative practices of global ordering: networks of students, academics, and activists confronting the shortcomings of state and institutional responses to human rights crises. Empirically, it demonstrates how solidarity with Gaza has revitalised repertoires of protest, from encampments and boycotts to digital campaigns, and has connected Western civil society with struggles in the Global South. The paper advances the claim that these mobilisations may foreshadow a “Western Spring”: a transformative opening in which social movements force a reckoning with the contradictions of Western democracy.
