Alex Gourevitch’s badly needed defense of the right to protest hits the mark, especially his call to roll back the asphyxiating “safetyism” now being used to stifle scrutiny and criticism of Washington’s military subsidy to Israel. But even as we reaffirm the right to disrupt, let’s not forget that there are other highly effective forms of communication and advocacy beyond and before protest. At the risk of sounding outrageously mild, I feel this needs to be said: ordinary liberal channels—especially public discussion and debate—are an effective way to convince people and win elections. These mechanisms are a bit under-appreciated and under-utilized at present, but they are more radical, or at least more effective, than many assume.

Public reasoning is often belittled as “academic,” idle and eggheaded—the prerogative of elites, or something that’s fine to tolerate because it poses little threat. Consider that Senator Chris van Hollen recently roasted Secretary of State Marco Rubio for saying that Tufts grad student Rümeysa Öztürk posed a threat to U.S. foreign policy by coauthoring an op-ed for a student newspaper. The very contention, van Hollen implied, was “pathetic.”

I see the senator’s point—and I understand why anyone eager to get Öztürk released would want to deny that writing op-eds can threaten U.S. foreign policy, since it formed the legal basis of the administration’s action—but I don’t agree. We must bite this bullet: it’s very much to the credit of Öztürk, of Mahmoud Khalil, and of hundreds if not thousands of others of student advocates and protesters that they really do pose a threat to our country’s longstanding bipartisan policy of blank-check support for Israel by peacefully, powerfully, persuasively engaging in the public exchange of reasons. This is a good thing. A great deal of the threat to unconditional U.S. support for Israel stems from quite ordinary, non-disruptive academic practices like reading assignments, writing assignments, classroom discussions, student and independent journalism, organized debates, guest speakers, film screenings, and the like.

I do not mean to be Pollyannaish about what reasoned persuasion can do in a climate of deep power imbalances or attempted McCarthyist repression. But the open debate and free criticism of state policy that has taken place in the university is a big part of why support for arming and funding Israel has tanked here in the United States. All the teachers who have taught this conflict, and Washington’s role in it; all the students who have read and thought and written about it, anyone who’s organized a speaking event about Israel-Palestine—hey, give yourselves a hand! And don’t stop!

This isn’t at all to belittle protest either, of course. I’ve marched, chanted, demonstrated, acted as a legal observer and secured sound permits at or for dozens of protests, and been arrested at the Indonesian Consulate of New York, protesting genocide in East Timor. But the protests that I’ve enjoyed the most are the ones I have provoked, inadvertently. When I was a law student, two of the guest speakers I invited onto campus were “leafleted” either in the middle of or immediately after their talks. In both cases, the protesters lost their cool and said things they probably wish they hadn’t said. (It was, for instance, a bit of an eye-opener to me to hear a liberal Zionist law student declare that she saw post-apartheid South Africa not as a model for Israel-Palestine equality but as a “disaster” to be avoided.)

The truth is, most people, most of the time, find protesters annoying. Generally speaking, you win the point if you get other people to protest you, ideally in an unhinged way. Bland, vanilla, non-disruptive speaking events are surprisingly essential to playing offense, winning over persuadeables and normies, and building a broad, powerful mass movement.

It will be objected, accurately, that panels and speakers and debates related to Palestine aren’t even an option at the many universities, like Columbia, that have illiberally banned student groups like Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, selectively narrowed rules about protests and blurred the definition of antisemitism to stifle debate. That is all the more reason to start directing the energies and smarts of students and faculty off-campus. Yes, believe it or not, students and faculty can take part in off-campus group activities too, and many already do. If your school pissily elects to no longer allow student events on U.S. policy on the Gaza slaughter, why not take the message straight to the senior centers, nonprofit youth groups, church groups, union halls, book clubs, VFW halls and Rotary Clubs? What a great experience this would be for both students (from freshmen to postdocs) and faculty too.

Believe it or not, there are receptive and curious audiences all over the United States eager for rational explanations, historical context, criticism both mild and blistering, and workable solutions for how to reshape Washington’s relationship with the Palestine, Israel, and the Middle East in general. Send out some well-informed, bright-eyed college kids—I recommend in pairs or trios—to these venues, and most of the time they’ll be a hit. Yes, you’ll often get some hecklers, as well as the opportunity to judo-flip their frothing in your favor. You may even be put on the naughty list of some tattletale snitch group like Canary Mission (whose influence I suspect to be minimal and shrinking, even with the Trump tailwind). Hey, no one said this was going to be totally risk-free.

And consider the rewards. Finding and talking to lay people is a great way for students and scholars to learn to communicate about important issues in the vernacular, to hit the notes and messages that resonate with real people where they are. In my own experiences speaking to all kind of civic groups, from Peace Action of Staten Island to the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia to Occupy Wall Street (a spinoff group on the New York Public Library steps) to a 2015 Veterans Day Event at the Mississippi State Capitol (where I argued for a full commutation of Chelsea Manning back when she was incarcerated), I’ve gotten intelligent pushback, challenging questions, dealt with the occasional hater, and met all kinds of nice people. Most of us progressive intellectuals could stand to de-Brahminize ourselves a bit, and this is a great way to do it.

Please know that with this proposal I do not mean to shovel more responsibility on young people for cleaning up their elders’ atrocities; obviously we oldsters need to step up with budget and organizational capacity for setting up Anti-Imperialist Speakers Bureaus (working title) in every town, while making sure to let the youth have a major role in the running of it. Who could step up—Quincy Institute? The Quakers? This is your moment! 

That’s not all. Another boring liberal channel of discourse that could really use more traffic from campus types is election work. Given widespread hostility for the system, I recognize this charge will sound to some as naïve at best. But the U.S. left has been so far from a major electoral presence for so long that I fear we have developed a kind of learned helplessness and defeatism about ever gaining state power to change government policies. Given recent massive swings in public opinion, however, the hardcore supporters of militarized Zionism are more vulnerable than people realize. One such diehard supporter of bombs for Israel is my congressman, Rep. Daniel Sachs Goldman, who won his 2022 primary for New York’s 10th Congressional District with less than 26 percent of the vote, beating the non-Zionist runner up by only 1,679 votes. Given how few people show up to vote in congressional primaries, it is entirely achievable for students and other university types to make the difference in unseating Rep. Goldman. Come to think of it, it may well be easier to flip a few congressional seats than to change Columbia or NYU’s endowment investment policies.

Don’t get me wrong. I don’t believe in procedural liberalism for the sake of procedural liberalism. I am not filing a brief here for “civility.” I certainly don’t mean this as an implied scold of all the wonderful protesters, student, faculty and neither, who have stepped up around the country the past year and a half. It’s just that I sense untapped potential in ordinary civil discourse. That’s one reason why the Netanyahu Democrats atop many universities have tried to shut these channels down no less than the protest encampments.

So yes, long live the right to hostility. But let’s not sleep on the radical potential of going out into the social world on or beyond the campus and confidently selling our message to people as their friends and equals.