How Anthropology Can Harm Students During a Genocide

Abstract

Abstract

ABSTRACT This essay is about the harm that is committed in the name of care. More specifically, it is about student requests for support during the ongoing genocide in Palestine and an anthropology department's use and weaponization of the language of “care” to do the exact opposite: to cause harm. I examine how the language of care for students and the exception of Palestine are weaponized by administrators—including anthropologists—to silence and shut down conversations about, and support for, Palestine. I demonstrate how the “permission to narrate” stems from certain methods of attention that speak to the university's alignment with settler colonialism, neoliberal capitalism, and anti‐Palestinian racism, even as the university officially acknowledges settler land relations and shares statements about “Diversity, Equity, Inclusion” (DEI). Indeed, such acts of care are often based on the condition that settler‐colonial and capitalist relations remain unchanged—that colonial whiteness remains unchanged—and any attempts to unsettle these liberal, institutional‐settler relations will be met with purposeful occlusion and harm.