Topics Justice

Question I live in France, where, as you are probably aware, many universities have been physically blockaded by students protesting government policy. This prevents others from attending classes and lecturers from teaching, regardless of whether or not they agree with the protestors. Now, it strikes me that these same protestors would complain vehemently and denounce the violation of their own rights and freedoms if the police were to block a road to prevent them from marching down it. Would that be hypocritical of them? Would it not constitute claiming a right for themselves which they have denied to others?

Accepted:
March 29, 2006

Comments

Such hypothetical protest would indeed be hypocritical if the two cases were relevantly alike. But are they? You point out two respects in which the cases are alike: Agents A are blocking the path of agents B, some of whom do not agree with the reasons for A's actions. But the cases may be different in other morally relevant respects.

One such further respect is the quality of A's reasons (with which some of the Bs disagree). It matters morally, I would think, whether the police are seeking to prevent the burning down of a church or abortion clinic, on the one hand, or whether they are seeking to prevent a peaceful demonstration against a morally dubious war, on the other hand. And it matters whether students are shutting down the universities in protest against a government policy that permits blacks to attend or in protest against a government policy that forbids blacks to attend. The students could then argue against your charge of hypocrisy that their own blockade is protesting an injustice (in government policy) whereas their hypothetical complaint would be directed against police blockades that lack a similarly compelling moral purpose.

Other such further and arguably morally relevant respects are the gains that A's blockade are likely to bring and the costs it is imposing on the disagreeing Bs.

I conclude that, to denounce the students' blockade as hypocritical, you need to delve more deeply into the morally relevant features of the situation and its imagined parallel. What you've said thus far is a bit like saying: "Isn't it hypocritical for a country's government to conduct a war against country P and yet also to complain against another war conducted by a third country Q." Yes, this may well be hypocritical -- as when the Soviet Union protested the US invasion of Vietnam even while it was invading Czechoslovakia. But then it may not be hypocritical at all -- as when the UK protested fascist Germany's attack on Norway even while the UK was fighting fascist Italy (assuming here that belligerent fascist Italy was, and neutral Norway was not, a legitimate target for military attack).