Universities are a useful indicator of an advanced society. They represent those essential values of learning, scientific development and the cultivation of culture and the arts.
They stand as beacons of understanding and reason and they challenge bias and ignorance in a world which would otherwise be devoid of the tolerance and humanity which only education can foster.
In view of their intellectual status and their economic importance, it is sad that one of our universities appears associated with the dark ages of war and its associated brutality.
Queen’s University has a fine tradition for academic excellence, but its chancellor supports Israel’s slaughter in Gaza.
Hillary Clinton is the university’s chancellor. It is an honorary post which carries no significant responsibilities, but it is seen as something of a coup if a university can persuade a well-known personality, especially one with influence, to act as chancellor. Mrs Clinton is indeed well known and has used her influence globally.
She supported the (illegal) US invasion of Iraq in 2002, later claiming that she misunderstood what she was voting for.
She opposed US drone strikes in Pakistan in 2007, but supported 300 of them when she became Secretary of State and she endorsed deploying 30,000 additional troops to Afghanistan in 2009.
She was instrumental in ousting Colonel Gaddafi in Libya in 2011, without any plan for a future system of government. Libya has been in anarchy ever since.
She strongly supports Israel’s war in Gaza which has killed more than 43,000 Palestinians and injured over 102,000.
Sixty per cent of these casualties are women, children and old people, but Hillary Clinton still opposes a ceasefire. What human being, whatever their political views, can refuse to call for an end to the slaughter and maiming of children?
Last week the House of Commons International Development Committee heard evidence from Professor Nizam Mamode, a retired NHS transplant surgeon, of his work in Gaza during August and September.
He reported that there are 1.3 million people herded into an area of about one square mile. They live under “pieces of cardboard and plastic” on the side of the road in a landscape of total destruction. Many he met hated Hamas.
He described how after Israeli bombs were dropped on civilians, their drones would come down and deliberately shoot “civilians, including children” who were lying on the ground.
The drones fire cuboid bullets which bounce around inside the human body to cause multiple organ rupture. He retrieved those bullets from injured and traumatised children every day and their only pain relief was paracetamol.
With Israel blocking antiseptic cleaning materials, maggots were common on wounds and the rest of his testimony is too horrible to include in a family newspaper.
By refusing to advocate a ceasefire, we can only assume that the chancellor of Queen’s University supports this inhumanity, immorality and injustice.
As her fellow Democrat, Senator Bernie Sanders, points out, the US in recent times has provided £14 billion in military aid to Israel and delivered more than 50,000 tonnes of armaments and military equipment. That equipment is used to deliberately kill children every day.
Sanders says the US is complicit in genocide. Mrs Clinton is on record as saying “nobody likes” him. There are 1.3 million Palestinians who like Senator Sanders.
Protestors called the QUB chancellor a war criminal at a World Forum event in Berlin earlier this year. The accusation was repeated during her speech at Columbia University. Did anyone inside the meeting at Queen’s challenge her?
Mrs Clinton is a well-known person of influence, but does that make her an appropriate university chancellor? Sadly, no. Universities teach tolerance and understanding. Mrs Clinton preaches war.
An international political figure as chancellor would normally be an asset to a university. However, Hillary Clinton is a reputational liability to a fine academic institution, with which I have had a long affinity.
The university did not help its image in its press statement following protests at her visit. It condemned the behaviour of a “small number of protestors”, but offered no condemnation of the Gaza genocide which triggered the protest.
Queen’s has already called for a ceasefire in Gaza, but retaining Hillary Clinton as chancellor undermines such a worthy sentiment.
It is time for Queen’s to find a new chancellor to restore the dignity which Hillary Clinton has damaged.
The university could select from the estimated 40,000 injured, or the 20,000 orphaned children in Gaza.
Any one of them would make a more eminently suitable replacement.