For over four decades, events in Palestine-Israel have provoked raging conflicts between members of British universities. These seemingly intractable exchanges have stoked controversies around free speech, 'extremism', antisemitism and Islamophobia within higher education, controversies that have been widely reported in the media and subjected to repeated interventions by politicians. But why is this conflict so significant for student activists living at such a geographical distance from the region itself? And what role do emotive, polarised communications around Palestine-Israel play in the life of British academic institutions committed to the ideal of free expression? 

In Tragic encounters and ordinary ethics, Ruth Sheldon invites students, academics and members of the public to explore the sources of these visceral campus encounters. Making use of original ethnographic research conducted with conflicting groups of activists, she asks what is at stake for those students who are drawn into struggles around Palestine-Israel, and investigates the ongoing transformation of university spaces in the age of neoliberalism and the 'War on Terror'. From this case study she argues that in an increasingly globalised world shaped by entangled histories of the Nazi Holocaust and colonial violence, members of universities must develop creative and ethical new ways of approaching questions of justice.