Hessel calls for student ‘outrage’

A 93-year-old German Jew may seem an unlikely advocate for Palestinian rights. Yet that is what Stéphane Hessel has been for the past several years. Throughout his life, Hessel has embodied many roles: immigrant, French Resistance fighter, concentration camp survivor, diplomat, advocate, and author. On Sept. 27 in 301 Uris Hall, Hessel addressed a packed room of 250 people at an event orchestrated by Columbia’s Maison Française to discuss his latest endeavor, the short political book “Indignez-vous!” or “A Time for Outrage.”

Shanny Peer, the director of Maison Française, and Nikil Saval, CC ’05, an associate editor of literary magazine “n+1,” moderated the event after a beaming Hessel had given his series of opening remarks. Although Hessel wrote his book with France and its problems in mind, the book’s message is widely applicable: “never give up, never be indifferent.” Hessel’s book is a call to action.

During the event, Hessel encouraged everyone in the audience to find his or her own personal outrage—Hessel’s own is the situation of Palestinians in Gaza, a major topic of his book. “I always side with the dissidents,” Hessel said. Despite his solidarity with Jews and his love of Israel, Hessel claims in his book that “Israel is not above international laws” and reiterated in his speech a desire for change in the region.

To others seeking outrage, Hessel said: “You will find something, and when you find it you must commit.” He believes that the time has come for the younger generation to become outraged rather than let the world fall stagnant. “My generation has been lucky in a way,” he said. As a Jewish resistance fighter who suffered through two concentration camp internments, Hessel hardly seems fortunate, but he was talking about the opportunity of having something obvious to resist. “We had a clear enemy. We knew who to fight,” Hessel said, whereas this generation, he said, lacks an unambiguous enemy to rail against.

Hessel feels that Obama and the U.S. have suffered from this lack of direction and political stagnation. But when interlocutor Saval asked Hessel how Obama, a proponent of consensus, would feel about Hessel’s call to outrage, he compared his book title, “A Time for Outrage,” to that of Obama’s book, “Audacity of Hope.” “Audacity, that is not consensus,” Hessel said.

He then clarified and qualified his message while expressing concern for youth who have given up on the political process. “You cannot change a democracy without being inside the democratic aspects,” Hessel said. Rather than work outside democracy, disregarding politics as a means for change, Hessel wants the populace to revitalize the system by getting involved.

Hessel then talked about another organized instrument for change—the United Nations. As a French ambassador and one of the primary drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Hessel has had a long-standing relationship with the UN. Although he spoke of the organization’s shortcomings, particularly the effect that U.S. veto power has had on Israeli-Palestinian relations, Hessel still stands by the organization’s declaration of rights. “I think the text deserves over-enthusiasm,” Hessel said.

Hessel expressed hope for an ethical revolution, where compassion and human rights concerns would rise to the forefront of the international agenda. The spirit of the resistance runs deep in the charismatic Hessel. He ends his book with this message: “To create is to resist. To resist is to create.”