Ben Sasse, president of the University of Florida, wrote last week in The Atlantic magazine, lamenting the decline in morality among the US public with three elite university presidents “having drunk the Kool-Aid of a new and cultlike worldview. Along with so much of higher education … they have become acolytes of a shallow new theology called ‘intersectionality’.” Sasse was referring to the lopsided congressional testimony of the presidents of Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania, saying that they failed to unconditionally condemn some students’ threat of genocide against Jews. Any speech condoning genocide is of course wrong. Genocide is a crime against humanity and can never be justified. Institutions of higher learning, particularly the presidents of elite universities, should know better.

How the world should run is not really that complicated. How people think and act is. The true values that we hold dear are just that people should all deserve equal respect as human beings. This we all know, but we behave otherwise. Jews are human beings. Palestinians are human beings. Those who hold the black identity “intersecting” with the female identity are humans just as whites and Asians are. All lives deserve respect and should be valued the same. Professor Kimberle Crenshaw, who coined the term “intersectionality”, did not mean to advocate special privilege to those who are both black and female. She only meant to argue that they deserve equal treatment like any other group. The key question is always whether a particular group is being singled out and targeted in the workplace or in economic or social life.

Equal respect for all humans is a value that we all hold dear. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights, passed in the United Nations, is grounded on this value: Human life is equally valuable regardless of ethnicity, religion, or belief.

The Gaza Strip has been called the world’s largest open-air prison. Long before Hamas attacked Israel on Oct 7, since Hamas won the Palestinian elections in 2006, Gaza has been subjected to an Israeli blockade through land, sea and air. Since Israel declared war on Hamas, Gaza’s electricity and water supply have been cut off. With bombs and artillery shells raining down from above and shootings on the ground, Gaza has now become unhabitable. An ongoing genocidal or near-genocidal onslaught of human lives in Gaza is taking place for the world to see. Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry said the war had killed more than 18,000 people. Why should anyone be angry about the misuse of speech but stay numb about the killings of many innocent people, women and children included?

In his 2009 book Civilising Globalisation: Human Rights and the Global Economy, David Kinley this wrote about human rights: “At their barest minimum, human rights are the features of an individual’s life lived with irreducible levels of safety, comfort, freedom, dignity and respect. And beyond the individual, collectively they constitute … ‘the foundation’, as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights puts it, ‘of freedom, justice and peace in the world’.” President Xi Jinping would certainly agree with him.

A national security law that protects a political system that has proved to work for China actually enhances peoples’ human rights

The world as we know it has degenerated. Many political leaders do not act as though they are civilized. If they are indeed civilized, they would do what they can to reduce people’s suffering. Freedom, justice, and peace are important to all of us, and the meanings of freedom, justice, and peace are not complicated.

In 2019, the West cheered those “freedom fighters” who limited the freedoms of other fellow Hong Kong residents in mobility, in running a business, and in speech. Those who disagreed with them were beaten and even burned alive. At least one was killed by a brick. People from the Chinese mainland were particularly targeted. Traffic lights and MTR stations were vandalized. Tourists were scared away. Many shops had to close. What were the freedoms that the “freedom fighters” sought? They sought the freedom to bypass the Basic Law requirement for a nominating committee to first vet the candidates before they stand for election for the chief executive post. Some sought the withdrawal of the extradition bill introduced in April 2019. That bill was eventually withdrawn, but the protests and the violence went on, many demanding that the HKSAR government must give in to all their “five demands”, which included an independent commission to investigate alleged “police brutality”, dropping the label of “rioters” for those who had rioted, and providing amnesty to all those arrested by the police. No one who believes in the rule of law would give in to such demands. For one thing, given the scale of the riots and violence, the Hong Kong Police Force clearly has demonstrated considerable restraint. It is also clear that no one should be above the law.

I have, in previous articles published in this column, expressed the view that Article 21 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights had wrongly prescribed that periodical election of the government is a human right. While equal political rights among citizens are appropriate, the ballot box may not necessarily lead to good governance. Fair selection of a country’s leaders against well-reasoned and transparent criteria is. A national security law that protects a political system that has proved to work for China actually enhances peoples’ human rights.

The author is director of the Pan Sutong Shanghai-Hong Kong Economic Policy Research Institute, Lingnan University.

The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.