The Price of Speaking Out

Critics are punished, complainants rewarded, and institutions look away. The chilling effect may protect reputations in the short term, but history is rarely kind to the silent.

A doctor resigns from a board after posting about the Gaza war. Universities cancel lectures. Professionals self-censor online. Across democracies, a pattern is emerging: those who criticise atrocities abroad often pay a professional price, while those who remain silent, or who complain about the critics, do not.

This week it was Dr Stephen Parnis, a former vice-president of the Australian Medical Association, who stepped down as chair of the Medical Insurance Group of Australia. He remains on the board but made clear his social-media posts on Gaza reflected his conscience alone. The company declined to say more. Few doubt that complaints and reputational fears shaped his departure.

Such cases expose an asymmetry. Condemnation of civilian deaths is treated as reckless. Silence is rewarded as prudence. Even language that rationalises state violence passes without censure. The imbalance owes less to principle than to the mechanics of institutional risk management.

This is not theory. A survey of U.S.-based Middle East scholars found that 82% admitted they self-censor professionally when addressing the Israel and Palestine issue, rising to 98% among junior academics. That level of silence is not principled. It is fear, institutionalised.

Medicine, like academia, has never been neutral. Doctors campaign against tobacco, drink-driving and domestic violence. They advocate for public health measures without apology. Only when it comes to war crimes and mass killings are they urged to keep their heads down.

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor,” warned Desmond Tutu during the struggle against apartheid. Neutrality, in this context, is not professionalism. It is convenience.

Why do the complainants get away with it? In part, because the cost of their complaint is borne not by them, but by the institution. Boards prefer to sacrifice a dissenter than risk reputational noise. Complaints also cloak themselves in the language of neutrality, presenting censorship as professionalism. And because complainants face no scrutiny of their motives, the asymmetry hardens. The dissenter is interrogated, the dissent-silencer is not. In the end, the safest career move is not to speak but to complain about those who do.

Some argue that neutrality is necessary, that doctors and academics should avoid geopolitics to preserve trust and cohesion. Yet this argument collapses under scrutiny. Professions already take stands on politically charged issues: climate change, vaccination, Indigenous health. The claim to neutrality is invoked only when the victims are far away, or when speaking out is politically inconvenient. It is not a principle applied consistently, but a shield raised selectively.

The consequences reach beyond professional careers. Patients expect doctors to advocate for the vulnerable. Silence on atrocities abroad risks eroding trust at home, particularly for refugees and communities who look to clinicians for moral clarity as well as care. A profession that retreats into neutrality on matters of life and death risks diminishing its authority in every sphere.

Worse, the culture of enforced neutrality does not stop at foreign conflicts. It bleeds into domestic debates: asylum seekers in detention, Indigenous health, even pandemic responses. A profession trained to weigh evidence and speak out for the vulnerable finds itself muzzled by its own institutions.

This is more than a personal injustice. It corrodes professions and weakens society’s ability to confront atrocity. When truth-telling is penalised and complicity rewarded, institutions that claim to protect the vulnerable instead abandon them.

What kind of professional culture punishes conscience and rewards silence? Institutions may think they are buying safety. In truth, they are mortgaging their moral capital. And history is rarely kind to those who looked away.

A profession that will not speak risks forgetting why it exists.