In dark times, to appear. Arendtian accountability and the public voice of universities on Gaza

In the wake of the escalating violence in Gaza, Italian universities issued public motions calling for ceasefires, suspending research collaborations, and condemning the violation of humanitarian law and fundamental human rights. These institutional interventions marked a rare re-entry of universities into the moral and political public sphere, challenging the entrenched managerial neutrality and performance-driven accountability regimes of contemporary higher education. This paper argues that such collective speech acts constitute a distinct form of accountability, one that resists economized logics of audit and transparency. Drawing on Hannah Arendt's concepts of judgment, action, and plurality, the study reconceptualizes accountability as public appearance, the practice through which institutions disclose themselves by speaking and judging in response to collective suffering. Using interpretive, document-based analysis of university motions, the paper reads these texts not as administrative artifacts but as performative enactments of responsibility. In dialogue with the critical accounting literature, the analysis develops an Arendtian framework that reframes accountability as a political and ethical capacity rather than a managerial function. The paper shows how institutional speech – treated as a world-building act – can mediate the public articulation of moral and political responsibility within neoliberal governance systems.