Biden should take a firmer stand on protesters’ rights
The semester may be winding down on university campuses around the US, but the antiGaza war protests are not. It has been a turbulent month of protests and of administration and police crackdowns on students and faculty members demonstrating in support of the Palestinians and a ceasefire, and against Israel’s war in Gaza.
On the one hand, there have been accusations of antisemitism and, on the other, warnings of attempts to silence free speech and trample the First Amendment have become rife on campuses and on social media. Universities’ reactions to the protests have varied. Some jumped the gun and called the police on their students, while others resorted to dialogue. Politicians have inserted themselves into the battle, taking sides and turning campuses into political arenas. After weeks of turmoil, one cannot help but assign a failing grade to all the officials handling the issue, from university leaderships and administrators to the White House and Congress.
It all started at Columbia University. Had this issue been handled well from the start at Columbia, things may have turned out differently for everybody, academics say.
Columbia was the first test. The testimony of Columbia’s President Minouche Shafik in front of Congress this month was pregnant with dread and expectation in universities across the country, especially at Columbia. The reaction to Shafik’s statements in Congress was immediate on the university campus, with students and faculty criticizing her performance, especially her revealing of information about internal investigations into professors even before they had been informed. The president doubled down, either badly advised or acting out of panic. She ordered the police to remove the demonstrators from their encampment the next day and a number of students were suspended.
After the police crackdown at Columbia and the arrest of 100 people, all hell broke loose and the snowball of protests grew larger, spreading to universities across the country in solidarity with Columbia’s students. Encampments sprung up on campuses, with students calling for a ceasefire and for their universities to divest from businesses linked to Israel or that supply Israel with arms.
But university administrators called the police to stop the protests. The police’s harsh and violent arrests of students and professors at some universities, the Universities of Texas and Emory in particular, went viral on social media. The violent arrest of Emory economics professor Caroline Fohlin sent shock waves through campuses and brought the debate about police brutality back to the forefront. Politicians did not fare any better. They used the Columbia crisis to further their political agendas. Members of Congress, mostly Republicans and led by House Speaker Mike Johnson, descended on Columbia. Johnson called on Shafik to resign and suggested deploying the National Guard at the university, whose traditions, he claimed, “are being overtaken right now by radical and extreme ideologies.”
The students’ leadership should also have done a better job at preventing extreme external elements from infiltrating their camp, as the universities claim, and stopping those extremists in their ranks from making inflammatory statements, which the schools and Jewish students considered antisemitic and threatening. All eyes were on the White House to see how President Joe Biden would handle the issue in an election year and when the young voters’ voice will be critical if he is to win in November. The president condemned the “antisemitic protests,” as well as “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken, while visiting China, considered the protests to be “a hallmark of American democracy.” He said: “Our citizens make known their views, their concerns, their anger, at any given time, and I think that reflects the strength of the country.” Democrats say these words would have had more impact had the president said them from the White House, instead of a spokeswoman saying that the president “will always support and believes in free speech and nondiscrimination.”
But the White House calibrates every word to make sure it does not affect Biden’s election campaign. In its drive not to hurt the president’s chances of reelection, officials are doing exactly what they set out to prevent. Through their caution, they are alienating the very people that Democrats depend on to win elections.
The president could have addressed the nation about this crisis and counseled both sides to calm down, stressing the American principles of freedom of speech and assembly and encouraging dialogue, while at the same time condemning hate speech, intimidation and antisemitism. However, it seems that the president’s campaign is not worried that the university protests will hurt him. Campaign officials reportedly told Politico that these young voters are “a subset of a subset of the electorate, one that’s drawn a disproportionate amount of media coverage compared to its actual political clout.”
The White House should not view what is happening on university campuses only through the lens of the campaign. America’s standing in the world as a beacon for freedom, especially the freedoms of speech and assembly, is being tarnished by the images of professors and students being violently arrested and by the prevention of protests in some universities. The sooner the Biden administration addresses this issue, the better for the country and for the president.
Politicians have inserted themselves into the battle, taking sides and turning campuses into
political arenas
The White House should not view what is happening on university campuses only through the lens of the campaign