Republicans go all-in on U.S. campus protests as potential election winner

It doesn't take a college de‐ gree to figure out Republi‐ cans see the protests sweeping U.S. college cam‐ puses as a winning elec‐ tion-year issue for them.

There's proof enough in their plans for a half-dozen congressional hearings, new campaign ads and choreo‐ graphed confrontations with student protesters.

Republican lawmakers are posting videos of themselves being heckled, creating ads tailored to swing-state voters and scheduling events aimed at ensuring the issue remains top of mind for months.

As he announced a suc‐ cession of hearings, House Speaker Mike Johnson de‐ scribed his cause as counter‐ ing the scourge of campus antisemitism.

"We have to act," he said. When a journalist questioned why this stated commitment to fighting antisemitism seemed to exclude hearings into far-right groups like the Nazis holding public marches, he replied: "This is not partisan at all."

The hearings start next week.

Republicans have con‐ vened the mayor and police chief of Washington, D.C., for a grilling into their reported refusal to clear out an en‐ campment that began in a square at George Washing‐ ton University and has grown to clog the adjacent street several blocks from the White House.

The following week, col‐ lege administrators from Cal‐ ifornia and Michigan are being summoned to a hear‐ ing into their handling of these events.

There will be more hear‐ ings - into whether colleges have violated civil rights law, whether that makes them in‐ eligible for federal funding and whether foreign studen‐ ts arrested at these protests will be deported.

A group of Republicans used George Washington University as an eardrum-rat‐ tling backdrop to discuss this. As they held a press confer‐ ence on a tent-filled H Street, those lawmakers were greeted with noisy chants of "Hands off D.C." and "Trump lost."

'Kiss your federal fund‐ ing goodbye'

A crowd of students gathered around the lawmakers. That included one far-right law‐ maker, Rep. Lauren Boebert, who cursed as she tried pulling a Palestinian flag down from a statue of George Washington, now covered in a keffiyeh and spray-painted with graffiti.

"Kiss your federal funding goodbye," she said, warning the college administration to clear out the dozens of tents.

A professor at George Washington University who supports the protesters ex‐ pressed doubt that those lawmakers were motivated by sincere concerns about student welfare.

"I'm cynical," said Ivy Ken, who teaches sociology. "So I think they were just using it as a stage, and I think the on‐ ly photo ops they got were a lot of peaceful students singing and, you know, being clear about their demands."

What the students want is multifaceted. Demands range from colleges with‐ drawing investments from Is‐ raeli companies and U.S. companies that supply the Is‐ raeli military to a ceasefire in Gaza to the end of the state of Israel.

While Republicans revel in this fight, it's more awkward for Democrats.

The way in which it's di‐ vided the party is evident in the contrasting reactions on Capitol Hill: some Democra‐ ts applauded police for mov‐ ing in to clear out the Colum‐ bia University protest, while others condemned it.

The White House has ap‐ parently sided with the former, not the latter. In his most extensive comments on the issue on Thursday, Presi‐ dent Joe Biden appeared to endorse law enforcement breaking up some of the en‐ campments.

But he's being pulled in two directions by his party.

A revealing statement from College Democrats of America zigs and zags care‐ fully through the issue - call‐ ing the protests "heroic" but also condemning some of their rhetoric, then reiterat‐ ing support for the president but criticizing his Mideast policy.

WATCH | About That: How U.S. campus protests spread to Canada and bey‐ ond:

How the issue divides Democrats

That intra-party debate was illustrated in a moment of disagreement on the Thurs‐ day morning show of the lib‐ eral network MSNBC.

As the hosts took in scenes of police clearing out the encampment at UCLA, Rev. Al Sharpton fretted that liberals appear hypocritical here, picking and choosing when to enforce public order laws based on their politics.

"How do the Democrats how do all of us on that side say Jan. 6 was wrong, if you can have the same pictures going on, on college cam‐ puses?" Sharpton said, refer‐ ring to the 2021 storming of the U.S. Capitol.

"You lose the moral high ground."

Co-host Mika Brzezinski recoiled at the comparison to an attack on American democracy: "Good lord, don't make a parallel with Jan. 6."

To be fair, Republicans al‐ so face accusations of hypocrisy on this issue. Some of the same people, notably Donald Trump, who condone pardoning the Jan. 6 convicts want the full force of the law applied to college protesters.

There are similar divisions over an antisemitism bill in Congress. The bill would define certain anti-Israel statements as antisemitic for the purposes of withdrawing federal funding to schools under civil rights law.

More than half of Democ‐ rats voted for it, as it passed the House of Representa‐ tives. But 70 didn't, and some viewed the vote as a silly stunt designed to divide their party.

Even a House Democrat who voted to pass the bill grumbled to the website Ax‐ ios that it was a load of leg‐ islative garbage that will never get through the Sen‐ ate.

Predicting the political fallout

One well-known right-wing strategist says this is pre‐ cisely what he hopes for here: to continue cracking the left, just as Vietnam-re‐ lated unrest did in 1968.

"It will move public opin‐ ion in our direction," writes Christopher Rufo, a fellow at the Manhattan Institute best known for almost singlehandedly building opposition to critical race theory.

He predicted that these protests will never generate public sympathy like the Black Lives Matter ones in 2020, and said Republicans should let them continue.

Two pollsters contacted by CBC News said it's hard to make a solid prediction about how this issue might unfold in November.

One concurred that it's different from Black Lives Matter, or even Vietnam and apartheid, in the sense that the protests have divided American campuses them‐ selves. But, said Tim Malloy at Quinnipiac, it's still too ear‐ ly to offer a definitive state‐ ment.

Another pollster pointed to a potpourri of knowns and unknowns. For starters, said Patrick Murray, director of the polling centre at Mon‐ mouth University in New Jer‐ sey, the Gaza war is a very low priority for most voters. On the other hand, he said, scenes of instability at home could undercut one of Biden's central messages that his presidency means calm, compared to the chaos of Donald Trump.

It's also worth noting, Murray said, that the school year is ending, and we don't know what campuses will look like this fall, closer to the election.

"There is no data that can predict outcomes - especially six months ahead of the elec‐ tion," said Murray.

Here's another detail so essential to modern Ameri‐ can politics that neither poll‐ ster bothered mentioning it: presidential elections are usually so close that even the smallest twitch in voter be‐ haviour is enough to swing the outcome in key states.

So what is the sociology professor, Ken, hearing from her students back on cam‐ pus? It's mixed news for Biden.

"They say they'll hold their nose and vote for him. But I would guess a lot of people won't even go to the polls, won't even bother to vote. Because, what choice is this? Two old white guys."