Campus unrest: are the protests backfiring?
On 17 April, a handful of tents appeared on a patch of lawn on the campus of Columbia University in New York, said Jack Clover in The Times. That same day, the college’s president, Minouche Shafik, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, appeared before a congressional committee, where Republicans accused her of not having done enough to combat antisemitism on campus since the start of the war in Gaza. The next day, she called in the NYPD to clear the pro-Palestinian encampment. Some 100 students were arrested, in an operation (condemned by some as heavy handed) that “inflamed” similar protests at campuses across the country. Since then, some 2,000 people have been arrested; Columbia has had to cancel its graduation ceremonies; and copycat protests have sprung up at universities in the UK, demanding similar concessions, notably the divestment of university funds from Israel-linked companies.
So far, the British protests have been relatively muted, said Andrew Neil in the Daily Mail. They may peter out as the term winds down. In the US, though, I am afraid we can expect to hear a lot more noise from “entitled”, keffiyeh-appropriating students, many of whom seem more concerned about drawing attention to their own revolutionary cosplay than the plight of Gaza’s civilian population. Last month, one PhD student (dubbed Keffiyeh Karen on social media) went so far as to demand “basic humanitarian aid” for protesters at Columbia who’d smashed their way into the building (see page 15) because they had paid for meal plans. “The revolution will be televised,” we used to say in the 1960s. It didn’t occur to us that “it should also be catered”. Other students interviewed have seemed to scarcely know what cause it is they are protesting, or what their slogans mean. At least, we have to hope when they chant “river to the sea...” they don’t realise that this is widely seen as a call to wipe out the state of Israel.
Nor are their demands realistic, said Tim Marshall on Reaction. It’s not always possible to weed specific firms out of a huge stock portfolio. You might have to ditch entire investment funds – which “raises another issue”: trustees have a duty to maximise returns (to fund scholarships for underprivileged students, among other things). Dozens of colleges did manage to divest from South Africa in the 1980s. But it took years, and it was far simpler than this would be, not least because the Apartheid regime had few supporters. Boycotting the Jewish state would be far more fraught. It would likely lead to legal challenges, and a sharp drop in alumni donations.
Look, these are college kids, said Natalie Shutler on Slate. Of course their message is sometimes muddled; some of them will be ignorant, confused and self-aggrandising. And yes, the protests have sometimes veered into bigotry – against both Jews and Muslims. The “hateful sloganeering” should be condemned, but the youngsters camping in quads and occupying buildings are not part of a worrying new trend that needs cracking down on by police in riot gear. They’re just doing what students do, and standing up for what they believe in. No doubt, there are some antisemites among them, said Patrick Cockburn in The Independent. But the great majority of these students are simply outraged by the “mass killings” of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank (which are not “excused” by the war crimes perpetrated by Hamas on 7 October); and are enraged by the way their president has committed US “arms and political backing” to an Israeli government “notorious for its extremism”. They want it to stop, and their protest has right on its side.
Unfortunately, that is not how it’s coming across to many Americans, said Dov S. Zakheim in The Hill. They’ve seen Jewish students being harassed and accused of complicity in genocide; and heard protesters support Hamas. Such behaviour, combined with scenes of mask-wearing students smashing windows, is likely to have alienated many US citizens who’d previously sympathised with Gaza’s plight. The protests may not alter Joe Biden’s stance, said Time: true, it is costing him support among young voters, but most Americans back Israel’s war, and even under-30s have many more pressing concerns than Gaza. This student movement has been likened to the Vietnam War protests that convulsed America in the 1960s, said Max Boot in The Washington Post. In truth, it is minuscule by comparison. But today’s protesters should bear this in mind: historians believe that it was revulsion about campus unrest, and the sense that America was out of control, that rallied the “silent majority” behind Richard Nixon, and allowed him to keep the war going for four more years. By “re-enacting some of the excesses of the past”, allowing themselves to be organised by anti-Zionists, and failing to condemn Hamas’s atrocities, today’s students risk making the same contribution to Donald Trump’s campaign.
“The youngsters are just doing what students do, and standing up for what they believe in”