May 2, 2024
More than 2,000 people have been arrested at protests on college and university campuses around the country opposing Israel’s military strikes on Gaza since the October 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, and the subsequent humanitarian crisis there. It is unclear how many of the protesters are students, as many of those arrested have not been affiliated with the universities, or how many of the arrests will result in charges—sometimes arrests at protests are designed simply to clear an area.
The roots of today’s protests lie in an investigation by the Republican-dominated House Committee on Education and the Workforce, chaired by Virginia Foxx (R-NC). The committee announced the investigation on December 7, two days after its members spent more than five hours grilling then-president of Harvard University Claudine Gay, then-president of University of Pennsylvania Liz Magill, and president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Sally Kornbluth on how their universities were handling student protests against Israel over its military response to Hamas’s attack of October 7.
Led by Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Republicans on the committee insisted that the universities were not protecting Jewish students. The university presidents responded that they deplored antisemitism, that students had the right to free speech, and that they took action against those who violated policies against bullying, harassment, or intimidation. But in their defense of free speech, they admitted both that hate speech against Jews and others is sometimes protected and that they had sometimes made bad calls.
The Republicans’ interest in protecting Jewish students on campus overlapped with their opposition to diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives that they associate with Democrats. Burgess Owens (R-UT) said DEI initiatives protect Black students at the expense of others. “I just remember a couple of years ago when we were dealing with Black Lives Matter,” he said. “Try to talk about Blue Lives Matter, Jew Lives Matter, Arab Lives Matter—they call it racist. It’s time for us to focus on what’s happening on your campuses.”
Stefanik called the testimony “pathetic” and, along with 74 other members of Congress, demanded that Gay, Harvard’s first Black president, resign. On January 2, following accusations she had plagiarized scholarly work, she did. Her resignation followed that of Liz Magill. “TWO DOWN,” Stefanik wrote on social media.
Two days after the university presidents’ testimony, Stefanik announced that the House Education and Workforce Committee would be investigating universities. “We will use our full Congressional authority to hold these schools accountable for their failure on the global stage,” she said.
On February 12 the committee informed Columbia it was next up. Columbia University president Nemat "Minouche" Shafik had been unable to testify with the other presidents in December and gave her testimony to the committee on April 17, along with co-chairs of the Board of Trustees Claire Shipman and David Greenwald and former dean David Schizer over the university's response to antisemitism.
In an April 16 essay in the Wall Street Journal, Shafik wrote that “antisemitism and calls for genocide have no place at a university…but that leaves plenty of room for robust disagreement and debate.” She said she prioritizes “the safety and security of our community” and that while the attack of October 7 had a "deep personal impact" on the Jewish and Israeli communities, there was also a "humanitarian catastrophe" in Gaza, and the war was "part of a larger story of Palestinian displacement." She explained that Columbia had defined a space for protests to enable those they upset to avoid them.
Opening the hearing, committee chair Foxx said: “Since October 7, this Committee and the nation have watched in horror as so many of our college campuses, particularly the most expensive, so-called elite schools, have erupted into hotbeds of antisemitism and hate.” Stefanik called out tenured professor Joseph Massad of the Middle Eastern, South Asian, and African Studies department, who called the October 7 attack a “stunning victory.”
Shafik responded by condemning the professor’s statements. “Trying to reconcile the free speech rights of those who want to protest and the rights of Jewish students to be in an environment free of harassment or discrimination has been the central challenge on our campus, and many others, in recent months…. We do not, and will not, tolerate antisemitic threats, images, and other violations…. We have enforced, and we will continue to enforce, our policies against such actions,” she said.
Ilhan Omar (D-MN) questioned Shafik about discrimination against pro-Palestinian protesters. She noted that Israel-born assistant professor Shai Davidai was accused of harassing pro-Palestinian students; Shafik said they have had more than 50 complaints about him and he is under investigation.
On April 17, the same day the Columbia officials testified, pro-Palestinian protesters organized by Columbia University Apartheid Divest (a self-described “coalition of student organizations that see Palestine as the vanguard for our collective liberation”), Students for Justice in Palestine, and Jewish Voice for Peace set up a camp at the university. It garnered little attention; the April 18 New York Times did not mention it. According to Sharif, the school warned protesters they would be suspended if the encampment was not removed. They stayed. On April 18, according to New York mayor Eric Adams, Columbia officials called in New York City police to disband the protest. They arrested more than 100 people, including Representative Omar’s daughter, a Columbia student. The arrests were peaceful.
University faculty and community members were shocked by the resort to law enforcement at a place known both for learning and debate and for its history. In April 1968, in the midst of the Vietnam War and the Civil Rights Movement, a week of protests after students learned of Columbia’s support for weapons research and its plan to construct a seemingly segregated gym in a nearby community had led New York City police to crush the demonstrations with violence.
In the days after the current arrests, nearly a dozen student and faculty groups released statements or open letters objecting to the police presence on campus and supporting students’ rights to free speech and peaceful protest. The protest encampment sprang back up.
At the same time, Jewish leaders warned that antisemitism was increasing. Rabbi Elie Buechler, of the Columbia/Barnard Hillel and Kraft Center for Jewish Student Life, urged Jewish students to return home for Passover, which began April 22, and to stay there for their own safety.
In the next weeks, protests sprang up around the country, with protesters generally demanding that university administrators divest from investments in Israel or in companies that sell weapons, technology, or construction equipment to Israel, and cut ties to Israeli universities. They have tended to turn their anger against President Joe Biden and his administration, whom they blame for what they call a genocide in Gaza. Universities have responded in a variety of ways, from discussion to armed law enforcement officers.
Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken have insisted that Israel has a right to defend itself from Hamas and have continued to provide Israel with military defenses, whose importance in stopping the war from spreading showed on April 14, when those defenses shot down virtually all of the weapons Iran launched at Israel. They are working hard for a ceasefire, with Blinken currently in the Middle East and a proposal on the table that Israel has accepted but Hamas has not.
The administration has also stood against the initial policy of Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s administration to cordon off Gaza without food, water, or electricity, and has pressured Israel into permitting humanitarian aid into Gaza. It has also firmly opposed Israeli plans to attack Rafah, where more than a million Palestinians have taken shelter, and has stood firmly in favor of a Palestinian state, which the protesters have not indicated they endorse.
On April 24, House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) visited Columbia, where he called for Shafik to resign. On Monday, April 29, he and Republican leadership met to discuss how they might reenergize the party and gain traction now that their impeachment effort against Biden and Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas has flopped, the conference is bitterly split, their control of the House of Representatives has resulted in one of the least productive congresses in American history, and their presumptive presidential nominee is being tried for election interference that involved paying off women with whom he had extramarital sex. They settled on campus antisemitism—although Trump’s open embrace of white nationalists makes this problematic—and the campus protests as a sign that Democrats are the party of disorder.
On that same day, 21 House Democrats wrote a letter to Columbia’s trustees demanding they “act decisively, disband the encampment, and ensure the safety and security of all of its students.” That night, protesters took control of Columbia’s Hamilton Hall, where they broke windows and vandalized furniture. About twenty hours later, police in riot gear arrested them. Arrests across the country climbed.
Yesterday, Representative Foxx announced that her committee’s antisemitism investigation will expand into a Congress-wide crackdown on colleges. In a press conference, she said she had a clear message for “mealy-mouthed, spineless college leaders. Congress will not tolerate your dereliction of duty to your Jewish students. American universities are officially put on notice that we have come to take our universities back.”
Will Bunch of the Philadelphia Inquirer noted that right-wing politicians jumped on the Kent State shootings of May 1970 to defund colleges and universities, while a “law and order” backlash helped to give Republican president Richard M. Nixon a landslide reelection in 1972.
Today, President Biden addressed the protests, saying they “test two fundamental American principles. The first is the right to free speech and for people to peacefully assemble and make their voices heard. The second is the rule of law. Both must be upheld.”
Biden called for lawful, peaceful protests and warned: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations—none of this is a peaceful protest…. Dissent is essential to democracy,” he said, “But dissent must never lead to disorder or to denying the rights of others so students can finish the semester and their college education…. People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.”
When asked, he told reporters he did not think the National Guard should be involved in suppressing the protests.
Steven Lee Myers and Tiffany Hsu of the New York Times reported today that Russia, China, and Iran are amplifying the protests “to score geopolitical points abroad and stoke tensions within the United States,” as well as to “undermine President Biden’s reelection prospects.”
It is unclear if the protests will continue during the summer, when fewer students will be on campus.
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Notes:
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/05/college-presidents-testifying-campus-antisemitism-00130277
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2024/1/3/claudine-gay-resign-harvard/
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/09/us/university-of-pennsylvania-president-resigns.html
https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2023/12/9/congress-resignation-calls/
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/01/03/sally-kornbluth-mit-president/72099065007/
https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/07/colleges-anitsemitism-house-education-committee-00130666
https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/columbia-antisemitism-house-testimony/index.html
https://electronicintifada.net/content/just-another-battle-or-palestinian-war-liberation/38661
https://www.cnn.com/business/live-news/columbia-antisemitism-house-testimony/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/issue/todayspaper/2022/04/18/todays-new-york-times
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-68939445
https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/24/politics/johnson-columbia-university-president/index.html
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/02/politics/johnson-gop-agenda-college-campus-protests/index.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/02/business/media/campus-protests-russia-china-iran-us.html
https://www.npr.org/2024/04/26/1247527512/columbia-university-protests-1968-2024-history
https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/02/middleeast/us-saudi-treaty-israel-palestinian-statehood-intl
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/02/nyregion/columbia-students-hamilton-hall.html
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/article/columbias-hamilton-hall-takeover-photos-from-inside.html
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2024/04/30/nyregion/columbia-protests-college
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I’m Jewish. I’ve seen a lot of antisemitism in my life. I’m now watching Israel destroy what took it and its allies years to build in the Middle East. If anyone is stoking antisemitism it is Israel and its supporters. It’s hard to love a country that has killed 35,000 plus Palestinian civilians in retaliation for the admittedly horrible Hamas attack that killed 1,200 plus Israelis. That’s 70,000+ Palestinian eyes for 2,400+ Israeli eyes. Hardly fair by biblical standards. The well funded repression of protest against Israeli Zionism in the name of fighting antisemitism has to stop. There will be no peace in the world until all hypocritical self interest, whether from the left, right or middle, ends. Based on my 82 years living in a cesspool of hypocrisy I don’t expect I’ll see peace in my time. I do, however, wish all younger than me good luck in taming the forces of naïveté and evil that seem to rule, especially in times of chaotic trauma like these.
Thank you Professor Richardson.
In the Powell Memorandum of August, 1971, Powell said that public colleges and universities were largely funded by taxpayers, and articulated that high-income business executives and corporations were were among the most significant taxpayers and therefore, funders of higher education (at least pre-Reagan, when the wealthy actually paid taxes -except for Trump). Powell argued that oddly, highly-educated professors were liberal or leaned liberal -thus he called for more conservative influence on campuses around the United States.
Students today (just as they did during the Vietnam era) want to feel empowered and relevant. The news from Gaza is a steady stream of the very worst of humanity. Just as protests eventually led to the American withdrawal from Vietnam, protests led to the demise of South African apartheid, students have every right to peacefully protest war crimes committed by Hamas in the terrorism, killing and kidnapping of innocent people, and Netanyahu's criminally terrorist acts in his continuing indiscriminate bombing and destruction of Gaza.
The GOP are always among the first to yell "don't politicize this mass shooting" at Sandy Hook, Uvalde, Columbine, Las Vegas, or the Tree of Life Synagogue. Yet, the hypocrisy that flows freely through GOP/MAGA/Putin veins ensures they politicize everything from climate action, to diplomacy, and of course -any place else they see an opportunity to manipulate voters. So it should not come as a surprise they are pressuring institutions of higher education. Just as Trump only wanted to direct disaster relief to "Red" States, or Jared Kushner was fine allowing the contagious, deadly pre-vaccine COVID to spread through "Blue" States, watch for MAGA Elise Stefanik and others, if Trump is elevated to the Presidency, to restrict Federal funding to any colleges or universities with programs related to race, gender, environmental conservation, ESG, or economics (in which the writings of John Kenneth Galbraith are preferred over Milton Friedman).