Tag Archives: #Harvard

Student protests will shape a generation of Americans’ thinking on social justice

This op-ed was published by The National on May 3, 2024 

The sustained student unrest over the Gaza war may have reached a crescendo. Yet US student activism against Israeli policies may be just starting.

This semester is ending. Israel’s rampage in Gaza appears to have one major target left in Rafah. And the astoundingly self-defeating behavior of the Columbia University administration will shortly be studied by others as an object lesson in exactly what not to do unless you want protests galvanized and empowered.

But perhaps the biggest reason is that the opportunism on the political left and, especially, the right over this issue is probably approaching points of diminishing return on both sides.

The confrontation began over a peaceful student encampment of about 100 students on one lawn out of at least a dozen on the Columbia campus.

The students were demanding a ceasefire, an end to US support for Israel and, crucially, that the university divest from holdings that operate in, or work closely with, Israel.

The university had the option of simply ignoring the students, or even trying to meet some of their demands. But the political right sensed an election-year opportunity to argue that liberal-dominated colleges had created the groundwork for supposedly “anti-Semitic” protests just by being too liberal.

When Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, was summoned by a congressional right-wingers, one radical fundamentalist Congressman asked her if she was worried about Columbia being “cursed by God” because of anti-Israel protests. Unfortunately, that absurd question probably played well in his district.

Feeling the political pressure from powerful national right-wingers, some parents and wealthy donors, Dr Shafik asked police to intervene, arresting 100 students who, police attested, may have been technically trespassing but who were not doing anything but calmly expressing their opinions.

This craven action may have been sufficient to placate pro-Israel parents and donors, and indemnify Columbia’s administration from further right-wing attacks, but it was a massive blunder in terms of limiting the protest movement.

The students were zip-tied, arrested and processed, but quickly released on misdemeanour trespassing charges. Most immediately returned to their encampment, which they of course then vowed to maintain indefinitely. Similar protests spread around the country.

Columbia students began negotiating with administrators over the encampment, but talks broke down, particularly on divestment. Suspecting the university was planning more mass arrests, some students took over an administration building. The university once again decided to send in the police.

These students in some cases are now being charged with burglary and other excessive charges that probably won’t stick. But between its “get tough approach, the end of the semester, and the final stages of Israel’s major operations in Gaza, this batch of protests may have largely run its course.

Yet the Palestinian cause has almost certainly emerged decisively as international social justice cause for the current generation of American students. Unfortunately for campus administrators, the issue is highly unlikely to go away in the short or medium terms, and could potentially flare up even more dramatically in the future.

For all the rhetoric about the appalling war, Israel’s brutality and the virtually unimaginable number of Palestinian civilians, particularly children, who have been wantonly killed in Gaza, the divestment movement will probably emerge as the next phase of a protracted campaign on US campuses. When anti-apartheid fervour gripped campuses in the 1980s, many universities adopted rules prohibiting their own investment in entities that do business with those practicing apartheid, without limiting the ban to South Africa only.

The opportunity for student activists, and the nightmare universities will struggle to manage in coming years even without the Gaza war, is built-into those policies. After all, it is difficult to look at the social, economic and political system enforced by Israel’s occupation army, particularly in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and argue with a straight face that it cannot accurately be described as “apartheid”.

The only effective means of doing so would be to claim that this is a temporary military occupation to be resolved by forthcoming negotiations. But given that it has been ongoing since 1967, and that the policy of the current Israeli government is to eventually annex large chunks of the West Bank and never allow the establishment of a Palestinian state, that claim of a “temporary” status is intellectually, factually and legally baseless.

That could all change if Israel suddenly recognises the Palestinian right to a state and enters into a process to eventually create one. But that would be a total repudiation of the stated policies of the current government, and unlikely to be embraced by any viable alternative coalition

Students may find themselves on rock solid ground in coming years in asking why their universities persist with investments in such a system, or companies with any sort of presence in, or business with, the Israeli settlement project in the West Bank. The pro-Israel and right-wing backlash will be hysterical and reflective of great power, but counterarguments at the universities themselves will be factually hamstrung and intellectually weak.

The rhetoric of the anti-Gaza war protests has been shaped and informed almost entirely by the boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) movement, and these protests in turn have galvanised and breathed new life into the BDS project on American universities.

But BDS proponents will be on much shakier ground whenever it insists on breaking ties with Israeli universities and especially refusing to deal with Jewish Israeli faculty. Suddenly, they will find, the moral and intellectual equation flips against them, as they will be painting with far too broad a brush and playing into the hands of those would accuse them of anti-Semitism.

But, especially insofar as they avoid academic and intellectual boycotts and stick to divestment from Israel, and especially anything to do with the occupation and settlements, this coming student movement should prove enduring and potent. It has been operating on the margins of US campuses for the past two decades, meeting with limited success among student structures but virtually none institutionally.

The main legacy of the current organising against the Gaza war is very likely to be a greatly empowered campus divestment movement regarding Israel that, despite pressure from the same pro-Israel parents, donors and politicians, university administrations will find increasingly unmanageable, effective and possibly irresistible.

By cracking down on the Gaza protests, US universities are betraying their core mission

This op-ed was published by The National on April 24, 2024

Free speech at American universities is enduring one of its most severe stress tests in decades. Israel’s war of vengeance in Gaza, precipitated by the October 7 killing spree by Hamas-led militants from Gaza, has riveted and appalled the world, even eclipsing the perhaps historically more significant Russian assault on Ukraine.

Huge coalitions of US students have united against Israel’s rampage that has targeted not just Hamas but Gaza society generally, damaged or destroyed the vast majority of buildings, and killed at least 35,000 Palestinians, mainly civilians. The slaughter has been shocking, even given the vicious savagery of the October 7 attack.

Since the end of South African apartheid, Palestine has been the most likely focal point of US student international social justice outrage. This movement was predictable and predicted. Yet pro-Israel constituencies appear taken aback by outrage at the butchery in Gaza and sympathy for Palestinians roiling American campuses, particularly at elite schools. Not since the Vietnam War have university leaders looked this discombobulated, unable to placate any faction or to credibly and creditably defend their institutions from such intense internal and external pressure.

Turmoil over Gaza has already contributed to the downfall of several major university presidents. Others, most recently the Egyptian-American president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik, have committed extraordinary miscalculations. Following several other elite university leaders, she was recently grilled by a highly aggressive Republican congressional committee, and told to take tougher action against pro-Palestinian protesters, particularly by Representative Elise Stefanik who is angling to be Donald Trump’s running mate in the coming election.

 

Ms Shafik tried to placate the right-wingers by labelling phrases such as “from the river to the sea” and even just the word “intifada” as “incredibly hurtful”, without any additional context. Upon returning to campus, she ordered police to arrest more than 100 students encamped on a campus lawn. Even the authorities appeared uneasy at the operation, with New York Police Department Chief John Chell noting that “the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner”.

This unnecessary and chilling crackdown had the inevitable effect of galvanising student protests at Columbia and elsewhere. Ms Shafik is now predictably squeezed between demands for her resignation from dissatisfied pro-Israel Democratic and Republican legislators and a pro-free-speech censure motion filed by outraged faculty in the University Senate.

University leaders find themselves trapped between two competing and crucial values: upholding the protesters’ right of free speech while simultaneously protecting a sense of safety and security for pro-Israel Jewish students.

While the protests have been almost entirely nonviolent, instances of harassment and speech that either is, or is interpreted as, hateful have left many Jewish students – like their Arab and Muslim counterparts, some of whom have even been shot – feeling shaken and unsafe. Both are left wondering if they are truly welcome at their own schools.

Meanwhile, the demonstrators are being systematically and unfairly painted as all or mostly followers of Hamas, proponents of terrorism, and violent anti-Semites. They are being generally conflated with the worst elements of the far left that have, of course, seized a golden opportunity of outbidding everyone with extremist rhetoric that dominates media attention and trying to gain control of a potent fledgling oppositional movement.

The political right, abetted by some liberals, is similarly relishing the chance to paint criticism of Israel as inherently anti-Semitic and claim that liberal-dominated universities have in recent decades created an atmosphere of casual left-wing extremism by not being more conservative. For supporters of Israel’s otherwise indefensible bloodbath in Gaza, pointing to the genuinely extreme, rhetorically violent, or effectively anti-Semitic screeds of the most radical protesters is a desperately needed means of discrediting and delegitimising vigorous opposition to the war.

Panicky universities are not just mishandling a delicate and difficult fissure. They are missing a rare and profound opportunity for academia to demonstrate its unique social role and putative worth.

Rather than arresting students en masse and denouncing them as anti-Semitic because they object to a barbaric war on top of an unjust, predatory occupation, university leaders should be embracing their institutional mission of education. Nothing is going to magically make traumas and bitter divisions evaporate. But everything necessary for universities to foster serious dialogue on a mass and highly sophisticated level is readily available.

There are countless constructive and serious scholars and advocates on both sides who are ready for such a conversation, which should most certainly include students. And the communication technology that all students, and much of society, access daily provides many excellent platforms. These forums should resonate with calm but passionate and principled voices on all sides.

While many Jewish students hear the chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” as an exclusionary call to get rid of Jews, surveys demonstrate that most Arab and Muslim students hear merely a call for freedom. No one is asking the demonstrators what they mean by such slogans. Instead, malign sentiments are being inferred or presumed. A dialogue is therefore urgently required. What would freedom from the river to the sea entail? Is anyone against freedom? Can everyone have it equally? Must an area be under a single sovereign or system to be free? Is this really anti-Semitism?

Rather than fostering such a novel and broad conversation, many universities are instead trying to limit speech, not just by arresting or otherwise punishing and maligning protesters, but also, as in the shocking and shameful case of the University of Southern California, silencing it outright.

USC cancelled the graduation ceremony speech by valedictorian Asna Tabassum because of her criticism of Israel, citing highly credible and numerous violent threats. This yet again confirms that extreme harassment and intimidation are coming from both sides. Worse, assuming its rationale is sincere, USC is effectively pioneering a preemptive and presumptive heckler’s veto.

Like Columbia and others, USC is charging headlong in the wrong direction. Rather than finding creative ways of tapping into a huge appetite, and the vast intellectual and other resources at hand, for serious, albeit difficult and potentially painful, dialogue – and thereby fulfilling academia’s socially indispensable educational mission – these schools are turning to suppression, marginalisation and demonisation of speech that offends some students, reactionary politicians and pro-Israel donors.

It’s a betrayal of the core mission of academia, a cowardly and short-sighted blunder, and a missed opportunity of epic and historic proportions.