Zoom-in 2: Campus Protests in the US (April 17-May 2024)
Last updated: June 18, 2024
Perhaps the most noticeable form of dissent towards American policy on the Israel-Gaza war to date was a series of Gaza solidarity encampments and protests on university campuses that peaked over April and May. Over 150 universities worldwide had encampments, more than 100 of which were in the United States.1 The Guardian described these protests as “perhaps the most significant student movement since the anti-Vietnam campus protests of the late 1960s”.2 The protestors themselves alluded and sometimes explicitly referred to the 1968 protests.
Although students had protested in solidarity with Gaza on campuses from early on, few of these demonstrations drew public attention in the first months of the war.3 The campus protests began drawing far more attention in the context of the Columbia encampment and the university’s forceful attempts to remove it in mid and late April. In response, students erected encampments on many other campuses. These encampments often took the form of students putting up tents on campus and holding a position with signs and flags for days or weeks, periodically holding events such as talks or classes, demonstrating and chanting. On some occasions students also took over buildings. As a decentralized movement, encampments in different universities had different demands but most shared sharp criticism towards Israel, especially in context of the war in Gaza. One common student demand was that their university divest from companies that profited from Israel’s occupation, or Israeli companies. Other demands included breaking ties with Israeli institutions of higher education, stopping research that supports the military, supporting Palestinian students or universities, calling for ending military support to Israel, or calling for ceasefire.4
The protests were mainly an elite college phenomenon,5 at least partially because those universities had larger endowments that could be invested and were more likely to have international connections that included those with Israeli universities, but also perhaps because poorer students at other institutions had other concerns.5 The elite universities and in particular Columbia University also drew more national attention and had an outsized influence on the perception of the campus protests. The media coverage surrounding these protests was often politicized (see section on media above). An analysis of 553 protests found that 97% of them did not cause serious interpersonal violence (physical violence above pushing or shoving) or property damage (breaking a window or worse). Nearly half of the 3% of protests categorized as violent became so because demonstrators fought with police forces that were sent to clear encampments. Property damage was found in two cases.6 Serious clashes between protestors on both sides took place only in UCLA, where video evidence showed pro-Israeli counterprotestors attacking the encampment.7 Police waited for a few hours before separating both sides, resulting in dozens of injuries among protestors in the Gaza encampment.8
Most university administrations opposed the encampments, being pressured by both politicians and their donors. Political pressure was most obvious in a series of hearings in which elite university presidents were brought to Capitol Hill and forced to answer questions about their university policies, mostly surrounding antisemitism and protecting their students.9 At least two university presidents later lost their jobs as a result.10 Prominent donors used their donations to apply pressure to universities, publicly or privately threatening and sometimes actually pulling their support.11 The protests also fed into local politics. At least in the case of New York, a group of dozens of business elites attempted to influence the city’s mayor to use the police to deal with protesters in Columbia.12 Such pressure was likely felt within university as well. As a result of this pressure, many university administrations actively tried to repress student protests in different ways, commonly by using police and campus security who were overwhelmingly associated with using violence on campus. Viral videos from campuses showed heavily armed police forces using rubber bullets and tear gas to disperse protesters.13 Physical violence was also prevalent, with students and faculty getting beaten up by the police, sometimes on camera.14 As a result, over a month of protests at least 3,025 people were arrested in 61 colleges and universities.15 Many others were suspended or expelled from their universities. Faculty members were among those arrested as well, sometimes using excessive force.16 On many other occasions, university administrations chose less explicit means to deal with the protestors and their voices. These included, for example, moving to online teaching,17 keeping police on campus,18 moving ceremonies out of campus, or canceling valedictorian speeches.19
Some university administrations eventually negotiated with students, sometimes reaching an agreement that fulfilled some student demands.20 In many other cases, however, universities did not change their policies towards Israel/Gaza. Some universities preferred to resolve the issue by declaring that they would no longer comment on political issues not central to university functions.21 The end of the academic year and the departure of many students from campuses for the summer ended almost all active protests, although in many cases students protested in various end-of-year activities such as staging walkouts of their own graduation ceremonies,22 raising Palestinian flags or symbols or associated signs,23 or demanding the cancellation of graduation ceremony speakers.24
Coverage and reactions
Instead of dealing with the protestors’ demands and grievances, media coverage was sensationalized.25 Public attention was drawn to a few examples of incendiary language or signs, as well as to a more general discomfort or lack of personal safety a minority of students felt on campus. Much of the public debate surrounded allegations of antisemitism, often neglecting the fact that a significant portion of the students organizing and participating in the encampments, as well as supportive faculty, were Jewish themselves.26 In the US, the protests led to a bill that aimed to define antisemitism with a broad definition that included criticism of Israel (the bill passed in the House in May).27
Israeli voices weaponized the antisemitism in both international and domestic discourse. Internationally, Israel’s Prime Minister put out a widely covered video address in English in which he described the protests as “antisemitic” and “horrific”, comparing them to rallies in German universities in the 1930s (i.e. as the Nazi party rose to power): “Antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities… They call for the annihilation of Israel. They attack Jewish students. They attack Jewish faculty”.28 Netanyahu subsequently described students who chanted “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” – a relatively common call in protests – as “supporting genocide” and linked it to the “sorry state of American education… there’s a deep rot and bankruptcy there”.29 In Israel, the campus protests were framed as a form of antisemitism and covered far more superficially.30 Israel Today, the most widely circulating newspaper in Israel, dedicated its front page on April 25 to “Antisemitism Around the Globe” with a dark photo of a demonstration of people waving Palestinian flags covering most of the page. The subtitle read “[Jews] fearing to speak Hebrew, incitement in the media, and police incompetence… a terrifying reality”.31 A lead to the next page presented readers with a solution (“Despite everything, there is only one place to Jews in the world [today]”, i.e. Israel).31
Beyond a debate on antisemitism, US media outlets were concerned with the presence of non-students within the protests and their organization, although little evidence was presented to support these claims. A similar question concerned who was “behind” the protests, which appears to have been asked more commonly in conservative-leaning media. A Wall Street Journal opinion piece, for example, claimed with no evidence that the protestors were “groomed” by Hamas, Hezbollah and the Houtis.32 Other right-wing commentators blamed George Soros for them.33 Israeli media had similar concerns, decrying for example the “billions of dollars” with which Islamic countries such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar bought influence in American universities.34 A third theme of Israeli coverage, aimed primarily at domestic Israeli audiences and almost completely absent from US media coverage, presented American student protestors as ignorant about the real situation in Israel/Palestine and naïve towards Hamas in particular.35 This talking point was amplified by the work of an initiative heavily promoted by pro-Israel elites.36
The public discussion touched upon Israeli academia as well. The Association of University Heads in Israel (VERA) put out a statement in which they voiced their “deep concern” regarding “the serious cases of violence, antisemitism and anti-Israeli washing through the campuses of many leading American universities, with the support of Palestinian organizations including terrorist organizations”. They proceeded by stating that they would help Jewish and Israeli scholars and students who desired to come to Israeli universities “and find here a personal and academic home”.37 In May, Israel launched a well-funded program to bring Israeli ex-pat and Jewish scholars to the country because of “an unprecedented wave of antisemitism” by offering them generous grants.38