Campus Protests over Gaza Part of a Proud Tradition
Contention is raging over the rectitude of university protests over the Israeli military campaign in Gaza.
I speak as a veteran of student protests since the Black Power boycotts at my high school in Cincinnati Ohio following the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968. I went on to participate in Black Power and anti-Vietnam War campus protests in the 1970s at Akron University, and the campaign to divest Washington State University from its stock holdings in companies doing business in South Africa, as a graduate student in the 70s and 80s.
From this vantage point I wish to separate the question of the propriety of the protests over Gaza from the propriety of the acts taken by some of the student protesters.
The fact that students feel compelled to protest is a good thing. It is a teachable moment for an issue of enormous complexity which is gut-wrenching for people on all sides of it. The conflict fleshes up issues of two peoples claiming the land as their ancestral home. It raises uncomfortable questions of settler colonialism and dispossession, terrorism and the right to self-defense, and yes even genocide.
Let's not forget that protests calling for a ceasefire have been going on in the streets and before chambers of all levels of government since the month after the Israeli offensive began. It is noteworthy that Jewish activists, especially Jewish Voice for Peace, have been prominent in those campaigns.
Campus protests calling for a ceasefire, as well as Boycotting, Divesting from and Sanctioning Israel (BDS) have grown over the months. US government complicity in the crimes against humanity occurring in Gaza have been in the spotlight. And the refusal of Biden to threaten ending military allocations to Israel if it won't accede to a ceasefire make him look weak.
Many university administrations, tied as they are to defense contractors and Zionist donors, have abandoned their obligation to offer a space that is physically safe, simultaneously protects free speech, affords students deep knowledge of a complex historical situation, and even training in non-violent direct-action protests.
While responses to encampments and the most aggressive protests have been confused and ham-handed, a handful of administrations have responded with calm like they were the grownups in the room. See the processes at Northwestern, the University of Minnesota and some other schools where administrations have engaged in negotiations with students over stockholdings, the ceasefire, and the Palestinian and Arab presence on campus among other issues.[1]
For their part, students have made a splash with their demands and building encampments on campuses. But they mustn’t think that universities can make weighty decisions about a ceasefire and their stock portfolios overnight. These issues can only be tackled through deliberate and gritty negotiations. Students can also become the educators. In the Vietnam War and South African divestment eras, students held teach-ins examining the issues and giving attention to a wide range of their historical, sociocultural and political dimensions.[2]
Once the media splash of building occupations and tent encampments have drawn attention to their issues, students need to engage in negotiations, return to classes and allow the rest of the campus community to get on with business as usual. By remaining encamped or occupying campus buildings, they prevent the university from operating effectively, turn less activist sympathizers against them, and take the spotlight away from Israeli atrocities in Gaza.
From the students at North Carolina A & T who began the civil rights sit-in movement in 1960, to the lonely anti-Vietnam War protesters in 1965, to those who began to call for South African divestment in 1977 (after South African student protesters were gunned down in 1976), students have often lit the spark that led to humanitarian social change.
This time the students have joined the cacophony of voices from civil society pressuring their institutions to pressure the US government to pressure Israeli to stop its genocidal campaign in Gaza. Simultaneously, however, the US must pressure Hamas to release the hostages and recognize the right of Israel to exist. Then both sides must be forced to enter negotiations for a long-term settlement involving a just, humane and secure peace for both peoples.
If Israel will not agree to US terms they should face the loss of military assistance. If Hamas fails to comply, they should face annihilation and the annexation of Gaza by Israel. Then of course a sovereign Palestinian state in the West Bank would have to forced upon Israel as the price for genocide and their annexation of Gaza.
Sleepy Joe! Wake up and smell the coffee!
[1] Adrian Florido, Weekend Edition Saturday, May 4, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/05/04/1249166920/students-at-some-campus-anti-war-protests-are-reaching-agreements-with-universit
[2] Ayesha Rascoe, Weekend Edition, May 5, 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/05/05/1249135170/usc-dean-reflects-on-leading-anti-apartheid-student-protests-in-the-1980s
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