Arrest of pro-Palestinian students adds fuel to the fire at elite American universities

Dozens of students were arrested Monday on the campuses of Yale and New York University. They have since been released, but from Berkeley, California to Cambridge, Massachusetts – home to Harvard and MIT – university authorities are bracing for new protests.

Calls from politicians and American elite universities to calm the emotions surrounding the war in Gaza seemed to add more fuel to the fire in recent days. The spark for the latest protests was the arrest of about a hundred pro-Palestinian students who had pitched their tents in the middle of the campus of Columbia University in Manhattan.

When Minouche Shafik, the chancellor of Columbia, deployed the police against student activists (for the first time in fifty years), she received pushback from numerous students and professors. They accused her of obstructing freedom of expression and the right to protest. The tents she had removed soon returned and the protests spread to other universities and to the streets around campus.

There, pro-Israeli counter-demonstrators testified how some pro-Palestinian demonstrators intimidated them. Some students no longer felt safe, so the New York University decided to continue classes online for a few days.

“Intimidating environment”

The administrators of America’s most prestigious universities are in dire straits. As long as Israel’s invasion of Gaza lasts, protests will scar campus life, disrupt classes and mar academic celebrations. But donors, politicians and some students and academics blame the universities for their inability to curb excesses. Especially on the Republican side, there is great enthusiasm this election year to portray the bastions of the progressive intellectual elite as hotbeds of derailed activism.

The latest developments at Columbia show how delicate the task of the rectors is. Shafik, a famous economist and experienced manager, took flight last week. Republican members of Congress grilled her in Washington over her handling of anti-Semitic incidents during pro-Palestinian protests. Previously, her colleagues at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) had come under criticism for their evasive answers to Republican questions. Both eventually had to resign.

Shafik didn’t go out of his way in Washington. Anti-Semitism is unacceptable at Columbia, she stated plainly. But her authority waned at university when she had the pro-Palestinian tent camp cleared a day later. According to her, this created “an intimidating environment.” However, the Columbia student council ruled that it is punishing the protesting students because they are practicing the values ​​that this institution holds dear and that they have learned here.”

In the days that followed, critics who had sounded the alarm about anti-Semitism saw their point confirmed. During protests in the streets around campus, demonstrators shouted, according to video reports and testimonies in the student magazine Columbia Spectator, “go back to Poland” and “burn Tel Aviv to the ground” towards Jewish students. Another protester held up a sign with the message “Al-Qasam’s next targets (the military wing of Hamas, ed.)” next to a bunch of pro-Israel counter-protesters.

It was indicative of the “unsafe” atmosphere, a pro-Israel student told the newspaper Columbia Spectator. “For the past six months they have been singing: ‘We don’t want Zionists here.’ Now they openly say: ‘Go back to the gas chambers.’” Who is and is not a student among the hateful shouters is often unclear. Numerous Jewish students who participate in the pro-Palestinian protests say they feel safe.

“Anarchy”

From Washington, the Republican members of Congress whom Shafik had defied last week, dismissed her again. “In recent days, Columbia has been engulfed in anarchy,” wrote Congresswoman Elise Stefanik. “As leader of this institution, one of your most important moral and legal objectives is to ensure that students have a safe learning environment. By all accounts you have failed in this.”

It is unlikely that Stefanik and her Republican colleagues will drop the issue. It is politically advantageous for the right to shine a spotlight on pro-Palestinian demonstrators who oppose the policies of Democratic President Joe Biden and on the unrest their protests cause.

Some Democrats think back with concern to 1968. Then, as now, an unpopular Democrat was in the White House. Progressive opposition to the Vietnam War and dismay over the assassination of Martin Luther King provoked large protests, up to the Democratic convention. Ultimately, it was Republican Richard Nixon who took advantage of the social unrest and became president with a ‘law and order’ campaign.