Student unrest on American university campuses

Dr. Sudhir Kumar Das

(dasudhirk@gmail.com)

The American universities have been on fire for the last few weeks over the six-month-old Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. One section of student protestors wearing the Palestinian keffiyeh and waving the Palestinian flag protested American support for the war effort in Israel, which they term a genocide of the Palestinian people by the Jewish Israeli state. On the other hand, another section of students waving the Israeli national flag, the Star of David, demands the release of the remaining hostages kidnapped by the terrorist organization Hamas during the October 7th attack on the innocent civilian population on the southern border of Israel. The discourse in American universities has been diametrically divided over the protests. Some prefer to call it an anti-Israel and pro-Palestine protest, whereas others prefer to call it neither pro-Israel nor anti-Israel but an anti-war protest. Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has declared that the ultimate objective of the war is to obliterate the threat of Hamas permanently so that another October 7th will not happen. He has further said that deal or no deal, the IDF has prepared an elaborate plan to launch an attack on Rafah, bordering Egypt, the last bastion of Hamas. Over six months into the Israel-Hamas War, as of April 24, 34,262 Palestinians and 1,410 Israelis have been killed, over 70,000 injured and reportedly over 10,000 missing and large parts of Gaza’s infrastructure in total ruins making it the bloodiest and most devastating Israel-Arab conflict. Agitated students first protested at Columbia University, then it spread like wildfire to other universities across the US, to universities like Harvard, Yale, New York, George Washington, Emory, the University of Texas in Austin, the University of South Carolina, Barkley, and Indiana. The recent development is that the students of Columbia University have taken over the administrative block, Hamilton Hall, and named it ‘Hind’s Hall’ after the Gaza child victim Hind Rajab, who was allegedly killed by the Israeli forces. 

It is an undeniable fact that, at the initial stage of the war, nobody disagreed with the Israeli war objective of obliterating Hamas for the dastardly and barbaric attack on the innocent Israeli victims on October 7th. But nobody expected the war to continue this long, entailing such huge collateral damage in the form of human life and property as a result of the ruthless Israeli retaliation. The huge collateral damage since the war started has stirred the conscience of every right-thinking man at the utter suffering of the people of Gaza, especially women and children, let alone the university students. In an age of social media, the live streaming of a human tragedy of such a humongous nature naturally stirred the consciences of many. Historically, the students of American universities have always defied government policies, especially foreign policies, and forced a course correction. Out of many student protests in the US, there are three noteworthy instances where the American administration has bowed before the student uprising in the past and changed the policy followed then. The first noteworthy instance of student protest was during the segregation era, when blacks in America did not enjoy the same rights as whites. On April 20, 1960, four black students waited for hours in vain for food service at the F.W. Woolworth store in Greensboro, North Carolina, where the white service staff refused to serve them food for the race they belonged to. They were known as the “Greensboro Four.” They made history, and inspired by this event, many blacks stormed white-only hotels, demanding food and disrupting the normal service of these hotels. This led to the granting of equal rights constitutionally to blacks in 1965, when charismatic black leader Matin Luther King Jr. led the Civil Rights Movement. The second occasion was when the American students stood up against the government’s anti-communist war in Vietnam. On May 2, 1964, around 400 students from Columbia University, New York University, and other nearby colleges protested against US involvement in the Vietnam War, demanding the immediate withdrawal of American troops from there. In 1975, America effectively withdrew its troops from the Vietnam War, which had claimed 58,000 American lives. The other occasion when student protests forced the governments of the time to change their policies was during the anti-apartheid movement of the 1960s and 1980s. Leading a movement against the policy of apartheid practiced by the government of South Africa, the students gathered on American university campuses, pressurising the university administration to cut financial relations with the companies that supported South Africa’s apartheid policy. The movement against anti-apartheid rapidly spread to many universities, demanding that they divest from all South African-related investments. The same universities like New York University, California University, and North Carolina University that led these anti-war protests are at the forefront this time too. 

The present student protests veer around the demands of an immediate ceasefire to the conflict and humanitarian aid being allowed into Gaza so that the starvation deaths can be stopped. Their other demand is to cut all financial and technical ties with Israel. On the other hand, a wounded Israel insists on the return of the hostages taken by the Hamas after the October 7th attack to be released first. There is a stalemate as far as reconciliation between the two warring parties is concerned. The question asked here is, to what extent will the present student protest impact American policymaking towards Israel? Will the Biden administration bow before the students and abandon long-term, ironclad ally Israel, fearing these student encampments on university campuses? It sounds very unlikely. The other demand of divesting ties with Israel equally seems difficult to meet in the present geopolitical scenario as most of the tech giants in the US are dependent on Israeli expertise in developing state-of-the-art innovations in the communication sector. One of the important aspects of student movements, especially those led by students of elite institutions, as is the case here, is that they are mostly unpopular socially. The reason being obvious, the popular argument is that—why should the student, whose sole duty is to study and pursue a successful career, meddle in politics? The age-old debate “Should students take part in politics?” is a ‘chicken and egg who came first’ debate where neither side can offer a conclusive argument. However, going by the historical achievements in the USA of past student uprisings on the issues of foreign policy pursued by the government of the day, it seems something will come out of this ant-war student movement to force the government to do something differently with regard to the Israel-Hamas War. But there is another aspect to this present student uprising, it does not enjoy the wholehearted support of the people of America. Many accuse these protestors of antisemitism and threatening the Jew students on the campuses. Many Jewish students have spoken openly about how they are being singled out and misbehaving with religious and racial slurs. Secondly, some of the slogans, like “From the river to the sea, Palestine should be free,” are interpreted as a call to completely obliterate the Jewish state of Israel, which is unacceptable to any civilised society, let alone the American public. The disruption to normal academic practices in universities has also created a lot of annoyance among students who do not support these activities on their campuses. One thing is clear: how far the protesting students succeed in forcing the Biden Administration to yield to their demands will be revealed as time passes, but what has already been achieved by these agitating students is that these protests and the subsequent police actions have provided a lot of bad optics to the international media to browbeat America’s exalted claims to free speech.