CNN
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The dramatic protests on campus have injected a new element of incendiaryness into an election year that already threatens to push national unity to breaking point.
Tensions escalated late Tuesday following an operation by the New York City Police Rapid Service team to retake the Columbia University campus from pro-Palestinian protesters, resulting in scuffles, arrests and canceled classes on at least 25 campuses in 21 states. .
The protests, sparked by the terrible civilian casualties of Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, are now exposing the country’s ideological divisions and new political trends. America was already nervous that a former president, and perhaps a future president, was on trial. And if the protests drag on, the election season could worsen and political defection in the country could worsen.
Hundreds of people were arrested during demonstrations across the country. Most have been peaceful, but there has also been property damage and some heavy-handed enforcement in Texas, for example. “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” protesters chanted outside Columbia University’s Hamilton Hall on Tuesday, a phrase many Jews consider anti-Semitic. At Brown University, however, university officials and protesters reached an agreement that led to the disbandment of a protest camp on campus.
The nationwide protests have sparked a historic wave of young progressive Americans embracing the Palestinian cause like never before, stirring political pressure that could challenge long-established bipartisan support for Israel. It highlights the possibility of a moment in time. But they have also deepened anti-Semitism in American society and traumatized many American Jews who feel threatened in their own country.
The protests are a new test for President Joe Biden, who is seeking re-election after the war in Gaza has caused deep rifts in his fragile electoral coalition. The growing dissent highlights how Biden needs to stop an Israeli military offensive in Rafah, Gaza Strip, which would have killed scores of civilians and sparked more protests in the United States. There is a possibility of concentration. The Israeli response has already killed more than 34,000 people in the Gaza Strip, according to the Gaza Strip’s Ministry of Health. A president torn between doing what he believes is in the US national interest (in this case, the defense of Israel) and his own political obligations is in a dangerous position. Especially for a president who has six months left to ask voters for a second term. And if protests spread and Biden threatens to lose control of the country, the political fallout could be devastating.
Meanwhile, footage of protest encampments and student choruses has become a gift to Republican candidate Donald Trump, who paints a dystopian picture of a nation racked by unrest. His narrative adopted by conservative media is misleading, but powerful in the hands of such a skilled agitator.
On Tuesday, for example, Trump piled on the responsibility for the sitting president. “We have to stop the rampant anti-Semitism in our country right now. Biden has to do something,” he told Fox. “Biden is supposed to be the voice of our country, but he’s certainly not much of a voice,” the former president said. He has been accused of using anti-Semitic tropes in his past campaign ads and placating white supremacists, such as white supremacists and far-right groups. Proud Boys.
The demonstrations also mark a new front in the escalating culture war over education. Republicans, long fond of bashing elite universities, see populism as energizing their base and paving the way for crushing the pipeline of ideas on the left.
At the same time, university presidents struggle to balance their principles with controlling ultra-progressive elements in student bodies that embody the mission of higher education by questioning the status quo. However, it is causing fear among some students and effectively destroying the university. Stop.
And fears of left-wing extremism are growing as some protest movements adopt Hamas- and Hezbollah-like rhetoric, refusing to acknowledge the Hamas terrorist attack that killed 1,200 people in Israel in October. ing.
The protests are at a critical moment.
Will they start to disappear as the school year ends and students return home? Or will it flare up even more intensely in the fall, when classes resume after a long, hot summer and the country is expected to experience even more political instability in the weeks following the election?
Republican Rep. Elise Stefanik is a leading figure in the deepening political backlash against campus protests. New York Republicans frequently tout President Trump’s democracy-threatening falsehoods about 2020 election fraud. But the Harvard graduate made a critical intervention in a House hearing last year in which several Ivy League presidents made surprisingly vague statements about the surge in anti-Semitism on campus after the Gaza war. revealed that.
Stefanik was at the side Tuesday of House Speaker Mike Johnson, who launched a new effort to skewer Biden and Democrats over the campus riots after visiting Columbia last week and calling for the intervention of the National Guard. “This is a moral rot that is entrenched throughout American institutions of higher education,” Stefanik said.
Mr. Johnson vowed to use the broad powers of the Republican majority in what appears to be a coordinated effort by political parties to replace university officials. “Antisemitism is a virus, and we are seeing it flourish because governments and woke university presidents do not intervene,” Johnson said. “We must act, and House Republicans will speak with moral clarity about this fateful moment. We sincerely hope that those in the White House will do the same.”
There is a long history of Republican attempts to capitalize on campus unrest. Ronald Reagan ran for governor of California in 1966 promising to “clean up the mess in Berkeley” and accused the Vietnam War and civil rights protests of having more to do with riots and anarchy than academic freedom. did. President Richard Nixon often criticized student demonstrations against the war and once called university radicals who opposed his policies “sons.”
The current Republican attack on campus protests is not surprising. The demonstrations now pit the Democratic Party against the activism that defines its DNA and what unstable moderate voters (even those who disagree with Biden’s handling of the war) perceive as liberal extremism. The case has divided party leaders who understand the potential dangers ahead. In an election year. It took Democrats years to largely neutralize the political impact of demands to defund the police that emerged during the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.
Still, there is hypocrisy in the Republican approach. Republicans have spent years complaining that free speech on campuses is under threat and conservative causes and speakers are being excluded. Now, as students are exercising the same right to protest Israeli policies, Republican leaders are calling for a crackdown and demanding that university leaders call in outside police to evict protesters. ing.
Republicans are also trying to use the student movement drama as a shield to downplay their candidates’ own extremism. President Trump has already criticized the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where marchers chanted “Jews will not replace us” and one person died. He says that it is insignificant compared to these student movements. “There are very good people on both sides,” the former president said, and he was criticized for not condemning extremists and anti-Semites strongly enough.
Key party leaders disagree about what actually happened when Trump’s supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in an attempt to stop the certification of Biden’s victory. In the midst of this, there is a possibility that violent scenes at protests could play into the hands of the Republican Party. On Tuesday, footage of protesters using hammers to enter a Columbia University building was played on a loop on conservative television. And President Trump, speaking outside the New York courtroom where his own criminal trial is being held, called out protesters as well as hundreds of his supporters who were convicted of violently attacking the Capitol. requested to be handled. “Will it be the same kind of treatment they gave J6?” Trump asked.
So far, this unrest is incomparable because there is no student mob trying to destroy American democracy. But the former president’s arguments are persuasive to millions of supporters and will only complicate Biden’s position on the protests.
Campus protests so far have not matched the scale of the Black Lives Matter demonstrations and marches that took place in cities across the U.S. and abroad after the killing of George Floyd by a white police officer in 2020. . the civil rights movement and Vietnam War protests of the 1960s and 1970s; But because these national movements were small to begin with, there are precedents for student movements to expand, and the rallying power of social media now allows them to create a sense of common purpose among marchers hundreds of miles apart. can.
University of Kansas history professor David Farber told Paula Newton on CNN International on Monday that Vietnam-era protests “often started small.” Although they were often dismissed as fringe people, or crazy people, their anti-war movement really ignited, and students played a major role in it. And ultimately the tide of American public opinion turned against the Vietnam War. ”
The student radicals of the mid-2020s are no strangers to politics. They are the generation that endured the horrors of high school shootings, had their lives shut down during the coronavirus pandemic, and went on strike during the Black Lives Matter era.
It may not be a coincidence that student-led pro-Palestinian protests are occurring in a year when an 81-year-old white man and a 77-year-old white man are competing for president. Neither Trump nor Biden has the same appeal to young voters as John Kennedy or Barack Obama.
At the same time, some student protests have been modest in scale compared to the universities they target, and it is unclear whether the protesters truly represent an entire generation on the cusp of a political awakening. .
Still, young voters’ anger over the war is having a profound effect on the president’s reelection. A CNN poll found that a majority of registered voters nationwide are dissatisfied with Biden’s handling of the war, with 81% of voters under 35 disapproving. A more specific survey of 18- to 29-year-olds published by Harvard University suggests a more nuanced view of the war in Gaza. About a fifth of the cohort believes Israel’s response to the October 7 attack was justified, while 32% think it is not. The majority have sympathy for both Israelis and Palestinians. But the Israeli-Palestinian crisis lags far behind issues like inflation, health care, housing, gun violence, jobs, and protecting democracy in terms of importance to young voters.
Still, November’s election is likely to be a close one, and young voters who have defected from Biden or are simply disinclined to participate could play a big role in the battleground states that choose the next president.
