Student protests will shape American thinking on social justice

The ongoing unrest among students over the Gaza war may have reached a fever pitch. Yet American student activism against Israeli policies may be just beginning.

This semester is coming to an end. Israel’s rampage in Gaza appears to have left one major target: Rafah. And the astonishingly self-destructive behavior of the Columbia University administration will soon be studied by others as an objective lesson on exactly what not to do unless you want protests to be encouraged and amplified.

But perhaps the biggest reason is that the opportunism of the political left and especially the right on this issue has probably reached a point of diminishing returns on both sides.

The confrontation began over a peaceful student encampment of about 100 students on one of at least a dozen lawns on the Columbia campus. The students demanded a ceasefire, an end to US support for Israel and, crucially, that the university get rid of companies that operate in or work closely with Israel.

The university had the choice to simply ignore the students, or even try to meet some of their demands. But the political right sensed this election year as an opportunity to argue that liberal-dominated universities had laid the groundwork for so-called “anti-Semitic” protests by being too liberal.

When Columbia President Minouche Shafik was summoned by right-wing members of Congress, a radical fundamentalist congresswoman asked her if she was concerned that Columbia would be “cursed by God” because of anti-Israel protests. Unfortunately, that absurd question was probably good politics in his district.

Feeling political pressure from powerful national rightists, some parents and wealthy donors, Dr. Shafik asked the police to intervene and arrested 100 students who, the police confirmed, may have technically committed the offense but who did nothing did anything other than calmly express their opinions. This cowardly action may have been enough to appease pro-Israel parents and donors, and shield the Columbia government from further right-wing attacks, but it was a colossal blunder in terms of limiting the protest movement.

The students were tied up, arrested and processed, but quickly released on trespassing charges. Most immediately returned to their encampment, which they naturally promised to keep indefinitely. Similar protests spread across the country.

Columbia students began negotiating with administrators about the encampment, but talks broke down, especially over divestment. Some students suspected that the university was planning more mass arrests and took over an administration building. The university decided to call the police again.

These students are now being charged in some cases with burglary and other extremely excessive charges that are unlikely to stand. But between the “crackdown,” the end of the semester, and the final stages of Israel’s major operations in Gaza, this series of protests may have come to an end.

Yet the Palestinian cause has almost certainly emerged decisively as a matter of international social justice for the current generation of American students. Unfortunately for campus administrators, this problem is highly unlikely to go away in the short to medium term, and could potentially flare up even more dramatically in the future.

For all the rhetoric about the horrible war, Israel’s brutality, and the almost unimaginable number of Palestinian civilians, especially children, who have been deliberately murdered in Gaza, the divestment movement is likely to be the next phase of a long campaign on American campuses. As anti-apartheid fervor gripped campuses in the 1980s, many universities adopted rules banning investments in entities that did business with those who practiced apartheid, without specifically mentioning South Africa.

The opportunities for student activists, and the nightmare universities that will struggle to cope in the coming years even without the Gaza war, are built into that policy. After all, it is difficult to look at the social, economic and political system maintained by the Israeli occupation army, especially in East Jerusalem and the West Bank, and argue with an honest face that it cannot accurately be described as ‘apartheid ‘.

The only effective way to do this would be to argue that this is a temporary military occupation to be resolved through future negotiations. But given that this has been going on since 1967, and that the policy of the current Israeli government is to eventually annex large parts of the West Bank and never allow the creation of a Palestinian state, it is claim of a ‘temporary’ status is intellectually, factually and legally unfounded.

That could all change if Israel suddenly recognizes the Palestinian right to a state and begins a process to eventually create one. But that would be a total rejection of the current government’s policies, and is unlikely to be embraced by a viable alternative coalition.

Students will be on solid ground in the coming years as to why their universities continue to invest in such a system, or companies that have any presence or business with Israel’s West Bank settlement project. The pro-Israel and right-wing reactions will be hysterical and powerful, but the counterarguments in the universities themselves will be effectively paralyzed and intellectually weak.

The rhetoric of the anti-Gaza war protests has been shaped by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and has reinvigorated the BDS project in American universities. That movement will be on much shakier ground when it insists on cutting ties with Israeli universities and especially refusing to do business with Jewish-Israeli faculty. Suddenly they will find the moral and intellectual equation turning against them, as they will paint with far too broad a brush and play into the hands of those who would accuse them of anti-Semitism.

But especially to the extent that they avoid academic and intellectual boycotts and insist on divestment from Israel, and especially anything related to the occupation and settlements, this coming student movement will prove lasting and powerful. It has operated on the margins of American campuses for the past two decades, having limited success among student structures but virtually no institutional success.

The main legacy of the current uprising against the Gaza war will most likely be a powerful campus divestment movement against Israel, which, despite pressure from the same pro-Israel parents, donors and politicians, university administrations are increasingly out of control, and possibly will find irresistible.

Published: May 3, 2024, 12:40 PM