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Is this the week that the US campus protests peaked?
The combination of police clearances, inter-factional violence in Los Angeles, politicians weighing in and the end of the academic term suggests it may well be – at least in its current phase.
The movement has certainly left a mark on US politics – and may do so again later in the year.
A student movement is always difficult to sustain during the long summer months when there are few students on campus.
Apart from graduation ceremonies over the next fortnight, there are few opportunities for drawing attention – which is the main point of a protest.
Whether it will regain strength in the autumn depends on the situation in Gaza at that time.
Even without student protests, a continuation of the current situation in Gaza into the autumn will be a negative factor for Joe Biden’s re-election prospects.
Or perhaps what we have seen on the college campuses may morph into something else – a different, highly-charged protest movement targeting the presidential nomination conventions in July and August.
“These are radical left lunatics. And they’ve got to be stopped now, because it’s going to go on and on and it’s going to get worse and worse.”
The Chicago police have been concerned for some months about the likelihood of protests at the Democratic Party Convention in the city in August.
As the incumbent, Mr Biden is the most vulnerable to the perception of chaos that could ensue.
The charge has already been levelled at him by his Republican rival Donald Trump, who has accused him of being weak and allowing chaos on the campuses of America.
Mr Trump and other conservative voices have been highly critical of the student protesters – and that criticism has found receptive ears among that half of US society that has not been to college – the blue collar workers who these days form the big voting block supporting the Republican party in general – and the party’s current standard bearer, Mr Trump.
Mr Trump had praised the police for clearing university campuses, saying of the Columbia University incursion by the police: “It was a beautiful sight.”
This has chimed with coverage on conservative supporting media such as Fox News, one of the earliest stations to cover the protest movement as it sprang up in New York’s Columbia University.
Comment on the station has usually been critical of the students taking part in the protest, many commentators calling for a police crackdown and criticising Mr Biden for not intervening. And remember, most of its audience are not college graduates.
The same with the New York Post, a breezy tabloid newspaper also owned by Rupert Murdoch, which caught the sentiment among a significant block of the public early and has also been critical of the protesters – dubbing them “anti-Israel protesters” and supporting a “law and order” approach.
University leaders have also been strongly criticised by conservative-leaning media, who see the protests as a manifestation of a “woke” culture encouraged by academics in the nation’s elite centres of higher education – a long running theme that resonates with the Trump voting half of the population.
Yesterday, a New York Post editorial targeted the colleges, saying: “Fact is, these schools’ ability to attract the most promising students is sinking: by failing to wrangle their radicalised students as they wreak havoc, grinding campus life to a screeching halt, they’re pushing every parent to doubt they are worth the $90,000-a-year list price (not to mention what they are costing the taxpayer when they finally ask the NYPD to restore order).
“All NYU and Columbia are contributing to the city right now is chaos. The legislature should be talking seriously about getting the ball rolling on ending their tax breaks. Someone needs to push them to start cleaning up their acts and, and stop bringing shame to New York City.”
“People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.”
Mr Trump himself addressed the issue in one of his periodic stops at the media pen on the 15th floor of the New York criminal courts building, where he is currently on trial.
He said: “Just so you understand, this is the radical left. This is a movement from the left, not from the right. The right is not your problem, despite what like law enforcement likes to say.
“The FBI director said that he worries about the right. Don’t worry about the right.
“The right’s fine. Worry about the left, because this is a movement from the left. These are radical left lunatics. And they’ve got to be stopped now, because it’s going to go on and on and it’s going to get worse and worse.
“And, you know, they take over countries, okay. And we’re not letting them take over the USA. We’re not letting the radical left morons take over this country. You can’t let that happen.”
His rival in the presidential election, Mr Biden, broke his silence on the student protests the same day in an address from the White House, in which he tried to perform the balancing act between contending rights – the right to free speech and assembly – and various other rights that people and institutions enjoy.
In a televised address from the Roosevelt Room, he said: “It’s a matter of what’s right. There’s the right to protest but not the right to cause chaos.
“People have the right to get an education, the right to get a degree, the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.
“But let’s be clear about this as well. There should be no place on any campus, no place in America for antisemitism or threats of violence against Jewish students.
“There is no place for hate speech or violence of any kind, whether it’s antisemitism, Islamophobia, or discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans.
“It’s simply wrong. There is no place for racism in America. It’s all wrong. It’s un-American.
“I understand people have strong feelings and deep convictions. In America, we respect the right and protect the right for them to express that.
“But it doesn’t mean anything goes. It needs to be done without violence, without destruction, without hate, and within the law.”
Mr Biden is under fire from the left of his own party over his strong support for Israel – a stance that has also alienated important voting blocks: young voters and African Americans.
But the Republicans are also seeing divisions in their party:
The radical right lining up with the Democrats radical left members of the House of Representatives to oppose a bill intended to crack down on antisemitism and hate speech on college campuses, to drive a wedge between centrist Democrats who back the president’s support for Israel and his simultaneous efforts to bring about a ceasefire, and left wing Democrats who have backed the student protesters.
The bill, which passed in the House of Representatives on Wednesday, defines antisemitism in federal law for the first time, and could lead to the withdrawal of federal funding from universities that fail to restrict students from making a broad range of statements, including “denying the Jewish people their right to self determination”, and claiming that Israel’s existence is “a racist endeavour”.
Seventy Democrats and 21 Republicans voted against the bill, which was proposed by New York Republican Mike Lawler.
Conservative Christians in the House
Religious conservatives among Republican House members argued that the bill would criminalise some parts of the bible.
Some conservative Christians among house members say they firmly believe that Jews killed Jesus Christ.
Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Green – one of 21 Republican House members who voted against the bill – said she opposed it because it could be used to “convict Christians of antisemitism for believing the gospel that says Jesus was handed over to Herod to be crucified by the Jews”.
Florida representative Matt Gaetz was another opponent on the far right of the Republican Party, saying on social media: “The gospel itself would meet the definition of antisemitism in the bill.”
Republican representatives Paul Gosar and Andy Biggs of Arizona, Chip Roy of Texas and Lauren Bobert of Colorado were also opponents, as were left wing Democrats Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan, and Pramila Jaypal of Washington State.
The Senate had passed a version of this bill back in 2016, but opposition is starting to emerge now to the newer version, especially to the stated intent to chill speech on college campuses and fears it could clash with first amendment rights on free speech and religious freedom.
Contrasting approaches to protests
In city politics, too, the student protest movement has produced radically different approaches within the same party – notably with the contrasting approaches of the mayors in New York and Washington DC.
The Democratic Party Mayor in New York City Eric Adams – a former police officer – was an enthusiastic proponent of a clampdown on the protests at Columbia and some smaller colleges – urging Columbia’s governors to make a decision to call in the police.
What particularly disturbed him, he said in TV interviews, was the presence of a significant group of “outside agitators” – nonstudents who had entered the campus and mixed in with the student protesters.
Ever since 9/11, the New York Police Department (NYPD) has developed a very strong counter terrorism role, and with it an intelligence operation that plugs them into national databases.
At the start of the week, the NYPD said it had received information that a number of what it described as “professional agitators” had travelled to New York City to get involved with the student demonstrations.
The NYPD intervened on Tuesday night in response to a group of protesters occupying one of the university buildings on Columbia’s campus.
On Thursday, the police department released lists of the people it had arrested at Columbia and City College.
Of 284 people arrested on Tuesday, 134 of them had no affiliation to either college.
Of 112 arrested at Columbia, 80 were students there, 32 were not.
At city college, 170 were arrested, of whom only 60 were affiliated with the college.
One of the nonstudents arrested at Columbia was named in newspapers as James Carlson, aged 40, who was described as a “longtime figure in the anarchist world”.
He has been charged with burglary for unlawfully entering a university building. He has a previous arrest record in San Francisco.
Mayor Adams – an African American – said he was proud that police officers had taken down a Palestinian flag flying from one of the university buildings and replacing it with an American flag, adding: “It was despicable that schools would allow another country’s flag to fly in our country.”
According to the New York Times, a key voting block for Mayor Adams in a tight electoral race has been Orthodox Jews.
The same demographic has been strongly courted by Republicans in New York, who are defending hard won Congressional seats in this strongly Democratic state.
Mayor Adams referred to the college encampments as “anti-Israel protests”.
The Jewish community in America is a small part of the population – about 2.4% – but is heavily concentrated in New York, Los Angeles and Miami – three big cities in three big electoral college states with big media markets that can amplify political messages from otherwise small segments of the population (such as Cubans in Florida).
In tight elections, support from small groups can make a big difference for candidates.
Arab Americans are an even smaller, newer part of the US population, and have only one geographic cluster of note – in Michigan, a state Mr Biden simply must win in November’s election if he is to stay in the White House.
A bigger numerical threat to his political survival is young voters, who are the most alienated part of the 2020 coalition that delivered the White House to Mr Biden – and African Americans. Both groups disapprove of the president’s policy on Gaza.
In the nation’s capital, the mayor is another Democrat and African American, Muriel Bowser, a rising talent in the party who was considered a potential vice-presidential pick for Mr Biden in 2020.
Last weekend, she stopped police from going onto the campus of the rather posh George Washington University and breaking up a student camp there.
The DC Metropolitan police also let it be known they did not want to do the job as it could have been “bad for the optics” if a potentially heavy-handed clampdown just 800 metres from the White House, especially now that term has ended and students are melting away from this expensive – and soon to be unbearably humid – city.
The local politics are much more convivial for Democrats.
A Republican Party presidential primary was held in DC at the beginning of March, with polling in a single hotel ballroom. Nikki Haley won with a resounding 29-point victory over Mr Trump.
So, there is little competition for votes between the parties.
That is not the case in Wisconsin, one of the battleground States.
Mr Trump was campaigning there on Wednesday, the usual break day in his New York criminal trial.
The same day at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the cops started to forcibly clear a student pro-Palestinian protest from the university campus.
Milwaukee in Wisconsin will host the Republican Party convention in July.
A lot of commentary on the student protests have invoked the anti-Vietnam war protests of the late 1960s, which rocked campuses across the US and changed the political direction of the country – by ushering in the presidency of Richard Nixon, and the entry into politics of Ronald Reagan as governor of California.
Presidents not protesters
While the anti-war protesters garnered the TV images, press analysis and near mythical status, the political beneficiaries of those student protests were arguably the political conservatives.
Mr Biden was not a protester either back in the day.
In his autobiography ‘Promises to Keep’, he wrote about seeing students occupy a building when he was a law student.
He said: “They were taking over the building. And we looked up and said, ‘Look at those assholes.’
“That’s how far apart from the antiwar movement I was.”
George W Bush was another student who did not get involved in the Vietnam-era protests but did end up in the highest office in the land.
For the pro-Palestinian protesters, students and non-students alike, their potential impact on Mr Biden’s policy on Israel/Gaza might just be enough to return Mr Trump to the White House – the president who moved the US embassy to Jerusalem.
For student protesters and party politicians alike, it may be an opportune moment for a time out to ponder the ancient warning to be careful what you wish for.
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