From New York to Los Angeles, university campuses in the United States look like riot zones these days. Student protests against the Gaza war are spreading across American campuses, with more and more universities requesting police to step in. They have not yet reached the levels seen back in the 1980s when campuses rallied against the apartheid regime in South Africa or in the 1960s when the Vietnam War led to nationwide protests. Yet, protests against the Gaza war have become the biggest students' movement in the 21st century, paralysing the functioning of top-notch universities such as Columbia, UCLA, Princeton, Yale, Ohio State, Emory, the University of Texas and the University of Minnesota, to name a few.
The recent wave of protests were triggered by the arrest of more than hundred protesters at Columbia on April 18. Two weeks later, police officers in riot gear moved into the the university, cleared a building occupied by students and arrested more students. Similar police action and arrests have been reported from across the country.
While pro-Palestine protests have been reported from universities across the world, in the US, their scale and scope have been huge. The high profile protests in Columbia and the subsequent police action may have got something to do with it. Columbia being an Ivy League university located right in the heart of New York City gives it a wider national as well as global reach, making it a trigger for protests in other parts of the US.
Another reason behind the intense wave of protests is the heavily polarised political situation in the US, which is in the middle of a presidential election cycle. The Republican versus Democrat divide is clearly visible. Among the Republicans, who are facing a fierce internal battle between extreme MAGA elements and mainstream Conservatives, the campus protests have come as a uniting factor. Among Republicans across the spectrum, there is staunch support for Israel and they are vociferously opposed to student protests. Republican leaders have been targeting university presidents for not doing enough to quell the protests and they accuse mainstream universities of being sanctuaries for the radical left. They also blame university administrations for not reining in anti-Semitic tendencies and protect Jewish students. Harvard president Claudine Gay and University of Pennsylvania president Elizabeth Magill were forced to resign after fierce criticism of their institutions' response to the Israel-Hamas conflict a few months ago. Columbia president Minouche Shafik is under immense pressure to resign. She was summoned by the Republican-led Congressional committee on education on April 17 for a hearing on her university's “response to anti-Semitism”. Shafik called in the police that night itself to remove protesters from the campus.
Among Democrats, things are more complicated. While a large majority of the Democratic leadership are avowedly pro-Israel, there is a significant and influential minority which is opposed to the Gaza war and is supporting the student protests. “They are protesting this war,” said Pramila Jayapal, who chairs the progressive caucus in the House. “We have a long history of doing that in this country with students on campuses and I think it would be great if President Biden lifted up that history.”
Along with Jayapal, many other progressive leaders, such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have expressed solidarity with the students, saying the protests were part of free speech protected by the American constitution. They have also called for sanctions against Israel and divestment from companies doing business with it. “The worst thing that you can do is send in police to violently escalate what is going on,” said Ocasio-Cortez, who visited Columbia protesters last week. But that view is not shared by centrist Democrats. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, for instance, said smashing windows with hammers and taking over university buildings could not be called free speech. “It is lawlessness and those who did it promptly face the consequences that are not merely a slap on the wrist,” he said.
This division within his own party has turned into a major challenge for President Joe Biden in his re-election campaign. Essentially, the student protests are directed against his policies on the Gaza war, but he has been largely silent on the issue. Biden's last public comment came on April 22 at an Earth Day event. He spoke against anti-Semitism and also criticised “those who don't understand what's going on with the Palestinians”. It was clear that he was trying to adopt a safe, neutral stand. But the balancing act may not work for long. Unless his administration can manage a temporary pause in fighting by working out a new hostage deal between Israel and Hamas, the campus situation could deteriorate and hurt Biden's chances.
If the protests are not addressed soon, it could affect youth votes for Biden and hurt his reelection prospects. While Biden led Trump by around 25 points in the 2020 elections among voters under 30, opinion polls have shown that the lead has come down to less than 10 points this time. Young voters overwhelmingly oppose Biden's handling of the war. And nearly 60 per cent of them believe that the country is on the wrong track. But most of them are unlikely to vote for Donald Trump, Biden's presumptive Republican rival. Most of them may, however, choose to boycott the polls, which could give Trump the edge in key battleground states. On May 1, the College Democrats of America, a pro-Biden, centrist outreach group of the Democratic Party, endorsed campus protests. The group said it was important to stand up for the rights and dignity of the Palestinian people. “Each day the Democrats fail to stand united for a permanent ceasefire, two-state solution and recognition of a Palestinian state, more and more youth find themselves disillusioned with the party,” said a statement.
The issue could affect not just the youth vote, but also Arab American and Muslim American votes, which have always been reliably pro-Democratic. If a section of those voters opt to boycott the polls, it could create a big problem for Democrats in key battlegrounds such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
Finally, the protests and Biden's style of handling it could alienate the progressive, liberal, educated section of voters, which is a solid Democratic bloc, especially in the cities and suburbs. It could also affect his standing among independent voters.
Republicans are using the issue to argue that Biden has abandoned the longstanding bipartisan consensus about offering Israel unconditional support on all issues. They also allege that the president has not been able to maintain order and curtail the chaos caused by the protesters. Trump has called the campus protesters raging lunatics and alleged that they were hired by left-wing groups to turn the attention away from the crisis on the southern border.
Democratic strategists, meanwhile, believe that a large majority of the young voters are solidly behind Biden. College students, in their assessment, form only a small section of the youth population. For the rest of the young voters, economy and abortion rights are even more important issues. As a Politico report observes, “The protesters are a subset of a subset of the electorate, one that's drawn a disproportionate amount of media coverage compared to its actual political clout”. Gaza, Democratic strategists believe, is not a critical issue for the rest of the voters.
History offers some lessons about campus protests getting out of hand in an election season. There is clearly the precedent of student protests affecting the presidential election in 1968 when Democratic incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson was forced to drop out of the primaries and quit his re-election campaign following widespread campus protests against the Vietnam war. Johnson was devastated to hear slogans such as, “Hey, hey LBJ, How many kids did you kill today?” He just could not take it anymore and chose to give up, although many other reasons, too, contributed to his decision to quit. Johnson's vice president Hubert Humphrey managed to win the Democratic nomination in his absence, but he lost in a landslide to Republican candidate Richard Nixon. It offers valuable clues to Democratic strategists to tweak their efforts in getting the president reelected in November.