"To every college president, I say: Remove the encampments immediately, vanquish the radicals and take back our campuses for all of the normal students who want a safe place from which to learn."Donald Trump, at a rally in Wisconsin this week.
I've seen this movie.
It's a coming-of-age story mixed with politics. The movie ends badly, with the election of Trump. But the students don't know that yet.
I feel lost in time travel back to my college years when I watch the news of campus unrest. Columbia University erupted in the spring of 1968, my freshman year of college. What happened at Columbia happened at Harvard the next two years, in the springs of 1969 and 1970. The universities went through a cycle of protests, police, and disruption. The political outcome apparent by the end of 1968 should have discouraged the anti-war protests of subsequent years, but it had the opposite effect. Young activists learned that the world paid attention to campus disruption and that it moved the scoreboard of public affairs
Alas, it scored points for the opposite team.
I was more an observer than a participant in the political turmoil. I loved my classes. I was there to learn things from books, not from observing direct political action and reaction. My mistake. I thought classmates who occupied the administration building were hurting the cause of ending the war because the people whose opinions mattered thought students at fancy schools were spoiled brats. I got that right.
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| Freshman year, age 18 |
I was usually "clean for Gene," with short hair and no beard. I recognized that "long hair hippie freaks" irritated old people over 30.
The demonstrations on university campuses today bring into focus the different perspectives of the generations. The holocaust shaped the view of people my age. European Jews were victims, so of course Israelis are fearful and bellicose. Young people grew up seeing a strong, modern, prosperous Israel with nuclear warheads and U.S. military and economic support. Jews in America hold positions of power, prestige, and wealth. They interpreted Israeli behavior toward Palestinians as some version of Jim Crow, with Israel the oppressor. That's what they saw, not the history I saw.
I am serene about university disruption. Young people supporting Palestine are sure they are fighting for justice and the good guys, so they organize protests. There is no surprise here. College students have the passions of young people. My hope is that college administrators can keep protesters from breaking things that cannot be repaired easily. They should try to keep the warring factions separated, but disagreement and strife is part of life.
Below are images from The Oregonian newspaper, from damage at Portland State University this week.
Students will see vandalism of their school and many of them will feel angry that their spaces have been invaded. They will learn in a way one doesn't learn from books or lectures how counterproductive some kinds of political messaging can be. People learn from the stupidity and misdeeds of others.
University administrators should try to chill out the rich alumni who are offended by what they see and hear. Assure them that they are seeing leadership getting training and experience, and that the students' views will change with time, experience, and world-weariness. Change is slow, and humans are a flawed experiment of nature. Tell those angry alumni that in 50 years some of these campus leaders will have founded great businesses and they will be the trustees and benefactors of the university. They are the future. Just wait. Meantime, realize that this is a memorable part of their college experience. They are paying for this, right along with their classes, the libraries, the sports teams, and the late-night bull sessions in their dorms.
I am not serene about the politics of campus disturbances, though. I saw what happened in 1968. The old school Democrat -- Hubert Humphrey and now Biden -- takes a middle path and urges people to make peace. That includes the parties at war and the people on campuses. They don't. Too many of the disputants think their side is just and the situation is dire. Biden cannot help but look irresolute and helpless because he will be unable to bring peace and order. If the Middle East were solvable it would have been solved. It will be an open seeping wound in world affairs, and students will observe it and protest. The Republican -- Nixon and now Trump -- says he would restore order with tough, no-nonsense police power and military force. He said he sides four-square with the powerful side in the war. Trump, like Nixon, says that he will bring an end to the war. The public, tired of the disorder, elects the Republican. If Democrats cannot bring peace and order, then let a strong man bring order through victory. Meanwhile it will give an overdue spanking to those coddled student troublemakers.
The parts are cast. A script is written. It could go something like that, again. This movie may be a remake.
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11 comments:
There's battle lines being drawn
And nobody's right if everybody's wrong
Young people speakin' their minds
Gettin' so much resistance from behind
I think it's time we stop
Hey, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down
What a field day for the heat
A thousand people in the street
Singin' songs and carryin' signs
Mostly say, "Hooray for our side"
Then, as now, I and the other students I knew were concerned about all the innocent people whose lives were being ended or destroyed for no discernible reason. And now, as then, most of the violence seems to be perpetrated by the authorities.
Yes, I know: Some say Israel is justified in it's wanton slaughter of over 34,000 Gazans in response to the attack that killed 1,200 Israelis but for some reason, the youth seem to find that out of all proportion. Let's just hope the Democratic convention in Chicago isn't a rerun.
I've been having similar thoughts and worries as you regarding this situation Peter. I'm not old enough to remember the late 60's college campus protests, but the end result of that along with the chaos at the '68 Democratic convention was an awful look, and led directly to Nixon.
The irony is that this time around Trump makes Nixon look like Mother Teresa in comparison. Anything that can be legally done to prevent Trump from reclaiming office *MUST* be done. The protestors are mad at Biden for not putting more pressure on Israel to stop the war and I get it because the slaughter that's occurred there is horrific and Israel's stated goal of completely eradicating Hamas is impossible to achieve. In the meantime what are they doing is ruining the lives of millions of people who will ultimately be more likely to support violence against Israel whether it's from Hamas or another group. It's terrible for Israeli long term security.
But the point is that however upset you are with Biden over this issue, Trump would be orders of magnitude worse and I don't know that the protestors really get that right now. Worried about Maas casualties if Israel goes into Rafah? Trump would be f***ing STOKED to see a bunch of brown-skinned Muslims slaughtered there.
While I agree that every action provokes a response, maybe things will be different this time. Maybe history will only rhyme and not repeat. Maybe organized workers will join in against the corporate Merchants of Death.
“SBWU Starbucks Workers Union) stands with students around the country and condemns the brutal attempts to suppress their rights to free speech and political protest. Labor stands in solidarity with the students this May Day.”
Students aren't just learning academic subjects; they're also developing concepts of morality and justice that form the foundation of their values. Students are responding to perceived injustice without weighing how many lives it's worth to keep Trump out of office. And they have a good point. Israel is not a poor country but we're donating $14 billion to aid and abet the ongoing atrocity in Gaza where, besides all the dead and wounded, the widespread destruction has displaced 1.7 million people who are on the brink of starvation.
Israel's actions are creating even more mortal enemies than they had before, and our participation has undermined our credibility and influence. If the political fallout is Trump's election, it won't be the fault of a few students but of those who voted for him. It couldn't be more obvious that Trump is an egomaniacal sociopath, not to mention criminal. Those who vote for him anyway are as messed up as he is.
This is crazy. There is a through line from the student disorder of the 1960s (I'm not talking about Martin Luther King) to January 6, 2021, to the present defund-Israel demonstrations. American culture needs to change; this stuff is not the way to advance a political agenda. What's crazy? On one hand, listen to Bill Myer and Lars Larson; they try to make you believe that January 6, 2021, was essentially a peaceful show of support for President Trump, despite what you saw on tv and what Vice President Pence and Speaker Pelosi experienced. On the other hand, listen to those who now insist that the campus defund-Israel encampments, the Hamilton Hall takeover at Columbia, etc., are peaceful protests; I read that people blame the police for the disorder, and it's clear to me that these apologists for the protesters are wrong--it's not peaceful when a substantial part of the student body has to stay away, as is the case with many Jewish students. By the way, Nicholas Kristof hit the nail on the head a couple of days ago in the New York Times; he said the news media are now so focused on youth protests at American campuses that we are forgetting about the needs of the Gazans whom these students say they want to help.
Sequels are rarely as good as the original movie. 1968 riots on campus against the Vietnam War were the original movie. Male students all had skin in the game, depending on their draft status. Throughout the nation families wept as their young sons came home in caskets. Youth on campus confronted the prospect of becoming a war causality. Our entire country was touched by these deaths.
This movie today, if you will allow me to carry the analogy, has a different theme, the appearance of gross injustice in the Middle East. How novel! Nothing new here. Where are the protest songs to enliven the mood. Why just there? Why just now? It's an old rerun with a grandparent's theme. The rhetoric seems manufactured angst.
In this movie, I see Israel, a nation we helped create in 1947 as a Jewish homeland, using the weapons we supplied to wage all out war on a population of Palestinians. It's as if an offspring committed mass murder with a weapon we provided! That is the theme for the movie this time around.
This time it's different on campus too. The police a showing restraint. College Presidents are calling for and allowing non-violent protest and dialogue. 24/7 new streams have a steady stream of new and watchable world and local events beyond student protests.
What happens in November is unknown but there are different players involved today. The shine is off student protests and riots. These events will cast a shadow but there are so many shadows gathering it's difficult the see the true threat at this moment. Perhaps distraction is the goal?
Trump could (undeservedly) benefit from similar dynamics to 1968, yes. The 2024 Democratic convention is even in Chicago, and upheaval there could be powerfully symbolic now as then.
The fault, if so, lies with the modern Left, however. Today's Democrats, including--or especially--Joe Biden, are kowtowing to the worst elements of the intersectional leftist base.
The Oregonian online today has a photo piece headed, "Walk-through of Portland State University's library after three-night occupation reveals damage: 'It's ugly'". Ugly, indeed, and quite telling too.
The wanton, gratuitous vandalism and ruin is vile enough. So is the graffiti messaging, e.g.: "ANY form of anti-imperial resistance is justified". In other words, including the 10/7 butchery.
(Israel goes as "West").
"ACAB" (All Cops Are Bastards), "BLM", and the circled capital "A" for Anarchy also feature prominently on the trashed PSU library walls, from the ersatz "pro-Palestinian", coff coff, "protesters".
Bottom line: most Americans of whatever persuasion do not believe that America and the West are a nonpareil geopolitical horror, to be burned down and ruled by zealots who recall Khmer Rouge thugs.
Democrats rationalize and even abet such thugs, starting in the academy. Radical yet deterministic egalitarianism, with social "justice" defined at the lowest common denominator. New autocrats atop?
I am not as sanguine as Peter is about these demonstrations.
Demonstrations broke out within days after the atrocities committed by Hamas on October 7. Those demonstrations put all of the blame for those atrocities on Israel. Black Lives Matter of Chicago posted an image of a paraglider with a slogan supporting the Palestinians (the Hamas terrorists who perpetrated the massacre at the Nova music festival arrived on paragliders). College professors called the Hamas attack “awesome“ and said they were “exhilarated“ by it. Thirty student organizations at Harvard published an open letter putting all of the blame for the events of October 7 on Israel. All of this happened immediately after the Hamas attack, and weeks before Israel took any military action in Gaza.
The current wave of college demonstrations is fueled by hard-core anti-Israel activists who acted as described above, and a large mass of what Vladimir Lenin called “useful idiots“ - well-meaning students acting out of total ignorance of the actual details of the situation. When asked which river and which sea they are chanting about, many of these students respond with sheepish bewilderment, apparently never having considered those questions, much less what the answers might be. There is an unmistakable undercurrent of antisemitism fueling the hard core; you just have to listen to the glee with which they chant about globalizing “the intifada”, which was a wave of 140 terrorist suicide bombings that targeted public transit buses, cafés, and pizzerias in Israel.
These demonstrations arise out of a completely inappropriate mapping of the far left’s understanding of American race relations onto the conflict in the Middle East. Jews and Israel are seen as “white colonialist oppressors,” while Palestinians are seen as “oppressed people of color”. Every single detail of this analysis is wrong.
* Jews are indigenous to the area, and were living there well before there was ever such a thing as an Arab. There has been a continuous Jewish presence in that area since biblical times. Jews did not “colonize“ the area.
* Over half of the Jews in Israel are Mizrahi Jews, who are descended from the Jewish refugees of 1948, and were expelled from the Arab countries in the area after Israel won its 1948 War of Independence. There were more of those Jewish refugees than there were Arab refugees from that war who became what are now called the Palestinians. Mizrahi Jews are every bit as much “of color“ as the Arabs who wrecked to their lives in a fit of antisemitism after the 1948 war.
* Israel took in its Jewish refugees and made them a functioning part of a prosperous society. Arabs kept their Arab refugees in horrible refugee camps and molded their misery into a weapon against Israel.
Students all over the country are being trained/indoctrinated in this erroneous left wing view of the conflict by disproportionately left wing faculties at all of our major higher educational institutions. Alumni and donors and trustees have every right to look with disfavor on the prejudicial and functionally antisemitic environment created by these far left faculties, and to take effective action to correct the situation.
Where were those students on October 7th? Where was their condemnation of what Hamas actually did that day? In the days, and weeks after, they had plenty of opportunities to take action, but did not. They did nothing until Israel retaliated.
Where was the condemnation of Hamas by the UN? The media? The President?
Whatever happened to zero tolerance for the violence back then.
Most of these protesters today have absolutely no clue about Palestine, Jewish history, and why or how both Christianity and Islam rose centuries ago. First there were the Jews, then Christianity, and then Islam.
There was no Palestine back then, or anytime afterwards, except for the British mandate that defined this region of Jews, Muslims, Arabs and Bedouins.
After WW II, the UN created Israel for the Jews. And non-Jews, and Jews lived there side by side.
I'll leave it to others to explain what happened after that.
Our students today are so dumb. They'll be the people running the US in years to come. Or perhaps not at all.
Low Dudgeon raises a good, if one-sided, point: protesting violence with violence is counter-productive. Unfortunately, there are zealots on both sides of just about any issue all-too-willing to resort to it. By far the majority of the demonstrators have been peaceful, but that hasn't stopped the police from using tear gas and firing on them with rubber bullets. The most violent clash so far has been at UCLA, where a right-wing mob attacked pro-Palestinian protesters, resulting in a number of injuries.
Protest founded our nation and is a right. It'd be nice if they could all be non-violent, but mass movements seem to attract knuckle-draggers of every persuasion seeking a good melee.
These college protestors are using the religious wars to misbehave, much like looters during the social justice marches.
Prison for all of them.
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