The Vietnam War sparked a massive mobilization at U.S. universities based on the fight for civil rights. Since then, few events have been on the scale of the Gaza war, which shares some key elements with it: the idea of a powerful army subjugating a helpless population; the generation gap (young Americans are more pro-Palestinian than their elders); the conflict as a catalyst for broader trends and finally the consideration that resistance to the war was a just cause in both cases.
But there are also many differences. That of race, the first. In the 1960s, campuses were largely white, while today's campuses have many more students of other races who see the Palestinian struggle as a final form of resistance to colonialism. The demonstrators against the war in Gaza also echo criticism of the police brutality against African Americans that shocked the United States in 2014 and 2020. But even in the racist protests of the last decade, the demonstrations did not reach the level of polarization and violence of the current ones, in which the accusation of anti-Semitism has become a casus belli added to the war.
Today's anti-war protest differs from that promoted by the Beat Generation and the hippie movement of the 1960s because it finds itself confronted with like-minded people: Jewish students who say they feel afraid of their own classmates and their calls uncertain about the Intifada. Tensions have spread from the bottom up, reaching university leaders and fueling a political storm a year before elections. And it goes further: A federal investigation is examining whether a dozen centers, including some of the most prestigious in the country, violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin. by allowing anti-Semitic demonstrations.
Just like the demographic composition of the campus locations, the political pressures and demands on the rectorates also varied. The first, supported by many donors, put the presidents of the universities of Pennsylvania and Harvard and MIT in an untenable situation, to the point that the first, Liz Magill, resigned after one of them threatened to give up a fund to deduct from 100 million dollars. Harvard's Claudine Gay is still in trouble not only for not explicitly condemning hate speech expressed on her campus during a congressional hearing; also due to allegations of plagiarism, which forced him to revise several articles. The image of the third party, Sally Kornbluth, adorns, like gays, banners and posters with disqualifying legends. The controversy over alleged anti-Semitism is the Republicans' new heresy hammer.
Omer Bartov, professor of Holocaust and genocide studies at Brown University – which, like Pennsylvania and Harvard, belongs to the exclusive Ivy League – provides an overview of the background to the debate. “Since the election of President Donald Trump in 2016, there has been a general polarization of political opinion. This polarization has also found its way into universities. In parallel, there is a growing tendency to silence or even ban the opinions, speeches and writings of those who hold viewpoints that contradict one's own. This has happened on both the political right and the left and has manifested itself primarily in conservatives banning speech and writings that criticize American history and racism, or liberals banning such speeches and writings that contain the terms and use terminology that is considered offensive or inappropriate. The first was observed in several schools in Republican states; The latter has become common in many liberal universities.”
Student-organized protest against the Gaza war in New York on November 9th. JUSTIN LANE (EFE)
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Gaza's protest movement is largely decentralized but has ties to national platforms such as the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights, the country's largest. “We have seen students lead our communities across the country. Despite attempts to silence them, students continue to organize and advocate for an immediate ceasefire and a free Palestine. We proudly support their work,” explains a spokesman. The Internet offers protesters inspiration and sometimes advice. In 2014, when the death of an unarmed black man at the hands of police brought thousands of people to the streets in Ferguson, Missouri, for days; Palestinian Americans took to social media to recommend how to protect themselves from tear gas. Nine years later, at the University of California, Santa Barbara and elsewhere, black and Latino students are at the vanguard of the pro-Palestinian movement.
Joey Ayub, who is of Palestinian-Lebanese descent and editor of a podcast about the conflict, wrote last week that young Americans tend to see the Palestinian cause as a sister issue to the fight for racial justice. According to the author, there is a “visual parallel”, an image that is easy to assimilate: that of a soldier or a police officer dominating a space inhabited by an oppressed population, be it in a West Bank city or in one Majority Black neighborhoods in the US also claim that 2014 was a pivotal year for younger generations of Americans' understanding of the conflict, because that summer, when protests broke out in Ferguson over the death of the African American, an offensive against Gaza was launched The so-called Operation Protective Edge killed around 2,250 Palestinians and 73 Israelis. The networks' advice on how to use tear gas was “something symbolically very powerful,” he remembers.
The end of the semester and the Christmas holidays seem to have returned to calm on campus, but only apparently. In Columbia, New York, it's not hard to find Palestinian flags, even at a fraternity headquarters. At Harvard, the excitement came from people outside the university in mid-December. The fact that Colombia has managed to escape the noise – despite being the epicenter of mobilization in the first days of the war – is thanks to initiatives that combine prohibition and dialogue: including a new specific debate forum on the conflict against the prohibition of two pro-Palestinian groups groups for violating the rules allowing demonstrations (none of them have responded to this newspaper). More than a few are wondering how long it will take for Columbia, one of the universities targeted by the federal investigation, to fall into the turmoil sweeping other campuses.
Israeli Shai Davidai, a professor at Columbia Business School and one of the first to denounce the Rectorate's inaction, assures that in practice nothing has changed despite the above measures. “Last month, the university suspended two pro-Hamas organizations from campus. On the 8th, the university issued a statement due to pressure from the congressional hearing [tres días antes]that calls for violence and genocide violate the norms of the institution. On the 11th he announced that a planned protest was not authorized and therefore would not take place, but on the same day the unauthorized protest took place,” he says emphatically. “It was organized by the two organizations that had allegedly been suspended and involved chanting slogans inciting violence, something the university says it rejects. In short: nothing is being done about it. “As we saw in the shameful congressional hearing, universities today are run not by executives but by lawyers,” he denounces.
Lack of context
Davidai is referring to the appearance of the presidents of Pennsylvania, Harvard and MIT before the House Education Committee on December 5, during which they were insulted by Republicans, particularly Elise Stefanik. The fame of the representative of the most extreme faction of her party has damaged the reputation of the three women and tarnished the image of the institutions, but her speech was an exercise in political opportunism. “There is little doubt that when asked, representatives like Elise Stefanik, who has expressed sympathy for the so-called anti-Semitic grand replacement theory and coddled the most radical factions of the Republican Party, had no interest in combating anti-Semitism.” the heads of the universities. Stefanik not only pursues her own political ambitions, but also seeks to expose universities as bastions of the radical left elite that censors any other opinion,” explains Bartov, who warns to “be careful about censorship on campus.” At the same time, we protect students and teachers from hate speech, hate speech and intimidation.”
Israeli-born Professor Bartov believes that the rectors' equidistance from showing compassion to all victims and pleasing everyone (professors, students, donors) “only made things worse.” He gives the example of the three rectors before the congressional committee: “Instead of expressing their own views clearly and directly or declaring their inability to make public statements on political events in other parts of the world, they opted for it.” legalistic language that completely undermined their authority as leaders of major institutions.” Furthermore, Bartov adds: “Even at elite universities like Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, as well as my own, Brown University, the violence of the Student protests against Israeli politics and the no less vehement attacks against these protests as anti-As Semites, they often lack a real understanding of the complexity of the situation on the ground in Israel and Palestine.”
A few examples will suffice: many of the young people who use slogans like “From the river [Jordán] Palestine will be free to the sea” [un lema que los estudiantes judíos consideran un llamamiento a la expulsión o el genocidio]You don't know what exactly the expression refers to. According to a recent Economist/YouGov poll, some believe the Holocaust is a legend. According to Harvard's latest CAPS-Harris poll, two-thirds of voters ages 18 to 24 believe that Jews as a class are oppressors and should be treated as such. 67% of those in this age group confirmed that the principals surveyed in Congress have done more than necessary to combat anti-Semitism on campus, compared to 62% of all respondents, where the three women were very far from doing so. According to the survey, one in five young Americans believe the Holocaust is a myth.
The “official” definition of anti-Semitism
Professor Omer Bartov assures that, in addition to the context of political polarization and culture wars, there is another factor that explains the root of anti-Semitism (or what some sensibilities call anti-Semitism). “For years, the successive governments of Benjamin Netanyahu and elements of the Jewish right elsewhere in Europe and the United States have argued that any criticism of Israeli policies, particularly the occupation of Palestinian territories, is anti-Semitic. This was intended to protect Israel from exposure of its oppression of millions of Palestinians in the occupied territories. Many governments have adopted the “working definition of anti-Semitism” formulated by the IHRA [siglas en inglés de Alianza Internacional para la Memoria del Holocausto], which describes certain anti-Israel speech as potentially anti-Semitic. This has led to both a silencing of criticism from those who fear being falsely accused of anti-Semitism and a confusion between actual anti-Semitism, which has undoubtedly increased in recent years, and a growing public awareness of objectionable Israeli policies. , which has also grown.”
Compliance with this uniform definition can be seen, for example, in Germany, where the government in Berlin closed Israel without, however, expressing criticism of the military offensive against Gaza. Many others are torn between censorship and self-censorship, but does the issue threaten free speech in the United States? “Some pro-Palestinian students would say this is the case. There have been cases of students being arrested or universities trying to ban certain types of demonstrations. But.” [las prohibiciones] They have relied heavily on disruption of university life or incitement. In general, despite the intense rhetoric from both sides, I do not believe that Jewish students are unsafe on American campuses, as the Israeli media sometimes enthusiastically reports, nor that there is oppression of students, as other media outlets have claimed – Palestinian voices or a persecution of Arab and Muslim students, despite some horrific incidents, such as the shooting of three Palestinian students a few weeks ago in Burlington, Vermont, including a Brown University student.
As for the climate of insecurity that some Jewish students denounce on campus, “I think it is a misperception, but there have also been cases of real anti-Semitism that should not be ignored,” Bartov clarifies.
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