More than just a war of ideas has broken out in universities across the United States. In response to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, there are protests at universities and proclamations, manifestos and accusations, which are amplified on social media. The tension leads to threats and sometimes attacks. And in the face of this unforeseen conflagration—unprecedented since student mobilization against the Vietnam or Iraq wars—trustees and donors are threatening to cut campus funding if their interests conflict.
The campus as an institution, as a living and intellectual universe, is an image rooted in the American social and cultural imagination. The war in Gaza has turned several universities into a battlefield and ideas into weapons, amid a growing inquisition: institutions are considering how to respond for fear of alienating students, professors, alumni and donors.
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The conflict is “bringing to light these divisions” on campuses, places where “you can and should disagree and disagree and talk,” says Kristen Shahverdian, who directs PEN America’s free speech program. “This work never ends, but now the main thing is to ensure a safe space for disagreement, including within social networks, which are often positive but also instruments of great misinformation,” he explains by phone. In times of crisis, schools “must not use evasive or unclear language,” although the complexity of this conflict makes everything difficult, he emphasizes.
In the Ivy League, the group of elite universities in the country, the official statements were gradually corrected. Indiana University President Pamela Whitten had to clarify her original message after highlighting widespread non-affiliated, non-partisan violence in the Middle East. Harvard’s board also amended a statement regarding “the death and destruction caused by Hamas’ attack on citizens of Israel.” Carol Folt, the president of the University of Southern California, where 3,000 Jewish students study, was sharply attacked for failing to condemn Hamas terrorism in her first message.
On the West Coast, a large group of Stanford members, including three Nobel Prize winners in chemistry and economics, criticized the initially lukewarm message from university authorities. They used the term “conflict in the Middle East” to avoid reference in an initial message to the thousand victims and more than 200 kidnappings by Islamist militants on October 7th. That university’s law school canceled classes on Oct. 20 and urged its students to connect electronically out of fear of unrest.
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In New York, a city with 1.1 to 1.5 million Jews, the largest population outside Israel, the tension is palpable. Columbia has canceled an annual fundraiser scheduled for this Wednesday due to growing division on campus. Last year’s tender raised $30 million [28,4 millones de euros]. Rector Minouche Shafik, of Egyptian origin, is in trouble because she allows protests of the opposite kind, namely “a moral and intellectual debate.” The administration has condemned in separate statements the “disturbing anti-Semitic and Islamophobic acts, including intimidation and blatant violence” on campus in recent days, but has not taken specific action against any group of students or faculty for expressing their opinions.
Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at Columbia Business School, laments the leadership’s negligence. “This is not a political question, but a question of condemning terror.” “I am very critical of Israel, I support the Palestinian cause and the two-state solution, but I also call on universities to take a clear line against organizations whose narrative has been adopted by a few hundred radicals,” he says of a protest by a pro-Palestinian group that did not respond to this newspaper’s request for comment.
“What we see is not a problem of Israel, but of the world, of civilization: we would never allow an IS deployment.” [Estados Islámico] on our campus. We saw the terror of September 11th, the terror of the trains in Madrid… It is not a political question, but a moral question of humanity against terror. If we cannot draw this line, we will no longer be able to say what is right and what is wrong,” emphasizes Davidai. A video of an impromptu speech by him during a pro-Israel protest rally was viewed a million times on social media within a few hours. He assumes he risks losing his job by openly criticizing Columbia and calling Shafik a coward, but he doesn’t care. “We have seen it in history, in Germany [en los años treinta]“Now in Russia, Iran or North Korea: If we remain silent, we are complicit,” he emphasizes.
Such calls for more dedicated positions can be heard on college campuses across the country. “The struggle of the Palestinians is not isolated, it is connected to that of all people of color,” says Anahit Kirakosian, an American student with Armenian and Mexican roots at Arizona State University, one of the country’s largest with more than 40,000 undergraduate students. Sympathizers of the Arab cause at this center canceled a demonstration called for October 13 due to tensions in the atmosphere. This finally happened last Saturday. At the protest, young people criticized Israel’s “colonial policies,” one of the elements that has resonated most with American students critical of Benjamin Netanyahu’s government.
Liberal campuses, millionaire funds
Campuses across the country are more liberal than conservative when it comes to free speech, according to an AP-NORC poll released Oct. 2. The armed conflict has strained relationships that were already on the brink. At the University of California at Berkeley, for example, the law student group Justice for Palestine drafted a law late last year banning Zionist sympathizers from speaking at its events. The war in Gaza brings a new conclusion: the majority of university supporters overwhelmingly support Israel.
The ideological tension has reached the patronage. Major donors who fund programs or departments have challenged universities over their stance on the Hamas attack and allegations of anti-Semitism. Marc Rowan, CEO of an investment bank and a major donor to the prestigious Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, has asked other donors to turn off the money. He is calling for the resignation of university authorities for allowing the organization of a Palestinian literature festival in September that he said included hateful rhetoric against Jews. Ron Lauder, heir to the Estée Lauder cosmetics empire, said he is “reviewing” his financial support.
Funders accuse Penn, as the university is called, of applying freedom of expression inconsistently. “This is not about being awake or against being awake, but about being right or wrong. “Hamas is a group that believes that all Jews must die,” Rowan said in an interview with CNBC. Another benefactor, financier Clifford Asness, wrote in a letter to Wharton this week that he had “long been dismayed by the departure from true freedom of thought” and would not consider donating until “significant changes were apparent.” Professor Davidai believes that any measure, including economic pressure, is justified to shake up university authorities.
Some people don’t get carried away by threats. Penn faculty argued in a public letter that donors pushing for the president and provost to resign were going too far. “Academic freedom is at the heart of our education and research missions,” the scientists write. “And we demand that it continues to be free from internal or external pressure or coercion.”
At Harvard, Israeli billionaire Idan Ofer and Victoria’s Secret founder Leslie Wexner cut ties with the school after student groups signed a statement blaming Israel for the Hamas attack. The outflow of funds, which has not yet been quantified, will definitely be significant, because the elite universities have enormous resources: Pennsylvania has a budget of 21 billion dollars, Harvard 50 billion.
It is no longer a matter of waiting for special treatment from their children or grandchildren in order to be admitted to the institution: large donors are now trying to modulate essential values of universities and, if necessary, dismiss their leaders as if they were the board of directors of a university corporate. The relative independence of the Rectorate to ensure the academic function is threatened by a political debate that takes the form of an economic threat.
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