Front Burner - The growing wave of campus protests

Episode Date: April 29, 2024

 On April 17th, pro-Palestinian protesters set up an encampment on the lawn of Columbia University in New York, calling for a ceasefire in Gaza, and for their administration to divest from ties to Israel. The next day, their university’s president called on the NYPD to clear the encampment. They arrested more than 100 students. That event caused an eruption of solidarity encampments, protests, and faculty walk-outs at colleges and universities across the U.S. Now, the encampments and solidarity protests have spread even further — including at McGill University in Montreal, and universities in Europe and Australia.Today, we’re going to talk about why students in multiple countries feel compelled to face arrest or suspension for this movement — and why others feel the protests are creating a dangerous climate that is fueling antisemitism.Our guest is Arielle Angel, editor-in-chief of the magazine Jewish Currents.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Jamie Poisson. Free, free, free Palestine! Free, free, free Palestine!. From California to Michigan and along the East Coast, college campuses erupting in protest.

Cal Poly Humboldt is closed right now. Protesters continue to occupy a building. So if you have been anywhere near a TV or the internet in the past couple weeks, I'm guessing that you have heard about the pro-Palestinian encampments that have been spreading across U.S. university campuses and now across the world, including a McGill University in Montreal this weekend. The group spontaneously began arriving today near the McGill library inside the main gate on Sherbrooke Street and set up tents

and other installations, warning the administration of McGill and Concordia not to be complicit in what they call the genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. You've probably also heard about the reaction to these protests. We need NYPD back on this campus for bringing the national park. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations against the war in Gaza have been happening on U.S. campuses since October. But the escalation we're seeing right now really started 12 days ago, on April 17th at Columbia, an Ivy League university in New York. Hundreds of students set up tents on the main lawn of the university and called for the school to divest from corporations doing business with Israel or profiting off of the war in Gaza. I'm here today

because I'm a Palestinian student and I can no longer bear that my school refuses to recognize that over 33,000 Palestinians have been killed. We will not be leaving from our position until our school divests from all funds that are going to this genocide. This happened at a moment when Colombia was already in the hot seat over its handling of pro-Palestinian activism. That very same day, the university's president, Manoush Shafiq, was being grilled at a U.S. congressional hearing.

She faced accusations that her university was allowing Jewish students to be harassed on campus. Anti-Semitism has no place on our campus, and I am personally committed to doing everything I can to confront it directly. The following day, Thursday, April 18th, President Shafiq called on the NYPD to break up the Gaza solidarity encampment on campus. She said that the students posed a clear and present danger to the functioning of the university.

They arrested at least 108 students, the largest number of students arrested at Columbia since the Vietnam War protests of 1968. Many of the students were also suspended and some barred from returning to their dorms. NYPD Chief John Chell later said that the clear and present danger was identified by Columbia, not by the NYPD. He said that there was no violence or any injuries associated with the encampment,

and that, quote, the students that were arrested were peaceful, offered no resistance whatsoever, and were saying what they wanted to say in a peaceful manner. But that was not the end of it. Not even close. By Friday the 19th, a new encampment had sprung up at Columbia, and students at other universities, including many of the most elite schools in America, began staging their own rallies and encampments. Chaos erupts on the University of Texas at Austin's campus during a pro-Palestine protest Wednesday afternoon. Tonight, more clashes between police and protesters in Bloomington.

At UCLA, a pro-Palestinian protest is about to start. At Harvard, students race to set up tents. There was a walkout today at the University of Illinois, and the encampment at the University of Michigan is growing. At many universities, faculty also staged walkouts or joined the protests. Suddenly, these demonstrations weren't just about Gaza. They were about academic freedom and freedom of speech. Have you thought that every philosophy department office in Jerusalem might get arrested?

Philosophy department? Yes. I am a professor, everyone! I am a professor! I'm an economist! Of course, there are many people who do not like what these students are doing or the things they are saying or the climate these protests are creating. Many Jewish students say they don't feel safe on campus. Some say they've been harassed and in at least a couple of cases say they were assaulted or witnessed an assault. I wear a Star of David necklace.

One of them taunted me by waving a Palestinian flag in my face and jabbed me with it in the eye. My brother was assaulted. Someone came and grabbed his Israeli flag and when he ran to go grab it back, he was surrounded by a mob. People threw things at him. They threw a rock at his head. And certain chants used by some of the student groups have wildly

different meanings to different people. From the river to the sea, end Zionism. To some, those are calls for a pluralistic one-state solution, where Jews and Palestinians live with equal rights in the entire area of historic Palestine. To others, they are hate speech, a call to ethnically cleanse Jews from Israel. Then there have been senior Republican senators, including Senator Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who have characterized the protesters as violent mobs who support terrorism and called on the Biden administration to use federal law enforcement to clear the encampments. Senators Tom Cotton and Josh Hawley last Monday called for the National Guard to be sent to campuses. The demonstrations have also been condemned by some Democrats. Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman called them anti-Semitic, unconscionable, and dangerous.

He wrote on X, add some tiki torches, and it's Charlottesville for these Jewish students. Many universities across the U.S. have now called in police to try to clear the encampments. In some cases, they have used force. At Emory University in Georgia, police reportedly deployed rubber bullets and tear gas. Video also shows three officers there restraining a protester in handcuffs on the ground and then tasering him. On Saturday, protesters at McGill University set up an encampment there and called for both McGill and Concordia universities to divest from funds connected to Israel. There are also encampments and other protests in solidarity happening at universities in Europe and Australia. And there's no sign right now that

this campus movement is about to let up. So today, we're going to talk about why students in multiple countries now feel compelled to face arrest or suspension for this, and why others feel this is a dangerous climate fueling anti-Semitism. And we're going to do that today with Arielle Angel. Arielle is the editor of Jewish Currents, which is a long-running magazine focused on the ideas and culture of the Jewish left. Arielle visited the Columbia encampment last week and spoke to protesters there. And another reason that we wanted to talk to her is that Jewish people make up a significant portion of these organizers and demonstrators, even though they are not the majority opinion within the Jewish American community. Arielle, hi. Thank you so much for coming on to FrontBurner.

Hi, thanks for having me. So last week you went twice to interview students at the Columbia encampment. And before we get into specifics, just in general terms, how would you characterize what you saw? What was the vibe? What were the students doing? Well, Jamie, I really have to stress that I was sort of nervous about what I might find just based on what I was seeing coming out of X and on the news. I really didn't know what to expect. And I was blown away by what I saw when I got to the campus. It was a really welcoming space, very calm. the students were very organized they've been putting on programming alternative programming including dance performances cultural performances and you know trainings about anti-semitism for example I was there on Monday night for the first night of Passover for a Seder it was you know a

Seder that would have been recognizable to the majority of American and Canadian liberal Jews, you know, kind of going through the traditional steps while also adding in supplemental readings about justice and liberation. It was mostly Jewish students, but also a number of non-Jewish students from the encampment sitting around enjoying the Seder. a number of non-Jewish students from the encampment sitting around enjoying the Seder. I heard somebody asking their friend a question like, is this what Seders are normally like? And another student sort of quieting down the rest of the encampment when they were getting too loud to hear the Seder leaders. Really all in all, a very sweet environment, to be honest, and sort of wholesome. I mean, there's no drugs or alcohol in the camp. The kids are not partying, you know, even though they're college students. They're very focused on what they're doing there, you know, educating themselves and

one another. There's a lot of speeches, a lot of speakers. I didn't hear anything that I would consider to be anti-Semitic. And not only that, I just didn't see anything that was threatening, you know? I mean, it was really just people, you know, young people being together and expressing their solidarity with Palestine. So I do think it's probably important for us to address right away that even though you might not have seen anything while you were there, there have been videos of people outside the gates of Columbia shouting at Jewish students that they should go back to Poland, for example. Yeah. There was another one. Hamas, we love you. We support your rockets to burn Tel Aviv to the ground. This is all outside the campus. There are groups within the anti-war or like anti-imperialist left who I would consider fringe who do show up to protests. And usually, you know, when the protests are extremely large, those people are just totally drowned out because, you know, the overwhelming majority of people in this movement are not going to chant that. They don't want to.

And I just would stress to people that you cannot judge the students by people outside the gates who are looking to co-opt their movement. And in fact, that's what the students have said over and over again and put forth in their own communications. have said over and over again and put forth in their own communications. Having said that, there have been some reports of incidents on campus, too, right? So, or involving students. So, for example, one of the student organizers of the protests at Columbia, it came to light that they had remarked on a video in the past that they believed, quote, Zionists don't

deserve to live. And since then, they've said that they were wrong in making that statement. There was another incident reported on by The Spectator, the campus paper, where a group of pro-Israel counter-protesters on campus were playing music and waving flags, and someone approached them with a sign that read Al-Qassam's next targets, that had an arrow pointing at them, and Al-Qassam's next targets that had an arrow pointing at them. And Al-Qassam Brigades is Hamas's military wing. Yeah, I saw an interview with a Jewish student who said his brother had a rock thrown at his head during that.

So what do you make of those incidents? I haven't heard anything about rocks being thrown, frankly. And I think if that had happened, it probably would be bigger news. But I don't want to comment on that specifically, just because this is the first time that I'm hearing that. I think that we have to remember something. And I'm not saying this to excuse the students, but they are young people, very young people. Some of them are teenagers, 18, 19 years old. And I think there is a worrying strain of perhaps childish interpretation of thinkers like Franz Fanon and what they consider to be a decolonial politics that frankly strikes me as eliminationist or at least zero sum. I don't, maybe eliminationist is not the right word, but zero sum where it's either

Palestinians or Israelis, but we can't imagine a future with both. And, you know, frankly, like this isn't even what Hamas is saying at this point. Hamas wants to join the PLO and, you know, they've sort of seemed to have to confront in the long term in terms of whether they allow this tendency to flourish, this frankly unrealistic tendency to flourish, in my opinion. But I also just want to stress that this is not what the encampments are about. The encampments have very narrow demands, specifically about divestment and about the presence of police on campus. And they also have very strict principles about non-engagement, for example, with counter-protesters and about limits on speech that would be considered bigoted towards any group. And I think overall, the students are really abiding by that

and sticking with these narrow principles. And at least from what I've heard and seen from student organizers. And I think it's actually frustrating to see, for example, an entire article in the New York Times about one teenager and some very imprudent, offensive things that he has said, and nothing that actually engages in good faith with the just demands of the students, which is that their schools stop profiting off of war that has thus far killed tens of thousands of Palestinians with, you know, countless more missing and almost a million on the brink of starvation. You know, we really have to look at the ways that these things are reported. And it starts to feel a little bit like there is a broad movement to discredit the students because there is an investment in the power structures saying

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You mentioned that the organizers, they have standards around language and what would be considered. Can you just give me an example of what they're telling you? Like, what are those standards? What are they talking about? Well, I mean, basically, to be honest with you, I just want to be clear, I'm not a student organizer. I'm a journalist. And I don't want to insert myself too much in the ways that this is playing out on campus because I don't have the up-to-the-minute information on that. What I do know is that there are principles that are specifically in there, you know, you can see them in the encampment, that specifically speak about if there are Zionist counter-protesters, that they are to be ignored, essentially.

They've done multiple de-escalation trainings in the encampment to diffuse instead of stoke or escalate clashes between the two groups. And we've also, by the way, seen attempts at provocation, too, from pro-Israel counter protesters. You know, and we saw, for example, I think it was Northeastern this weekend that the police were brought in to arrest students because they said somebody yelled, kill the Jews. And it turned out to be the pro-Israel protest, counter protesters. Yeah, that is. Yeah.

At Northeastern. At Northeastern. So I know that as part of the negotiations with Columbia, the students adopted a commitment to restricting, you know, all kinds of bigoted or anti-Semitic speech within the encampment. The students readily did that because they insisted that that was already part of their mandate on campus. And I just want to say also that to say that the students are working these things out, it's not to say that there's no anti-Semitism within the encampment. All of our leftist movements contain all of these isms because they are microcosms of this imperfect world that we live in. I'm sure that there is racism within these

encampments. I'm sure that there's Islamophobia within these encampments. And particularly because this is a movement that is focused on Israel-Palestine, and there has been a broad conflation of Jews and Zionism, which is also, frankly, pushed by the broad mainstream Jewish establishment, you are likely to see anti-Semitism. It's not that these things don't exist. But again, I think that actually overall, the students have resisted those conflations and have invited Jewish students who welcome their cause and are part of that movement to be a part of it. And those Jewish students actually influence the movement as well. They have a voice in basically building the space that they want to see in the encampment. You mentioned before that you were at a Seder. What have the Jewish students at the encampment told you about why they decided to participate? I think that they, I mean, look, they decided to participate because they believe that Palestinians should be free.

Many of them are on their own journeys of unlearning things that they learned in day schools and growing up in very pro-Israel communities. And they believe that their schools should not be complicit or financially invested in weapons of war that are used against Palestinians. It's really that simple. And I think, you know, it's worth pointing out that Jewish students have always been a part of movements for justice, and this is no exception. And that people like Jonathan Greenblatt, the CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, calling to bring the National Guard onto campuses. I mean,

we know what happened the last time that that happened. In Kent State, they killed four students. The guardsmen opened fire on the students. 67 shots. At an anti-Vietnam War protest, four dead, nine injured. And three of those four students were Jewish students. And honestly, I don't think you would get, I mean, if there was, God forbid, another instance of the National Guard firing into a student encampment, I believe that some of those students would be Jewish students, which really raises the question of what they are talking about when they talk about protecting Jewish students on campus. Are they talking about protecting Jewish students? Are they talking about protecting an ideology and making sure that students feel completely comfortable? And those are very different things. I'll just note for our listeners, you mentioned Kent State, so these were the protests, 1968, I think, right around the Vietnam War. I want to come back to the Vietnam War protests

with you in a moment. But, you know, it's still maybe important to point out that these Jewish students that are protesting, they don't represent the majority of the American Jewish community. So I saw a poll from Pew Research from late February that found 62% of U.S. Jews they spoke to said the way Israel was carrying out its war in Gaza was acceptable. I know that's from two months ago, but it's probably still fair to say that a significant portion of the Jewish community in the U.S. likely feels more aligned with the Jewish students who say they're feeling scared on campus. Absolutely. Absolutely. I would say that the best polling that we have, and we don't have great polling, to be honest, and there's a lot of reasons for that that I won't go into now. I won't go into now. But the best polling that we have suggests that about a quarter of the Jewish community is sort of aligned with broadly the politics of the encampment, in that they believe

that Israel is, quote unquote, an apartheid state, and they do not support the idea that Israel as a Jewish state practicing a form of governance in which Jews have rights that Palestinians do not have. They don't want to see that continue. That's kind of my best estimate is that it's about 25%. So it's a quarter, I would say a quarter of the Jewish community. It's not nothing, but it is not the overwhelming majority. And still, that doesn't contradict the fact that Jews are overrepresented within these encampments in the same way that they've been overrepresented in social justice movements historically. I think the other part is like, what, what does certain things mean? Right. And who gets to define what they mean? So, so like I talked in the intro about what from the river to the sea means for different people. And Zionism, you'll also hear protesters chanting, you know, Intifada Revolution, right?

Like, to some people, that means uprising. To others, that means suicide bombers on buses. And even, you know, within the Jewish community, of course, you know, while there's disagreement about how to interpret these phrases. That's right, you know, like, what are you thinking about when we talk about that, about definitions and, you know, how the interpretation of language around this? It's really tough. Like, personally, I don't think that when people say from the river to the sea means, you know, throw Jews into the sea, as it's historically been understood by Jews to mean. You know, I think that that phrase has been used in many different contexts on the ground in the

Palestine movement. It's been used in the first intifada, which was largely a nonviolent resistance, you know, consisting of mass strikes and other tactics like that. And it was also used in the second intifada where there were bus bombings, you know. So just to say that it is legitimately tricky, I don't think that it's fair to attribute the students with, I mean, first of all, there are no students who are carrying out, you know, bus bombings or anything like that. And there is no part of the movement thatrael groups on campus have equated the students with terrorists, have basically called them proxies for groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran has their military proxies like Hezbollah and Iran has their campus proxies like these

groups like SJP and JVP. I mean, look at them. I mean, this is literally like a demonstration in Tehran and you can't believe it's happening in Morningside Heights. So, and what that has done is open the door to violence against the students, calling in the police for these violence, violent arrests, bringing in snipers to hang out on the roofs of college campuses, and also cracking down on the students' right to free speech. So, for example, again, this coalition of groups, including the ADL, has lobbied on behalf of the renewal of a provision in the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, which we know has been used to spy on American protesters and was used that way in the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests.

And these Jewish groups have lobbied for this renewal, which was just renewed recently, saying that they should be able to spy on, quote, foreign involvement in domestic anti-Semitic events. So these anti-war protests. So there's a way in which you may not like what these students are saying, but the fact that the discomfort around what they are saying is being used for all of these kind of illiberal crackdowns on speech and expression and protest should worry even the people who disagree. And we do also have to recognize, again, that these are not proxies of Hamas or Hezbollah. These are students, and they are largely not engaging. And by largely, I mean 99.99% not engaging in violence. They are nonviolent protesters.

We talked earlier about Kent State and so the protests around the Vietnam War. There was a really interesting piece in the Washington Post last week that pulled together a bunch of polling from the 60s about campus protests against the Vietnam War. And just to cite a few examples. So there was a CBS poll from 1969 that found that three quarters of respondents disapproved of public protests against the war. There was another from 1968 when the National Guard, as we talked about, killed four students at Kent State in Ohio. The large majority actually blamed the students for the deaths rather than the National Guard. What do you think about the shooting at Kent? The people weren't behaving properly, and apparently they have asked for that sort of thing.

So you think the guard was justified? Yes, I do. I'm sorry, they didn't kill more. Really? Yes, because they were warned and they knew what was happening and they should have moved out. Another from 1968 about protesters blocking traffic, which is a tactic that's being used by a lot of Palestinian protesters now. Almost all respondents disapproved of blocking traffic and actually two-thirds said that if nothing else worked, they might participate in a physical assault or armed action because of it. And what does all of that say to you? say to you? Well, I think we should remember that Columbia University, you know, has a plaque commemorating 1968 on the campus. They use this as now to burnish their reputation, to show that

their campus was a place where, you know, the students were free thinkers who are on the right side of history, standing up and speaking truth to power. And I think that's how we're going to remember these protests in the future. Look, I think that, unfortunately, I do think that many people also in the pro-Israel establishment are on the wrong side of history here. This is an instance of mass death and collective punishment on the Palestinian people. You know, the West Bank, which has nothing to do with what happened on October 7th, 400 people have died since October 7th. I think more than a dozen of villages have been depopulated through settler violence aided by the state of Israel. You know, you have a government in Israel that is cracking down on its own citizens, Palestinian citizens of Israel, for very innocuous social media posts that has jailed and arrested a Hebrew university professor for academic work

that we would consider to be covered in any definition of academic freedom. Police arrested the internationally renowned feminist Palestinian professor Nadra Shalhoub Kavorkian at her home in Jerusalem Thursday on charges of incitement to violence. And a government that, again, has tried to dismantle the only check on the legislature, the Supreme Court. And again, I just, I think that history will vindicate these students for standing up against that. And yeah, it's not ever going to be popular. And I see what really frightens me is the way that, especially liberals who have sort of been saying for years, like these students are snowflakes and they have to be, you know, they have to be uncomfortable and, you know, that our

campuses are becoming so illiberal and a place where, you know, different ideas are not tolerated. These are exactly the people who are doing the bidding of the right wing right now to dismantle freedom of expression and academic freedom on campuses because they are uncomfortable. I'm curious to know how significant you think these protests that we're witnessing right now are, right? Like, do you see this as a turning point in, you know, attitudes towards the war? You know, is it also possible that it just kind of peters out? I mean, I think if the administrations had not sent in the police, these protests would have fizzled out on their own. Because the students have to go home for the summer.

And they're naturally going to face an enormous amount of attrition. I think that the students have a chant that says, the more they try to silence us, the louder we will be. us the loudest, the louder we will be. And I think that that's absolutely true and that, you know, these protests will proliferate directly in response to how much they are suppressed. That energizes them and also just shows sort of how threatened these universities and also their trustees and their donors and the pro-Israel establishment is by these students. I think that that gives us an indication of how powerful they think the students are. Why would they call in the police on students who even the NYPD said were posing no threat? They are afraid of what these students are saying and what their power is. And I don't know what's going to happen. American public opinion on Palestine, and that we will continue to see it, especially as the contradictions heighten as it relates to the actions of an increasingly right-wing Israeli government. All right, Ariel, I want to thank you very much for coming on to the show today

and giving us your perspective. It's very much appreciated. Thank you. Thank you. All right, that is allbc.ca slash podcasts.