The Munk Debates Podcast - Be it Resolved, campus protesters are on the right side of history.

Episode Date: May 14, 2024

For the protesters and their supporters, the pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations across the globe are part of a proud tradition of student activism that includes the anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s, and the calls to end South African Apartheid in the 1980s. And just as those past protests are now widely accepted to have been on the right side of history, today’s campus protesters are confident that history will prove their cause was just.  Critics disagree. They say the protesters have often downplayed or made excuses for Hamas’ murderous attack on Oct. 7; that the demonstrators fail to consider the complexity of a conflict that cannot be simplified into simple binary terms; and that some of the protesters have indulged in violent and hateful rhetoric towards Israelis and Jews.    Arguing in favour of the resolution is Ben Burgis. He’s a columnist with Jacobin and an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutgers University. Arguing against the resolution is James Kirchick. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Secret City: The Hidden History of Gay Washington. He’s also a columnist for Tablet magazine, and a writer at large for Air Mail. SOURCES: Columbia Jewish & Israeli Students, WPA Film Library, Getty Images, ABC 7 New York, The Hill.    The host of the Munk Debates is Rudyard Griffiths. Tweet your comments about this episode to @munkdebate or comment on our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/munkdebates/ To sign up for a weekly email reminder for this podcast, send an email to [e-mail].   To support civil and substantive debate on the big questions of the day, consider becoming a Munk Member at https://munkdebates.com/membership Members receive access to our 15+ year library of great debates in HD video, a free Munk Debates book, newsletter and ticketing privileges at our live events. This podcast is a project of the Munk Debates, a Canadian charitable organization dedicated to fostering civil and substantive public dialogue - https://munkdebates.com/   Executive Producer: Ricki Gurwitz Senior Producer: Daniel Kitts Editor: Kieran LynchBecome a Munk Donor ($50 annually) to get 72-hour advanced access to the full length editions of Friday Focus and Munk Dialogues. Go to www.munkdebates.com to sign up. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

You don't help the poor by making everybody poorer. The media has a frame, and the frame is Israel is the oppressor, and the Palestinians are the oppressed. I shouldn't be forced to acknowledge my privilege unless I desire for that to be part of my interaction with somebody else. What I know to be true and what all of my fellow Gen Z know to be true is that this is the most talented generation yet. With respect to every indicia of disadvantage, there is still a racial hierarch. And though I am, of course, an Anglo. I'm certainly not a fucking Saxon. Welcome to the Monk debates.

Every episode we provide you with a simple and substantive debate on the big issue of the day. Our goal is to arm you, the listener, with enough information to make up your own mind. Today's debate, be it resolved, campus protesters are on the right side of history. For the protesters and their supporters, the pro-Palestinian campus demonstrations

across the globe are part of a proud tradition. of student activism that includes the anti-Vietnam War protests in the 1960s, and the calls to end South African apartheid in the 1980s. And just as those past protests are now widely accepted to have been on the right side of history, today's campus protesters are confident that history will prove that their cause is just. Here is Lila Saliba, a student protester at Columbia University in New York. People in Gaza, they are starving. They have lost everything.

Their homes and their apartments have been bombed. So really, we feel like we have a moral obligation to continue doing what is right and speaking up for the Palestinian people. Critics disagree. They say protesters have often downplayed or made excuses for Hamas' murderous attacks of October 7th. And that demonstrators fail to consider the complexity of the conflict, one that cannot be simplified into binary terms. and that some protesters have indulged in violent and hateful rhetoric towards Israelis and Jews. Here's Eleanor Reich, a Jewish and Israeli student at Columbia. You see Israelis on campus being called Nazis for speaking Hebrew.

When you hear chance calling to remove Zionists, when you hear chance calling, we don't want no two states, we want all of it. You just think what comes next after that veteran. and from Jewish history, we know what comes next. On this installment of the Monk Debates podcast, we challenge the essence of these arguments by debating the motion, be it resolved. Campus protesters are on the right side of history.

Arguing in favor of the motion is Ben Burgess. He's a columnist with Jacobin, an adjunct philosophy professor at Rutgers University. Arguing against the motion is James Kirchick. He's the New York Times bestselling author of Secret City, the hidden history of gay Washington. He's also a columnist for tablet magazine and a writer at large for airmail. Ben, James, welcome to the Monk Debates. Hello. Hello. Let's dig right in here. It's an important topical debate. We're going to get it underway with our opening statements. Ben,

you're speaking first in favor of our motion, be it resolved campus protesters on the right side of history. Let's have your opening remarks, please. Yeah, thank you. In the last seven months in just Gaza, a tiny territory with a population of 2.3 million people, Israel has managed to kill far more civilians than the United States killed in 2003 in Iraq during the shock and awe, a bomb in an invasion that was condemned by most of the world at the time, far more civilians than Vladimir Putin is killed over the course of two and a half years of, almost two and a half years of waging really brutal and disgusted war in Ukraine.

And when I make those comparisons, those are absolute numbers, not relative to population. So even though Gaza only has 2.3 million people, Iraq had well over 26 million, Ukraine had well over 43 million, there have still been far more killed in Israel. These are really the kinds of atrocities that people are going to be reading about in history books for centuries. 1.9 million of those 2.3 million people have been forced at gunpoint to leave their homes by the Israeli army. There's been a campaign of destruction to try to eliminate the possibility for normal Palestinian life resuming as usual after the war so complete and so thorough that just to give one example, not even the worst one, but I think a particularly striking one

given that we're talking about university protests, the last remaining university in Gaza was destroyed, not even by aerial bombardment, but by controlled demolition. And so under those circumstances, when I see university students who are willing to risk their academic careers, in some cases, risk mob violence, like what was directed against them at UCLA, or even Charlottesville-style lone wolf violence, like what was directed against one of the protesters recently at Columbia, I have nothing but admiration for these students, and I think the question is not, are they on the right side of history? But what will history make of those who stood aside and said nothing while this was happening? Thank you, Ben, for that opening statement. Okay, Jamie, your opportunity now to weigh in

our debate today. You're arguing against the motion, be it resolved, campus protesters are on the right side of history. Let's have your opening remarks. Sure. The right side of history, of course, is a subjective term. It depends on what one thinks about a particular issue, and it's usually applied in retrospect towards movements, social movements, around which a generally positive consensus is formed. So if we look at the 20th century, we say that the women's suffragists in the early 20th century,

they were on the right side of history. African-American Civil Rights Movement was on the right side of history, the gay rights movement, the anti-apartheid movement. These were causes that were all considered radical at their time. and they were radical at their time, but which now in 2024 we look back on, and there's a large consensus that these were all justified movements. Now, my conception of what constitutes the right side of history with regard to what's going on in the Middle East right now may be different

from Ben's. I'm not sure what his understanding or conception of the right side of history is. My conception is two states, Israel and Palestine, living side by side in peace. And the main obstacle to that vision, I believe, is Hamas and its paymasters, mainly Iran. And the reason for that is because they do not believe in a two-state solution. They want to destroy the state of Israel, and they're very open about that. Now, if these movements that were seeing on campuses across the country, if they merely sought the end of this war, they might have a plausible argument to being on the right side of history. I would argue otherwise, because I believe, personally, that the only way there's going to be a long-term peaceful solution in this region is if Hamas is eliminated. And so the war must continue until that goal is to

achieve. But if these were genuinely anti-war protests, I would respect them, even though I disagree. But that's not what these protesters want. They're very open about what they want. These protests are an outgrowth of the protests that happened on October 8th before any Israeli response to the massacre, the horror of October 7th, which need I remind you all listening, was the most horrific largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. There were protests in American streets and at university campuses endorsing that massacre and calling for more. At these protests we've been seeing over the past couple of weeks in university campuses, there have been no calls to release the hostages, the Israeli hostages who are still being held captive. We have chants in slogans

that explicitly endorse the violent destruction of the Jewish state. Calls for intifada, resistance is justified by any means necessary. And the proof of this, ironically and sort of tragically and sadly and humorously, is that these protests have been applauded and endorsed by Hamas, by the Houthis, and by the Iranian regime. The latter two parties, I might add, have offered scholarships to the American students who have been suspended for their violations of university policies and the actual law. They've involved breaking into buildings in collage. as we saw. And there's actually a lawsuit now being filed in federal court alleging that the major organizations sponsoring these protests have been collaborating with Hamas, which is, of course, a

designated terrorist organization by the U.S. government. Now, because these student protests are openly calling for violence against civilians, they are better characterized as pro-war protests. And because of that, I say that they will be looked upon in the future as being absolutely on the wrong side of history. Thank you for that opening statement, Jamie. Okay, Ben, your opportunity to react now. Another two minutes on the show clock. Give us your early thoughts in this debate.

So Jamie said that these are pro-war rallies, and that was based on cherry-picking some of the most militant slogans. But, of course, as he well knows, the main overwhelming demand of the protest has been for a ceasefire. This is what the people, protesters have said again and again and again and again. They have never released any kind of statement about what they want. That does not talk about a ceasefire.

That's just the reality. There's no denying that. Now, you can say that being anti-war makes you on the wrong side of history. But I think there's no seriously denied that the students are anti-war, that their goal is to stop the war to get a ceasefire, which, by the way, if you care about the half, is the thing that you would want because that is the only way that all of the remaining hostages are going to get back safely. Jamie also raised an issue about long-term solutions.

He said, oh, many protesters want the destruction of Israel, but, you know, the real, you know, the real answer is a two-state solution. And I think that what, you know, many of more radical things that protesters say point to is that Israel has been a single state for the river to the sea for the last 57 years. It's just not a state with equal rights for everybody. It's a state where what kind of rights people have varies dramatically on the basis of ethnicity and religion. If my dad, for example, lost his mind tomorrow and decided to exercise his right under the law of return, become an Israeli citizen, moved to the West Bank, where about five to 10 percent of Israeli Jewish citizens live, then he would have all the rights of a citizen,

Palestinian neighbors in the same territory would have none. He'd be able to vote in Israeli elections. He would be able to, if he was accused of a crime, he'd be tried in real civilian courts. Palestinians in the same territory lack all of these rights. And so I think it's fairly natural after 57 years of that to demand equal rights for everybody within the existing state. But let's say, this is the last point I want to make about this because this is incredibly important. Let's say for the sake of argument that I'm dead wrong about that. that it's not, there's nothing reasonable about that wish for a state with democratic rights for everybody

between the river and the sea, but rather the solution has to be take the form of a two-state partition of the territory. Well, it seems to me that if you really believe that, you should be grabbing a placard and a bullhorn and joining the protest because there is no possible path from where we are right now, where the current Israeli government says, and it could not be clear about this, that that will never happen. that there will never be a Palestinian state. They have said this over and over and over again. There's no path from where we are to Israel allowing such a partition that doesn't go through exactly the kinds of things that the protesters are demanded in terms of a withdrawal of U.S. military aid and U.S. diplomatic cover to Israel to do whatever it wants, which unfortunately

has been the policy for so long that even the very mild resurrection. about 2,000 pound bombs being used to bomb the last refuge for Palestinian civilians and Rafa was received as an earthquake as a major change of course. And so if you really do want a two-state solution, it seems to me that you should still be very happy that there are people who are out there demanding the kinds of things that might start to nudge us in a direction where Israel would actually agree to such a solution. Jamie, let's get to you now on the microphone with either a rebuttal of the opening statement that we've heard from Ben or what you've just heard now?

Sure. Well, the casualty figures he cites, I dispute. I don't think we're going to know the total casualties until long after the conflict is over. The casualty figures are all coming from Hamas sources, which, as we know, do not distinguish between civilians in militants. to the extent that we do have some idea of the ratio between civilians and militants being killed, according to John Spencer, who's a military expert at West Point, he says it's roughly one to one, which if that's true, is a remarkably low ratio, that that would be better than any Western

military intervention in recent history. But let's get to the reason why so many Palestinian civilians have tragically died. And I'm not disputing that. It's because Hamas started this war. And not only did they start it on October 7th, they placed their fighters, they place their armaments in civilian locations, which is a war crime. They're putting their bases in hospitals, in schools, in mosques because they want to ensure maximum civilian casualties just so that people like Ben in America can say that Israel is committing a genocide. So it's a very cynical, and I would say evil strategy that Hamas is employing, and they are the way. ones who are primarily responsible for any civilian casualties in Gaza. Of course, is Israel mistakenly

killing civilians? Yes, absolutely. We saw that with the food aid workers, which was tragic. Any military makes mistakes. And there may actually be individual soldiers who will have to be reprimanded. But the notion that this is some sort of organized ethnic cleansing or even more obscenely a genocide is it's not a serious argument. You know, as to, cherry-picking what the protesters are saying. And I do want to keep this debate here more about the protest, because that's the resolution we're debating, rather than the decades-long history in the rightness or wrongness of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. You know, I would just say that if the cause was just that they're advocating for, why are so many students covering their faces?

This is an intimidation tactic. And you never saw this with the movements that I discussed in my opening statement. These suffragists in the 1910s, they didn't cover their faces. African Americans never covered their faces. The first gay rights demonstration in the United States was outside the White House in 1965. And those people, in 1965, when homosexuality was illegal in almost every state in this country, and you could be fired from your job, they courageously did not cover their faces. Who covers, who else covers their faces?

The Ku Klux Klan. They wear hoods. Why are these students covering their faces? I think it says something about their movement, about their ideology, and also simply the fact that they're also cowards. And related to that is that when you commit an act of civil disobedience, you go along with the punishment. That's what African-American civil rights protesters did. They endured horrible treatment from police, fire hoses, dogs, beatings, jail terms.

What are these students doing? They're demanding, they violently break into a building at Columbia University, intimidating and beating up janitors, working class people. and you care about the working class. You have these privileged elite students at Columbia harassing janitorial staff. And then what do they do? They demand humanitarian aid,

that vegan food be sent to them, thuzz likening their plight as Columbia students to the plight of people in Gaza. It's ridiculous. So I just think that to compare this movement to the other social movements in the past, that most of us can all agree, we're righteous, I think it does a real disservice

to those historical movements. Thank you for that reaction, Jamie. Ben, let's come back to you and have you weigh in on what you've just heard. Talk a little bit about, for instance, Jamie's case here that mask wearing is not actually in the kind of tradition of the best of civil disobedience and protests in America and that this lends credence to, you know, Jamie's contention that campus protesters are not on the right side of history. Well, I find that argument very odd because for one thing, it definitionally doesn't apply to most protesters because most protesters have not covered their faces. So we have, I mean, this is just straightforwardly true. The majority of protesters have not covered their faces. Can you cite something to back out that claim?

Okay. I have certainly not seen they have any reason whatsoever to think that the majority of protesters, have covered their faces and certainly anecdotally, the vast majority of the ones I've seen have it. So if you have some sort of data, then I'm happy to listen to it. But otherwise, I think it's very strange to focus on this argument that from what I've seen and anybody listening to this can judge for themselves, all the pictures they've seen. I just got back from visiting the encampment at Princeton last week. Not a mask in sight. Most of the pictures that I've seen, not a mask in sight, but perhaps some.

I would also point out, though, that if your range of historical examples of people who have covered their faces is only limited to the KKK, then, you know, you, for example, didn't see a lot of pictures from the Medan protests in Ukraine where tons of people had their faces covered from various protests in the Arab Spring, where tons of people had their faces covered. But I also think that this is a very odd way of trying to sort out the question of who's on the right side of history that is primarily through a question of face covering rather than a question of the cause. The reason to think that these protesters are on the right side of history is that they're protesting really extreme atrocities in human rights violence. violations that, you know, we just heard, you know, waved away based on not much. We got a estimate that one out of two of the victims of this remarkably indiscriminate bombing campaign. There was just an interview in The New Yorker from somebody from an international agency dealing with mine saying that there are more unexploded rockets than bombs now in

Gaza than anywhere else since World War II. you know, this is usually when people, you know, usually the low ball estimate is that two thirds of the victims are, uh, are civilians. And that itself is based on simply assuming that any adult male, uh, is there for Hamas, just sort of counting, you know, anybody who's not a woman or a child as a civilian and anybody, um, anybody who is one of those things as a civilian, and everybody who's not as not a civilian. But I, I think that there's very little to take that seriously. And last point about this, because I really do want to keep this, you know, I think that the, if you're going to be serious about asking whether they're on the right side of history,

the really important question is, are they protesting something that should be protested against? And to answer that question, I think that the scale of the atrocities in Gaza is extremely relevant. And the idea that, oh, these are Hamas figures is just wrong, that the Ministry of Health figures have proven right after previous, you know, around. of conflict in Gaza. And if anything, right now, there's every reason to suspect that it's a very dramatic underestimate, given that the Ministry of Health infrastructure has been so thoroughly destroyed by the scale of bombing that has killed so many doctors, has destroyed so many hospitals

throughout Gaza, and made it very, very difficult to keep a running count. Thank you, Ben. I'm just going to center us back around our resolution. Just want to try to, as much as we can, keep on. the topic today, which is campus protesters are on the right side of history. And, Jamie, to come to you, can you give some examples maybe of where protesters were on the wrong side of history? I mean, does Ben have a point that if history, is it at all predictive of the future? And we can debate that, but that's another resolution for another day.

are there examples where protesters have really gotten things wrong that could suggest that that's happening again? Well, it depends on what you believe and what your causes are. I mean, let's not forget that the Nazis had a lot of support among students at German universities. The book burnings that began in the 1930s, they were happening at universities. On the left in the 1960s, there were many students who were Maoists, believe it or not. They weren't just opposed to the Vietnam War. They were actively Maoists. A parallel actually with the protests on university campuses with American history.

I think it was at UCLA. There was a non-Zionist zone that was created. And students were actively asking other students. Are you a Zionist or not? You cannot enter a public space, a public campus area. Or they were preventing Zionists. And let's be clear what they mean by that. they mean Jews. They were preventing them from entering academic buildings, which to me sounds like

George Wallace standing in the school or the schoolhouse door, trying to prevent the integration of public universities in Alabama. So yeah, I mean, protesters are not always right. And I think that there's this belief that, you know, because they were often right in the past, that therefore any sort of, you know, ostensibly progressive or left of center protest, we have to get on board with it because it'll be right in the future. But I actually think that this protest, I think it's wrong to even label it left wing because what many of these students are actually supporting,

whether they know it or not, and I think a lot of them are just ignorant, I'm going to be charitable, and say that they're ignorant, but they've actually allied themselves with a far-right fascist, theocratic movement, which is the Iranian axis of resistance in the Middle East.

These are, you know, in Iran and Gaza, these are countries where women have to be veiled, where there's obviously no one's, voting for a democratic government. The strangest and most, you know, to me, perplexing development has been, you know, queers for Palestine, where we all know, or we should know, what happens to LGBTQ people in all these territories, which is that they are hung from construction cranes or stone to death. So, yeah, no, these students, I'm going to be charitable and I'm going to say that most of them are ignorant of what they're actually cheering on.

So, Ben, I mean, how do you separate for a listener who's not part of these protests and maybe not as kind of tuned into their thinking and worldview? Is it possible to separate? I think we would all agree, legitimate protest at any time, anywhere against war as a way, a failed way to solve for human differences. versus the fact that this war has a belligerent, most notably Hamas, who have deeply illiberal principles, ideas, and beliefs. Does that matter to you, Ben, that for many people watching these protests, these things have become conflated in the public's mind's eye? Well, I think it's been conflated because people like Jamie have worked very hard to conflate them.

the actual cause, which is opposing the atrocities in Gaza, that are on an entirely different scale than anything we've ever seen anywhere around the world in recent years, that, again, I think those contrasts with Iraq, Ukraine, etc., are really telling with these entirely spurious charges of, you know, anti-Semitism that we just heard, that this alleged, you know, people allegedly being asked, if they're Zionists, you know, I guess we'll see if that turns out on investigation to be true. But I would point out that anybody with even a passing knowledge of the Palestine Solidarity Movement in person and, you know, firsthand will tell you, a very obvious thing and something that's very unsurprising to anybody with the slightest knowledge of the American left is that a massively disproportionate number of the protesters are themselves Jewish. There are people who try to dismiss this as tokenism, but I think that's just not.

living in the real world. Jewish peace movement is a huge driving force behind what's happened. And while the illiberalism of Hamas is certainly true, I do struggle to see the relevance because Israel itself makes no claim whatsoever that they're, you know, that they're fighting, that they're killing these tens of thousands of civilians in order to impose social liberalism on the survivors. That's not, you know, you can search in vain, you know, the pronouncements of Netanyahu, Ben-Gavir, etc. for any kind of clover. claim that that's a war goal, right? So given that it's not a war goal, I don't see the relevance, and I think that it's very often true that wars that there are very good reasons to oppose

have targets, you know, that are bad or illiberal in, you know, in one way or another. You know, Jamie mentioned the protests against the war in Vietnam. I hope we could all agree that the war in Vietnam was very bad and it should have been protested, even though the North Vietnamese regime was authoritarian in many ways. I think that now in 2024, nearly everybody who supported the Iraq War with very few exceptions here, their wishes they could delete that part of their political history and very much regrets taking that position. But, you know, Saddam Hussein, you know, was certainly an authoritarian dictator. I would simply suggest that that's not the most relevant question when you're asking, is it okay for the United States to back a war that has

involved millions of people being forced at gunpoint to leave their homes and tens of thousands of civilians being slaughtered out of far greater scale than other conflicts in the recent past? And I think that the illiberalism of the official enemy is just not relevant to that question. Hi, monk listeners. I wanted to tell you about our upcoming monk debate on anti-Zionism. On June 17th, author and journalist Douglas Murray and UK-based international law expert, Natasha Hochstorff, will debate former MSNBC commentator and columnist Median San and Israeli journalist Gideon Levy on stage in Toronto in front of a live audience of 3,000 people. The debate will be streamed, so if you can't make it in person, you can watch it from a comfort of your living room. Find out how to become a monk member and get your live stream access to

the monk debate on anti-Zionism. Visit our website right now, triple w monk debates.com. As we move towards the conclusion of this debate, Jamie, I want to give you an opportunity to talk a little bit about how these protests are unfolding the extent to which some members of university campuses, primarily Jewish students, Jewish faculty have indicated that they feel threatened or that they've been the subject of intimidation as a result of these protests. I want to get bent away on this also, but set the case for us as to why you think this feature of the protests, which you believe is widespread, undermines their legitimacy and would suggest that they're not on the right side of history.

Well, I should be clear that I'm a free speech absolutist, and I've actually argued in the New York Times that the expression from the river to the sea should be allowed on campus, that you should not be punished for saying that. Well, I consider it a call for ethnic cleansing. Other people don't see it that way, and I don't want university administrators becoming like literary commissars and deciding whether or not certain expressions are acceptable. But I can see why Jewish students would view that. as being a threatening statement. And if it's being used in a threatening way directly at an individual, right, if there's harassment, those are types of activity that are not protected by

the First Amendment and that people should be punished for. But I think that that's actually been quite rare. And I don't, you know, I don't, to the extent that students should be expelled or suspended, it should be for violating university regulations, breaking into an academic building, preventing freedom of movement, preventing other people from studying and going about their day. Those are the sorts of things that should result in punishment. Ben, I want to come to you on this point. If we look back, I don't know what civil rights protests or protests of the Vietnam war era, yes, there was lots of hot rhetoric, lots of anger and frustration being expressed. But I think maybe some people would say what's different today is there's an element to these protests and

let's hear your counter argument who are at times targeting a certain cultural and religious group is that new do you accept that contention let's hear you on that point yeah i absolutely do not accept that contention again i think that there is a massive proportion and you know like the question about mass earlier i can't claim to have seen any polling on this earlier although nobody who seems to suggest otherwise, seems to bring up any polling either. But it seems to me anecdotally that there is a massive proportion of these students who are themselves Jewish. And that's certainly consistent with my lifetime experience of being around Palestine solidarity activism, that of course, you know, that Jewish students are more likely to have spent

more time thinking about this issue than students who are raised, you know, Hindus or Mormons or episcopalians, although of course all those are going to be represented. But, you know, it makes sense to me that, you know, that Jewish peace activists are going to be rather dramatically overrepresented at the protests. And, you know, I mean, if you say, I think given the scale of the protest, the absolutely unprecedented scale, it would be a minor statistical miracle if you couldn't find any instance of somebody saying something genuinely anti-Semitic. And, you know, it's sort of certainly condemn it, you know, when it happens. But I'd also. say that, you know, if you're really talking about, you know, violence and intimidation,

you know, we've heard all sorts of spurious claims. The Yale student, uh, who, who claimed to have been stabbed in the eye and was then refuted by her own video, uh, for, for example, uh, but, you know, if you actually want to talk about violence directed at Jewish students, uh, then overwhelmingly, these Jewish students most likely to be victims of violence the last couple of weeks are protesters that, you know, if you look at certainly the scale and ferocity of the crackdown, which is, which is, you know, really unprecedented. I mean, if you, you know, we've heard these comparisons thrown around at this conversation to the Vietnam era protests. So, that's a nice one-to-one comparison to look at that when a Vietnam War protesters broke in,

if you consider that violence and occupied Hamilton Hall in 1968. The university waited a week before calling in the cops to clear them out. In 1985, when Hamilton was occupied by anti-apartheid protesters, then they actually left after three weeks without a single arrest. They were going to knew that a judge's order was going to come down soon. And so they left in anticipation of this. In this case, it was within less than a day. And I do see really considerable irony in the fact that so much this has been justified by the

principle of the badness of the disruption of ordinary campus life, by the principle that it's really important that everybody have access to all areas of campus. But of course, the effect of the crackdowns has been to violate those principles much more dramatically than the protests themselves ever could. I mean, look at Columbia, where students and faculty have been, you know, entirely locked out of the campus as part of the crackdowns on the protests. And, you know, last point on this, I think that, you know, one thing that you just have to reckon with, if you're going to be serious about this, is that American Jews are really increasingly divided on this, that even in 2021, one out of three young American Jews told pollsters that they considered Israel to be an

apartheid state. Common sense would suggest that the number right now is probably a lot higher, given what's happened since 2021. And of course, I would never say that somebody is right because of their background. You know, arguments have to be evaluated on their merits. I dislike identity politics in any form. But I would just say that if you're going to talk about the feelings of Jewish students and faculty, I think the beginning of an honest discussion has to be that Jewish students and faculty are deeply divided on these issues. Thank you, Ben. Well, let's move to closing statements.

We've done this perfectly so we can land the debate with James going first with his closing statement. And then Ben, as per debate tradition, will leave you with the final. final word on a resolution today, be it resolved, campus protesters are on the right side of history. So James, kick us off for the closing statements. What are the two minutes or so of remarks that you want to leave our audience with? Well, something that Ben and I probably agree on is that Donald Trump would not be a good president to have this November. I'm assuming that we agree that we don't want to see him reelected. What I fear is going to happen. in large part because of these protests, is that they will help reelect Donald Trump.

Much in the same way, by the way, that the anti-Vietnam War protests in 1968 at the Chicago Convention helped ensure not just the election of Richard Nixon, but 40 years of near interrupted right-of-center government. Because when people see these images, and, you know, Ben and I are sort of disputing with anecdotes what we see at these protests. You know, I, for instance, do not see many Jewish students. And I also hear a lot of genocidal slogans. I hear only one solution, intifada revolution, which is not only calling for intifada,

it's also using that word solution, which I can't help but feel is a not so subtle reminder of the final solution. I hear say it loud, say it clear, we don't want no Zionists. here, or there is no safe space death to the Zionist state that was heard at Columbia. And Ben and I can disagree on whether or not these, you know, characterize the movement as a whole. But these images of chaos and anarchy. And, you know, Ben was downplaying what's been happening

on the campuses. He kind of, you know, sort of waves off the occupation, the breaking into an violent occupation of a campus building at Columbia, that should be met with punishment. Unless you want to live in an anarchist society where there's no rule of law, we do, you know, the law does need to be enforced. And usually protesters who are on the right side of history, they break the law in the firm conviction that what they're doing will be seen as justified in time. And I don't think that's going to happen. At least I hope not. I hope we don't. don't live in a society in this country, we're 30 years from now, these protesters get what they want, which is the elimination of Israel. And so I would just say for those reasons that people should

vote against this resolution. Thank you, Jamie, for that closing statement. You're listening to our debate today, be it resolved, campus protesters are on the right side of history. Ben, you've been arguing in favor of the motion. We're going to give you the last word in today's debate. Thank you for hosting and Jamie for participating. I would just point out, right, that, you know, we can, there are a lot of side issues and related issues that have come up. Would it be bad if Trump won? My view is yes, but also if a significant portion of voters in places that Biden needs to win like Michigan can't look past the increasingly towering mountain of Palestinian corpses to reelect him, that's Joe Biden's fault. It's the job of politicians. to appeal to voters. So there have been a lot of issues like that. There have been a lot of issues about particular incidents. But one thing that I haven't heard, Jamie deny explicitly, is that, one, there have been a giant number of civilian deaths, that there have been tens of thousands of civilian deaths, that there have been millions of people forced at gunpoint to leave

their homes in Gaza, and that the protesters want these things to stop happening. I haven't heard a denial of that. And I think given those facts, I think even if you think that there are individual protesters who've said and done things that they shouldn't have, I think as a group are the protesters on the right side of history, those things are definitive. And sure, here's something you haven't heard me deny throughout the entire discussion. You haven't heard me deny that some protesters have said or done things that I disapprove of, that I find, you know, I find, you know, sort of performatively radical and counterproductive, et cetera, if the resolution were, be it resolved, every single protester is doing everything right, or be it resolved, no leftists

ever do anything that are stupid or counterproductive, I would definitely be on the other side of it. But that's not the resolution. The resolution is, be it resolved. The protesters are on the right side of history. and when we see millions of people ethnically cleansed for their homes, when we see a scale of civilian death that is without precedent in comparable recent conflicts, and when we see these protesters calling for the U.S. to stop arming and backing that, it seems overwhelmingly clear to me that they are on the right side of history, just like I think even most people who supported the war in Iraq and smeared protesters in 2003 as pro-Saddam now regret that. support, I am extremely confident that when we see the, in the years to come, we see the scale of suffering that was inflicted on Gaza, even most people who made excuses for these atrocities now,

smeared the protesters as violent or anti-Semites, we'll wish they could take it back, but sadly, history does not come with a do-over button. If you want to be on the right side, you have to be on the right side right now. Ben Burgess, thank you so much for that closing statement. And Jamie, thank you for your contributions to this debate. You guys have engaged on a really hot topic with a ton of civility and substance, and we appreciate that. It's not easily done.

But you've given our membership some new ideas and principles to think about, and we're the better for it. So thank you so much both for coming on the program today. Thank you. Thank you. That wraps up today's debate. I want to thank our debaters, Ben and James. They certainly gave us a lot to think about.

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