For the Baby Boomer generation that occupies Washington's most powerful ranks, campus anti-war protests have played a defining role in the political landscape that shaped their careers.
On May 4, 1970, members of the Ohio National Guard fired into a crowd of Kent State University demonstrators protesting against the war in Vietnam, killing four and wounding nine. The image of a horrified student screaming over the body of a fellow protester was burnt into the collective American memory.
One top aide to then-president Richard Nixon would later suggest the shootings had a direct impact on national politics, eventually contributing to the downfall of the administration.
Earlier, in 1968, Columbia University saw a violent police crackdown on student protests against the construction of a racially segregated campus gymnasium as well as the school's ties to the Pentagon amid the Vietnam War.
Columbia University takes a sympathetic tone to the student protesters in its modern reflections on the institution's actions in 1968.
The university notes on a page on its website that it is “a far different place today than it was in the spring of 1968 … The fallout dogged Columbia for years. It took decades for the university to recover from those turbulent times”.
Those times do not seem so far away now.
Columbia is at the forefront of a wave of protests against the Gaza war on American campuses, which are once again under threat of National Guard and police intervention.
A student group that was previously suspended by the university said in a statement that school administrators had threatened to call in the National Guard if protesters did not disperse. New York's governor has denied these claims.
Pro-Israel activists have sought to portray anti-war activists as dangerous and anti-Semitic. Major university donors have pulled funding over those claims of rampant anti-Semitism, and some universities have moved to remote learning.
Time will tell how history will look on this moment – and history is certainly being made: Israel's war in Gaza has killed more than 34,200 Palestinians and Congress this week passed billions more in funding for the Israeli military, while campus and other protests highlight a glaring divide between 81-year-old President Joe Biden and the Gen-Z vote he is seeking in a critical election year.
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Which US universities have protests against the Israel-Gaza war?
Columbia's protest – and the university-ordered police arrests of more than 100 people last week – have inspired student protest camps and pro-Palestine demonstrations at university campuses across the US.
“This is a deeply painful, painful moment for many communities,” White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said.
US House Speaker Mike Johnson visited Columbia on Wednesday and, in a dramatic press conference that saw him face-off with protestors, suggested the National Guard should be called in to clear what he called anti-Semitic protests against Israel's war in Gaza.
Most of the student protests have called for their schools to divest from companies working with Israel, shut down academic relations with Israeli institutions and a ceasefire.
At Yale, in New Haven, Connecticut, police arrested 60 people including 47 students early on Monday.
Police said 133 protesters were taken into custody late on Monday after a protest at New York University on the plaza in front of the business school.
Massachusetts, the US state known for its many academic institutions, has several on-campus protest camps, including at Emerson, Tufts and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
But encampments are not restricted to the elite institutions of the north-east:
The University of North Carolina's campuses have camps, and protesters set up more than 30 tents in the central part of the University of Michigan's Ann Arbor campus.
Nine anti-war protesters at the University of Minnesota were arrested on Tuesday morning after police took down an encampment a couple of hours after it was set up in front of the library.
Several west coast campuses including University of California, Berkeley have also seen demonstrations.
What's Washington talking about?
Ukraine and Israel funding The US Senate passed $95 billion in foreign aid, ending months of chaos that threatened Ukraine's chances of staving off a Russian victory and blocked President Joe Biden's ambitions of sending more money to Israel for the war in Gaza. The funding measures include about $60 billion for Ukraine, $26 billion for Israel and $8 billion for Taiwan and Indo-Pacific security. Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Ben Cardin called the vote “a major victory for democracy and international unity”, but celebration was tempered by the chaotic pathway to passage amid Republican infighting.
TikTok A fourth bill passed with the supplemental contains a measure that would ban TikTok in the US if its Chinese parent company ByteDance does not sell it. The latest actions establish a new timetable for the short-video platform. Once the bill is signed into law, ByteDance will have nine months to sell TikTok. If a sale is in progress, it will be given a three-month extension. Supporters of a ban have expressed concerns that data from TikTok could be shared with the Chinese government. TikTok argues the bill violates free speech rights for Americans, while China has accused the US of “unreasonably suppressing” the platform.
QUOTED
"There is an appropriate time for the National Guard."
– US Speaker of the House Mike Johnson after a meeting between Republicans and Jewish Columbia University students
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Spotlight: A conversation with an arrested protester at Columbia University
After participating in a pro-Palestine protest at Columbia University in New York, Lebanese-American student Yasmine was detained by police.
“We were arrested, put on four buses and then taken into One Police Plaza,” Yasmine, who asked to be identified only by her first name, told The National.
“We were released with a misdemeanour charge. They gave us this slip, which means we have to appear in court on May 8. And then we were all suspended on Friday.”
She is only two months away from graduating and is unsure whether she will be able to complete her degree in time.
The students have declared their intention to stay until the university agrees to divest from companies linked to Israel, ensure financial transparency and grant amnesty for faculty.
“We don't actually know what Colombia invests in and that's part of our tuition,” Yasmine said.
In November, Columbia suspended the groups Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, which had organised the protest, for the rest of the autumn term, citing repeated breaches of school policies.
Read Adla Massoud's full report
Opinion
By cracking down on the Gaza protests, US universities are betraying their core mission
Free speech at American universities is enduring one of its most severe stress tests in decades. Israel’s war of vengeance in Gaza, precipitated by the October 7 killing spree by Hamas-led militants from Gaza, has riveted and appalled the world, even eclipsing the perhaps historically more significant Russian assault on Ukraine, writes Hussein Ibish.
Since the end of South African apartheid, Palestine has been the most likely focal point of US student international social justice outrage. This movement was predictable and predicted. Yet pro-Israel constituencies appear taken aback by outrage at the butchery in Gaza and sympathy for Palestinians roiling American campuses, particularly at elite schools.
Turmoil over Gaza has already contributed to the downfall of several major university presidents. Others, most recently the Egyptian-American president of Columbia, Minouche Shafik, have committed extraordinary miscalculations. Following several other elite university leaders, she was recently grilled by a highly aggressive Republican congressional committee, and told to take tougher action against pro-Palestinian protesters, particularly by Representative Elise Stefanik, who is angling to be Donald Trump’s running mate in the coming election.
The political right, abetted by some liberals, is relishing the chance to paint criticism of Israel as inherently anti-Semitic and claim that liberal-dominated universities have in recent decades created an atmosphere of casual left-wing extremism by not being more conservative. For supporters of Israel’s otherwise indefensible bloodbath in Gaza, pointing to the genuinely extreme, rhetorically violent, or effectively anti-Semitic screeds of the most radical protesters is a desperately needed means of discrediting and delegitimising vigorous opposition to the war.
Panicky universities are not just mishandling a delicate and difficult fissure. They are missing a rare and profound opportunity for academia to demonstrate its unique social role and putative worth.
Read Hussein Ibish's full column
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