Campus protests are a rite of passage for youth everywhere, and also their first dose of reality as they pit students against the full might of the state. Stepping into the Gaza solidarity encampment at George Washington University (GWU) in early May, I realised that nowhere in the world was that comparison more stark — as young men and women railed against the war, just a few blocks away from the White House and the world’s most powerful government.
Already, campuses around the country were afire with protests over images from Gaza — the killing of civilians, including thousands of children, the daily bombardment of residential buildings and hospitals by the Israeli Defence Forces in reprisal for the brutal October 7 terror attack by Hamas on Israeli citizens in towns and kibbutzim that shocked the world last year. The police crackdown on Columbia University had just taken place, the University of California in Los Angeles (UCLA) had seen violent clashes between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli supporters, amid standoffs at more than a dozen other such campuses across the U.S.
There in the University Yard (U-Yard), the protesters had pitched dozens of tents, declaring it a ‘Liberation Zone’. The encampment itself was well organised, with volunteers running food stalls round the clock, and even a small ‘grocery’ for sudden needs such as bottled water, soap and toothpaste, torches and batteries. Organisers had a roster of speakers who would address the encampment in the evenings, before music and chants took over until well past midnight. For Muslim students, rows of mats were set out in a corner for prayer. Most protesters wore the Arab keffiyeh scarf, popularised by the Palestinian movement as a mark of solidarity, but also to cover their faces. In an age of social media ‘doxxing’, no one wanted to take the chance of being identified.
A statue of George Washington is draped in a Palestinian flag and wrapped in a keffiyeh in University Yard where students set up a protest encampment in the heart of George Washington University. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
What stood out was a statue of the man after whom the university and the American capital are named — George Washington, the first President of the U.S. He was now draped in a cape of the Palestinian black, white, green and red flag, a keffiyeh around his face and his body covered with protest stickers and spray paint.
Controversial speech
“Not another nickel, not another dime... Free, free, free Palestine,” the crowds chanted, calling on the U.S. government to stop funding Israel. “We will not stop, we will not rest… Disclose, Divest,” they shouted, demanding that the university give up Israeli investments and financial dealings. Other chants were more controversial and according to officials, bordered on hate speech, including, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free”, and “We don’t want no two-state, we want… forty-eight”, referring to Palestine in 1948 before the Israeli State was formed by a UN resolution.
The chant “Resistance is justified, when facing a genocide”, was seen by some as a defence of the Hamas attacks, and I watched heated arguments over just where the line between ‘free speech’ and ‘hate speech’ was, and when ‘a protest becomes a mob’. Clearly, the U.S.’s role in West Asia, with all its blood-soaked history, had come home to the American campus in an election year. Most of all, there was a sense among the students that their protests had no support from any quarter of political leadership: while Trump called the police storming of the Columbia hall occupied by students a “beautiful thing”, Biden condemned the protests as “anti-Semitic” and largely ignorant.
I ask protesters, most of whom would normally be seen as ‘progressive’ Democratic voters, whether this would impact their voting decisions in November. “It’s hard to think about voting for either,” said a young woman who asked not to be named, camped on the yard lawns in a solo tent. “I hope a third choice emerges.”
Students pray at the Gaza solidarity encampment at George Washington University. | Photo Credit: Getty Images
“The administration is accusing us of disrespecting the university,” another student said angrily, when I questioned some of the chants being raised. “But Israel has bombed every university in Gaza. Why aren’t they worried about that?” I met some counter-protesters who said that they felt unsafe as the U-yard protests were right in the middle of their campus; but there were also many Jewish students who joined the protests with ‘not in my name’ placards. While GWU professors mostly stayed out of the protests, a few volunteered for the ‘Peace Committee’, setting up lines between one group of protesters and another.
At all times, police were posted at the ends of the yard, keeping a watch on the protesters, intervening only when things got tense, like when pro-Israeli ‘counter-protesters’ entered the yard with their own slogans, or when college administrators attempted to speak to the protesters, asking them to vacate the area and return to class. While they did not stop students from putting up a giant flag of Palestine over the yard, the police officers, not much older than the students themselves, were visibly upset when protesters tried to take down the U.S. flag, and after a brief physical struggle, managed to push them back.
March of time
The polarised nature of the arguments this summer reminded me of my own time as a student in Boston, home to more than 50 universities, when George H.W. Bush launched the First Iraq War in 1990. As foreign students, we were warned to stay out of protests as we could lose our visa status, but I went to watch, out of curiousity, and as a journalism student. I remember being stunned by the thousands of anti-war protesters coming over the Boston University Bridge, only to be met with an equal force of students from the other side who defended the war against Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait. Both sides were eventually beaten back by baton-wielding riot-police, but the ferocity of the students about what was essentially a foreign policy issue, was unforgettable.
Pro-Palestinian protesters in front of university President Ellen Granberg’s house during a demonstration in support of Palestinians, face off against riot police | Photo Credit: Getty Images
On any university campus, the concept of free speech is one of the most empowering and also explosive ideas — one that allows young students to push the limits of what they can think, say, chant, deface or even burn. After the encampment was finally cleared by the police in riot gear in the early hours of May 8, 33 protesters were arrested. The tents were removed, the yard was locked, and the Washington statue covered in a grey cloth until it could be cleaned and restored.
While the defacing of the nation’s founding father may seem appalling to many, think of Washington’s own words to Army officers in 1783 (Newburg Address): “If Men are to be precluded from offering their sentiments… [ dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the slaughter.”
From the civil rights marches of the 1960s, to the anti-Vietnam war movement, to students then coming out against the second U.S. war in Iraq, to the current pro-Palestine encampments, American campuses have seen several iterations of such protests. None of them changed U.S. policy in the short term, but in the long term, each have earned their place in history.
suhasini.h@thehindu.co.in
