US campus protests: 1968 revisited?

“What’s going on at some of America’s top universities?” asked Mark Stone reporting for Sky News from the University of Minnesota. “Easily explained or nuanced and complicated? It’s certainly extremely challenging for policing, educational and political leaders.”

Mark Stone has had a disastrous few months reporting on the conflict in Gaza, so it should come as no surprise that his reporting on the student unrest on America has been just as bad.  The unrest is not at all “challenging for policing, educational and political leaders”. What’s happened is a complete failure to preserve order by university presidents (a role similar to vice-chancellors in the UK). They should have sent in the National Guard with water cannon and tear gas; then they should have expelled the troublemakers; politicians should have taken a stand against vicious antisemitism; donors should cancel their cheques immediately until college administrators get a grip.

It took weeks before any students were suspended or arrested. Faculty members who have joined the protests have not been dismissed. For example, what action has been taken against faculty members at NYU who formed a human chain around the protesters’ encampment following threats of mass arrests of protesting students? Or what about Marianne Hirsch, a professor of literature at Columbia who also specialises in Holocaust studies? She said that while there have “certainly been incidents” of antisemitism at Columbia, she feared that the issue was being “weaponised and misused under the guise of safety and security”. This was “actually cutting down on the academic freedom to be critical,” she argued. “Bringing armed police onto campus creates an atmosphere of fear and intimidation. That’s not what this university is about.”  According to @CampusJewHate on 30 April: “By our count, over 50 faculty members [at Columbia] have joined the pro-Hamas students in the takeover of the campus at @Columbia.” What action has been taken against them?

In the meantime, we are regularly presented with images of students telling Jews to “go back to Poland” and yelling “Oh Hamas, our beloved, strike, strike Tel Aviv”, or screaming, “From the river to the sea, Palestine is Arab,” a familiar chant from London hate marches since the Autumn. Organisers from Yale’s and Columbia’s “Liberated Encampment Zones” [sic] published a guide containing 14 points that explains the protestors’ strategy in the weeks and months to come. The guide was endorsed by the National Students for Justice in Palestine. It’s currently being circulated among many of the encampments and is being translated into multiple languages.

Here are some of the most important points: Point 2: “An occupation needs to spread in order to survive. New buildings need to be taken on campus, throughout the city, and across the country. Take the enemy by surprise. Strive for daily or even hourly successes, however small. At all costs, retain superior morale.”

Point 6: “Occupations draw strength from the spectre of a riot. The April 1968 occupations took place in the immediate aftermath of the ‘Holy Week’ of riots in the surrounding neighbourhood and cities across the country after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King, Jr. Campus administrators, city officials, and the police department worried that any attempt to suppress the occupations might lead to unrest in the surrounding neighbourhood; Harlem might invade Columbia. An occupation today will be in a stronger position if it is similarly able to build and mobilize support from the surrounding neighbourhood.”

Point 7: “The first task then is to open the campus to the community. Students from other campuses, residents of the surrounding neighbourhood, and outside agitators need to be welcomed in. In April 1968, five hundred people marched on the gate at 116th St and Broadway. The NYPD stood down out of fear that violence might otherwise erupt. Similar tactics might be necessary today.”

Point 9: “Form committees. Once you seize a building, get organized around practical tasks. In 1968, a defense committee built barricades and coordinated the night watch. A liaison committee established communication between occupations and with the outside world.”

Point 11: “This is only the beginning. A number of revolutionary organizations emerged from the 1968 occupations movement. Pushing the university struggle to its limit might contribute in a similar way to producing a constellation of revolutionary forces in the city today.” Point 12: “Two, three, many Columbias. Then as now, it will take the opening of new fronts and the spread of increasingly disruptive tactics, such as building occupations, to pull the emergency brake on the war machine.”

Perhaps the most shocking example of a college president completely out of her depth and unable to control the situation has been President Shafik at Columbia. She recently issued the following statement:

“We are making important progress with representatives of the student encampment on the West Lawn:

• Student protestors have committed to dismantling and removing a significant number of tents [how many?].
• Student protesters will ensure that those not affiliated with Columbia will leave [many of the protesters were not students at Columbia or anywhere else and they have not left]. Only Columbia University students will be participating in the protest [this was never the case from the outset and is still not the case].
• Student protestors in the encampment will comply with all requirements of FDNY with respect to activities and safety [they have not, as recent footage of protestors scaling the walls of Columbia student dorms shows].
• Student protestors have taken steps to make the encampment welcome to all and have prohibited discriminatory or harassing language [vile antisemitic abuse continues].

It is hard to imagine a more pathetic response to serious student disorder at a leading American university. Every single point is either wrong, or the feeblest wishful thinking, or both.

It’s not just college presidents who have failed and let down both Jewish students and their parents. It is striking that neither Biden nor Trump have had much to say throughout this period of unrest and Biden has done nothing to control the situation. It is Republican Congressmen and women who have taken the initiative. New York Republican Elise Stefanik, best known for her cross-examination of several leading college presidents during Congressional hearings, formally requested on 23 April that Columbia’s federal funding be revoked; student visas of the pro-Hamas group be revoked; the findings of the Title VI investigation be published. Biden and the Democrats have gone missing for fear of losing the crucial youth vote in November’s elections. The Republican Speaker of the House of Representatives, joined by more than two dozen Republican Congressmen and women, came to Columbia, where Speaker Mike Johnson was heckled and booed throughout his speech. Biden’s response to this shameful scene was to say that he believes in free speech. There is nothing he could have said which would have been less helpful.

As so often, the British news media have done little to explain or analyse the wave of unrest that has spread from coast to coast, from Harvard (where students have just replaced the US flag with the Palestinian flag) to Stanford and Berkeley. The best analysis so far has come from the Jewish-American online magazine, tabletmag.com.

In an article called, “Why America’s Richest Universities Are Protecting Hate-Filled Foreign Students”, posted on January 31, Tony Badran did what all proper journalists should do: he followed the money. Why have so many rallies featured Arab and Muslim students who eagerly support terrorism? Why are so few of the protest leaders and organisers Americans, “meaning that they are not American citizens or even green card holders.” Rather, he continues, “they are foreign passport holders, including from Arab and Muslim countries, … importing the passions and prejudices of their home countries to American campuses.”

“The average share of international students in Ivy League schools who enrolled in the fall of 2023,” writes Badran, “is about 15%… A quarter of Harvard’s student body is now international. At MIT, it’s nearly a third.”

There are several obvious explanations for this. First, “only a comparatively small number of Americas can afford the mind-numbingly high fees” at top American universities. Second, “Foreign students, the overwhelming majority of whom are either the children of wealthy foreign elites or directly sponsored by their governments represent a serious source of funding for American colleges, public and private alike.” They also help “fill federally funded programs that are based on racial and ethnic quotas.”

It’s not just about tuition fees and ethnic quotas. “According to the National Association of Scholars,” he writes, “since 2001 Qatar has given around $5 billion to American universities, more than any other foreign government. Between 2014 and 2019, American colleges and universities received $2.7 billion in Qatari funding… Given that Qatar hosts the leadership of Hamas, one can see how cracking down on Hamas-sympathising students might seem like a bad idea for university presidents who cash Qatari checks.”

Qatar is not the only foreign cash-cow for American universities. Look at the top thirteen foreign countries who have given over $1 million to American universities since 2012:

Ten of these thirteen countries are either Muslim and/or from the Middle East. The exceptions, predictably enough, are China, Russia and Venezuela (only $4 million).

This helps explain another odd question. Why do Columbia protesters all have exactly the same tents on campus? Who’s paying for this? Afshine Emrani, a Jewish cardiologist, pursued this online: “Something odd about those campus tent encampments. Almost all the tents are identical — same design, same size, same fresh-out-of-the-box appearance. Which suggests that rather than an organic process, whereby students would bring a variety of individual tents, someone or some organisation has supplied them and organised the event. I think it would be instructive if we can determine who that someone is. Because rather than spontaneous demonstrations, these are choreographed events by hidden actors — and the students, sincere though they may be, are merely manipulated props.”

This question also attracted the attention of Dion J. Pierre in an article for The Algemeiner. He quotes NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research institute: “the exponential rise in antisemitic violence, incitement, intimidation, and harassment on and around campuses in the United States is not the product of spontaneous protests of individuals. Rather, they are tightly coordinated and well-funded by a network of radical and often antisemitic nongovernmental organizations. Under the guise of human rights and justice, these NGOs work to undermine the economic, military, and other ties between the US and Israel, and to besiege and divide the US Jewish community.”

“NGO Monitor,” writes Pierre, “noted that all of the groups in question supported and justified the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 and that many are linked to designated Palestinian terror organizations.” According to Pierre, key organisations supporting the student unrest include Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), Within Our Lifetime (WOL), US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR) and others.

This wave of student unrest at American universities does not seem to be a spontaneous eruption of pro-Palestinian activism. It looks like it is funded by a network of radical and often antisemitic NGOs. It also looks as if the inaction and lack of will of college presidents might have something to do with the enormous amount of money these universities receive from Middle Eastern and Muslim states. This is not 1968 revisited. This is something very different: something nasty, antisemitic, and very well funded.

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