Causes and consequences of pro-Palestinian student protests in the USA

Protests by pro-Palestinian students have spread to several US universities in recent weeks and have already begun to reach Europe, raising questions of foreign policy, but above all freedom of expression.

Last Monday, Paris police were called to intervene at the Sorbonne University to expel activists defending the Palestinian cause, echoing situations that began at North American universities following an attack by the Islamist group Hamas in Israel and the subsequent Israeli armed response. Army in Gaza.

The problem is the division of American society, serving as a political weapon for Republican opposition to the Democratic presidency of Joe Biden in the middle of an election year, as well as creating a rift within the Democratic Party over North America’s position towards the United States. The regime of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

We are talking about the situation in the Middle East, as well as topics concerning restrictions on freedom of expression and demonstrations, repeating scenes that were already observed in North American universities in the late 60s of the last century, when the background was the struggle for civil rights.

Here are some of the highlights of this controversy that is crossing the United States and has already crossed the Atlantic.

Direct causes of university protests

The protests come as the Israeli army invades the Gaza Strip, where more than 35,000 people, most of them civilians, have been killed in the past six months, plunging the territory into a severe humanitarian crisis.

The Israeli offensive is in response to an attack by the Palestinian Islamist Hamas movement that killed more than 1,100 people and took about 250 hostages on October 7.

Shortly after the offensive began, student protests against the White House’s pro-Israel stance began to emerge at some major US universities as pro-Palestinian activists.

White House foreign policy

From the very first moment, immediately after the Hamas attack on October 7, the White House sided with Israel, transferring one of its main aircraft carriers to the region and promising assistance in the event of a new external threat to Israeli interests.

As Israel has escalated its military action in the Gaza Strip, concerns about the humanitarian crisis have grown and the international community, including the United States, has called for the protection of civilian lives in the face of the deaths of tens of thousands of Palestinians.

The issue has caused divisions within Biden’s Democratic Party, but it is primarily helping Republicans question how the White House is allowing pro-Palestinian demonstrations that conservatives are accused of being behind to spread across the United States. serving anti-Semitic motives.

Limits of freedom of expression

Demonstrations by pro-Palestinian activists increased at several US universities shortly after the Israeli military intervention in Gaza, some with chants and slogans that were interpreted as anti-Semitic.

Faced with this situation, in December congressional Republicans asked the presidents of some of the largest universities – Harvard, Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) – to appear at the Capitol for a hearing on their actions in the face of the demonstrations. .

During the meeting, which lasted more than five hours, these officials gave mixed answers about whether anti-Semitic chants at demonstrations violated their universities’ code of conduct.

A particular issue was the fact that some of the protests called for an “Intifada” – a popular uprising linked to the Palestinian cause – which, according to some Republican congressmen, was also a call for genocide of the Jewish people.

The ambiguity of their responses led University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill to resign days later, leaving Harvard University President Claudine Gay in a fragile situation before she also succumbed to an administration made up of institutional representatives. with deep ties to the Jewish community.

The ambiguity of university presidents’ positions has been linked to the question of the limits of freedom of speech, a sensitive topic in the academic community since clashes between students and police in the late 1960s during the fight for civil rights and against racial discrimination.

Clashes between students and police

December’s congressional hearings in Washington have only further heightened the climate of protest against the war in the Gaza Strip, and now against the way freedom of expression and demonstration is being curtailed at universities.

The climate of protest quickly multiplied protests that spread from California on the West Coast to New England on the East Coast, affecting more than three dozen universities, including Loyola New Orleans, New Mexico or the University of California. in Los Angeles (UCLA).

At many of these universities, school administrators sought to strike a balance between maintaining order and ensuring freedom of expression, seeking to prevent police forces from entering campuses to stop the escalation of the conflict.

At some universities, demonstrations displaced pro-Palestinian activists, as well as multi-ethnic protests from other minorities who showed solidarity against restrictions on freedom of expression on their university campus.

Columbia University Case

A second wave of university protests erupted in recent weeks after Columbia University President Minouche Shafik went to Congress in April to testify on the same topics as her colleagues at Harvard, Penn State and MIT.

In December, Shafik stated that he was not at the Capitol due to a business trip and appeared before Congressmen with duly prepared responses, promising severe action against any students who expressed anti-Semitic words or views, not hesitating to declare that any reference to genocide constitutes a clear violation of your university’s code of conduct.

In response to these statements, groups of pro-Palestinian activists set up camp on the Columbia University campus in central New York, challenging Shafik and presenting her with a dilemma: keep her promise to Congress or respect the right of her students to exercise their student rights. Freedom of expression.

Although activists didn’t make it easy for her – trying to avoid anti-Semitic slogans or calls for genocide, with even some Jewish professors and students taking part in the initiatives – the Columbia president did not hesitate and for the first time in decades asked police to enter the university campus to demobilize the protest.

Last week, more than a hundred students were detained for resisting calls to cancel the camp, and last Monday, Shafik gave the pro-Palestinian students just a few hours to abandon their protest or they would be suspended or even unable to attend at all. complete the academic course.

The President’s initiative was aimed at preventing another police incursion, knowing the harmful impact of images of security forces blaming in the private space of the university, with all the political consequences they cause.

Shafiq argues that students have the right to express their political positions, but adds that this must “occur within certain parameters,” referring to the need to avoid threats against properly identified individuals or groups.

“Calls for the genocide of a people—whether Israeli or Palestinian, Jewish or Muslim or any other—will have no place in this community,” Columbia University’s president warned in a statement sent to students.