The failure of the negotiations between the authorities of Columbia University (New York) and representatives of the students camped for 10 days in solidarity with Gaza, who this Monday received an eviction order, adds edges to a phenomenon, that of campus mobilization, which recalls the clamor against the Vietnam War and which, as in 1968, fully affects politics. Pressure not only from Republican congressmen – the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, visited the campus last week to support the Jewish students – but also from some Democrats are additional fuel for an already incipient agitation in Europe and that in the United States threatens to cost President Joe Biden even more support: in front of 21 Democratic congressmen who have asked Columbia to vacate the camp, other of his co-religionists come to show solidarity with the students. In addition to the external front of criticism for his support for Israel—from tens of thousands of voters of Arab and Muslim origin—the gap in the Democratic ranks threatens a new sink of votes in the November presidential elections. In the early hours of Monday to Tuesday, Columbia students occupied a building after the center’s management began suspending students who refuse to leave the camp.
The division among Democrats has once again become evident. About twenty representatives of the Lower House wrote a letter to Columbia’s board of directors on Monday to demand the dismantling of the camp or the resignation of the rector, Minouche Shafik. The letter represents an escalation in the politicization of the phenomenon, given that calls to restore order were until now limited to Republicans. The signatories express their “disappointment that, despite promises to do so, Columbia University has still not disbanded the unauthorized and impermissible encampment of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish activists on campus.” The senders are moderate or centrist congressmen, 10 of them Jews.
As the House prepares to vote this week on at least one measure against anti-Semitism that further divides the Democrats, another small group of the progressive faction, with the representatives of the so-called Squad (Squad) in the lead, goes to the campuses to support the protesters. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman visited Columbia on Friday. Ilhan Omar did the same last week at the University of Minnesota and then in Columbia, where his daughter was arrested in the early days of the protests.
Whether or not to resort to force to evacuate the campuses, when there are barely two weeks left for the graduation ceremonies, is the main doubt of the academic authorities, and also a reflection of political decisions. About a hundred riot police evacuated the University of Texas last week, in a show of force by the state’s governor, Republican Greg Abbott. Columbia, which has its own law enforcement service and even has “demonstration management” employees – as it appears on their uniforms – has resisted until the last minute from calling the police again, as it did 10 days ago to suppress the first camp—and whose repression gave rise to the movement—but each new day of protests fuels the disaffection of donors, especially Jews. Some of the Democratic congressmen who signed the letter last week visited a center for Jewish students on campus financed by millionaire Robert Kraft, who threatens to withdraw his funds if the mobilization continues.
Divestment, a key demand
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The swords are increasingly raised. A few hours before giving the eviction ultimatum, Columbia announced this Monday that it is not going to divest, that is, to withdraw its investments from companies linked to Israel, the main demand of the protesters along with the readmission of the expelled students and, obviously, the ceasefire in Gaza. In mid-2023, the elite New York university had some $13.6 billion in companies linked to Israeli capital, more than double the annual budget of the modest public university in New York, where a massive camp has also emerged that does not attract any attention. media.
Aside from the difficult balance between guaranteeing the exercise of freedom of expression by protesters and keeping at bay the alleged anti-Semitic speeches that many Jewish students claim to hear every day, the rectorates must address many more, and more specific, interests, such as the thousands of millions of dollars from the donors who finance the centers and also their investments (the difference between the Columbia shield and the unnoticed camp at the Cuny public university demonstrates the abysmal distance between the two: tuition at the public university costs about 7,000 dollars , 10 times less than in Columbia). The latter’s statement announcing that it will not divest from companies linked to Israel offers, instead, to invest in health and education in Gaza.
Biden’s Vietnam, many are already calling this massive, transversal mobilization with a global flag: Palestine. The only precedent, from the point of view of student demands, may be the protests against the apartheid in South Africa that shook US universities and that in the case of Columbia twisted the arm of the rectorate in 1985 and caused the disinvestment in important companies of approximately 4% of its portfolio. The mobilizations against the Iraq war—in the end, a distant war—were notable, but much less noisy. Unlike more recent movements, such as Occupy Wall Street or Black Lives Matter, which are more locally rooted, solidarity with Gaza acts as a global drag net: students, but also countless left-wing and anti-globalization groups join forces in an internationalist imitation that escapes the authorities and, above all, the two parties of the establishment. The bête noire that elite universities are for Republicans, who attack them for considering them a bastion of the radical left – even social democracy is a bastion in the US – is the target of extreme discourses in this new front of the cultural wars.
Peaceful eviction in Paris
Columbia was hoping for a last-minute miracle this Monday to avoid a repeat of the scenario of two weeks ago, when it invited the police to dismantle the first camp, with a hundred arrests. It was precisely this repression that unleashed a wave throughout the country, with around 800 arrests, more than 300 of them over the weekend, such as those at USC in Los Angeles, while the students do not stop: at Yale, where The police arrested fifty people a week ago, a new camp has sprung up tonight. The university began suspending students who refuse to dismantle the protest camp.
University activism finds a response on the other side of the Atlantic, in Germany and especially France, where for a few days now, protest scenes on some campuses have been reproduced on a smaller scale than in the United States.
This Monday, the police evicted fifty students who were blocking the Sorbonne University in Paris, three days after an agreement between the university students and the academic management deactivated another blockade at the Institute of Political Studies, the prestigious Sciences Po. Since the Hamas attack on October 7 and Israel’s war in Gaza, authorities have feared that the conflict would somehow spread to France, the European country with the largest Jewish and Muslim population. Fearful of aftershocks in suburbsthe scene of periodic protests and outbreaks of riots, it has been rather in the universities where rejection of Israel’s policy has been expressed.
The mobilization at Sciences Po ended after obtaining from the center’s management a promise to lift sanctions against students with criminal records and to open a public dialogue. At the Sorbonne, this Monday, the blockade lasted a few hours. It remains to be seen whether in the coming days the protests will be repeated or spread as in the United States. There have been calls from student associations to occupy other campuses and also from leaders of La Francia Insumisa (LFI), a hegemonic party on the left that faces the European elections in June under the threat of being overtaken by the socialist candidacy. LFI champions the Palestinian cause in France and its deputies and leaders have attended some of the protests.