At least 25 arrested at the University of Virginia. Police eviction – without arrests – at the University of Southern California encampment. And in Michigan, the graduation ceremony was interrupted on several occasions by shouts, flags and even a plane with banners that flew over the venue. Pro-Palestinian protests continue to inflame universities across the United States, despite warnings from rectorates and police evictions. They now have a new focus: the graduation ceremonies, the most solemn moment of the school year, scheduled throughout May. Some study centers have chosen to cancel their celebration or use security measures typical of an international summit, with a strong police presence and searches at the entrance. Others negotiate with students over a key demand: divestment from companies that profit from the war in Gaza.
So far, more than 2,300 people have been detained in more than 45 universities throughout the country. This Sunday, around fifty agents entered the camp at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles for the second time in a week to expel several of the occupants from the campus, although without making any arrests, according to the student newspaper. The Daily Trojan. The campus remained closed three days before the start of its graduation festivities on Wednesday. A day earlier, riot officers had used pepper spray to break up a pro-Palestinian demonstration at the University of Virginia and arrested 25 protesters. Dozens were also arrested at the Art Institute of Chicago.
Other universities have cut back on their graduation celebrations due to the protests, which have mostly taken place peacefully. Vermont has announced that the US ambassador to the UN, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, will no longer deliver the keynote address. Columbia, the university that became a symbol of the protests after the violent entry of the police two weeks ago, plans to maintain the presence of the agents until the 17th, once its calendar of ceremonies concludes.
There, discontent persists despite the calm imposed by the police presence and the move to virtual teaching. The entry of the agents was a special trauma. On campus it is well known that two years ago, the New York City Council had to pay 13 million dollars (about 12 million euros) in compensation for police brutality in the dissolution of street protests in the anti-discrimination movement. racist Black Lives Matter (Black lives matter).
“We know that the NYPD has a history of violent brutality against protesters and it is horrifying that Columbia turned them on our own students not once, but twice. The (university) administration has chosen to escalate the confrontation with increasingly disproportionate responses, turning what at first was a peaceful protest by students doing their homework in a camp, into a police occupation of our campus for the next two weeks. “, indicates in an email Bassam Khalidi, professor of Law at the New York institution.
Other universities have opted for dialogue with their students to end, or moderate, the protests. Those of Minnesota or Michigan, two of the states with the largest Arab population, and Brown (Providence, Rhode Island) have promised to consider or submit to a vote of their management boards the divestment of their funds in companies that benefit from the war . Rutgers University in New Jersey has announced plans to create a department of Middle Eastern studies.
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Political side
The development of the protests is being watched very closely by the two major political parties. In a race as close as the one being fought between Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden for the White House, they have placed themselves at the heart of the electoral campaign.
Republicans have opened up to demand harsh measures against pro-Palestinian protesters and against what they denounce as acts of anti-Semitism. House Speaker Jim Johnson was holding a press conference in Columbia and calling for an investigation. His party promoted controversial legislation against anti-Semitism, approved in the lower house and now moving to the Senate. And he painted a picture of Biden as an ineffective leader who allowed scenes of chaos and incivility to take place under him.
“This is Biden’s chaos on campuses,” Trump said in a message on Instagram accompanied by a video with the president’s words in which he defended the students’ right to demonstrate.
Biden, for his part, finally delivered a statement on the protests last Thursday. “There is the right to free expression, but not the right to sow chaos,” he said. The president’s delay in responding to the protests was due, in part, to his interest in avoiding upsetting the progressive wing and the young vote of the party, who favored an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. And, in part, to the belief that the demonstrations will end up dissolving on their own and will not have a great impact on their electoral prospects. Especially if, as Washington intends, by November the war had already ended.
Some data seem to corroborate the White House’s opinion. The vote of those under 30 years of age, who mostly supported him in 2020, is more skeptical four years later, but among those who do declare that they will go to the polls with certainty in November, those who will lean towards the Democrat lead by 19 percentage points to Trump supporters, according to a poll by the Harvard University Institute of Politics in March. The same survey indicates that interest in Gaza among this segment of the population is minority: on the list of issues that concern young people, war appears in 15th place, below employment, the defense of democracy, the environment or even immigration. Only 8% of those surveyed declared themselves very concerned about foreign policy.
But with the polls against, and especially in the handful of pivotal states where he won by the minimum in 2020, every vote counts. The war in Gaza already threatens to cost the Arab American vote, essential in Michigan or Minnesota. And the Harvard survey indicates that 51% of young people support a ceasefire in the Strip.
Biden already has other events planned to condemn anti-Semitism. This Tuesday he will give a speech at the annual commemoration ceremony at the Holocaust Museum, a decision already made long ago. And days later he will travel to Atlanta to participate in the graduation ceremony of Morehouse College, one of the historic universities for black students.
But even there problems can continue. Students at this institution have already asked administrators to cancel Biden’s invitation, as a gesture of protest against the president’s pro-Israel policy in the war. Last Wednesday, the federation of Democratic university students sent a warning about the electoral risk for the president if he maintains his current course in the Middle East. “The Democratic Party should not take the votes of college Democrats for granted. “We reserve the right to criticize our party when it does not want to listen to us,” noted this branch of the political party in its account on X, the old Twitter.
College Democrats’ votes are not to be taken for granted by the Democratic Party. We reserve the right to criticize our party when it fails to listen to us.
— College Democrats of America (@CollegeDems) May 1, 2024