“Any human being has to be distressed at what is going on in Gaza because of the quantity of innocent death. I would just like some of the protestors to mention Hamas, because that is where it started. Hamas is a terrorist organization. You know it is very strange for young progressive student politics to kind of support a fascist terrorist group. You know they are talking about a free Palestine. I mean I am somebody who has argued for a Palestine State for most of my life. I mean since the 1980’s probably. Right now, if there was a Palestinian State ,it would be run by Hamas and that would make it a Taliban like state. You know, and it would be a client state of Iran. And is that what the progressive movements of the Western left wish to create? To have another Taliban another ayatollah like state in the Middle East right next to Israel? So I feel that there’s not a lot of deep thought happening. You know there’s an emotional reaction to the death in Gaza. That’s absolutely right but when it slides over towards antisemitism and sometimes the actual support of Hamas, you know, then it’s very problematic.”
- Ahmed Salmon Rushdie, Famed Author who is subject of a Fatwah from the Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini and has thus been subject to several assassination attempts”.
Although the end of the Semester saw the end of student protests they were the central focus of the media last month.Their emergence begs a number of questions. What is the role of the Universities that they are enrolled in? Do the protests impact and/or are they agents for change within the Universities themselves or on Government policy? How do they originate? How do the students “decide'’ which burning issue of the day to focus on? Are the students always on the side of the angels?. Whatever the answers to these questions the Universities themselves play a central role in today’s society hence what happens there is big news. It is largely because of the Universities that they attend that the protestors garner outsize media attention.
These institutions of higher learning.are the laboratories that have defined the professions, rule of law, economies, and morality of modern day society. Jay H. Ell will argue that they are a dominating institution akin to the churches, prior to the Age of Enlightenment.
THE PROTESTS.
Jay H. Ell’s attitude to student protests is in sync with the author and mystic Salmon Rushdie. As a student activist in South Africa he realized the importance of articulating opposition to apartheid and the policies of the University itself who were accommodating to “the norms of society” in the arena of social segregation. However there were three criteria in the decision making process — the obvious, the cause had to be “righteous”, then as much of the student body as possible had to “on sides”, and finally framing the message and the actions in terms that allowed the anti government forces to get behind the narrative. Specifically there was to be no resort to violence. The latter changes the narrative and the cause is diminished.
America has 6000 educational entities that are classified as Universities or Colleges. Not more than a hundred have had any protests that were significant. Protests started a day following the October 7 massacre. The stated objectives were many, as the war progressed, from a cease fire to create a Palestinian State “From the River to the Sea” and open support of Hamas. In a number of universities violence broke out. Very few if any mentioned the hostages and October 7. Anti semitism towards Jewish students became a scary by product.
A small number of campuses protests, mainly at the elite universities, were invaded by tent cities. Most tents had Palestinian flags emblazoned on them. Protests were concentrated at Universities that had well funded organizations entitled Students for Justice in Palestine. The latter is funded, inter alia, by an organization called WESPAC which dishes out cash to many anti Zionist organizations. Ironically the student organization is involved in intersectionality and is pro LGBT and all the other minority groups. They are advocates of the new left that divides the world into victims and victimizers.
It is fair to say that the student protestors was ready to go at the slightest pretense of an uproar in the Middle East. There was no thought of backing Ukraine in the Russian war and they were not remotely interested in the hundreds of thousands who have succumbed to genocide in Sudan. Ukraine and Russia are both white and are seen as big enough to be victimizers. In Sudan both sides are black, so therefore victims, so who cares who triumphs?
The number of students involved at most were a fraction of American students and are in a minority in their demographic both in Universities and the country. In a study conducted by Harvard of all youth in the 18 - 25 year demographic as to how various issues impacted them, the Israeli/Palestine “problem” ranked 15th of 16.
The protestors never remotely attempted to gain the support of the majority of their constituency - Columbia the most media covered event had 300 participants, 150 0f whom weren’t students, out of a registration of 38,000. Their sophisticated occupation of a hall had 40 operatives who had to be forcibly removed. The New York police found weapons in the hall that the forty had barricaded themselves in.
So what could the protestors achieve? They obviously cannot impact their own demographic nor the body politic as 80% support Israel. Their practical demands are limited to “persuade” the Universities to no longer invest in Israel. In a few instances the Universities offered to bring the matter up to their Board of Trustees, The reporting was not positive but a number of opinion writers claimed they were peacefully protesting for Palestinian rights and condemned the University authorities and the police when the latter were asked to intervene.
What the protests did achieve was media attention. Not because of their political power but because of the elite universities that they are privileged to attend and because the role the modern universities play in society generally. So Jay H, Ell will attempt to describe the Universities in general and the elitist ones specifically. The publicity helped the movement that sought to make blacks, Hamas and Palestinians the victims and the white Biden administration collaborators in their victimization.
THE UNIVERSITIES
Universities are.the arbiters of the qualifications needed to fill the most important roles in society in every sphere from medicine to law to engineers of every sort - in short their alumni are the elite. Those that attend them and receive degrees are at an advantage economically. Likewise America is governed by those who have had a college education - 96 percent of the current Legislative Congress have attended Universities.
Some Colleges are more equal than others. Generally speaking the Ivy League, Stanford University, University of California and a few others in each State are regarded as the tops. There are 8 members of the Ivy League including Columbia, Harvard, Yale, Cornell, Brown and Pennsylvania.The latter have all made the headlines with regards to pro Palestinian and anti Israeli protests. One out of eight members of Congress attended an Ivy League School. Every President of the United States except Joe Biden attended an Ivy League College. Eight of the nine Supreme Court Judges attended Harvard or Yale. Sixteen of the fifty - three Nobel Laureates in Economics were tenured at the University of Chicago. And so it goes……
In America more than anywhere else they are not only educational institutions they are gigantic not for profit organizations. The “private” Universities like the Ivy League have massive war chests and the public entities are big big items on their State budgets. Even more they are commercial enterprises. They are providers of health care to private as well as public insurance, their engineering departments produce patents and every possible opportunity to make money is exploited.
So they Universities are the equivalent to the churches in days of yore. They are the engines and the standards of the professions, They the trendsetters of culture and indirectly create the divisions in society and they are financial powerhouses.
Universities are where “woke” is ground zero. They are easy targets for Trump’s anti elitist attacks and he is backed by his MAGA cult in Congress. Hence the Heads of the University were dragged before the House of Representatives Education Committee to answer for their alleged lack of acton against anti semitism which was pervasive in the recent anti Israeli protests.
The Republicans had scant regard for the Principals of these institutions and scoffed at their attempts to cope with the well planned protests. However they did manage to elicit one very damaging and shocking response.
WHY THE UNIVERSITIES ATTITUDE TOWARD ANTI SEMITISM WAS SO SHOCKING.
The Universities over the past three decades have “lost their way” according to no less a political commentator than Fareed Zakaria. Their focus, according to him, has been more on a political agenda but more significantly on a bizarre set of internal regulations which were designed with the best possible motives. There are “safe spaces”, “micro aggressions” “deplatforming” and “trigger warnings”.
“Micro aggressions” are defined as follows, “Commonplace verbal, behavioral or environmental slights”. The persons may be well intentioned and unaware of the potential impact of their words”. The presumed recipients of this protection are the “socially marginalized”. To recover from their hurt the University create “safe spaces” with soft lights and refreshments. Anyone who is not deemed marginalized are fair game it seems.
Thus the Principals’ responses to the Congress legislators’ questions as to whether calls for genocide of all jews, the destruction of Israel and bullying of jewish students constitute harassment caused a sense of shock. They maintained the statements “depended on the context”. In light of the current ground rules of discussion at Universities this was a bizarre answer and resulted in up to time of going into print three Principals of the Ivy League resigning.
So the Jews and Israel represent the white neo colonial fascists, the victimizers, while Hamas and or the Palestinians represent the minorities who by definition are the victims.…
THE INFLUENCE OF THE UNIVERSITY CULTURE ON NATIONAL POLITICS
Just one further general point on the politics of this all. Those with College degrees vote overwhelmingly for Biden while those without pull the lever for Trump. Hence Biden's schtick has been “Better paying jobs for Americans without College degrees”. Biden hopes to build on the slither of disgruntled blue collar workers that returned to The Democrats to put him in power in 2020.
So if the reader hasn’t got it yet the “woke” Universities and their alumni are part of MAGA'S rampage against the elite. Furthermore Biden has felt it necessary to welcome students’ participation in the debate of the Israeli/Hamas war. Generally the caveat of Biden is he is supportive of the protests but condems the violence that has in some instances accompanied it. Trump has promised to cancel the international student visas of those participating and set back the protestors' movement "20 - 30 years". Biden faces a larger threat from a small group of Democratic legislators who have sworn that he will pay for his support of Netanyahu as well as movements who now say he is pro white, ie Israel, and anti black, ie Hamas and/or Palestinians. This narrative is targeted to young African Americans who are now hesitating to vote for Biden.
ARE THE STUDENTS ALWAYS ON THE SIDE OF THE ANGELS?
Are the students always on the right side of history even though their influence is overestimated in real politik?. Don’t they serve as the conscience and aren’t they always proved prescient? Immediate examples offered are the Vietnam war protests and the protests against apartheid. The former was in sync with a countrywide societal movement and the advocacy of Martin Luther King. The student protests were sustained furthermore by the fact that they themselves were drafted into an unpopular war.
Notwithstanding the student protests and the sustained world condemnation with economic sanctions against apartheid, the repressive regime in South Africa could have continued. Less powerful nations with fewer guns, police, military and resources remained in power, witness Franco's Spain. The reason the white regime abandoned apartheid was change from within. Yes sanctions had some impact but it was leadership by a vey brave White politician who had been embedded in the apartheid regimen and an iconic Black politician who forswore retribution after nearly three decades of imprisonment, that ended the regime.. President De Klerk led a white plebiscite and Nelson Mandela molded the disparate black groups into conciliation.
So while the students have been on right side of history they aren’t necessarily so - the Nazi students also joined Hitler’s genocide of the Jews
AT THE END OF THE DAY
The University Administrations as well as their hardly representative student protestors would do well to heed Salman Rushdie’s words and do “some deep thinking”.
Life of course would be much simpler if Bibi Netanyahu wasn't the Prime Minister of Israel and so as to keep out of jail is allowing two zealots to call the shots.
A complaint has been filed in a Federal District Court in New York, the objective being to probe the finances behind the student protests.
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