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Suspended Jewish Columbia and Barnard students participate in a press conference outside the president of Columbia University’s house on April 23, 2024, in Manhattan, New York.
Hard Numbers: Columbia punishes deans, Iran boosts missile output, UN accuses Rwanda of fighting in Congo, Colombia protects the forest
3: Columbia University on Monday removed three deans from their positions over antisemitic text messages they exchanged in a group chat during a late-May event about Jewish life on campus in the wake of protests about Oct. 7 and the war in Gaza. The three have been placed on indefinite leave. For our complete on-the-ground coverage of the upheaval at Columbia this spring, led by GZERO’s Riley Callanan, see here.
2: Iran has been ramping up its output of ballistic missiles at two key production facilities, according to satellite imagery. Tehran’s most prominent buyers of the missiles include the Houthi rebels in Yemen, Hezbollah paramilitaries in Lebanon and, of course, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, which signed a missile deal with Iran in 2022.
3,000-4,000: A new UN report alleges that 3,000-4,000 regular Rwandan Army forces are fighting alongside M23 rebels in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, a serious allegation that follows years of accusations that Rwanda is deliberately destabilizing its neighbor. Alarmingly, the report also implicates Uganda — which had deployed a force to fight the rebels as part of a regional military intervention to support Congo — in providing support for M23, essentially playing both sides of the conflict.
305: Deforestation in Colombia fell by more than a third last year, to just 305 square miles, the lowest figure on record. The decline comes atop a 20% fall the previous year. About half of the deforestation was in the Colombian Amazon. President Gustavo Petro has sought to rein in corporate access to the rainforest, but orders from local guerilla groups to stop cutting down trees have also helped. Experts warn that despite progress, droughts caused by the hot-weather El Niño weather pattern this year could push up deforestation.
A message for those graduating in toxic times
You might be wondering … what’s it like to be the graduation speaker on an American college campus these days? On Monday evening, I got the chance to find out.
Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs, a school where I teach a class on applied geopolitics, invited me to deliver this year’s commencement speech. It was a privilege – and a challenge – that I took very seriously.
I’ve reprinted my speech below, but first, let me describe the experience.
Yes, there were protesters – of course there were. A number of students in the audience wore the keffiyeh, the scarf that has become a symbol of solidarity with Palestinians, particularly those trapped by the war in Gaza. Many brought Palestinian flags on stage with them as they collected their diplomas. More still passed out “diplomas” calling on Columbia University to divest from Israel in protest against the continuing conflict.
But not a single student walked out. Not one turned their back. When I began speaking about the war, there were rumblings in the audience for me to go into more depth. I stopped the speech briefly to assure them I intended to do just that. And then I did.
At no time did anyone try to disrupt the event or to shout me down – or anyone else.
The protesters were visible, creative, constructive, and respectful of the importance of the event for the graduates. They made themselves seen and heard, but they allowed everyone else to be seen and heard too.
In short, it was a beautiful thing, and I was proud to see it, particularly for the reasons I laid out in my speech.
Here it is … in its entirety.
*****
Dean Yarhi-Milo, distinguished faculty, honored guests, SIPA class of 2024.
Congratulations! To the graduates, with thanks to your families that supported you in your studies to get here today. With appreciation for the faculty and staff that make SIPA such a unique and valuable experience.
You made it!
How, exactly, you should feel about that and what, exactly, you’ve made it to, may feel unsettling to you today.
You’ve come to SIPA from all over the world, and you’ve finished an intense and rigorous program in public affairs. You’ve explored how institutions can improve human societies, and how and why they fail. You’ve studied these things so that you can help guide the future in ways that will ultimately serve the public good. I’ve no doubt that doing good and solving problems are your goals.
And yet …
You’re leaving behind a campus that has been ripped apart by an intractable problem of societies in conflict. Here on this campus, in this tiny insignificant microcosm of that deadly, decades-long crisis in the Middle East, has progress been made? Demands have been issued by the powerless, and mostly ignored by the powerful. There have been chants and yelling, and not much listening. And now, the players in this drama, and all of you, depart for new jobs, internships, fellowships, and summer travel, boundless opportunities afforded by elite institutions and the constituencies they serve.
While the war rages on. The hostages remain. And death stalks the population of Gaza.
You might ask yourselves why this particular conflict in the Middle East has so captured our attention. It is not, of course, the only conflict out there.
The war in Ukraine still deserves more of our attention. No, not because they’re white people in Europe. Hundreds of thousands have died, and more will follow. And this war’s impact on global food and fuel supplies threatens to push tens of millions of the world’s poorest back into poverty and starvation. Of all the conflicts in the world through your time here at SIPA, the war in Ukraine has hurt the most people.
In Sudan, with far fewer journalists to tell the stories, we will never know how many have already been killed or how many face starvation.
A few hundred miles from the tip of Florida, violent gangs are consuming Haiti. The government of the United States has done nothing about it, except to send back the desperate refugees who make it to our shores.
In Armenia, where some of my family are from, 100,000 people were ethnically cleansed just a few months ago in Nagorno-Karabakh. An old friend of mine, who left a comfortable life to serve his people there, has been falsely imprisoned on charges of terrorism.
Why has Israel / Palestine taken such command of our attention? Is it because we believe this killing results from the sins of Western civilization? Is it that America bears greater responsibility for this conflict? Or has greater opportunity to influence the outcome?
Let me pose a different hypothesis. Perhaps it is because this conflict is easier to reduce to absolutes. One side is right. The other is always wrong. One is always a victim, the other a hotbed of terrorism, or a vindictive colonial oppressor. We identify with one side over the other. We share the greatest cultural or religious affinity with this side or the other one.
Wherever you come from, I’ve no doubt that you — SIPA graduates — know this conflict is deeply complex, with historical roots well beyond the fighting this year. And yet the nature of this conflict makes it useful to powerful interests in this country. Useful to generate clicks, to capture attention, to sell ad space, to secure political advantage in this instant — and in this election — without any attention to the long, slow slog of work and compromise that is the only path to peace.
There are so many political and commercial forces today that frustrate progress. They ignore history and reject evidence. They amplify bias. They push made-for-the-moment ideas that are more slogan than solution. “Build the wall.” “Defund the police.” “From the river to the sea.”
These slogans divide us from them.
We don’t need to find shadowy forces that come from some deep global conspiracy. These threats are the result of the political and economic systems we’ve built. In recent decades, we thought liberal democracy would be the bulwark against dictatorships and autocracy. But liberalism has been supplanted by corporatism, which lacks a moral compass and makes a mockery of the public good.
Our public institutions are in decline just when we need them the most.
When I say the word “institution,” what image do you see? An edifice of stone, solid and unyielding, built for the ages? Hamilton Hall?
As SIPA grads you know that institutions are more like gardens. Dynamic systems of diverse and competing interests, constantly growing and reacting to their environment. Capable of great beauty, but at constant risk of infestation and disease.
Your leaders and elites have failed to tend as they should to the institutions they inherited. We have taken for granted the benefits of globalization with no plan to pay the check. We have reached for short-term gains — in wealth, in power — and avoided the hard effort of tending the gardens that sustain us.
And so, graduates, you should face the future with concern about our ability to manage the forces that drive us apart. Are our institutions fit for today’s purpose? Information warfare is fought on all sides, and we are the civilian casualties. Algorithms — controlled by people and business models that don’t care about civil society — shape our perceptions of what is true.
Israel and its supporters don’t see and hear the same news that Palestinians and their supporters see. Russians don’t get the same information about their war as Ukrainians, Europeans, and Americans do. In today’s America, the political information consumed by Biden and Trump voters comes from different planets.
I wish I was overstating that problem. But here at SIPA, you know that I’m not.
Our technological futures are being shaped by corporate leaders who don’t answer to elections, who will oversimplify the challenges we face and promote fixes only the technologists can provide. Techno-utopianism is a dangerous fantasy. Look at what it offers us: painless solutions to complex problems. Endless profits for its high priests. Civil society becomes an externality. The public good, a helpless bystander.
Disinformation, conspiracies, and performative outrage are the most dangerous rot in the gardens of our institutions. They will be impossible to eradicate if we huddle comfortably within our own bubbles, rejecting all the ideas and information that challenge us to question our assumptions, refusing to hear the other side.
How do we prevent these outcomes, and the violence that will inevitably ensue?
I have built my professional career on thoughtful analysis, but on these questions, I have no easy answers. We live in a world of complexity, where real evidence, critical thinking, and the dogged, persistent pursuit of practical solutions are so essential.
I am certain of a few things. First, it does not have to be this way. Humans created these problems, and humans can solve them.
Second, your generation — particularly you who have been so fortunate to study at this place and in this moment — YOU MUST find different paths from those who came before you.
I know that you have goals as varied as your backgrounds. Some of you are ready to change the world, you will pursue the heights of public service and government or found innovative startups to make a difference. Some of you have debts to pay, families to support, responsibilities too great to think about taking big risks. Some of you, like me over 30 years ago, have absolutely no idea what you really want to do. I’ll be honest, when I came to New York from Stanford so long ago, I just wanted a good job. But no one would hire me. They thought they didn’t need political scientists. I’ve spent the past three decades trying to show them they were wrong, and I’m looking forward to you doing the same.
Regardless of the path you choose, now or in the future, ALL of you have something to offer. All of you can make a difference. You know how to analyze problems, and you understand much of what makes societies stable, what brings countries into conflict. You can see where the choices that governments and institutions make can either help or hurt your fellow humans. You can help others to see clearly. You can choose to do the right thing.
In my own history, even when crammed into a borrowed cubicle, eating ramen under a leaky roof off West End Avenue, there were easy paths to financial success I would not follow. And later, when my company Eurasia Group finally became something more than Eurasia Guy, there were clients we would not take, governments we would not serve. That remains true today.
You may feel that your role today is small, that nothing you do will matter so much. Resist such feelings. Hard work is never a hopeless cause. Each step in the right direction matters.
You will make endless decisions over your careers in public affairs. Countless opportunities for small steps forward when you remain focused on doing right, with an eye toward the long term, toward repairing public confidence in our civic institutions.
This is what you have been trained for, and this is what our institutions need.
As you set off on the next phase of your lives, I hope that you will keep a few principles in mind, some themes to help us create a truly civil society:
1. Change your mind
The world never stops changing.
If you’re afraid to change your mind …
even about things you consider fundamentally important…
ESPECIALLY those things,
the more wrong you will become as the world around you changes. Having a fixed world view is the one thing that guarantees you’ll be wrong as the world changes.
2. Listen to the other side
Are you a tolerant person?
I’m really asking you.
If you’re a tolerant person, you can listen to people you disagree with, even strongly disagree with, and learn something you didn’t know.
Learn something that can help you do what you think you should do.
Make a list of people you respect…
…but with whom you disagree on questions you feel are truly important.
Listen to those people. Read what they write. Follow them on social media.
They may not shift your core convictions. It doesn’t matter.
Listening to them and considering FAIRLY, HONESTLY what they say will broaden and deepen your perspective.
3. Remember that your work is about helping people
If your work is on the problems of international and public affairs, your work is about people and their lives.
Don’t forget that.
It’s not mainly about ideas and principles.
It’s about creating opportunities for people alive today and others not yet born.
Opportunities to live securely. To learn. To realize potential. And to share.
When life gets in the way, as it surely will, remember what brought you here, to this place, to this field of study. Remember how fortunate you are, and never forget those whose most basic needs are constantly under pressure. Resist the gentle tug of fatalism. Resist the long slide into complacency.
And please remember, cynicism is toxic. It’s pure poison. Do not swallow it.
And last but not least (at least not for those of you that know me)
4. Take your work, but not yourself seriously
I was going to make this speech funny.
Because I’m generally a funny person.
But I take this moment seriously.
If you’re a generous person, your WORK will outlive you.
When we go, we can’t take anything with us.
Give what you have.
I believe this is a secret of happiness.
The happiness of those who will benefit because you shared what you had to give.
I believe that can make you happy too.
Class of 2024, today’s wars will grind on a while longer, and America’s election season will only get uglier.
We’re not going to kid ourselves.
None of us will change the world this week.
But each of us has a chance to use whatever talent and wisdom we have to learn what this world has to teach us … and to work with other people, especially those we disagree with, to build a more cooperative future.
I wish you, graduates, the very best.
And I thank you.
*****
So, there it is, GZERO readers.
My most sincere gratitude to Columbia University, to SIPA, and most especially to its graduates!
Covering Columbia's campus protests as a student and GZERO reporter
The past few weeks of student protests, counter-protests, and police activity at Columbia have been the tensest moments the University has seen in over 50 years. What’s it like to be a student and graduating senior during this historic moment?
When GZERO writer Riley Callanan began her senior year at Barnard, the women’s college within Columbia, she never expected it would end this way: thousands of student protesters, an encampment and takeover of an administrative building, the attention of the national news media, armed police officers swarming campus, and, ultimately, a canceled graduation ceremony. Now, as she tells colleague Alex Kliment on GZERO World, instead of senior galas and grad parties, Columbia students are having intense debates over the Israel-Palestine conflict, antisemitism, and free speech.
Callanan has been documenting it all—from the early protests on the academic quad to Speaker of the House Mike Johnson delivering on her library steps. GZERO correspondent Alex Kliment sat down with Callahan to hear more about what it’s like to be a college senior in 2024, what she saw during the protests, and what happens after graduation.“We absolutely need to change the default setting on campuses from confrontation is romanticized to cooperation is the norm."
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week on US public television (check local listings) and online.
- With summer looming, where will student protesters turn next? ›
- From the inside out: Is Columbia’s campus crisis calming down? ›
- Chaos on Campus: Speaker Johnson's visit fans the flames at Columbia as protests go global ›
- Columbia & Yale protests: What campus protesters want ›
- Campus protests spill over into US political sphere ›
Why campus protests worsen divisions, and how to mediate: Advice from Eboo Patel
Listen: On this episode of the GZERO World Podcast with Ian Bremmer, Eboo Patel, founder of Interfaith America, advocates for cooperation over division on college campuses in response to protests, highlighting the need for civil discourse and pointing out that despite some instances of violence, most campuses engage in constructive dialogue.
Whether you are for or against the protests happening across the country, one thing is clear: They've caught the world's attention. Some have escalated into violence, as seen at UCLA, Texas, and Columbia University. On the podcast, Patel discusses his efforts on over 600 college campuses to foster unity. His central message: "Cooperation is better than division."
Patel emphasizes the need for universities to shift their focus from confrontation to cooperation, advocating for environments that promote civil discourse. He suggests initiatives such as teach-ins and dialogues to explore constructive solutions to complex issues. Patel criticizes the default mode of many universities. "I think the problem here, the thing that universities could control, which I think that they have gotten wrong in many cases over the course of the past five years, is the default mode has been set to confrontation, not cooperation."
While it may be challenging to find common ground, Patel highlights that the majority of college campuses have managed to engage in debates about the Israel-Gaza conflict without resorting to chaos or violence. He explains, "The media, for good reasons, covers planes that crash and not planes that land." This suggests that the instances of violence and chaos are outliers and that civil discourse is still prevalent on many campuses.
Subscribe to the GZERO World Podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your preferred podcast platform, to receive new episodes as soon as they're published.
- How campus protests could influence the US presidential election ›
- Columbia & Yale protests: What campus protesters want ›
- Campus protests spill over into US political sphere ›
- Chaos erupts overnight on US campuses. What’s next for student protesters? ›
- Crisis at Columbia: Protests and arrests bring chaos to campus ›
Israel intent on Rafah invasion despite global backlash
Ian Bremmer shares his insights on global politics this week on World In :60.
How will the international community respond to an Israeli invasion of Rafah?
Very, very badly. You see that the Israeli prime minister and War Cabinet continues to say that no matter what happens with the hostages and a potential deal, and everyone's trying to get one done at the last minute, that the intention is still very much to fight on the ground there. I don't think that's a bluff. And especially because it's supported by the entire Israeli political spectrum and the population, they believe that you've got to take out Hamas. And beyond that, there's also the concern about Hezbollah. So I think the international response is going to be very negative. It is certainly going to push back the possibility of any Saudi normalization, and it's going to lead to a lot more demonstrations and hostility against Israel in the United States and in Europe.
How would a Trump presidency be different from his first term?
I think the biggest issue, is that, Trump is going to be focused much more on ending, all of these cases against him, which he sees as completely unjust and that the political enemies, need to be responded to. And that means a top priority of ensuring that the leadership of the Department of Justice, the FBI, probably the IRS, are political appointees and loyalists to him. This was not a priority in the first administration. There's no Bill Barr coming back as attorney general. And I think the potential of that, to both create a new McCarthyism in the United States and also to create a structural advantage for the incumbent party in being able to ensure election outcomes much more strongly than you would in a normal, representative democracy, that is significantly at risk in that environment. That'll change the way we think about rule of law in the United States. That's probably the biggest difference.
Are growing US campus protests a sign of a chaotic election in November?
I wouldn't say that yet. We're still talking about relatively small numbers of students, and after graduations are over, I think the student protests are over. But there's no question this does reflect a significant anger among young people in the country. A lot of the people that are involved in the takeovers of buildings, for example, and the tussling with police, are not the students themselves, but people coming in, political entrepreneurs, if I can call them that, from outside. I am deeply concerned about what happens with the upcoming Democratic convention in Chicago. I think that could be very violent with lots of demonstrations. Certainly I don't see the war in Gaza over any time soon. And as a consequence of that, I think that, this is going to be a big problem and very, very challenging, as we think about the most dysfunctional and polarized US election since the 19th century, since the period of reconstruction.
- Crisis at Columbia: Protests and arrests bring chaos to campus ›
- Biden vs Trump foreign policy: Political scientist Stephen Walt weighs in ›
- Trump continues to lead the GOP charge ›
- Israel’s Shifa raid ends. Is Rafah next? ›
- What will Israel's invasion of Rafah look like? ›
- Israel-Hamas war: Who is responsible for Gaza's enormous civilian death toll? - GZERO Media ›
Two students occupying Hamilton Hall on Columbia's Campus
With summer looming, where will student protesters turn next?
What are those demands? The movement aims to isolate and put pressure on Israel to stop its bombing campaign in Gaza by forcing universities to divest from companies with ties to the Jewish state or that profit from the war. While protests on US campuses are being driven by the war in Gaza, their impact is transcending the conflict. Some of the demonstrations have featured antisemitic and intimidating chants and posters, while politicians on both sides of the aisle have made visits to college campuses to either support or condemn them.
Schools are striving to restore order before commencement season to avoid becoming the next University of Southern California, which canceled its main graduation ceremony after arresting more than 90 students last week.
But protesters aren’t concerned about graduation ceremonies. At Columbia, a new chant, “no commencement until divestment,” can be heard from the occupied building. Ali, a senior at The New School who was involved in the takeover of Parsons and requested anonymity, laughed when I asked if he was worried about missing graduation. “We are all pushing as hard as we can to get divestment before the end of school. That’s the priority,” he said.
He was optimistic they would succeed, at least on his campus. But the overarching goal of getting the largest university endowments to divest from Israel is certainly not going to happen before students go home for summer.
So what comes next?
Hamilton Hall, the building Columbia protesters occupied last night, was also taken over in the spring of 1968 during the Vietnam War. Demonstrators back then went home for the summer, only to resurface in the thousands at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and, long story short: Things got ugly. The gathering erupted into violence, leading to the activation of the National Guard and the arrest of hundreds of protesters.
This August, the DNC is also in Chicago, so could history repeat itself? When I asked students whether the movement would shift from university endowments to political events, the question took them off-guard.
“People aren’t really talking about what this is going to look like during the 2024 election," said Ali. “But what I do know is that people in this movement aren’t committed to voting for a certain party.” His statement echoed the disillusionment with political parties that I have heard again and again from student protesters.
“I don’t know how Joe Biden doesn’t realize he’s lost us,” said Julia Ye, a senior at NYU.
Cornel West and Jill Stein, two left-leaning third-party candidates, have both visited the Columbia University encampment in hopes of picking up the liberal youth vote. But it remains to be seen whether students will vote for either of them, especially if doing so makes it more likely that Donald Trump wins.
What’s clear is that students are confident the movement isn’t going on vacation. “Right now, all our focus is on university divestment,” said Ye, “but this energy isn’t going anywhere. It will just take a different shape over the summer.”
Students reported that throughout this year of university protests, they have seen their activist networks strengthen and expand, especially between schools. They have coordinated sending excess food donations between encampments in New York City, live-streamed the programming from different encampments across the country on their own, and been catalyzed by each other’s encounters with law enforcement.
“It was cool to see us moving in sync with the Columbia protests yesterday, even if it wasn’t officially organized,” said Gabriella, another senior at The New School who requested anonymity. “We are all watching each other on social media. We all want the same things. This movement is exploding, whether one person is calling for it to or not.”
The view Thursday night from inside the Columbia University campus gate at 116th Street and Amsterdam in New York City.
From the inside out: Is Columbia’s campus crisis calming down?
Special report by Riley Callanan and Alex Kliment
Late Thursday night, the words “New Shafik email drop” rippled through the protest site known as the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on Columbia University’s lawns.
The protesters had been waiting to hear whether the New York Police Department was on its way, knowing that the deadline for negotiations with the administration of university President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik was rapidly approaching.
The police would not, in fact, be coming, the email said. Shortly after that news broke, student negotiators returned from talks to report that while there had not been progress on their demands to divest from Israel or give amnesty to the suspended students, they had had a small win: No new deadline to end the protests had been set. The encampment’s leaders continue to demand that Columbia’s endowment divest from any Israeli-related holdings and offer amnesty to students suspended over the protests last week.
The agreement to continue talking, disagreeing, and protesting – without divesting or policing – came in stark contrast to the images of hundreds of students and professors being arrested on several other US college campuses on Thursday.
But what seemed like a de-escalation inside the Columbia campus gates also came after an evening in which tensions were still high outside of them. As in, right outside of them.
Starting around 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, a United for Israel March drew several hundred protesters, and almost all involved were non-students. They came in part because of media and social media coverage of the harassment and attacks that several Jewish students faced last week, in the first days and nights of the pro-Palestinian encampment.
“It’s like 1939 Germany in there,” said Amber Falk, 37, as she handed out free packets of pastel-colored 4x6 inch stickers that said “F*ck Hamas” or “From the River to the Sea, TikTok is not a College Degree!”
That idea echoed comments made the day before by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who said the atmosphere for Jewish students on American college campuses recalled Nazi-era discrimination. Also on Wednesday, US House Speaker Mike Johnson came to Columbia’s campus to suggest sending in the National Guard “if these threats and intimidation are not stopped.”
“You know, if they don’t handle this, it might be time for us to form a new JDL,” said pro-Israel protester Joey M, 36, of Brooklyn, referring to a violent Jewish extremist group, originally formed to protect Jews in New York in the 1960s. “If the government can’t protect Jews, we have to,” said Joey.
Meanwhile, across campus on Broadway, a different group of non-Columbian protesters in keffiyehs and masks chanted, “There is only one solution! Intifada Revolution!”
There’s no doubt that tensions at Columbia were immensely high last week when Riley reported that “the campus is unraveling into distrust, dysfunction, and fear.” But in the days since – which have seen one round of police arrests, the closure of campus to non-students, and the encampment itself pledging to weed out external agitators – tensions have come down noticeably.
“It's much more calm now,” said David Lederer, a sophomore wearing a kippah and waving a large Israeli flag just inside the gates. If that name rings a bell, it’s because David and his twin brother Jonathan were attacked on campus last week, supercharging concerns about antisemitism on campus.
“People will still say ‘sweep the camp,’ ‘arrest all of them.’ But I'm not like that,” said Lederer. “Free speech is free speech, just don’t harass us. I feel safe walking on campus again. Even if the change is just for the media to see, I appreciate that.”
Whether this new, relative calm can hold is an open question of huge importance – the deadlock between the encampment and the university is testing the respective limits of free speech, safe spaces, and campus rules, all in the eye of a furious national storm.
Pressure from beyond the gates – which remain closed to outsiders – is still immense. At least 10 GOP lawmakers have called for Shafik’s resignation. Vice President Kamala Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff held talks with Jewish Campus leaders on Thursday. Ilhan Omar, of the “squad” faction of progressive Democrats, has visited the encampment, where her daughter was arrested last week. And adding further fuel to the fire, Hamas itself has expressed support for the student protests.
Meanwhile, as Thursday’s campus arrests elsewhere in the country threatened to inflame protests further, the basic standoff at Columbia remains unresolved.
As the Shafik email drop put it: “We have our demands; they have theirs.”
Flags from across the divide wave in the air over protests at Columbia University on Thursday, April 25, 2024.
Slogans of war
Where do we draw the line between free speech and a safe space? That’s the core question posed by the protests and the arrests raging on campuses right now over the Hamas-Israel war.
Of the many complex, painful issues contributing to the tension stemming from the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre and the ongoing Israeli attacks in Gaza, dividing groups into two basic camps, pro-Israel and pro-Palestine, is only making this worse. Call it a category problem.
What do these terms, pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian, even mean? Are they helpful, or is it time to stop using them altogether?
The fundamental flaw with these terms is that they conflate support for the existence of a country with support for the government or leaders in power. For example, does pro-Israel mean support for the existence of the state of Israel, or for the policies of the current government? They are wildly different things.
Before Oct. 7, there were already massive rallies against Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, and they have only grown louder. Are the people protesting him anti-Israel? Of course not. Patriotism and partisanship are not always the same thing. The same person who supports the right of Israel to exist – and may even fight for Israel against a group like Hamas – might just as well protest the Likud government, support a two-state solution, and want a cease-fire in Gaza. Read the popular Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz and see the diverse views and critical opinions on Israeli policy.
The same is true for the Palestinian cause. Supporting a viable, safe, prosperous Palestinian state is the normative position of most governments around the world, but that does not mean supporting the murderous agenda of Hamas, which is listed as a terrorist organization in Canada and the US. Palestinians and millions of others who are deeply furious at the Israeli actions in Gaza and Netanyahu’s policies should not necessarily be equated with supporting Hamas and their eliminationist goals. Are you anti-Palestinian if you do not support Hamas? Of course not.
The same is true anywhere. No one asks if you are, say, pro-France, pro-Italy, pro-Canada, or pro-America when they are debating a specific policy. Instead, they ask if you support a particular position or action of the government in power. Reducing this to a conflict about the right to exist as a country – for Israel or Palestine – is a road to endless war. Making this, as it ought to be, about a conflict of policy and leadership – however deadly it is right now – is the path toward resolution.
With the war in Gaza raging, it is understandable that people are being forced to take a side: Are you pro-Israel or pro-Palestinian? That gives the patina of a firm moral stance, but it plays into the hands of the most radical forces on both sides who strategically want to co-opt the reasonable middle ground for their own purposes.
Among the great propaganda victories of this war are the Hamasification of the Palestinian cause on one side and the Netanyahuization of the Israeli voices on the other (and no, this is not meant to make a false equivalence between the two, but simply to describe the political dynamics).
That’s why you see, say, signs supporting Hamas on campuses and chants that celebrate Oct. 7. That’s why there is a rise in antisemitism or, on the other side, a refusal in some places to acknowledge the deaths and suffering of the people of Gaza.
The category problem supports this dynamic and undermines the rational middle ground where, for generations, there has been a genuine if fruitless effort to find a peaceful two-state solution. It is now parodied as a sinkhole of mushy naivete, offensive bothsidesism, and false equivalencies, and protesters and their slogans shout it down. But it remains the only hope.
There isn’t a lot people can do in the face of such a long-standing bloody conflict – though joining protests is certainly one thing. But perhaps adhering to the middle ground and avoiding the broad categories that help radicals on each side is a small but effective action.
You might think that the one place you’d find this middle ground would be on university campuses, where details, nuance, and debate are supposed to thrive. That’s not happening. On many campuses today, it is now impossible to distinguish between free speech and safe space.