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How campus protests could influence the US presidential election
Jon Lieber, head of Eurasia Group's coverage of political and policy developments in Washington, DC, shares his perspective on US politics.
This is what we are watching in US Politics this week: Campus protests.
They're happening everywhere. Elite schools, state schools, the Northeast, the Midwest, Southern California, campus protests are a major story this week over the Israeli operation in Gaza and the Biden administration's support for it. These are leading to accusations of anti-Semitism on college campuses, and things like canceling college graduation ceremonies at several schools.
Will this be an issue of the November elections?
Really difficult to say. Everyone remembers in 1968, massive protest at the Democratic National Convention, contributing to President Nixon's message that he was the “law and order” candidate, and the Democrats didn't have control. That could easily be repeated this year if the protests continue and are sustained into August at the Democratic Convention in Chicago, where it also was in 1968. And then, if the protests continue on campus once again, when schools come back in in the fall, right before the November elections.
One thing we're watching is how Donald Trump tries to spin these things. A key campaign message that he's been pushing so far, this cycle, is that everything they're saying about him are the things they're actually doing. They thought he would get the US into a war with Iran, and now President Biden came right up to the verge of that last week. They say, “He's the chaos candidate,” and now you've got wars all over the globe, you've got campus protests, you've got a spike in crime, and you've got a massive immigration problem under President Biden.
So, that message is going to be one that Donald Trump continues to push and will definitely resonate with Republican voters and could potentially resonate with independent voters if the large-scale protests and clashes with police continue into the fall.
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.”
A Palestinian woman inspects a house that was destroyed after an Israeli airstrike in Rafah, April 24, 2024.
Rafah braces for Israeli invasion as famine looms
As the World Food Programme warns that Gaza is getting closer to famine by the day, US troops are set to begin constructing a floating pier off the northern coast of the enclave to increase the flow of desperately needed aid. The project is expected to be done by early May.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to lay the groundwork for an invasion of Rafah, the southern Gaza city where over a million Palestinians are sheltering. Israel has pummeled Rafah with airstrikes in recent days, and the Israeli military is gathering tanks and armored vehicles near the southern Gaza border ahead of the expected operation.
The Israeli government, which says Rafah is the last Hamas stronghold in Gaza, has rebuffed international opposition to a ground offensive. Israel also says it’s taking steps to help evacuate civilians before invading, and satellite images suggest
Months of unsuccessful efforts to secure a new truce in the war have kept the door open for a Rafah operation. On Wednesday, a top Hamas official said the militant group would lay down its arms if Israel accepted an independent Palestinian state with pre-1967 borders — but there’s virtually no chance of that happening, particularly given the current Israeli government firmly opposes Palestinian statehood.
For now, all eyes are on Rafah. “We are afraid of what will happen in Rafah. The level of alert is very high,” Ibrahim Khraishi, the Palestinian ambassador to the United Nations, said Thursday.
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.
Pro-Palestine protesters hold placards expressing their opinion as they participate in a sit-in demonstration at New York University.
Campuses in crisis vs. Capitol Hill calm
Across the US, college students have been protesting, sleeping outside, and even getting arrested for trying to force their schools to divest from companies with ties to Israel. Meanwhile, it's been business as usual on Capitol Hill, where the Senate approved a $95.3 billion aid package for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan late Tuesday. The bill, which includes $17 billion in wartime assistance to Israel plus $9 billion for humanitarian aid in Gaza, is now heading for President Joe Biden's desk, where it is expected to be signed.
Student protesters have been targeting companies like Hewlett Packard, Lockheed Martin, and Airbnb, identified by the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions movement as benefitting the Israeli government, which they blame for the 34,183 Palestinians who have died from Israeli attacks on Gaza since Oct. 7. At Columbia College, the oldest undergraduate college at Columbia, 76.5% of students voted this week for the university’s $13.6 billion endowment to divest from Israel. Divestment is being pushed on campuses across the country, from Columbia and Yale to the University of Michigan and Berkeley, to name a few.
Universities appear unlikely to cave to protesters' demands and are instead bracing for chaotic ends to the semester. Columbia has moved to hybrid learning in acknowledgment that many students, particularly Jewish students, report feeling unsafe on campus. Meanwhile, colleges are weighing whether it is possible to hold graduation ceremonies without them becoming high-profile stages for protest.
Yet, despite intense student activism on campuses, there was no sign of public protest against the aid package on Capitol Hill this week.
Biden knows he is facing a possible backlash from Gen Z voters over Gaza and US funding for Israel. The president had hoped tougher talk on Israel would boost his reelection bid, but with less than seven months before Nov. 5, the protests and aid package could make it more difficult for him to get young voters to the polls.
Why the US is sending aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan
Ian Bremmer's Quick Take: Hi, everybody. Ian Bremmer here. And a Quick Take to kick off your week. A big $90 billion package that has been approved by the US House of Representatives, going through the Senate shortly after months of debate and, all of the package, all three major pieces of it, have some significant, complicated features.
First of all, the biggest piece for Ukraine, $60 billion, massive military support.
They had been in danger of losing significant more territory. This certainly shores them up. It helps the Ukrainians. It makes the Europeans panic less, but, you know, can they longer term hold on? What is the end game? The Ukrainians are, of course, running short not just of material to fight, but also air defense capabilities and, critically, people, soldiers. It's much harder for them to get people for the front lines than it is for the authoritarian, and much larger populated Russia. And so, the intention is that the Ukrainians don't fall apart, but of course, longer term, the idea that the US will continue to be able to provide 60 billion in support year after year. Certainly not true if Trump becomes president, probably not true if Biden wins a second term. What you really want to do is try to find a way to get them in a better position so that negotiations, inevitably, that need to occur with Russia, can be more productive and more constructive from the Ukrainian side, from the European side, from the NATO side. The US kick the can on this last year when the Americans, were in much better position supporting Ukraine. Now it's harder. Always is the case is that you think that things are going to get better. You don't feel like taking the political risk and as a consequence you extend and pretend. And now they're in a worse position. So I'm glad that the money came through. I'm glad the Ukrainians, are still fighting courageously and want to fight courageously. But of course, longer term, this war leads to some degree of partition where the Ukrainians are losing their land.
Israel, closest ally of the United States in the Middle East. Some 17 billion in military support for Israel, also some 9 billion in humanitarian aid in Gaza in this plan.
But, of course, increasingly, the United States does not support Israel continuing to fight against Hamas in Gaza. They want to see a lot more protection for Palestinian civilians, which the Israelis have been reluctant to put in place. They don't want to see a ground offensive into Rafah. Over a million Palestinians shelter in there. The Israelis are fully intent on continuing with that, proceeding with it. They did want to see a cease-fire that was linked directly to a hostage release. Now, increasingly, the US is talking about those two things as critical but delinked. And at the same time as the US is providing all this money, you have sanctions being placed by the United States on battalions of the Israeli Defense Forces engaged in human rights violations. This shows just how impossible this position is for President Biden to maneuver domestically, not to mention internationally. The US is overwhelmingly, the one country that is most supportive of Israel. Biden is overwhelmingly the political leader that is most supportive of Israel. But most of his constituents are not. And this is absolutely going to hurt him, even though it's a foreign policy issue and they don't usually play that heavily in recent decades in the election coming up in November. And you’ll see it, of course, across campuses all over the country, including my own at Columbia.
And then finally Taiwan. And this is in a sense the least controversial, because everyone on the Democratic and Republican side pretty much supports more support for Taiwan, is opposed to China. It's very easy to get lots of legislation that makes life more difficult for China. At the same time, though, the long term strategy of the United States is to make Taiwan less important, less important for the Americans in making sure that semiconductor production, moves from Taiwan to the United States, to other allies, not just a few miles off of the mainland Chinese coast, but also export controls that prevent the Chinese from getting advanced semiconductors from Taiwan as well. In other words, the big US strategy is not just arming the Taiwanese and helping them defend themselves, but also making Taiwan fundamentally less important to mainland China. and one of the main reasons that the Chinese would not be interested in attacking Taiwan long term or squeezing them hard economically long term, is because they're so indispensable to the Chinese economy. This is not going to be the case long term.
In all three of these areas, you've got the United States with friends, but they are less aligned with strategically than they are tactically. And that means that this money that we see going forward is all about kicking the can on short term gains that make sense politically for the US right now. But long term do not resolve the challenges that exist for the US with these countries.
That's it for me and I'll talk to you all real soon.
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Women mourn near the bodies of Palestinians killed in Israeli strikes in Rafah, in the southern Gaza Strip, April 21, 2024.
Israel-Hamas: Strikes, support, and… sanctions?
Israeli air strikes on Rafah in southern Gaza this weekend killed 22 people, including 18 children. Israel has intensified its operations against Hamas in recent days, leading to speculation that it may be preparing for a ground operation in Rafah — where some 1.4 million displaced Palestinians are sheltering.
In a statement, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said that Israel “will increase the political and military pressure on Hamas ...We will land more and painful blows on Hamas — soon.”
Giving and taking. This comes as the US House of Representatives approveda $95 billion legislative package, including $9 billion in humanitarian aid, of which $2 billion is reportedly earmarked for Gaza, and $17 billion in defense aid to Israel. The Senate is expected to pass the package soon, and President Joe Biden is ready to sign it.
Simultaneously, however, the US is threatening to sanction the IDF’s Orthodox Netzah Yehuda battalion over accusations of human rights abuses in the West Bank. This would be the first time the US has considered such a move, sparking a sharp response from Israeli officials.
Netanyahu described the sanctions as “the height of absurdity and a moral low” during a time of conflict, while fellow war cabinet member Benny Gantzwarned that “imposing sanctions on the unit is a dangerous precedent and sends the wrong message to our shared enemies.”
Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Mike Johnson (R-LA) speaks to members of the media on the day the House approved legislation providing $95 billion in security assistance to Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, at Capitol Hill in Washington, U.S., April 20, 2024.
Tiktok ban and foreign aid to Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan passes in the House
After months of stalling, the House of Representatives agreed in four separate votes to approve $95 billion in foreign aid for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan on Saturday, as House Speaker Mike Johnson puts his job on the line to advance critical aid to America’s allies. The bills will now head to the Senate and are expected to pass on Tuesday.
The legislation includes $61 billion for Kyiv; $26 billion for Israel and humanitarian aid for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza; and $8 billion for the Indo-Pacific region. It also mandates that $10 billion of Ukraine’s aid be a loan, a concept supported by former President Donald Trump and critical to keeping many Republicans on board.
But the far-right faction of the GOP, led by Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, is still threatening to oust Johnson over his decision to call for a vote.
The House also passed a potential TikTok ban during its round of voting today, putting pressure on the Senate to approve the legislation when it votes on the foreign aid bills on Tuesday. If it passes the Senate, TikTok would be forced to divest from Chinese-owned ByteDance within the year or face a nationwide ban.