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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.”
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.
FILE PHOTO: An image of Cuba's former President Raul Castro and Cuba's President and First Secretary of the Communist Party Miguel Diaz-Canel is seen beside a Turkish powership, in Havana, Cuba, April 17, 2023.
Cubans cry for electricity and food in rare protests
Extended blackouts and food scarcity drove Cubans into the streets of Santiago, the Caribbean country’s second-largest city, on Monday, in rare and risky protests. President Miguel Díaz-Canel blamed the US trade embargo for shortages and warned that American “terrorists” were fomenting dissent.
Cuba depends heavily on its allies, Russia and Venezuela, for food and fuel, but the island’s rumbling economic crisis means each peso fails to go as far as it once did. The government raised prices on fuel by over 400% at the start of March as part of an effort to stabilize the economy and control spiraling inflation, which officially topped 30% (though the real rate is likely higher).
Havana is now receiving aid from the World Food Programme for the first time, after requesting help in a rare acknowledgment that the country can’t feed itself. Now, blackouts of up to 18 hours a day mean that ordinary folks can’t refrigerate what food they do have, and instead watch it spoil in tropical weather. Over 400,000 people have fled to the US in the two and a half years since the last major economic protests.
We’re watching for signs of unrest spreading to other cities, and for how hard Havana cracks down on dissent.
A view shows Batman logo on a box of cocaine, said to be recovered by New Zealand Police.
Hard Numbers: Batman found on cocaine, Disney censors Simpsons, Nicaragua jails priests, Bard flub costs Google billions
3.2: In a possible indication that the Marvel universe is winning, Batman is now on cocaine. New Zealand’s navyintercepted a haul of 3.2 tons of the drug floating in the pacific. Many of the packets were labeled with the Dark Knight’s symbol, evidently a trademark of certain producers in South America.
1: Disney hasremoved one single episode of the current Simpsons season from its streaming service in Hong Kong. They haven’t commented on why, but the episode features a scene where Marge Simpson’s online spin instructor stands before a background that advertises “the wonders of China: Bitcoin mines, forced labor camps where children make smartphones!”
5: A Nicaraguan courthas sentenced five priests to decade-long prison terms for supporting pro-democracy protests in 2018 that the government of strongman Daniel Ortega deemed illegal. Since those protests, Ortega has cracked down severely on civil society, with a particular focus on his one-time allies in the Catholic Church.
100 billion: Google’s parent company Alphabetlost more than $100 billion in value on Wednesday after Bard, its newly unveiled AI-powered chatbot, incorrectly attributed the origin of certain deep space photographs in an advertisement. That weird sound you hear right now is rival AI bot ChatGPT, somewhere deep in the metaverse, laughing its neural networks off.
Political unrest when governments fail struggling citizens
What happens when 1.4 billion people are cut off from the global economy because they don't have a bank account at a time of mounting crises?
"The geopolitical ramifications are potentially huge," Ali Wyne, senior analyst for Global Macro-Geopolitics at Eurasia Group, says during a livestream conversation on closing the global digital gap hosted by GZERO in partnership with Visa.
First, it was COVID. Then came the twin blows of the food and energy crises, aggravated by Russia's war in Ukraine. When people are struggling, Wyne adds, they'll look to their governments for solutions.
"And if they feel that they're not getting satisfactory answers," he warns, "we can't understate the potential for significant political unrest."
Demonstrators from across Ecuador march on the capital Quito
Hard Numbers: Indigenous protests in Quito, Russia bleeds troops, Texas school to be razed, Great Barrier Reef lawsuit
10,000: On Tuesday, roughly 10,000 Indigenous people took to the streets of Quito, Ecuador’s capital, to protest rising fuel prices and unemployment. The country’s 1 million Indigenous people – who are disproportionately impacted by poverty and joblessness – say that President Guillermo Lasso’s government has failed to make good on a promise to revive the country's ailing economy.
55: The Russian-backed Donetsk militia fighting in the Donbas region in eastern Ukraine has lost 55% of its original force, according to British intelligence. Amid such heavy losses, Russia’s proxy administration is reportedly offering one-year contracts to foreign mercenaries to join its ranks in the region.
3: Local authorities will demolish Robb Elementary School, the site of the recent mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas, in which 21 people were killed. This comes amid reports that well-equipped police officers were on hand within three minutes of the gunman entering the school – but waited over an hour to go in and end the standoff. The US Justice Department is reviewing the police response.
267: An environmental group is suing Woodside Energy Group, which plans to build a 267-mile offshore gas pipeline in Western Australia, saying that the project will release more carbon into the atmosphere that will further damage the Great Barrier Reef … even though the reef is many miles away in the country’s east. The energy company hit back, saying the pipeline is crucial to helping countries in Asia Pacific meet pledges of getting to net zero carbon emissions.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken
Hard Numbers: Blinken leads migration summit, Rohingya tragedy in Malaysia, East Timor votes, South African leftists join Eswatini protests
6: Six Rohingya refugees were killed crossing a highway while trying to flee a detention center in northwest Malaysia. The country was once a safe haven for Rohingya fleeing persecution in Myanmar, but in recent years, xenophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment have led to many refugees being held in unsanitary and oft-dangerous detention centers.
60: With 60% of the vote counted Wednesday, Jose Ramos-Horta looks set to win the presidential runoff in East Timor, Asia’s youngest democracy. Ramos-Horta, an independence fighter during Indonesia’s long occupation of the country and a Nobel laureate, served as president from 2007-2012. He’s vowed to tackle enduring poverty, corruption, and political instability.
36: South Africa’s Economic Freedom Fighters – the country’s third-largest political party with Marxist affiliations – joined protests on the border with Eswatini against King Mswati III, who has led that country’s absolute monarchy with an iron fist for 36 years. Eswatini has been plagued by anti-government protests since an extrajudicial killing by the king’s police last May.