University’s Act To Silence Pro-Palestinian Demonstrators

From the early stages, the campus anti-war protests were confronted by a number of malign actors who sought to silence or discredit the dissent.

By Dr. James J. Zogby, Arab American Institute

In the 1960s, social critic Paul Goodman offered a parable to describe what had gone wrong with American higher education.

He wrote: “Millennia ago, there were wise people who knew many things that they were eager to share. Young people came to them and asked, ‘Would you teach us?’ And they did. Over time more students came to learn. And after learning, there were many more wise ones able and willing to teach. The enterprise grew with more students, more teachers, and more subjects to teach. It became so complicated that the wise ones hired clerks to keep track of who was teaching, what they were teaching, and which students were with which teachers. The problem today is that the clerks are running the show deciding who will teach, what they will teach, and who is qualified to learn.”

The lesson conveyed by this parable is relevant to understanding worrisome developments unfolding on US college campuses. Israel’s assault on Gaza, following Hamas’s attack of October 7, spawned a nationwide revolt of the young. While organised groups helped mobilise demonstrations demanding a ceasefire and Palestinian rights, the breadth and depth of the effort was more akin to a spontaneous eruption.

In this regard, it was not unlike earlier spontaneous protest movements that sprang up over the past decade: the Women’s March; the “Welcome immigrants” demonstrations that filled US airports in response to the “Muslim ban”; the student-led “March for our Lives” after repeated mass shootings; and the Black Lives Matter movement that erupted after the murder of George Floyd.

The ceasefire/pro-Palestinian movement had much in common with these earlier efforts. Its politics skewed left, was youth-led, and racially, ethnically and religiously diverse. The difference was that a main locus of its activities was college campuses.