Students at American colleges and universities are again making history. ‘Gaza encampments’ have been erected at dozens of colleges and universities around the country, making this one of the most important student movements since the 1960s. We are now hearing of new encampments every day, including now in Australia, Great Britain and Germany.
And, unlike in the 1960s, many faculty members are participating in and supporting these encampments, especially after their students face repressive actions initiated by panicked university presidents.
As a student protester myself in the 1960s, I could not be more excited or prouder of what I am seeing on college campuses today.
There are real parallels between the anti-Israeli war movement and the anti-Vietnam War movement. Just as students in the 1960s mobilized against an unjust war, students today are moved to action by the deeply disturbing role the U.S. is playing in enabling Israel to engage in an aggressive war against Palestine in open defiance of international law and public opinion.
And just like in the 1960s, the anti-Israeli war protests are already forcing a shift in the war itself, as the United States and Israel find themselves increasingly isolated and condemned for human rights violations. Biden is certainly feeling the pressure. He has already defied Netanyahu by building a dock for humanitarian aid to unload in Gaza and by forcing Israel to drastically scale back a planned attack on Iran and by putting economic sanctions on some right-wing extremist ‘settlers.’ It seems likely that as the protests build (especially if and when Israel invades Rafah), the U.S. will start withholding military supplies for some Gaza operations.
Of course, Republicans are sticking to their defense of Israel’s war, and are using all their power to try to force universities to repress the student protesters. Columbia University has emerged as ground zero because of the large Zionist presence on the campus and in New York City as a whole. There, more than anywhere else, university officials are under intense pressure to crack down on the Gaza encampment and have already called hundreds of NYPD officers to the campus to make mass arrests of students, who were then all summarily suspended from school without any academic due process. Despite her efforts to placate Republican lawmakers, Columbia’s President Minouche Shafik is under growing pressure to resign, with House Speaker Mike Johnson demanding her removal for failing to safeguard Jewish students from “violent, antisemitic” protesters. (He also called for the mobilization of the National Guard—perhaps thinking about what happened at Kent State in 1970?).
And who are these “violent, antisemitic protesters?” They are, like the protesters of the 1960s, those with the deepest commitment to social justice. They are the people who cannot go on with their studies when their country is aiding and abetting the mass murder of Palestinian civilians. They are the people who understand that the Israeli government is now the cutting edge of the worldwide right-wing movement, and that stopping this war is directly connected to stopping Trumpism in the United States. They are people revulsed by the racism of Israel’s callous disregard of Palestinian lives. And yes, a significant number of them are Jewish, a fact demonstrated by the beautiful celebration of Passover’s feast of liberation for all people at many of these encampments last Monday.
And who are the people referring to the protesters as “violent antisemites”? Well, most of the vocal Republican members of Congress consider themselves white Evangelical Christians, who until very recently referred to Jews as Christ killers, and many have a history of virulent racism in their political closets. All support unchecked police violence against Black people and Latinos, and all support the right of every American to carry guns.
If the parallels between the 1960s and the current movement are accurate, we can anticipate two major trends. First, there will be increasing repression of the protests. And second, in response to the repression, more and more people will join the movement. It is useful to remember that as late as 1967 only a small minority of students were even opposed to the Vietnam War, let alone actively protesting it. Yet by 1968, the anti-war movement had become capable of mounting nation-wide mobilizations, broad and powerful enough to force President Johnson to not run for a second term. Planning for national demonstrations against the Israeli war has already begun. Indeed, in the April 24 NY Times, David Brooks worried that the Democratic Convention (to be held in Chicago in August — as it was in 1968) might well be again the site of enormous protests that might doom the Biden Presidency.
Make no mistake about it: the students who are building the Gaza encampments are aware of the risks they are taking. They know (just as students in the 1960s knew) that what they are doing can lead to their arrest and/or expulsion from school. I would guess, from our experience in the 1960s, that the use of repressive force will grow in the coming weeks and months. But I would also guess that this movement is poised for a mass expansion which will surely happen when the IDF enters Rafah in the coming weeks.
The student movement will soon have to make a number of choices, just as we had to in the anti-Vietnam War movement. While I have all the confidence in the world in the current movement leaders, I just want to highlight some of the issues the anti-Vietnam War movement had to address as it matured. First, the early anti-Vietnam War movement expressed its solidarity with the Viet Cong and North Vietnam. But the movement could only grow by reframing itself as an anti-war movement to appeal to the broadest number of Americans. Secondly, the anti-Vietnam War movement had to address the fact that it was primarily a movement of white elite student, but that opposition to the war was actually greatest among people of color. Martin Luther King’s decision to oppose the war (and Muhammed Ali’s draft resistance) went a long way to creating powerful links between the anti-war movement and the civil rights/Black Power movements. Finally, the anti-Vietnam War movement become a movement for democracy against militarism. By doing all these things, the movement grew enormously. I am confident the anti-Israeli War movement will be able to navigate these issues with far greater insight than we did over half a century ago.
One side note: I am especially excited to see Jewish students boldly claim their Jewishness while condemning Zionism. As I have written in previous posts, there is no reason why Jews should be beholden to Israel’s current form of Zionism, and a million Jewish reasons to oppose it. The Passover Seders at the encampments were of great importance for the future of American Judaism.
Lastly, I want to point out that the students who are now becoming anti-war activists are being changed in ways they cannot now know, but in ways that most will carry with them for the rest of their lives. A study of people who participated in the civil rights movement in Florida in the 1960s and 1970s found that almost all of them made different life choices than their peers who did not participate. They chose different careers, different spouses, different friends, and lived in different places.
The students who today are daring to call on us to have a conscience are the best and the brightest among us. They understand the real purpose of an education and are now getting schooled in the most important lessons of their lives. I am so proud of them. We all should offer them our support and be prepared to join them in the national mobilizations soon to come.
The long view 