Today’s national news has been filled with yet more headlines about unrest on the campuses of some of the nation’s most elite universities. It’s starting to feel like 1970 all over again.
Mark Wingfield
From today’s news alone:
- “More than 40 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested Monday morning at Yale University, the school announced.” — Washington Post
- “Columbia University canceled in-person classes on Monday and new demonstrations broke out on other U.S. college campuses as tensions continue to grow over Israel’s war in Gaza.” — Los Angeles Times
- “Columbia University announced early Monday that it would hold classes remotely, a move that highlighted worsening friction at the school after a wave of protests on campus over the weekend.” — The New York Times
- “USC called off an appearance from director Jon M. Chu and other commencement honorees in the wake of growing controversy over its decision to cancel valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s graduation speech amid security concerns.” — Los Angeles Times
- “The university restricted access to Harvard Yard until Friday afternoon in apparent anticipation of student protests, amid a wave of high-profile pro-Palestine demonstrations at universities across the country including Columbia University and Yale University.” — Harvard Crimson
- “Protesters at the University of Michigan renewed their criticism of Israeli warfare today by erecting an encampment in the heart of the Ann Arbor campus, on the Diag, or Diagonal Green.” — NBC News
- “College students across Boston are standing in solidarity with Columbia University students who have been protesting Israel’s actions in the ongoing war in Gaza. Members of the MIT, Tufts University and Emerson College communities started protesting Sunday, calling on administrators to take action.” — NBC Boston
- “UC Berkeley’s campus is in turmoil. It’s unlike anything in recent memory.” — Politico
This is, of course, U.S. student reaction to current events in Israel and Gaza. To the law-and-order crowd, it represents anarchy. To the liberal crowd, it represents free speech. To students and faculty held hostage by the protests, it is terrifying.
America’s college campuses have a long history as bastions of free speech exercises, often including protests, sit-ins, marches and more. What’s different now is that those on campus report they feel physically threatened and unsafe. The pot is boiling over.
Wealthy donors are threatening to withhold giving if administrators don’t get things “under control,” while university presidents struggle to balance free speech rights with campus safety. Do you want to be the president who squashed free speech? Or do you want to be the president who allowed a riot to take place on campus? Nothing a university president does today is going to please anybody. It is a lose-lose proposition.
But why now? And why on campuses?
“Universities are, by design, places of intellectual inquiry and debate, of questioning authority and changing history.”
Reportedly there are outside agitators stirring the pot on some of these high-profile campuses. But that alone cannot explain what’s going on. Universities are, by design, places of intellectual inquiry and debate, of questioning authority and changing history. We should not be surprised when students who are taught critical thinking skills apply those skills to current events.
And don’t forget there have been plenty of protests and marches apart from university campuses in recent months. This is not a problem unique to higher education, although the campus protests are now drawing the most headlines.
The LA Times explained: “The demonstrations on U.S. campuses have tested the line between free speech and inclusivity. They’ve also stoked friction, with some Muslim students and their allies calling for schools to condemn the Israeli assault on Gaza and some Jewish students saying they no longer feel supported or safe on campus, with antisemitic sentiment running high.”
One reason for the campus conflict is that our government and other civic and religious leaders have done such a poor job of shaping the dialogue around a highly contentious issue. The White House has not helped anything with its head-in-the-sand endorsement of Benjamin Netanuyahu’s massacre of the innocents. As I have previously written, the U.S. is helping Israel throw people over a cliff into a river and then rushing downstream to express shock that so many people are being injured and killed and need aid.
Neither has the Christian church in America taken a realistic and public stand for equal justice. Instead, the evangelical line has been unwavering support for Netanyahu and the response of more progressive Christians has been deafening silence.
Much of this failure to respond is rooted in a fear of being labeled antisemitic — a now weaponized word that has lost meaning. Too many Americans believe to be antisemitic is to question or criticize the state of Israel or its leaders. What a few of us have been trying to say — without apparent effect — is that it’s not antisemitic to condemn Netanyahu’s insane and cruel tactics while still supporting the right of Israel to exist and saying Jewish people ought to be protected in the same way Palestinians ought to be protected. We do not have to choose to protect one race of people over another.
“Before any of us get on a high horse and bemoan the state of college students today, let us pause to ask what we have done to engage the serious issues they want to talk about.”
Let me be clear for any who question what I’m saying: There is no cause for violence or the threat of violence against any student on a university campus, whether Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu or something else. Protests that incite violence must be quelled. But protests that debate difficult ideas must not be quashed.
When other cultural institutions fail to address current social crises, university campuses are the most likely places for the debates to emerge. Again, this has been happening for ages. The most notable examples of the 20th century are protesting the Vietnam War and protesting racial inequality.
Michael Roth, president of Wesleyan University, wrote in the LA Times: “When conservatives denounce campus progressives and radicals as out-of-touch elites, when liberals bemoan failures to defend free speech, and when both denounce cancel culture, one can hear the echoes of the 1960s.” By the way, he wrote that in September 2023, a full month before the Hamas attack on Israel that started the current war.
Before any of us get on a high horse and bemoan the state of college students today, let us pause to ask what we have done to engage the serious issues they want to talk about. The nonviolent protests on campuses are, at root, a call to take seriously the issues the other societal powers — government, religion and business, to name three — refuse to talk about.
Before we tell students to shut up, we need to do some talking ourselves.
Mark Wingfield serves as executive director and publisher of Baptist News Global. He is the author of Honestly: Telling the Truth About the Bible and Ourselves and Why Churches Need to Talk About Sexuality.
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