I begin with a confession: I have not been to the pro-Palestinian, anti-Israel protests at Columbia University. For the last few days, I’ve been out of the country on vacation and I’ll be traveling again into next week. Therefore, I cannot offer any firsthand account on what’s happening uptown. Everything I write will be filtered through the lens of media coverage and prior experience with the Palestine left, especially since Oct. 7.
Students and faculty set up tent encampments on the campus of Columbia in Manhattan last week. More than 100 people were arrested after the Ivy League school’s embattled president, Minouche Shafik, called on the NYPD to break up the encampments on the grounds of criminal trespass. Predictably, the police crackdown did not squelch the protests, which have spread to other college campuses in recent days. Most of the influential Democrats in New York defended the NYPD raid and condemned the protests as anti-Semitic because some Jewish students on campus haven’t felt safe to go to class. President Biden himself, a staunch supporter of Israel who has been largely unwilling to counter their ferocious bombing campaign in Gaza—more than 33,000 dead since October—railed against anti-Semitism and the Columbia protests.
What have the protesters actually done, beyond chant loudly and refuse to leave certain parts of campus? The most damning evidence of anti-Semitism comes from video of protesters and counter-protesters facing off, with one unidentified person—the New York Times doesn’t make it clear if the person was a student or not—holding up a sign that said, “Al-Qasam’s Next Targets,” referring to Hamas’ armed faction. A video posted on X showed a masked protester outside the Columbia gates carrying a Palestinian flag who appears to chant “Go back to Poland!” One Columbia student wrote on social media that some protesters had stolen an Israeli flag from students and tried to burn it, and that Jewish students were splashed with water.
All of this is troubling. But why, exactly, are heavily-armed police hovering around Columbia and arresting students? Are these students joining with outside agitators to shatter windows, light objects on fire, or beat up anyone wearing a kippah? Are students even occupying buildings in a reprise of 1968? Columbia has gone to a remote schedule for the remainder of the semester, citing the alleged threats to students. If the protests had grown violent or even come to echo the worst of the 2020 marches—the rioting and looting—the pivot to remote schooling would be understandable.
But almost all of the complaints about the encampments at Columbia—and the anti-Zionist protests in general, dating back to October—boil down to speech. Defenders of Israel do not like what the pro-Palestine cohort says. They don’t like the chants. If it were up to them, such hatred of Israel would be deemed illegal for all time.
They are, like the affluent college students they decry, immensely coddled.