Campus protests over the war in Gaza continue to expand and escalate, causing both hope and fear. The past day has seen some big developments:
The good: Brown university reaches a deal with protesters. “The university agreed to schedule a vote on divestment at the school board's fall meeting. In exchange, protesters agreed to clear their encampment.”
The bad: Conflicts between protesters and university administrators continued to escalate pretty much everywhere else. Protesters at Columbia (perhaps the ‘flagship’ protest campus) decided to occupy an academic building, which was cleared by police last night.
The ugly: A vigilante mob attacked the protest encampment at UCLA.
I applaud anyone who finds a way to resolve these disputes without escalating the conflict. There are definitely people involved who want to sow chaos, regardless of whether it will help the people of Gaza. Or perhaps they have some magical theory that their protests will ‘wake up’ the rest of us, or inspire us to great acts of resistance. As if we weren’t aware of what’s going on, or as if they can change political reality through sheer willpower. I see little indication that the protesters have a strategy and deeper than wanting to feel like they are doing something. Despite the fact that some protests are surely agitators, that does not justify the police and reporters spreading rumors about them being “professional agitators”, which is a different thing and just ends up being an antisemitic dogwhistle (see Soros conspiracy theories), being spread in the name of anti-antisemitism.
Meanwhile, Republicans are egging on university administrators to continue escalating the conflict. They must be so freaking happy to see universities tearing themselves apart. It feeds right into their agenda to destroy independent academic institutions.
All of this strife reminds me of the build-up to the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Here’s a song from that era: