The Kraken is a mythical sea monster originating in Scandinavian folklore that attacked seafarers with savage ferocity. Joe Biden in his recent speech unleashed the Kraken on college students who are protesting against the Israeli destruction of Gaza, calling for an immediate ceasefire and on the United States to stop rearming Israel as long as it continues the attacks, and demanding that their universities end financial ties with Israel. Whether you agree with all or part of the student demands or not, they are well within campus free speech and assembly traditions. University administrators on some campuses summarily “suspended” students disregarding their own due process guidelines, labeled them “trespassers,” and called in police to break up demonstrations.
In an unscheduled televised statement from the White House, President Biden claimed to support “the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos” and argued that campus demonstrations had taken grievances too far by provoking violence and interfering with “the right to get an education” and “the right to walk across the campus safely without fear of being attacked.”
What Biden failed to recognize is that the chaos and violence were largely the result of university administrators responding to political pressure and demands from trustees and donors that they take a tough stand against student demonstrators. It is becoming increasingly apparent that the interference with education and the threats to campus safety were not instigated by protesters, but by college administrators, counter-protesters, and militarized police. On most campuses, protesters peacefully camped out on lawns or in public areas until they were threatened with suspension and arrested. Only then did Columbia students take over a building and it was an administrative building, not one where classes were held. At the City College of New York, most of the arrests took place outside campus gates. At UCLA, barriers were torn down by counter-protesters who precipitated the violence while campus security stood passively aside.
A big push to crackdown on campus protesters and the source of demands that administrators refuse to negotiate with students has come from wealthy University trustees and donors. Billionaire donors William Ackman and Marc Rowan were instrumental in the campaigns to remove the Ivy League presidents at Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania University, accusing the administrators of mishandling antisemitism on campuses. At Columbia, wealthy donors like Robert Kraft, owner of the New England Patriots, pressed University President Minouche Shafik to reverse her position and call-in police to arrest protesting students. A group of influential alumni sent a letter to Shafik demanding that the protests be shut down. Signers included a former co-chair of the Board of Trustees.
College campuses where school administrators were willing to negotiate with students have avoided violent confrontations. Northwestern University promised additional transparency in its investment decisions. Brown University's Board of Trustees will hold a vote on a student divestment proposal in the fall. Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington, Rutgers University in New Jersey, and the University of Minnesota agreed to review protester demands. Wesleyan University in Connecticut and the University of California at Berkeley allowed protest encampments to remain.
In his statement, Biden echoed Congressional Republicans who blame ineffective college administrators and student protests for an increase in antisemitism on campuses and in the United States. Unlike the Republicans, Biden did include that there is also no place for Islamophobia and “discrimination against Arab Americans or Palestinian Americans.”
At the same time, the House of Representatives passed an Antisemitism Awareness Act that will only exacerbate tension. The bill, which had majority support amongst both Republicans and Democrats mandates “a clear definition of antisemitism” that the Education Department would use to cut funding to academic institutions. The Antisemitism Awareness Act, which still must pass the Senate and be signed by the President, did not actually define antisemitism, but referenced a working definition proposed by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Critics charge that the IHRA definition would restrict free speech and brand protest signs or statements that mention revolution or Intifada as automatically antisemitic. Representative Jerry Nadler (D-NY), a Columbia University graduate and a longtime supporter of Israel, opposed the bill because it “threatens to chill constitutionally protected speech.”
Ironically, rightwing extremists in the House of Representatives also voted against the bill. They were worried it would brand as antisemitism passages from the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament that are antisemitic and have been used to justify violence against Jews for almost 2,000 years.
In New York City and in other parts of the country, campus protests are being blamed on “outside agitators,” something pushed by Mayor Eric Adams to justify police action. There are two big problems here. Many of the “outside agitators at the CCNY protests were people who fled the police at Columbia University, about a half mile away. Others were New York City residents with a commitment to social justice. A New York Times survey found that “There was little evidence to suggest they had helped organize or escalate the protests, and many were arrested without having ever set foot on campus.” The second problem is the claim that college students were being directed by “outside agitators” basically posits them as incapable of making their own decisions.
On domestic policy, I think Joseph Biden has been a better-than-expected President. But Biden’s vacillation when pressing Israel to negotiate a ceasefire in Gaza and respect human rights and his condemnation of student protesters exercising constitutionally guaranteed freedom of speech and assembly threatens to divide the Democratic Party coalition and sink his presidency as the 2024 Presidential campaign heats up.