Students, Gaza, and the elections

Some university groups have organized massive demonstrations against the war in Israel and Palestine, as well as against the handling of the conflict by the administration of Joseph Biden. This has led to clashes with groups of people, including authorities, police institutions, and members of those same university communities, who consider some of the demonstrations as antisemitic.

These demonstrations are the largest of their kind seen in the country in the last century, and for some people, the police responses are reminiscent of those given to protests in the 1960s, on a larger scale, against the Vietnam War.

After the arrest of more than 130 people at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), President Biden publicly stated this Thursday that "they have the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos." Although he ruled out the possibility of sending the National Guard to US campuses, images of the actions of riot police officers to evacuate the camps that these groups had set up on campus have gone viral. This eviction took place early this morning, following similar actions at Fordham University in Manhattan, the University of Texas at Dallas, Tulane University in New Orleans, Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff, and Dartmouth College in New Hampshire, where a 65-year-old professor described her arrest as "brutal."

Although UCLA authorities had initially been tolerant, on the same day they deemed the protest camps illegal, prompting police authorities to intervene. According to a count by The New York Times, more than thirteen hundred people had been detained on university campuses across the country. At Columbia University in New York and the University of California, Los Angeles, videos and photographs of confrontations with tear gas, people being arrested, and even shots from what the Los Angeles police described as "non-lethal means" have been seen.

Although the protests and police response at well-known universities, many of them Ivy League universities, have garnered more media attention, demonstrations and facility takeovers have spread to campuses throughout the country. Among the most common demands of these organized groups are clarification of the educational institutions' relationships with Israel and publicly condemning attacks by that country as genocide.

These events could have effects on the race for the US presidency. Although young people have the lowest voter turnout in the country, there could certainly be a backlash vote, as they have been openly critical of the current administration's stance on the Gaza conflict. Republicans have seized the moment to accuse Biden of a lack of ability to maintain law and order on campuses.

In a break among Democrats, the university arm of the Democratic Party, College Democrats of America, issued a statement describing President Biden's policy as “a bear hug” toward what they describe as "the genocidal acts of the far-right radical extremist Israeli government”: At the same time, they praised the courage of those facing detentions and condemned university authorities for their response.

For her part, Allyson Bell, a member of the Jewish caucus of the same political group, warned that previous statements condemning antisemitic expressions on university campuses had been dismissed by the organization. She considered the statement issued to be biased and "one-sided."

Today, the Columbia University chapter of the American Association of University Professors called for a vote of no confidence against university president Minouche Shafik and her administration. This is because they believe she did not ensure the safety of the university community and allowed the "horrific police attack on our students that is now shamefully on view for the whole world to see."