Joanna Williams
Spiked, Apr. 25, 2024
“Students have been deluded into thinking that the more extreme their demands for the abolition of Israel, and the more vile their targeting of Jews, the better they show their own virtue. Horrendously, anti-Semitism comes to be seen as a morally virtuous position.”
First it was Columbia, now anti-Israel protests have spread across America. Over the past week, students have set up camps at elite universities, including Harvard, the University of Michigan and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Yesterday, dozens of student occupiers were arrested at the University of Southern California on trespassing charges. The ‘rage of the privileged against the world’s only Jewish nation’, as Brendan O’Neill described the Columbia protests on spiked earlier this week, now rings out on leafy campuses from California to Boston.
In these ostensibly ‘anti-war’ protests, students have demanded the total destruction of Israel, while waving placards in support of Hamas and singling out Jewish professors and students for abuse. The terrifying orgy of anti-Semitism that has been unleashed in America’s top universities should disturb everyone. There is an urgent need to condemn the actions of these students. Yes, we should defend their right to protest. At the same time, it is vital that we engage in an honest reckoning with how the anti-Semitism they demonstrate has been allowed to fester unchallenged.
Unfortunately, so far, the response to the campus protests has been far from level-headed. Students have been flattered and appeased in one instance, and then subjected to violent police crackdowns the next. Yesterday, police sought to squash protests at the University of Texas in Austin. Students were manhandled and a journalist was thrown to the ground in a disproportionate response to what was a seemingly peaceful protest. This display of police force risks turning student protesters into martyrs and lending moral weight to their cause.
Meanwhile, far from condemning the bigoted outbursts of student protesters, professors are coming out in their defence. At Columbia this week, hundreds of faculty members demonstrated in solidarity with the students. Staff held a mass walkout after police were allowed on campus to arrest previously suspended students. A law professor said he was defending the student protesters because: ‘It’s not any different from everyday life on campus.’ When anti-Semitism is trivialised in this way by academics, students are emboldened in their beliefs. It should be possible to defend the right to protest while, at the same time, strongly criticising the students’ statements and behaviour.
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