Will the pro-Palestinian college protests lead to lasting change? | The Excerpt

On a special episode (first released on May 8, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: Pro-Palestinian demonstrations that began at Columbia University have ignited a wave of similar protests at colleges and universities across the country. Weeks into it, those protests seem to be only intensifying. Thousands have now been arrested. The students’ demands vary by campus, but the majority are asking for an end to the Israel-Hamas war and divestment from companies that are financially benefitting from the conflict. In decades past, student activism regarding the Vietnam War, civil rights and South Africa’s apartheid successfully sparked broad social and political change. Has this student-led movement reached the tipping point? To put the current protests in context, Robert Cohen, professor of social studies education at New York University and a scholar in student activism, joins The Excerpt.

Hit play on the player below to hear the podcast and follow along with the transcript beneath it. This transcript was automatically generated, and then edited for clarity in its current form. There may be some differences between the audio and the text.

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Dana Taylor:

Hello and welcome to The Excerpt. I'm Dana Taylor. Today is Wednesday, May 8th, 2024, and this is a special episode of The Excerpt. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations that began at Columbia University have ignited a wave of similar protests at colleges and universities across the country. Weeks into it, those protests only seem to be intensifying. Thousands have now been arrested. The students demands vary by campus, but the majority are asking for an end to the Israel-Hamas war and divestment from companies that are financially benefiting from the conflict. In decades past student activism regarding the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, and South Africa's Apartheid successfully sparked broad social and political change as the student-led movement breached the tipping point. To put the current protests in context, I'm now joined by Robert Cohen, Professor of Social Studies Education at New York University, and a scholar in student activism. Thanks for joining me, Robert.

Robert Cohen:

Okay, nice to be here.

Dana Taylor:

So let's dig right in. This is both a volatile and a rapidly evolving situation, but let's take a step back for a minute and put these demonstrations into context. Are you seeing and hearing the kinds of things that might lead to lasting change? Have we reached the tipping point yet?

Robert Cohen:

Well, I think it has raised more awareness about the war than the US support for the Israeli military in the war. So I think that's probably significant. I think it's more likely to have that kind of impact than the demands that they have for university divestment. Mostly because unlike say, the divestment demands in the eighties over US investments in connection to the apartheid regime in South Africa, there was nobody in the eighties in the United States, practically no one who supported apartheid is racist. Whereas in the United States, there's considerable support for Israel.

And so in fact, there are 30 plus states that have laws against state agencies doing business with companies that have been part of the BDS divestment movement. So I'm only a handful of universities across the country, even maybe even less than a handful have actually divested. So I think that's going to be a much tougher... there's a tougher demand that was made back in the eighties on apartheid, but still, I would say it's a little bit like the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations, which weren't a student movement so much. They had a student wing, but they were so anarchistic, they didn't have a demand. So you can say, well, that they were a failure, but really they helped to change the conversation about economic inequality.

Dana Taylor:

What kinds of science do you look for in a student led movement that signal the onset of real change?

Robert Cohen:

Well, I think it's a question of is the issue that they're promoting, is it getting more discussion? I mean, the more concrete way, sort of a more effective movement, the terms of its more local demands, are they winning? Are they changing the universities? Like the Free Speech Movement of 1964 asked that the restrictions on student free speech rights be eliminated. And that took a semester of some of the largest protest and the largest mass arrest in American history in UC Berkeley to win that demand. But that's kind of unusual.

Student movements usually don't win their... it's very rare that they win their demands. And so I think the question is what's the broader impact and a certain sense, like say during the Vietnam era, the student anti-war movement raised awareness of the problems with the war. And so you could say that it helped to turn the country against the war, but even more unpopular than what the war became after the Tet Offensive in 1968 was that student movement was always more unpopular than the war that it was opposing because American society is basically conservative culturally and doesn't think that students should be engaged in protest activity for reasons I can discuss with you. But so I would say they're always a mixed bag in terms of their impact, their success in a way they kind of boost the left, but in a way, the resentment against them boosts the right.

Dana Taylor:

Well, as you know, several universities have successfully negotiated deals with protest leaders, Brown and Northwestern among them. Is there something about the culture on these campuses that encouraged successful dialogues?

Robert Cohen:

Well, I would just say that's very unusual. In fact, why is it that students are often out in the streets or in the campuses either doing encampments or just mass demonstrations? Because basically on most college campuses, students are pretty much disenfranchised. If you don't like President of the United States or your senator or congressperson, you can vote them out of office. But if you don't like the investment policies of the university, you don't have any... you're a student, you have no role. You're not consulted.

And in fact, a lot of the universities have said like mine at NYU and Columbia said, "No, we won't do this," right? Where more inclusive, if the governance of the university was more open to students and more well had some democratic element in it, they would say, "Okay, present your evidence to the board of trustees," and there might even be a student on the board of trustees, which there are not on private universities, but at least we'll listen to you. And most universities aren't willing to do that. So Brown and Northwestern, they're the exceptions, and I think they show that if you have a process like that, you don't need to have demonstrations. So they help to end the demonstrations by actually involving students in decision making, even though they didn't promise they're the best.

Dana Taylor:

One of the most heated debates of these protests is free speech versus hate speech. I know you've written extensively on the free speech movement in the sixties at Columbia. USA Today has interviewed quite a few Jewish students who are taking part in the pro-Palestinian protest, whereas on some campuses such as UCLA, there have been protests of students who are pro-Israel and some were quite violent. Why is free speech so fiercely defended on college campuses? Can you please put that into context for us?

Robert Cohen:

Well, a university is really about the free exchange of ideas. And in terms of the politics and society, it's supposed to raise uncomfortable questions. And so if we're going to go on the basis of what's popular and only allow popular speech, university's not going to be able to fulfill its social function. And that's the key reason why you want free speech on campus is so you can pursue truth. That means two opposite views of the war. If you only have one side, you may not be able to arrive at that right? It's just what everybody assumes is right like the Vietnam War, the dominant view was this was a just crusade against communism, but the anti-war movement on campus said no. It raised questions. And I think 20 years later, a lot of people are willing to say, "Hey, the movement was right about that." They wouldn't have been able to have aired that view if free speech had been denied.

Dana Taylor:

Universities' tactics in dealing with the encampments and the protesting students vary fairly widely from campus to campus. Some campuses have seen arrests, some suspensions, some police forces have deployed riot control agents like tear gas. Many of these approaches seem to only escalate tensions. Where's the line historically been that separates peaceful protest from ones that are endangering the safety of other students and the community?

Robert Cohen:

Well, mostly the line is called time, place, and manner that as you have the right to free speech, but you can't disrupt the basic educational function of the university. So once you've done that, taking over a building or blockading a classroom, that's really problematic like what happened at Columbia when they took over Hamilton Hall. That's a violation of time, place, and manner. But the earlier protests on the lawn where just people sitting on the lawn is not disruptive, and the fact that those were suppressed is kind of, I think an overreaction and is very uncommon. That was not done in the sixties. In fact, in 1970 or late sixties, if you had done something like that, that would be seen as being very moderate and the college president would be relieved that you're not trying to take over the administration building or firebomb the RTC building or something like that. So what I'm saying is that the university has become, I think, less tolerant of dissent and is kind of pushing that line about what constitutes disruption. They're pushing that to the right.

Dana Taylor:

Professors and school administrators at Columbia and several other campuses have come out in support of the protesters in some cases physically creating a barrier between police and the encampment. This isn't the first time that's happened though. Historically, how has this played out?

Robert Cohen:

Well, like Columbia in 68 when they were protesting against the war and against the poor relations between Columbia and the local black community, when the police were coming, faculty did put themselves out in front like line up to try to prevent the police from suppressing the protest. But it doesn't work. I mean, because the police are going to come and arrest whoever's in their way. In fact, there's a famous case, University of Wisconsin, when they were protesting against Dow Chemical, which was recruiting on campus, and they manufactured napalm, which was a chemical weapon used in Vietnam, which killed a lot of civilians and there was basically a police riot. The police were beating up the protesters, and one of the students came in, some of the students came in to the professor's office, a sociologist, and they asked him to come out and he came in and thought, well, he was so naive at that point, because this is really early in anti-war movement, he thought that he could tell the police to stop beating up the students and the students to go home.

And there's a famous photo when he did that. He's talking to one police officer telling them to stop it and telling the students go home. Another police officer didn't hear it and tries to hit him on the head and the students kind of jump over him. And it's a famous photo of showing in a sense how naive it was, but how ineffective the faculty are when they try to protect the students. It's notable that they try to, but they don't have any more power actually than the students do really, unless they change university policy in the vote of the Academic Senate.

Dana Taylor:

The question of who's funding these protests has been a contentious one. What do you know here and what's been the history of protest funding in the past?

Robert Cohen:

To me, that's like a red herring. Students are out there because they're upset about the war, all the civilian casualties that come to them instantly on social media. They're not coming because someone's funding it. I mean, people can contribute whatever, but you don't need much money to go out and sit out on the lawn or sit in. All during the sixties, those kind of charges were made like Moscow Gold, the students are getting aid from communists. But the CIA investigated that under President Johnson and they said, "No, they're not like communist directed. The students are not dupes of the Communist Party." And Johnson was unhappy with that result. So he never publicized the study that came up much later, but I think that's an outside agitator argument. It's not nonsense because there can be some people outside who join in demonstrations or people who contribute money, but it's not being funded. And the idea, I've read things about people on the right saying that Soros is funding this, that's just like anti-Semitic nonsense. I mean, there's not any example of mass protest in the country that's being created by outside funds.

Dana Taylor:

Some college administrators are saying that non-student agitators are adding fuel to the fire, co-opting the movement for their own goals. Is this a valid concern or do outsiders, have they historically played a minor role?

Robert Cohen:

Well, I think again, it's like trying to blame people who are not on campus for what's something you don't like on campus. If you have a demonstration that's organized from the campus and it marches like here to Washington Square Park that's off campus, people off campus have a First Amendment right to join a demonstration. And unless you're saying I have to check IDs, which is, that was done at the encampment here, but not during mass demonstrations. So there will be people because the public concern about the war in Gaza is not restricted to the campuses.

So I think we shouldn't get hyper or paranoid about outsiders coming in. Although it is true. I saw in Columbia that there was one long-time outside radical who was involved, but again, that's not the students do what they want to do. In fact, actually in the sixties, there's a good expression, Jack Weinberg and the Free Speech Movement had when they were trying to blame the student protest movement on elder communists. He said, "We have a saying in the movement, don't trust anyone over 30." And really that wasn't even a saying, and it was then you used to talk about the generation gap in America more broadly, but he was just trying to say, "We run our own movement." And that's generally true of student movements in the United States. There's not really any student movement I can think of, and I've been studying it for decades, you could say, was produced by some outside agitators.

Dana Taylor:

Is there anything else that we didn't touch on that you'd like to add before we go?

Robert Cohen:

Well, I think the unpopularity of the student movements, not just this one, but all of them. That is, if you think about it, the sit-in movement in 1960, the Freedom Riders in 61, the Free Speech Movement in 64, the anti-war movement against the Vietnam War all were unpopular, underwater in terms of their polling. And why was that? I think because the basic cultural conservatism of our society thinking that students really should obey their elders, study, and be seen and not heard. It's like it doesn't matter what the students are asking for, it's always going to be unpopular, and they're all often going to be caricatured in the press. Like today, people saying like you were implying, "Oh, this is something funded by Hamas or something, or some outside agitators are making it happen." That's a way of acting as if the students can't think for themselves.

Or the idea that there was a cartoon in The Washington Post the other day that made it before any violence happened on campus, how do we suppress these violent movements when they're not violent. And they're basically, most of them have been nonviolent. There've been a few exceptions. So I'm just saying that there is a tendency to really be dismissive of student protests because students are kind of getting out of their lane. And I just want to say that it would be nice, I think if people were try to resist that kind of strong social pull to do that and try to just look at the students objectively. This movement for all its flaws and it has them, is really about stopping killing, stopping war, and what would we rather have? The piece of the graveyard where nobody dissents? I think that's really problematic. I think I'd rather have a college generation, even when it makes mistakes be trying to mobilize against war and killing.

Dana Taylor:

Thank you for being on The Excerpt, Robert.

Robert Cohen:

Thank you.

Dana Taylor:

Thanks to our senior producers, Shannon Rae Green and Bradley Glanzrock for their production assistance. Our executive producer is Laura Beatty. Let us know what you think of this episode by sending a note to podcast@usatoday.com. Thanks for listening. I'm Dana Taylor. Taylor Wolfson will be back tomorrow morning with another episode of The Excerpt.