Pro-Palestine student protests at the universities are taking the US by storm. Prolonged protests and their clampdown decried, as an attribute of the third world, the West spearheaded by the US from a high moral pedestal used lectured countries on freedom to protest and human rights. Western academics lashing out at India and lent support to the dubbed dissent echoing anti-national sentiments with “azadi” slogans permeating the university campuses; deemed the restrictions on protests as silencing of ‘free speech’. In fact, in line with the Western perception of declining liberties, the Freedom House has downgraded India’s ranking for the alleged “democratic backsliding” and rampant “crackdown”.

Ironically, when similar “azadi” slogans rented air at Princeton University in a pro-Palestine protest, Indian-origin student Achintya Shivalingan was arrested¹. The US is now overwhelmed by the student protests that began in response to the Israeli offensive in Gaza, after Hamas' surprise terror attack on October 7. In support of Palestine demanding a ceasefire, they began blocking military shipments to Israel from US ports, tore up posters of Israeli hostages held by Hamas and to gain more traction started holding massive demonstrations.

Over the months, the isolated, sporadic protests have now culminated into well-planned protests with strategic messaging and a demand charter to end the campus blockades. The student protests at Columbia University stipulated severing ties with companies supporting Israel, amnesty for students and faculty involved in the protests and disclosure of university funding sources. Unlike Portland State University which agreed to snap ties with Boeing for its links with Israel and acceded to student demands, the President of Columbia University refused to give in to the demands of the protests and issued a deadline to remove encampments.

Defying the deadline, the students continued to chant, “Disclose, divest! We will not stop, We will not rest”. Indeed, the situation escalated after pro-Palestine demonstrators vandalised, blockaded and took control of Albert Hamilton Hall. They renamed it “Hind Hall” after a six-year-old Palestinian boy, Hind Rabayah, killed during Israeli military action in Gaza. This takeover raised suspicions of outside instigators following which the university administration pressed for police help. The police entered the campus in riot gear and made hundreds of arrests. Indeed, police crackdown has begun across many universities- University of California, Los Angeles; City College of New York, Emory University, Georgia; University of Texas, Austin and many more. Hundreds of students were arrested and temporary tents were cleared.

To evict the encampments and quell the scuffles between the pro-Palestine and pro-Israeli demonstrators, police used force against anyone who resisted. They zip-tied the activists, used pepper sprays and stun grenades. Even professors weren’t spared. In fact a video professor being knocked down on the ground with her head smashed against a concrete sidewalk, while two police officers pinned her hands behind her back and handcuffed her went viral.

The US which sermonised India on human rights and the right to protest has unhesitantly deployed state instruments to come down heavily on the protesting students. The police excesses on student protestors on university campuses have blatantly exposed the double standards of the US which never leaves an opportunity to lecture Global South countries.

Since the Israeli offensive on Gaza a steady undercurrent of antisemitism, which has been an integral part of the leftist academia started acquiring critical mass. The pro-Palestine protests at Columbia University, known as the “Gaza Solidarity Camp” with numerous tents mimicked a mini Gaza with kaffiyeh-donning students. Indoctrinated with heavy doses of antisemitism, stepping up an initiative “Popular University for Gaza” amid chants of “We are Hamas” placards bearing “Al-Qassem’s next targets” the protestors under the garb of Palestinian solidarity have meandered into the dangerous territory of defending the terror outfit Hamas. (Al-Qassem brigades carried out murderous attacks on Israelis). With the death toll in Gaza now reaching 34,000 and still counting the condemnation of Israel is valid and genuine. But the protests overstepped the redline by celebrating Hamas and are silent over Israeli captives.

With every passing day, the scale and spread of protests are growing. Universities have cancelled the commencement of fresh sessions, postponed graduation ceremonies and suspended the protesting students. Some universities shut down the regular classes and resorted to off-mode teaching after clashes between protestors and counter-protestors intensified.

By and large, the protests have exposed the potent threat from the ‘exacting standards of progressivism’ elaborated by the leftist academicians and activists. A concept that is laid in black and white, advocates for standing with the oppressed against the oppressor, even if the oppressed is undemocratic. Driven by moral inversion, Israel is the veritable oppressor and by this logic, Hamas, an extension of the Muslim Brotherhood, -inspired by a repressive version of Islam, carrying out grotesque suicidal attacks on helpless children and women are deemed revolutionary. Their acts are passed off as an exemplar of social justice.

A student official at the University of London once tweeted, “I clearly don’t identify with the ideology Hamas promotes. However, in the event of a conflict between Israel and the Palestinians, I would take Hamas’s side”. Student protests on university campuses across the US are in fact, a conspicuous manifestation of antisemitism.  National Union of Students (NUS) in its report, cited a statement of a Palestinian saying, “I find it deeply offensive that support for Palestinian human rights is being used to mask blatant antisemitism”. The students’ protests have unfortunately slid deep into a crevasse of progressive activism that routinely accuses Israel of “settler colonialism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and land theft”.

Occupying the highest positions, the progressives with a disproportionate influence who form the major chunk of the academicians in the Ivy League Universities, enforce their thoughts on the students. As self-appointed gatekeepers, overly supportive of the so-called oppressed, these hyper-liberals are setting the tone of the academic environment. Advancing punitive cancel culture, the evangelical radical liberals are rewriting the tenets on university campuses. Jake Wallis Simons, the author of Israeophobia notes, “antisemitism has become a non-negotiable ticket of entry into the left discourse”.

The current protests are an outcome of this larger malaise that has spawned across the leftwing bastions that chose to whitewash the radical ideology. In the line of hierarchy, Israel is a “hyper-white” oppressor and a colonist state whose “right to exist” must be challenged. The brewing synergy between the liberals, authoritarian regimes and hardcore Islamists has afflicted the academic world for long and has come home to roost with these protests. As the initial investigations reveal, the protests are funded by anti-zionist groups ² masquerading as charitable ³ and cultural institutions.

Alarmed by the raging riot-like situations in several universities, the US House of Representatives, getting down to the crux of the issue has passed a bill to combat antisemitism on campuses. Though it is a measure in the right direction, antisemitism isn’t going anywhere unless the entire ecosystem of progressive activists is taken to task. This is a major challenge for democratic countries.

Grappling with a series of protests that threatened to disrupt and choke the national capital, India’s stringent measures to curtail the protests from turning into a national movement were meted with widespread condemnation from the Western countries. The US is currently facing a similar situation. Instead of approbation, expressing concern, India remarked, “In every democracy, there has to be the right balance between freedom of expression, sense of responsibility and public safety and order. Democracies in particular should display this understanding in this regard to other fellow democracies”, and added, “We are all judged by what we do at home and not what we say abroad”.

Instructively, given the free and open nature of democratic societies, vested interests and authoritarian regimes have been strategically penetrating the institutions to push inimical ideologies to foster dissensions and create unrest. As a democratic country, akin to the US, India is facing serious threats from adversaries and the leftist-Islamist cabal. Anti-India slogans were also raised at the Columbian University, after an Indian extended solidarity to pro-Israeli protestors. Now, Kashmir finds a mention in the demand charter of student protestors at Rutgers University. It calls for “displaying the flags of occupied people-such as Palestinians, Kurds and Kashmiris-alongside other existing international flags”⁴.

With protests now spreading to European countries, democratic nations must resist the temptation of being politically right and stall the juggernaut of the diabolical progressive activism from advancing dissonant cultural values under the garb of DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion).

References

1. https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/nri/us-canada-news/pro-palestine-protests-indian-origin-student-achinthya-sivalingan-arrested-from-princeton-universtiy/articleshow/109612279.cms
2. https://www.adl.org/resources/blog/campus-antisemitism-surges-amid-encampments-and-related-protests-columbia-and-other#:~:text=On%20April%2017%2C%20a%20protester,sic%5D%20next%20targets%E2%80%9D%20with%20an
3. Anti-Israel Group Encouraged Columbia Protesters To Re-Create 'The Summer of 2020' Hours Before Students Stormed a Building (freebeacon.com)
4. https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/article/2024/may/02/rutgers-university-of-minnesota-protest-agreement

Image source: The Conversation