An expert on the history of student activism in the United States explains why universities are deploying police officers to stop protests and what should happen instead.
New York University Professor Robert Cohen is a historian of student activism and protest. He speaks to TRT World about the Palestinian solidarity protests that have cropped up across the country, including at NYU .
That was the day after the president of the university testified before Congress and people in Congress were advocating for not tolerating mass demonstrations, occupation. Then she authorised the police to come in and they arrested over 100 demonstrators and broke it up. The literature that they gave out because I stopped by the encampment before, was dispersed on the back of the leaflet. They were recruiting anti-Zionist Jewish students. So that doesn't mean there couldn't have been some somebody on the fringes who was anti-Semitic.
Mostly they're upset about the war and the killing. So I, I just think it's not convincing to me. I mean, I'm open to it if you show me evidence, but I haven't seen evidence of it, because when I was there, there were the anti-Zionists in the demonstration and across the street were the Zionists. Maybe that changes later.If I don't like what you're saying, I tell you 'shut up.' It's free speech for me, but not for thee.
TRT World: How do you feel personally when you see what is happening in New York University and other colleges?Well, I'm concerned about the issue of academic freedom and freedom of speech. There was questioning in Congress about some professor at Columbia who expressed sympathy for Palestinian liberation and made it sound like he was pro- Hamas.
That's a violation of academic freedom. That means the only people who have academic freedom are people who agree with me or mainstream America. And if you take that back to the period when I was growing up and when the Vietnam War was going on, if you had barred the university from critiquing the Vietnam War, you know that war might never have ended.
TRT World: Well, about the mainstream, polls now say the majority of Americans think that Israel should have a ceasefire in Gaza. But then we have politicians and US President Joe Biden just approving these billions of dollars in aid for Israel. So who is really out of step with the mainstream?: There's a difference. Think about the campus. There's a difference between the issue and the movement in American history.
In other words, they are a lot of times sort of caricatured, in part because people are uncomfortable with young people not respecting their elders. So what I'm saying to you there, it seems illogical, but it's always been the case that a majority of the American public is uncomfortable with student activism.
So there's that hostility as well. In a certain sense, it's really hard for any student movement to get a sort of fair hearing and to be appreciated for what it's raised. Instead, they're kind of resented for raising uncomfortable questions. And so already at the beginning of the war, you had this issue about stopping. You don't want to have all this controversy, so you have peace. But it's like the peace of the graveyard. There's nobody really talking very much. And then a little later, because that's free speech here, it was closed.
According to NYU professor and historian Robert Cohen, the university presidents are afraid to “lose their job for inadequately policing the students”And let me just say too, I think it's better if the universities try to find a way to get a dialogue going about these issues. That is, we have experts here on the Middle East from both the Israeli and the Palestinian perspective and beyond.
You can advocate bigoted things from a podium, but I can't come to your dormitory and start threatening you because of your race or creed or whatever. And so they did a bad job. And then Stefanik, the conservative congresswoman and the others, they really wanted to get them fired. That is the presidents of Harvard and Penn, and they did.
So I think that pressure - if you're a university president, are you going to be on the side of being permissive and support free speech? Are you going to be on the side of being repressive and not have to worry about the donors and Congress coming after you? I think the answer is sort of obvious.
TRT World: Why do you think that the student movement is significant and historic in a way? Why isn't it just a bunch of local protests?: Well, because it's important because it's dealing with a very major international problem. The US has been supporting Israel militarily for decades and decades, and often that's almost unquestioned.
I think that for them, this is like a really important question and it's sort of pressing political leadership to do so. And by the way, it's not just young people, because you look in Michigan, this is an Arab community. Adults were involved in that vote against President Biden, you know, the uncommitted vote in the Democratic primary.
The country is out of control. Even the city they're in is out of control. And so that could hurt if that happens again. And plus, there's concern that the same young people who are doing this rallying might say, well, you know, Biden is not being critical enough of this war and trying to stop it. You know, Biden has been critical of some of the excesses of Netanyahu.
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