It’s been three weeks since students started taking over university campuses and we can now officially call it – they’ve blown it.
Instead of being defined as young people driven by a principled stand against Palestinian suffering in Gaza, they’re now broadly defined as a bunch of entitled, whiny, immature kids who want their 21st century creature comforts but also every single political demand immediately. And also: the meal plan.
Instead of being seen as champions for free speech they’re now defined as creepy groupthinkers who robotically chant slogans and follow directives by some shadowy, far-left leaders who wear masks and spew terms from Maoist playbooks like “imperialist forces” and something something “settler-colonialists.”
Funny how a few images going viral can define a movement.
This video of a Columbia doctoral student asking for “basic humanitarian aid” while standing outside the university administration building she and others had broken into, barricaded and commandeered will be a historic moment in stamping this movement as …a bunch of babies.
Student activist: “They’re obligated to pay for students who pay for a meal plan… Do you want students to die of dehydration of starvation?… It’s crazy to say because we’re on an Ivy League campus but this is, like, basic humanitarian aid we’re asking for.”
Reporter: “It seems like you’re sort of saying, ‘We want to be revolutionaries, we want to take over this building, now would you please bring us some food.”
The video has nearly 50 million views on Twitter-X.
Then there’s this fantastic Threads post about UCLA activists banning bananas from their encampment because one person had a severe allergy to bananas. “Participants when checking in have to confirm they don’t have any banana products on them.”
Another movement-defining image is going around Twitter of a University of Chicago list of “supply needs” at the encampment, including vital safe-sex aids among other – “HIV tests, dental dams, Plan B, Diva cup [for menstruation].” Also “Chapstik.” Implied but not stated: Mom! Please bring it quickly!
On Thursday night a mob of students eliciting a “primal scream” gathered beneath the window of Columbia University President Minouche Shafik’s home. A literal temper tantrum as political theater.
Here’s the creepy video where activists at the encampment started chanting in call and response from some leader:
Here’s the viral video of a Columbia student leader Khymani James filming himself defending his belief that Zionists deserve to be killed. After this video was leaked James was banned from campus, but not before leading the chants in front of Butler Library for a week or two.
If the goals of pro-Palestine protestors range broadly in demanding divestment from Israel, the extremism is nonetheless fully exposed. Instead of drawing attention to and winning hearts and mind over a principled stand against the suffering of Palestinian people in Gaza, things have pivoted to a very different perspective.
I can palpably hear the shift in the tone of coverage on CNN and The New York Times. On CNN the anchors like Laura Coates and reporters on the scene of police arrests of students are asking how many of the protestors are students, and who are the organizers. The protests come off as a weird combination of rich, privileged Western kids and radical political organizers on behalf of a left that’s disconnected from reality.
Coates interviewed a Columbia professor who expressed support for the decision to call in police to arrest and remove students, noting that the university needed to restore order so classes could go on. As an alum, I can tell you that is very unexpected.
And it’s a marked change from the previous days where the dominant narrative was around students calling for a cease fire, to free Palestine. The discussion veered between that topic and the question of whether the encampments had veered into antisemitism, and whether Jewish students on campus were feeling threatened by the rhetoric.
Now I’m seeing widespread pickup of a study that delves into the origins of Students for Justice in Palestine, which is organizing much of these protests nationwide, and $3 million funding that can be traced back to Hamas.
It goes to show that these movements turn on a dime.
What the internet giveth the internet taketh away. The same viral images that quickly coalesced a critical mass of hurt and angry students to take up the mantle of Gaza has flipped the script and just as quickly turned mainstream media – and I believe mainstream opinion – against them.
A quick word on bonafides. I was once a student at Columbia University. In my senior year of 1985, students took over the same Hamilton Hall, demanding that the university divest its holdings in South Africa. Students held the building for three weeks at exactly this time of year, just ahead of graduation. I covered the protest as a student journalist at the time, and also lived in the building next door, a dormitory.
The takeover was not violent, and the tone of the protest was much different. Student protestors were vociferous in their demands for the university to divest, and people were angry on behalf of Black South Africans, who were among the protestors. But there was no hate speech. There was no violent rhetoric, at all. And, dare I say, no demands for the meal plan. Eventually the students dispersed and we all made a stand at commencement.
That’s why I say the students have blown it for the Palestinian cause they champion. Blown it for free speech. Blown it for creating a movement of inclusion and justice.
They’ve lost me and other people at the center.
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