Shortly after the May Fourth Youth Day, young people's arms were once again stretched out in front of the wheel of history.
The activities of American students, represented by Columbia University, in solidarity with Palestine are still escalating.
They took over the campus, were taken away by the police, and then more people reappeared on the campus lawn...
As a result, graduation ceremonies at higher education institutions in May have been cancelled or postponed, and students are seizing the last minute to learn about another intangible cultural heritage of the university:
As a minority of dissent, how should the right to be heard be defended in a country that is mired in the domination of homogeneous voices?
The Columbia University incident has brought the anti-war protests of American universities, which have always had limited voices since the resumption of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, to gain global attention.
The university, which is known for its free speech and has produced five Founding Fathers, 10 Supreme Court justices, and presidents, including Barack Obama, has faced the most hard-line protest crackdown in recent decades:
Less than 24 hours after the student occupation, the Hamilton Building fell.
The Hamilton Building, Columbia's historic administrative building, was stormed by pro-Palestinian student protesters on April 30 and renamed the "Hind Building" after a Palestinian child killed by Israeli forces in Gaza.
The students barricaded the building with fences, cable ties and other tools, and formed a human wall outside the building, holding hands and singing the Internationale.
Schools are called upon to listen to the protesters, withdraw their investment in Israel, and pardon all convicted participants.
At the same time, school management, which is supposed to protect the tradition of free speech on campus, has backed off under strong pressure from Congress.
On the night of the storming of the Hamilton Building, students hoisted the "Hind Building" flag
Columbia University Principal Ms. Shafik invited in the New York police.
That night, heavily armed New York police stormed the Hamilton building and took away hundreds of protesting students. They may face suspension, expulsion, and charges of burglary, criminal mischief, and trespassing. This is the second large-scale police arrest at Columbia University after the middle of last month.
To catch, or not to catch. Since the resumption of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict in October last year, this has been a proposition faced by all presidents of institutions of higher learning in the United States.
Arrest would undermine the academic and freedom of expression that has been prized on college campuses for centuries.
If you don't catch it, no one can afford to be labeled as "conniving at anti-Semitism".
Ms. Shafiq's colleagues have demonstrated for her the serious consequences of answering incorrectly.
In December, Congress summoned a number of Ivy League presidents to hold hearings on "anti-Semitism" on campus.
Republican Congressman Stefanik pressed forward at the meeting, but the principals were reluctant to come to a simple binary conclusion:
Stefanik: "Is calling for genocide of Jews a violation of Penn rules or code of conduct, yes or no?" ”
Magill, President of the University of Pennsylvania: "If speech turns into behavior, it can amount to harassment." ”
Stefanik left the school behind and progressively asked on universal values: "What I want to ask is: Does calling for genocide against Jews amount to bullying or harassment?" ”
Magill: "If the behavior is targeted, severe, pervasive, it's harassment. ”
Stefanik: "So the answer is yes. ”
Magill: "Congresswoman, it's a decision that depends on the circumstances. ”
Stefanik exclaimed, "This is your testimony today? Does the call for genocide of the Jews depend on the circumstances? ”
Under a series of elaborate concepts from congresswomen, Magill insisted on "concrete analysis of specific issues" as evidence in favor of "genocide of the Jews".
Condemnation, anger and invective ensued, and less than a week after the hearing, Magil was forced to resign.
Shortly thereafter, Ms. Gay, the president of Harvard University, who also said at the hearing that "specific issues are analyzed on a case-by-case basis," was also forced to resign.
After a hearing to kill two Ivy League principals, Stefanik became famous and became a rising star of the Red Party's "anti-Semitic inspection".
Columbia University Viceroy Shafik was also supposed to appear at the fatal hearing, but she was lucky enough to escape the fateful hearing.
But the time to come is always coming, and last month, when the protests at Columbia were in full swing, Shafiq was summoned separately by Congress. With the lessons of the past, Shafiq did not dare to be tough.
When Stefanik posed the same question, "Is it a violation of Colombia's code of conduct to call for genocide of Jews?" Shafiq immediately replied:
"Yes, it does."
Not only did she take a firm stance on her resolve to quell the protests on campus, but she also made an exception to submit to Congress internal information about a number of faculty members who Congress deemed to be involved in "antisemitic conduct."
The Colombian students, who had lost the protection of the principal, were soon arrested one after another by the New York police who had been invited by the principal.
The managers expected the arrest to achieve the effect of drawing wages from the bottom of the kettle, but it backfired, and the police intervention did not become a basin of cold water, but poked the hornet's nest.
It's like a hellish joke about what buy one get ten free, every time 1 opponent is caught, 10 will pop up the next day:
The first Columbia protesters were taken away by police on April 18, and four days later East Coast universities such as Yale University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology launched an occupation of the campus.
Mass arrests took place on April 25 at the University of Southern California and other campuses, and days later, protests spread to Europe, Australia, and Canada.
As of May 6, there were 140 campuses in the United States with camping, strikes and sit-ins and other protests, and the number is growing.
The administrators, who are so well versed in the usual means of suppressing protests, seem to have forgotten the crucial point that they are dealing not with sophisticated members of society, but with vigorous university students in their nineteens and twenties.
At first, the protests were simply an expression of solidarity with Palestine and condemnation of Israel's military operations in Gaza that disregarded the lives of civilians. However, with the vigorous repression, more and more students who were not interested in the Palestinian-Israeli issue joined the group.
They are not so much here to support Palestine as they are here to "show support".
他们和亲巴学生一同高喊“from river to the sea，Palestine will be free”（从河流到海洋，巴勒斯坦必解放），但口号背后所想捍卫的，更是大学校园中自由发言的权利。
The intensity of the repression of student protests is clearly no longer commensurate with its level of destruction.
Although there are no official reports of violence in the pro-Palestinian camps this time. But there was a real atmosphere of unfriendliness towards Jews in the camps:
Protesters joined hands to form a human wall, calling curious Jewish classmates "Zionists" and expelling them from the camp. Some held up black cloths in an attempt to cover posters of pro-Israel figures, while others cursed Israel with "beautiful words" that began with F and B.
But at the same time, there was a Jewish-friendly side to the same camps: Jewish classmates were invited to give speeches and kosher food was prepared for them.
A healthy and complex field of public opinion, always intertwined with good intentions and malicious intentions at the same time. As Pastor McBride, who works to urge a ceasefire in Gaza, said, "Go to a protest and you can find whatever you're looking for, and if you look for it, you'll find it." ”
In contrast, the bullet pressure is far more fierce than usual.
First, the U.S. Congress has threatened to reduce or stop funding for education in schools that fail to control protests.
Later, the school's funders, generous billionaires, said that they would consider stopping funding given the current Jewish-friendly atmosphere on campus, lest their money produce "anti-Semitic genocidaires."
The police also have a clear tendency, and at UCLA, masked outsiders surrounded the camp late at night, threw fireworks at students, and launched violent attacks with sticks and other things. The police, who were stationed around the school, watched for three hours before belatedly stopping them.
Some of Israel's supporters in the civil society even crusaded against the protesting students with the same zero-tolerance attitude towards pedophilia:
On the night of the Hamas attacks, more than 30 student groups at Harvard University jointly issued an open letter with inappropriate rhetoric, saying that although Israel suffered from the violence, Israel should be "fully responsible" given Israel's long-term oppression of Palestine.
As a result, in just a few days, they were doxing. The students who signed the letter anonymously were exposed to personal information, posted online, and conservative groups paid for a digital advertising truck to circulate Harvard, on which a list of students and photos scrolled through its box and named "Harvard's Leading Anti-Semite."
The group also bought domain names in each student's name and set up a website named after them, calling on universities to punish them harshly and demanding that responsible businesses withhold them from jobs.
Another opponent, Meyer, set up a website called "College Terrorism Lists, a Guide for Employers to Use" to list students. Hedge fund billionaire and Harvard alumnus Ackerman praised it on social media, and after receiving the blessing of the big V, Meyer said that dozens of CEOs came to him to ask for the list.
This means that protesting students may have to pay the "price of speaking" with their lives and futures.
Overnight, "criticizing Israel" became as if it were a Nazi, and every word would become conclusive evidence of "support for Jewish genocide."
The definition of the label "anti-Semite" continues to broaden and is gradually gaining official recognition.
A week ago, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, an expanded bill that broadens the definition of "anti-Semitism" and allows anti-Semitism to be equated with anti-Zionism in certain circumstances, in other words, once the bill is also passed in the Senate, then "criticism of the State of Israel" can be called "anti-Semitism."
Omar Batov, an Israeli historian and expert on the Holocaust and genocide at Brown University, points out that this generalization is absurd. In fact, even among the most devout Jewish believers there are many critics of the State of Israel:
"There are hundreds of thousands of Jews in the world today who are anti-Zionists. Some of them are members of the current Israeli government. Most members of Congress may not know that many ultra-Orthodox Jews reject Zionism as an attempt to preempt the coming of the Messiah, the only theologically legitimate means of achieving the salvation of the Jews and the end of exile. ”
The current crackdown on student protests is more of a rehearsal for the weaponization of antisemitism than a fear of turning back the clock on history: the use of accusations of antisemitism to impose intolerance and authoritarianism.
Once any doctrine becomes absolute justice, it deserves 120,000 points of vigilance. American students, who have been immersed in "singing and singing contrarian tunes" for a long time, obviously understand this principle well.
So the more the administrators emphasized Jewish political correctness, the more fierce the students' resistance became.
Instead of a chilling effect, the crackdown has become a series of loud class bells: like the Black Lives Matter movement a few years ago and the Occupy Wall Street movement a decade or so ago, another college course outside the classroom has begun.
"Student protests are an important part of education."
Schmeman, a Columbia graduate and member of the editorial board of The Times, commented after the protests.
"Universities have always been seen as sacred bastions of discussion and learning, but this does not mean that they will not engage in contemporary debates. And our education has always been designed to equip students with the ability to lead such debates. ”
Historian and writer Rick Perlstein also noted:
"When you talk about college students, you're talking about people who are just coming out of their childhood. People who have just come out of their childhood, who are independent for the first time, who are exploring ideas for the first time, sometimes say crazy things. ”
Protest is exactly the toddler of college students before they enter adult political life.
During the black civil rights movement of the last century
Protesters staged a sit-in in a restaurant where blacks were not allowed to sit in a sit-in in protest
In the arrest of protesting students this year, the US police were surprised to find that the student protesters were unexpectedly well-trained.
They were armed with a number of professional tools in order to quickly break into the building and occupy the place, using umbrellas and fire extinguishers as tools of protest.
The protests are organized in an orderly manner: the students work together to form different units of legal, medical, advocacy, technical support, etc., and they know the boundaries between law and rule and know how the police organize and act.
It's as if these young people are not participating in high-intensity protests for the first time, but have already experienced a lot of battles.
Behind this is the "legacy" passed down from generation to generation of campus predecessors.
When the police arrested the students, they found a lot of privately printed pamphlets, which introduced the experience of the seniors.
Some explain in detail the formation of police formations in the United States, the usual means of responding to protests, and how to keep yourself safe during protests. Some talk about all the practical skills it takes to occupy a public space, from lockpicking to defense.
In the course of "protest", the student is both a teachable and a teacher. The struggles of each generation, whether successful or unsuccessful, are not forgotten with the graduation of one generation, they are passed on to the next generation of students in the form of experience, and the probability of success of the next generation is raised little by little.
"Student sports in the U.S. have never been popular outside of school."
Robert Cohen, a historian at New York University, said that it was like, "Shut up and learn!" You don't respect your elders! You can be seen, but you shouldn't be heard! ”
Student protests are often dismissed as childish nonsense, as Truman warned Columbia freshmen in 1968: "I will not tolerate those who have made the university an instrument of opposition to the established order of society." ”
As a result, the year of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the tragic scene in Vietnam went viral with the television signal, and the Vietnam War became the first war that Americans could watch on television. Civil rights, anti-war, free speech, as in today, all contradictions and aspirations converged in one place, and an unprecedented mass protest broke out at Columbia, condemning the United States for provoking the war.
At a time when students were being seriously accused of disrupting the country and not being sympathetic to the general public, a Gallup poll showed that 82 percent of Americans favored expelling radical students from campus.
But as we know, after the war subsided, the anti-war ideology was widely recognized, and the evaluation of the student protests changed from "nonsense" to "courageous action to force the Nixon administration to accelerate the withdrawal of troops."
Repression and opposition, in a way, are like a kind of medal – proving that the students' advocacy really stings mainstream society.
In the 1960s, U.S. Justice Holmes wrote in a ruling on free speech:
"It seems to me that the act of trying to suppress the expression of opinion is completely logical...... When you allow opposing voices to exist, it usually means only three possibilities: you completely disdain the objections that are not worth mentioning, or you simply don't care about the topic, or you lack confidence in your own opinions. ”
There is a generational way of looking at the world, and young people are always trying to break out of history and conventions, and re-examine the "achievements" of their fathers with more permanent and universal values. The parents felt that there was something right in these words, but they were angry and uneasy about the change of order that they might bring.
Behind this year's pro-Pakistani student protests is also a generational divide in the United States.
In the article "When Young Americans Begin to Sympathize with Osama bin Laden", we mentioned that after the resumption of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, a letter written by bin Laden denouncing the United States after the 911 attacks suddenly went viral on social media. The young people praised and exclaimed:
"We were all deceived by the government", "It turned out that the terrorist was myself", "If bin Laden was a terrorist, then so are we." ”
This is rather abstract, but it also points to the fact that, unlike previous generations, young Americans have a more general sympathy for Palestine than for Israel.
In addition, young people begin to wonder about the loopholes of "born righteous", and they are no longer satisfied with a certain answer that has been told.
Survey data is more intuitive:
At the end of October last year, YouGov's poll of adults showed that more people under the age of 30 were more sympathetic to Palestine. This was the only age group of all respondents who was more sympathetic to Palestine. Only 14 percent of them believe that "it is very important for the United States to protect Israel," compared with a third of those over 65.
A Pew Research Center survey in February showed that young people's sympathy for Palestine continues to grow.
One-third of adults under the age of 30 expressed "full or substantial sympathy for the Palestinian people". This is in stark contrast to their parents, with nearly half (47%) of those over the age of 65 having "full or mostly sympathy for the people of Israel."
Generational differences have become apparent, but mainstream society is still maintaining "unity" with a high-pressure posture.
So the radical young people chose to take the weapons left by their predecessors: they took to the streets and shouted harsh dissent.
They are like their predecessors in the present world, and they are clearly more advanced than their predecessors: in 1968, the students responded violently to police violence. After several crackdowns, bloody clashes broke out between protesters and police that resulted in multiple deaths. By 2024, students will have learned how to use nonviolent strategies more effectively to deal with violence, and how to navigate within the framework of laws and rules.
No one can predict whether the shouting will be effective, and the dark box of power is not in the rules of the game. But the protest experience itself is also an asset.
The researchers found that after the 1968 anti-war movement, "a disproportionate number entered the field of social services, fueled by the idealism and transformative beliefs that underpinned their protests and the broader social movements of the '60s." ”
When the storm of protest ended, a belief was unleashed: young people can do something about the world's problems, even if they are just students.
Justice, people, and rights are always narratives that liberal American values constantly emphasize, but when he abandons the fundamental of freedom for the answer he wants, American values and what he opposes are just two sides of the same ugly thing.
Whether it's war, civil rights, or racial issues, they all end up with the same legacy: a generation grounded in moral convictions and ready to protest.
They will eventually fade away as students, disappear into the crowd, and become mature members of society, but when social dissent arises, these immune cells will have the confidence to stand up and know how to speak out more safely and effectively.
Produced by | Tiger Sniff Youth Culture Group
Author | Mu Zitong
#你认可美国是当今世界头号流氓国家吗##常青藤##大学#