The past week has seen a growing wave of protest encampments and other demonstrations on college campuses across the United States, many of which have resulted in mass arrests and other forceful police actions, as well as ‘to intense media surveillance. And the protests continue to spread.
But protests on campuses abroad have been sporadic and small-scale, and none have led to a broader student movement.
In Britain, for example, small groups of students temporarily occupied university buildings on the campuses of the University of Manchester and the University of Glasgow. But they never made national news or sparked a widening wave of protests.
The wave of protest could still spread to foreign universities. There were some early signs of it this week. On Wednesday, students staged a protest encampment on the campus of the University of Sydney, Australia. Classes were canceled at Sciences Po, an elite university in Paris, on Friday due to a student protest.
But that would still leave the question of why this particular protest movement caught fire and widespread in American universities First of all. According to experts, the answer has more to do with the partisan political context in Washington than with the events in Gaza.
The “ovation” effect: why the wave of protest started with Colombia
Protests, like many forms of group behavior, can be contagious.
One way to understand how protest movements have spread is the “ovation model,” said Omar Wasow, a political science professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who studies how protest movements can affect politics. .
In a theater audience, “if some people in the front stand up, then others start to stand up, and it’s a cascade across the room,” he said.
In this case, he said, it is not surprising that the “ovation” began last week at Columbia University. The university’s proximity to New York’s national media and its status as an Ivy League institution give it, he said, a prominent position comparable to that of someone in the front row of ‘an auditorium. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations have therefore attracted greater attention there than elsewhere. Additionally, the campus is also home to a large population of Jewish students, many of whom have reported fearing anti-Semitic remarks. harassment or attacks Some protestors. This expression of fear has fueled greater media coverage and political surveillance.
More than 100 demonstrators have been arrested on April 18, after Columbia called police to clear an encampment of pro-Palestinian protesters, fulfilling a promise to Congress by University President Nemat Shafik that she was prepared to punish protesters without permission on campus.
But when the arrests took place, they prompted further actions of solidarity with the protesters – and counter-reactions from those who viewed the protests as anti-Semitic or wanted to show support for Israel, in a wave which quickly spread across the country.
“The conflict there then contributes to this big stunt, which other campuses join in and other media outlets across the country and around the world pay attention to,” Wasow said.
The events would not have gained as much importance without the arrests, said Daniel Schlozman, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University who studies social movements and political parties in the United States.
But these arrests were more than an isolated decision by a single university president. They were the result of the particular political and legal context in the United States that made Colombia the most likely place to start an “ovation.”
The unique politics of protests on American campuses
“Fundamental politics is finding the issues that unite your side and divide the other,” Schlozman said. And the war in Gaza proved to be a particularly striking example for Republicans.
The Republican Party is largely united in its support for Israel. Republicans have also long targeted universities as bastions of left-wing ideology, seeking to present them as incubators of radicalism on issues of race and gender, and as hostile environments for anyone who does not adhere. to these ideologies.
Democrats, by contrast, are much more divided on Israel, the war in Gaza and when and whether anti-Israel protests will turn into anti-Semitism.
So for Republican lawmakers, criticizing college presidents for their failure to protect Jewish students from anti-Semitism is a useful political issue, likely to deepen divisions among Democrats—an issue they, unsurprisingly, have vehemently defended.
College presidents are in many ways easy targets, Schlozman said.
“Within universities, administrators are trying to appease multiple groups: donors, protesters, professors,” he said. “But these alignments align imperfectly in national politics. » Actions likely to ease tensions within campus communities could invite outside political scrutiny — and the opposite is also true, as arrests on campuses across the country this week have shown.
Last December, Republican lawmakers toasted college presidents for their handling of protests against the war in Gaza, during hearings that contributed to the eventual resignations of the presidents of the University of Pennsylvania and Harvard. Shafik, the president of Columbia, had reason to fear for her job when she was called before Congress last week, where she pledged to punish student protesters if necessary. That same evening, she called the police to campus.
It’s unclear what role congressional questions played in his decision. But her real motivation is less relevant than the impression she gave to people on all sides that Republican pressure had led to the mass arrests. That would have acted as a “bat signal,” Schlozman said, to those on different sides of the issue.
To Republican politicians who have made criticism of campus protests and anti-Semitism a cause celebre, the arrests sent a message: “Look, we’re winning.” We can divide the coalition of our adversaries,” he said.
For students and others who might have sympathized with the protesters but not joined them, the shock of the arrests may have galvanized action rather than passive support. And for professors and others in the political center, it is anger over the arrests themselves, rather than the underlying political conflict over the war in Gaza, that has led many to join the protests.
In other countries, less drama meant less attention
In other countries, by contrast, campus protests and anti-Semitism have so far not been political flashpoints. (Although there have of course been large demonstrations in cities around the world against the war and against anti-Semitism.) In February, students at University of Glasgow occupied a campus building for 15 days, but left after negotiations with a senior university official. The story barely made the local headlines.
In France, there was a brief explosion of political indignation last month after a Jewish student claimed she was excluded from a university event because of her religion, but that quickly passed when other students, some of them Jewish, offered a different version of events.
And although several university directors were summoned before the French Parliament to discuss anti-Semitism on campus, the resulting debate received almost no media attention – a far cry from the closely watched hearings at the UNITED STATES.
Ultimately, nonviolent protests are most effective when they generate some kind of “drama,” Professor Wasow said. In other countries, the absence of drama may have kept campuses relatively quiet.
But now that the ovation has begun, that could change.
