The world watches what is happening on American campuses with shock, pride, pleasure and concern. Scenes of protests – and arrests of demonstrators – made news around the world, from Bogota to Berlin, from Tehran to Paris.
In some countries, including France, students have organized their own protests, but not with the scale and intensity of those in the United States.
Some applaud the protests. Others, particularly in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, see the crackdown as evidence of U.S. hypocrisy on human rights and free speech. Still others see it as the latest sordid chapter in America’s ongoing culture wars.
In some ways, the protests and the response to them constitute a Rorschach test for the world – with the analysis often offering more insight into local politics than into America.
Here is a selection of views from around the world.
France: alerts on “wokism”
Many in France, including Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, see the pro-Palestinian protests as another example of the dangers of “woke” culture – “wokism” – which they fear is imported from the United States and threatens fundamental French republican values.
Friday, the police loaded in an elite Paris university, Sciences Po, to evict students who had occupied the building overnight. The protesters had called on the university to condemn what they call “the ongoing genocide in Gaza” and to review its partnerships with Israeli universities.
It was the second time police had done so in the past nine days – something many say they have never seen before at the university, founded in 1872 to train the country’s future leaders.
Mr. Attal denounced an “active and dangerous minority” of protesting students who, according to him, want to impose “an ideology from across the Atlantic”.
Whether in the United States or France, the protests are seen by many, especially on the right, through the same prism as past movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, which the French establishment has disdainfully analyzed as being reductive and divisive, a threat. to social cohesion.
“One of the characteristics of Wokism is to divide the world into dominant and dominated, oppressors and oppressed. Today, what we see on American campuses is a vision that classifies Israel as oppressor and Palestine as oppressed,” said Chloé Morin, a political analyst who recently published a book denouncing wokism. “As a result, they cannot accept that anti-Semitism exists and that Jews can also be victims of it. »
A renowned academic and expert on Islam, Gilles Kepel, offered a similar analysis. “Wokism multiplies the narcissism of small differences, which means that no society is possible,” he wrote in the news magazine L’Express. “It is a mortal danger for democratic societies.”
Supporters of the protests reject the idea that they are imported from American campuses. They point out that Sciences Po students had organized protests long before the Columbia campus erupted.
“This is not a copy,” said Pierre Fuller, professor of Chinese history at Sciences Po, who organized a professors’ petition in late March calling on the university to condemn both Israeli policy and Gaza and the Hamas hostage-taking.
“If this is a woke imitation, I would rather be woke than someone who supports genocide,” said Jack Espinose, 22, a public affairs student at Sciences Po, who was among the students arrested. Friday by police.
Egypt: “The real White House”
A right-wing talk show broadcast across Egypt recently devoted an unexpected amount of air time to the arrest of an economics professor at Emory University. The show’s host appeared particularly impressed by the image of her head being slammed against concrete by a police officer while dispersing a campus protest, holding the image for two minutes.
“This is the real White House,” said the host, Ahmed Moussa, with obvious relish. “Don’t believe the words the Americans said before. Only believe what you see.
Mr. Moussa, who once declared himself proud to patriotically serve the ruling military and security agencies, is among many Egyptian television personalities who have pounced on harsh tactics used by police on campuses Americans to criticize Washington, which for years has made Cairo the target of warnings about human rights.
Images of officers beating or dragging students were broadcast repeatedly on many news channels. Moustpha Bakry, an MP who runs his own television show, said the United States had lost its credibility as a defender of freedoms.
“You fell into the swamp,” Mr. Bakry said.
Nashat Dehi, a prominent television host on Channel Ten, widely seen as linked to the country’s intelligence services, said Cairo was no longer obliged to respond to the department’s annual human rights report of American State on Egypt.
“The US administration is waging its own intifada to counter university protesters,” he said.
Germany: “Hate against Jews”
German media have covered the U.S. protests in much greater depth than those on their own campuses in recent months. They focused in particular on episodes of anti-Semitism.
A recent Die Welt headline read: “With smiling faces they preach hatred against Jews.” Articles published on its website about the protests are labeled “anti-Semitic protests.”
This focus provides justification for German decisions to ban many anti-war demonstrations and discourage public criticism of Israel in the name of combating anti-Semitism. This approach has been criticized internationally, particularly because of its deterrent effect on the world. artistic world.
“Should we consider that the discourse on the Middle East in New York and London should be considered exemplary? »wrote a commentator for the left-wing newspaper Taz.
China: a cautious silence
China is a place where protests on American campuses have received almost no media coverage, where state media reported little on them in the past week.
The most likely reason: Chinese authorities don’t want student protests on their own campuses, said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, professor emeritus of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University. “They fear that students will use this as an excuse to mobilize,” he said.
The main exception is Guancha, a nationalist website that has long condemned the United States. On Thursday, he highlighted articles suggesting the protests were indicative of divisions in the United States, symptomatic of a broader decline in social cohesion.
Other Chinese news outlets with target audiences outside China, as well as covert influence operations, took the opportunity to amplify protests and fuel tensions.
While Chinese officials have said little to their own people, Hua Chunying, chief spokesperson for the Foreign Ministry, criticized the United States over X, which is hidden in mainland China.
She job a video montage of scenes of American police officers grappling with demonstrators accompanied by a question: “Do you remember the reaction of American officials when these demonstrations took place elsewhere?
Colombia: a reminder
The country’s two largest newspapers, El Tiempo and El Espectador, published editorials this week supporting the student protests.
At El Tiempo, editors saw the violent arrests of students as an opportunity to remind readers of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, so that it would not “become part of the landscape,” said opinion editor Federico Arango. He said he lost count of the number of editorials the paper published about the war.
“Let’s hope the protests don’t just end in controversy,” Mr. Arango said. “Hopefully people see that these students are not here for or against Biden or Trump. I think what these students want is for people to see the tragic reality that the Palestinian people are going through.
This week, the country’s left-wing president, Gustavo Petro, announced that he was breaking off diplomatic relations with Israel. He called the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza “genocidal.”
At the National University of Bogotá, a public institution known for its student movements, slogans such as “It’s not a war, it’s a genocide” and “Don’t stop talking about Palestine” were painted on the walls.
“What is important is to show your discontent, to show that you are not turning a blind eye to what is happening in the world,” said Yadir Ramos, 22, a psychology student.
Iran: American hypocrisy
Iranian state media closely covered the protests on U.S. college campuses, viewing them as evidence of America’s double standards on free speech.
Images of riot police raiding Columbia University made the front pages of several conservative Iranian newspapers on Thursday, with headlines reading: “This is how America treats students” and “Crackdown and expulsion are the price to pay for being liberal.”
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian expressed concern about the safety of American student activists and protesters. Last week, on, he posted a video of police officers tackling and handcuffing students, calling it “repression” and saying it “clearly demonstrates the US government’s dual policies and contradictory behavior towards free speech.”
Many ordinary Iranians also took to social media to express their dismay that American universities, which they perceived as bastions of free speech and debate, had called in the police.
Raika, a 45-year-old Tehran resident who asked that her last name not be used for fear of reprisals, said the violence reminded her of when she was a student in Iran and security agents in civilians had burst onto the campus of Tehran University, beating and beating her. arrest students who were organizing a sit-in.
But at least, she said, American students had access to a fair and independent legal process.
The report was provided by Erika Salomon in Berlin; Jorge Valencia in Bogota, Colombia; Farnaz Fassihi At New York; Keith Bradsher In Beijing; And Joy Dong in Hong Kong; Emad Mekay in Cairo; And Ségolène Le Stradic in Paris.
