American universities, especially elite ones, have always represented a kind of subculture. There are very strong and diverse progressive trends, which in many cases are mixed with scholarship – especially in the case of critical race theory or postcolonial education, as the case may be – that look at the world through a lens in which they see the struggle of the oppressor. The oppressed are valued in all contexts, and this is also the case with the Palestinian-Israeli conflict – Sifu Omar explained to InfoRádio.
According to the expert, the American pro-Palestinian groups did not exist today; the two main organizers of the current demonstrations:
- Jewish Voice for Peace is a progressive, anti-Zionist Jewish student organization founded in 1996 in the generally more liberal state of California, and
- An increasingly active group, Students for Justice in Palestine, founded in 1993 and already present on more than four hundred college campuses.
Regarding the latter, the research leader also pointed out that since it is an umbrella organization, it also has extremist branches that, when necessary, demonstrate against the Jewish state in addition to various Islamic student organizations.
While several university leaders have already been forced to resign as a result of student protests, political authorities are trying not to interfere. It should be noted, Saif Omar continued, that elite American universities (and American higher education in general) depend to a large extent on donors, that is, on alumni who later enter politics and business and support the institutions with their donations. As a result, any kind of demonstration that goes against interests and sensitivities, including the current demonstration, carries the risk of alienating some donors from the university.
This happened in December of last year, as one of the staffers at the Migration Research Institute noted, when the president of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania was unable (or unwilling) to give a firm answer at a congressional hearing that he was offended by anti-Semitic chants at demonstrations and calls for the genocide of Jews—and by university regulations. It led to a scandal, with donors expressing their displeasure, and administrators being forced to resign. He added that Columbia’s chancellor, learning from their mistake, gave a firm “yes” answer at a congressional hearing earlier this year to a question about whether such hate speech violated university regulations.
As for the influential American press, the expert sees that there is a great division, and the demonstrations themselves are divided. In demonstrations where the majority are pro-Palestinian but Jewish organizations, anti-Semitic rhymes are not heard in the first place, but where a more extreme branch of the Students for Justice in Palestine movement appears, very specifically pro-Hamas and anti-Hamas. Anti-Semitic slogans are also heard. Sifo Omar concluded that despite the great division in the press, the voices that believe this is unacceptable are growing stronger even in the apparatuses associated with the Democrats.
