US College Campus Protests Call for Israel Divestment Over War in Gaza

Can Campus Protests Work?

This week, all hell broke loose on college campuses. I’m sure you saw some of the footage of the student protests against the war in Gaza on social media or in the news. Tent encampments have cropped up on the lawns of at least 100 US colleges. Students at Columbia University overtook a classroom building and others at Portland State University took over a library, prompting campus lockdowns at both schools. Police reportedly tear gassed protestors at the University of South Florida. Pro-Israel protesters clashed with pro-Palestinian groups at UCLA, prompting police action. Indiana University reportedly changed a 55-year-old policy on student assembly a few hours before a planned protest, then called in state troopers because students had violated its newly added ban against tents. Dozens of students at multiple schools have been arrested, suspended, even possibly expelled.

At the top of the protestors’ demands: Universities should cut their investment ties to Israel, including divestiture from funds run by BlackRock, Google, Lockheed Martin and others. But, as Bloomberg News reported, it’s a long-shot demand and most universities remain unmoved.

The Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel has been around for a few decades now. Its supporters are inspired by the the anti-apartheid protests of the 1980s, when a drive to isolate South Africa led to sanctions against its regime.

But divesting from Israel is much more complicated. Many people see it as inherently antisemitic because it calls into question the legitimacy of the Jewish state. In many places it’s also illegal; currently 38 US states have laws against boycotting Israel. They’re unlikely to repeal them any time soon.

I wanted to see how the current protests compare to past movements so I called up David Cortright, a professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame (and a visiting scholar at Cornell University) who studies nonviolent protests and social change. He’s written or co-edited almost two dozen books on topics ranging from analysis of the Iraq anti-war movement to the efficacy of economic sanctions in preventing conflict. In the late 1960s and early 70s, while on active duty in the military, he regularly protested the Vietnam War. “I went to all the big rallies,” he told me.

Here’s an edited and condensed version of our conversation.

Suddath: So often campus protests are over a big, international issue that a university doesn’t have any control over. All students can really do in terms of pushing for something actionable is to ask their schools not to be complicit. Is this a fair understanding of what’s going on?

Cortright: That’s exactly right. Vietnam and South Africa protests are both quite relevant here. You had students outraged at what was going on and opposed to American foreign policy. Their goals were to stop the killing in Vietnam, or help the African National Congress be free from oppression. But how do you achieve those goals on a university campus when there are no direct levers of power to pull? The question is always: what’s the local angle?

In the case of South Africa, the protests were about the divesting of university funds from institutions that did business in South Africa. Usually those were banks and big corporations. This was within a worldwide movement to impose sanctions against the apartheid regime. The United Nations had imposed sanctions. In 1986 the US passed a sanctions bill. Students were able to latch onto that issue and get institutions to withdraw funds.

Were they successful?

Not many institutions fully divested and the amounts were not that huge. But it dramatized the issue and was on target with what was happening internationally.

Vietnam was a little different, though. Can you talk about that?

There were a lot of campaigns to stop schools from doing business with specific corporations. Dow Chemical was a popular target. Dow produced napalm, which we were using in the war. They were also the major manufacturer of Dioxin, which was part of agent orange. A company like Dow would come to a university to recruit graduates to work there, especially engineers and scientists, and there would be massive protests. Police would be called in. Some of the protests were really huge. Some resulted in injuries. But the protests raised the issue of a school’s complicity.

Do you think the current protestors can convince schools to divest their money from companies that support Israel?

Probably not.

It’s very complicated. A university may not have a lot of resources invested in Israel today. And endowment funds are independently administered. Trustees have the authority -- it’s not something that can be changed quickly.

What has been done effectively, and I’m surprised I haven’t seen much about this yet, is that universities may at least agree to meet with students about their demands, to set up a working group to look into their options. In those settings, you don’t get everything you demand as a movement. But it’s something. At Cornell, for example, they had a campus-wide vote in which something like 70% of students supported divestment and called for a cease-fire. With a support level that high, a university has a responsibility to at least respond to that.

In some ways, a protest is only successful if people notice it. If you get on the news or go viral on social media, you’ll draw attention to the issue. But that can also be dangerous because things can so easily get out of hand.

It’s a tricky game. I think we’re right at that moment for some campus groups. Not all press coverage is positive, as we’ve seen. If it’s a scene of protestors physically clashing with the police or being violently disruptive, the image of the movement suffers.

On the other hand, if they do arrest you and you accept the arrest in a dignified manner, that may help your cause.

I wonder if at some schools — there's footage of protesters smashing windows at Columbia, there were also report of a clash between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian groups at UCLA — that is indeed what's happening, that violence is hurting their cause.

The media are attracted to physical altercation and argument. The resulting negative images reinforce the messages of their adversaries and turn away those who might otherwise agree with the movement in opposing the war and urging a cease-fire.

Movements win when they build large diverse coalitions and attract increasing numbers of people to their side. That requires a welcoming message and a framing that incorporates widely shared values, such as protection of the innocent, not breaking windows and shouting epithets.

Is the movement having an impact? Or is it too early to say?

I think so. If you look back to where the Biden administration was in October, the word “cease-fire” never came to administration officials’ lips. But—and this is not just the student movement—as people have pushed the issue, first you heard Vice President Harris use it, then the President, and now it’s commonplace. Even the fact that the US sanctioned those Israeli settlers on the West Bank is a change in American position. While these are only small steps, the US is definitely less friendly to Israel than it was. It’s significant.

By the numbers

New Voices