The Gazacaust has clearly changed the Boomers’ position about the intrinsic legitimacy and sanctity of student protests on college campuses. Yet there was a time when Boomers used to shut down campuses on a regular basis, a time that is still cited by them as evidence of their moral superiority to other generations.
The major movements of the 1960s were the Civil Rights Movement and the Student Movement. Both advocated for those who were discriminated against in various ways. The Student Movement also led the Free Speech Movement, starting on the University of California, Berkeley’s campus in 1964. Initially, college students protested against social injustices like poverty, the unfair treatment of African American citizens, and freedom of speech on college campuses. They later shifted their focus to opposing the Vietnam War.
Neither blacks in the USA nor the Vietnamese in Vietnam were being treated anywhere nearly as badly as the Palestinians are being treated by the Israelis, at least on a per capita basis in the case of the latter. And yet, at the behest of their “greatest ally”, the Boomers and their fellow travellers are determined to prevent Generation Z from speaking out about the Gazacaust.
Protests are roiling college campuses nationwide as administrators with graduation ceremonies next month face demands that schools cut financial ties to Israel against the backdrop of the Israel-Hamas war.
Many campuses were largely quiet by early afternoon Sunday but about 275 people were arrested on Saturday at campuses including Indiana University at Bloomington, Arizona State University and Washington University in St. Louis. Those have pushed the number of arrests nationwide to nearly 900 since New York police removed a pro-Palestinian protest encampment at Columbia University and arrested more than 100 demonstrators on April 18.
Since then, students have dug in at dozens of pro-Palestinian encampments around the country, prompting a range of responses from administrators — arrests and criminal charges, student suspensions or simply continued pleas to leave. The plight of students has become a central part of protests, with both the students and a growing number of faculty demanding amnesty. At issue is whether the suspensions and legal records will follow students through their adult lives.
Faculty members at universities in California, Georgia and Texas have initiated or passed largely symbolic votes of no confidence in their leadership.
It might be interesting to compare the number of people arrested for protesting the actions of a foreign government as opposed to those who were protesting the actions of their own government. Because, as we know, a foreign elite generally rules more harshly that a people’s own elite.
