I’ve been spending the last several weeks trying to find out what’s really going on with the campus protests.
I’ve met with students at Berkeley, where I teach. I’ve visited with faculty at Columbia. I’ve spoken by phone with young people and professors at many other universities.
My conclusion: while protest movements are often ignited by many different things and attract an assortment of people with a range of motives, this one is centered on one thing: moral outrage at the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people – most of them women and children – in Gaza.
To interpret these protests as anything else – as antisemitic or anti-Zionist or anti-American or pro-Palestinian – is to miss the essence of what’s going on and why. ….more
