Campus protests can be both consciousness-raising and effective

Like so many protests before them, reactionaries speak of their uselessness and even their counterproductivity, but the actions of universities and Biden tell another story.

College students have staged mass protests over the years against U.S. wars in Vietnam, El Salvador, and Iraq, and for climate justice and civil rights, including rights for queer people. Throughout the past half-century, political reactionaries have characterized such demonstrations as adolescents acting out, devoid of clarity, and sure to turn public opinion against their particular causes. It’s not surprising that the encampments we are seeing on campuses demanding a permanent ceasefire in Gaza have drawn the usual kinds of derision from the right. But in reality, the demonstrators seem to be making actual headway.

On Monday, for the first time since October 7, President Biden has stopped a weapons shipment to Israel. Biden’s Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, met with Benjamin Netanyahu and urged him not to invade Rafah. The threat of an invasion of this area that is home to 1.5 million Palestinians is the main reason that the US has suspended the weapons shipment. (Unfortunately, Netanyahu continues to order an evacuation of Rafah, but the fact that the US is changing its position is not trivial).

In another part of this conversation, Egypt and Qatar are closing in on a ceasefire deal, and the latest report is that Hamas has agreed to the bargain. Israel is saying it will not end the war, even in exchange for hostages (which makes some of us wonder if the war was ever about the hostages).

Nevertheless, these two developments—the suspension of weapons shipment and the potential ceasefire agreement—are two huge steps forward in the pursuit of peace in Israel-Palestine. They also are the very issues that protesters—the ones marching in the streets and living in encampments—have been crying out for. The protesters should feel proud of what they helped to accomplish. They raised awareness and applied pressure, and that helped move the Biden administration in the right direction.

As of this date, there have been over 2200 arrests of students on campuses from Harvard and Emerson to UCLA and USC. Encampments have gone up not only at places like NYU and the University of Wisconsin, which are well known for their past activism but also at the Universities of Utah and Texas. Protesters at Evergreen College have actually succeeded in their demand for divestment from Israel-connected holdings. Several others, including Rutgers and Brown, have agreed to begin formal discussions about such divestment.

Condemnation of today’s protests reminds me of the right-wing reaction to the Black Lives Matter movement of 2020. An interesting analysis of the anti-progressive position can be found in Albert Hirschman’s 1992 book The Rhetoric of Reaction. He outlines three categories of criticism from the Right. Social movements are seen as either: perverse, futile, or jeopardizing other social goods.

The perversity thesis argues that the protests hurt the cause. They make it less likely for police reform to happen or, in this case, for Palestinian liberation to occur.

The futility thesis argues that the protests are pointless and won’t result in any change. 

The jeopardy thesis argues that the protests threaten the gains we’ve already made. They might result in worse police brutality, or they may result in Trump’s re-election.

David Brooks, darling of American conservatives, alludes to these three theses in his latest column. You’d have to pay me to write a full critique of his piece, but I found some solace knowing that my growing frustration with anti-progressive narratives was part of a pattern. Of course, the assertion that these protests hurt the causes they try to solve and so on are hard to verify, but the point is that they are rooted in partisan interest. Although some progressives see Brooks as more reasonable than most on the political right, I, myself, feel that he writes in bad faith.

I’m also partisan, of course. I am supportive of and engaged in the protests. But so far, the protests strike me as far from futile. But also, I see the effective changes to both the positions of Biden and even the beginning of the conversations of divestment at universities. The latter wouldn’t been possible without the protests, and the former, may have happened more quickly because of them.

We know from historical example that protests work. They helped bring about women’s rights, civil rights, and the end to the Vietnam War. They have more recently led to increased consciousness about police brutality and have led to a national conversation about reform.

Beyond the important question of effectiveness, the sheer unity and camaraderie formed by action among like-minded people galvanizes our cause. The future of our movement may not be clear. We probably can’t stay encamped after the semester’s end, but we can always shift to other strategies and keep the faith. We don’t have to believe the tired narratives that say our actions are in vain. We have some proof that our work is making a change.

We are organized, determined, and making a difference.