Protests Across US Campuses and History on Past Protests

Starting in early October, war has broken out in Gaza because of the Hamas attack on Israel. Protests on college campuses have erupted since October; however, in April they have advanced tremendously. According to authors Do and Hoyle, 97% of the campus protests have remained peaceful, and over 94% of the more than 1,360 student demonstrations held between 7 October 2023 and 3 May 2024 have shown support for Palestine (Ho, Doyle). Around April 18, many examples of campus protests have spread across the US since the arrest of more than 100 students at Columbia University (Ho, Doyle). At Columbia University, a number of protesters took over a building on campus by locking arms and carrying items such as furniture and metal barricades inside. The campus then responded with restricting the access to campus and also threatening students on not graduating (PBS NewsHour.2024). Some other examples of campus protests that have sparked since then is that on the Yale campus, police arrested 50 people, 44 of them being students, due to protesting with tents at a public sidewalk area after they were kicked from the quad (PBS NewsHour.2024).

At the University of Texas at Austin, police surrounded about 150 protesters sitting on the ground and then the protesters proceeded to block the officers from leaving campus by shoving the officers in before the protesters were pepper sprayed and then arrested (PBS NewsHour.2024). At the University of North Carolina Chapel Hills campus, protesters took down an American flag to raise a Palestinian flag. In return, several students arrived, who in support of UNC Interim Chancellor Lee Roberts, brought Israeli flags as Roberts entered the quad to put the American flag back up (Politico). Also, around 20 students at Brown University were arrested because of their protest against the schools “endowment from companies with ties to weapons manufacturers” (Betts). It is a controversial opinion among many students on whether the protests are anti semitic. Many believe there are no anti semitic demonstrations, however some Jewish students have remarked that rhetoric expressed to them can come off as violent (Politico). At Emory University, some students have stated that they have heard anti semitic rhetoric expressed such as “There is only one solution, intifada revolution,” and “Hey hey, ho ho, Zionists have got to go.” (Politico).

These campus demonstrations occurring today are examples of social movements, and the protests are not new in today’s world. When understanding the history of why protests happen, it’s important to know some of the motivations. Many of times it associates with their beliefs such as political, status attainment, religious, and family beliefs (Sherkat). Protests may influence the rules in social settings and also inflict assumptions among people that can affect future decisions (Sherkat).

Starting around the 1950s and so on, campus protests have occurred over civil rights, war, religion, and more. One important time that we can look back on and parallel today’s protests with is the Vietnam college protests around the 1960s. Students were opposing government support for the repressive president of South Vietnam, Ngo Dinh Diem (PBS.2019), drafting for the war (Kindig), and also against the war going on itself. In the late 1960s at Cornell University, students tried to organize a “national burn-your-draft-card movement” (PBS.2019) and in May of 1970, 13 Kent State University students were shot by National guardsmen because of their anti-Vietnam war protests, which then led to more protests at over 1,300 college campuses (PBS.2019). The Vietnam Day Committee was an established group of war-opposed students that organized a number of antiwar social movements across campuses from 1968-1969 (Kindig).