The president of the University of California has announced that the system would enforce bans on encampments as well as the use of masks to “conceal identity” in guidance that comes as schools across the US are planning for protests in support of Gaza similar to those that roiled campuses across the country.
Michael V Drake, the president of the 10-campus university system, said in a statement on Monday that the UC was taking steps to “ensure a safe, inclusive campus climate that fosters a free exchange of ideas”.
“Except for ideas that involve criticising Israel for genocide. All the other ideas are fine though.”
For real! I don’t know any details of what may or may not have happened on those campuses, but framing this decision in this way is completely disingenuous.
Jewish steudents reported being harrassed, which probabky happened because there are always some jackasses in any large protest. But most of the complaints I noticed in news articles were the Jewish students equating criticism of Israel and Jewish people.
Yeah, that could come from a lifetime of experience with people equating the two, but it also means any valid criticism of Israel is going to feel like a personal attack to them too. Criticism of an active genocide is more important than verbal antisemitism on college campuse.
It doesn’t help that the Israeli government goes out of their way to conflate the two as much as possible. That way when people are trying to condemn the Zionist-run genocide, they are viewed as talking about all Israelis and Jewish people as a whole despite there being a clear and distinct separation. Their government is trying to muddy the waters so real discourse cannot happen, and that in turn puts them all in danger to the crazy fucks that harass people on campus.
On the other hand, tons of the protestors were harassed by pro-Zionist students but they never talk about that. They even threw fireworks in their tents or would start fights.
Much of what I read about things on campuses in general was this. Like you said, there were likely folks there who just wanted to be a problem, but not wide scale. It has been a long time since I was in college, but even then there were some Jewish students who were more pro-Israel, and other Jewish students who were not friends with them. I didn’t know what to think of it then, but I have a better idea now.