The New Yorker:

What explains the student movement against the war in Gaza? Sometimes the correct answer is the one right in front of you.

By Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor

In the final weeks of this tumultuous academic year, colleges and universities across the country have erupted in renewed protest against Israel’s military campaign in the Gaza Strip. At Columbia University, on April 18th, school officials tried to shut down a student tent encampment by enlisting the New York Police Department, which then arrested more than a hundred protesters. The administration’s move not only further emboldened activists at Columbia but also sparked a national uprising of students to end the war in Gaza and, for some, to end their institution’s financial ties to Israel. Since then, more than two thousand people have been arrested on at least forty-six campuses in the U.S. (At Princeton University, where I am a professor, I have participated in antiwar activities in recent weeks.) Student protests continue at schools that are still in session. This youth revolt will linger as a backdrop to the Presidential election, threatening Joe Biden’s bid for a second term.

For months, pundits have identified Biden’s underwhelming polling among young voters as a problem as he continues to lag behind Trump. In 2020, Biden rode a wave of anger expressed by younger constituents, who had been filling the streets in some of the largest protests in U.S. history. He won the election, in part, with nearly sixty per cent of the youth vote. But today’s youth have Biden, not Trump, as the focus of their demonstrations. As the U.S. persists in its provision of weapons to the Israeli military, Biden has been described as “Genocide Joe” and hounded during public appearances. Only eighteen per cent of young voters approve of the way he is handling the war in Gaza. Though some Democrats may believe that, if Israel ends the war by the fall, students will move on and recognize Trump as the larger threat, the ways in which their demonstrations have been denigrated, disbanded, and denounced as antisemitic will not easily be forgotten.

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