Those readers of a certain age will recall that 1968 was a tumultous year. There were anti-war protests on campuses across the country, a Kennedy running for president, and a riot at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Well, here we go again. Donald Trump was 22 and a student at the University of Pennsylvania then. On April 26, 1968, one of his fellow Penn Quakers, Kiyoshi Kuromiya, announced that he was going to burn a dog alive using napalm to show the students what napalm is like. Thousands of students showed up. They were handed a leaflet reading: “Congratulations on your anti-napalm protest. You saved the life of a dog. Now, how about saving the lives of tens of thousands of people in Vietnam.” Trump graduated in June 1968 and was undoubtedly very aware of all the unrest at Penn and nationally. He is surely aware that the campus turmoil and Chicago riot helped defeat Democrat Hubert Humphrey.
Now Trump is trying to put to use his knowledge that many Americans tend to regard college students who are busy protesting, rather than studying, as spoiled brats, rather than as citizens exercising their First Amendment rights (although setting up tent cities and camping out on campus is probably not covered by the First Amendment the way a march would be). He is seizing on the protests to gin up his base, get them good and angry, and make sure they vote. The pro-Palestinian protests on many campuses, including Columbia, Emory, MIT, Texas at Austin, USC and Yale, are inadvertently helping him, just as the anti-war protests helped Richard Nixon in 1968. In addition, Trump is claiming that some of the slogans the protesters are chanting (e.g., “From the river to the sea, Palestine must be free”) are blatantly antisemitic since they are effectively calling for the destruction of Israel. This gives him a patina of moral superiority. The students seem to be unaware that Trump’s Middle East policy (“What Bibi wants, Bibi gets”) would be far harsher for the Gazans than Joe Biden’s.
Trump is arguing that Biden is unable to maintain order or quash lawlessness, so the protests are his fault. Of course, dealing with campus protests is not one of the powers listed in Art. II. Handling them is up to college administrators, campus police and, if called in by the college president, local cops. But many voters don’t really grasp the concept of federalism very well.
Other Republicans are also trying to make hay out of the encampments and protests. Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) sent 100 state troopers to clear out pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Texas at Austin, resulting in dozens of arrests. Sens. Josh Hawley (R-MO) and Tom Cotton (R-AR) have demanded that Biden mobilize the National Guard to protect Jewish students. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who would dearly love to be Trump’s running mate, said that the protesters are mentally unstable. He tweeted: “You don’t get to turn our public places into a garbage dump. No civilization should tolerate these encampments. Get rid of them.”
The campus protests have deeply fractured the Democratic Party while uniting the Republican Party, just as in 1968. Being the “out party” is a luxury. You don’t have to take any action and are free to whine about what the president is doing (or not doing).
What some of the protesters are demanding is “divestment.” This means they are demanding that universities rid their endowments of stock in defense contractors who make weapons being sent to Israel. This is something that feels like a substantive action, but in practice is fairly hollow. The portfolio managers that handle university endowments rarely buy individual stocks these days. They buy index funds that track the S&P 500 and similar ETFs (Exchange Traded Funds). These are far less risky and are much cheaper, as well. So in practice, there is no practical way for a university to divest itself of defense companies (or tobacco companies or oil companies). Broad-based index funds cover the entire economy, by design. In addition, even if a university did own some stock in a defense contractor, selling it just means somebody else gets to own it. It doesn’t really matter to Boeing if Yale owns a bit of it or BlackRock owns a bit of it. They are still going to sell fighter planes to Israel if the Israelis can pay for them. If they turned away paying customers for political reasons, the stockholders would revolt and management would be cashiered. In fact, if a university does own some stock in a defense contractor, it can send someone to the annual stockholders meeting and make a fuss. Not so if they’re not invested in the company,
The only substantive way to change Israel’s behavior is to change U.S. policies toward Israel. That means convincingthe average voter that policy should change. The median voter is a 50-ish white person who didn’t go to college. Are protests on campus likely to change that person’s mind in the direction the protesters want? Or will they backfire? We may find out in about 6 months. (V)