Persistent student demonstrations on American university campuses, protesting Israel’s war on Gaza, showed no signs of abating over the weekend. Protesters pledged to persist until their calls for U.S. educational institutions to sever ties with corporations profiting from the conflict are heeded.
This wave of protests is arguably the most impactful student movement since the anti-Vietnam War demonstrations on campuses in the late 1960s. The clash between pro-Palestinian students and university administrators has unearthed a myriad of underlying conflicts.
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By 1970, the Vietnam War had been ongoing for five years, and Republican President Richard Nixon had declared an escalation of the war into Cambodia. By the close of 1970, nearly 1.8 million young American men had been drafted, and close to 30,000 had lost their lives.
While there are no U.S. troops directly engaged in Israel’s war in Gaza, the U.S. is implicated in the casualties in Gaza, as it has been extending financial, diplomatic, and military aid to Israel.
The Israeli offensive on Gaza was instigated by an attack by Hamas on October 7. The ensuing Israeli retaliation has resulted in the deaths of over 35,000 Palestinians, as reported by Palestinian medical personnel, and has displaced the majority of Gaza’s 2.3 million inhabitants.
Students from numerous schools across the U.S. have staged rallies or sit-ins to express their opposition to Israel’s war in Gaza, demanding that institutions cease transactions with companies that endorse the war. Over 2,000 protesters have been apprehended by the police.
Shift in War Support
The escalating death toll in Gaza and the extensive devastation visible there have influenced public sentiment, with backing for Israel’s military offensive falling from 50% in a Gallup poll conducted in November to 36% by the end of March.
President Biden, who ratified legislation last month to furnish an additional $14 billion in aid to Israel, has been increasingly criticized for his management of the crisis. This discontent is reflected in the hundreds of thousands of voters who have cast ‘uncommitted ballots’ in recent Democratic primaries to voice their dissatisfaction and resentment.
A profound generational gap, anti-war demonstrations on university campuses, and an impending Democratic convention in Chicago draw parallels between the current protests against Israel’s actions in Gaza and the anti-Vietnam War movement.
Senator Bernie Sanders highlighted these similarities with the Vietnam era, referencing former President Lyndon Johnson’s decision to abstain from the 1968 election due to mounting public outrage over the Vietnam War.
Sanders expressed concern to the media stating, “I am deeply worried that President Biden is positioning himself in a way that alienates not just the youth, but a significant portion of the Democratic base, with his stance on Israel and this war.”
Democrats Are Divided
In 1968, the party establishment committed a significant blunder by disregarding the anti-war youth and perpetuating the dreadful Vietnam War, thereby estranging young voters. The Democratic Party is currently teetering on the brink of repeating this mistake. Just as it was then, there are pronounced generational rifts today, including within the Democratic Party.
Biden’s initiatives to connect with young voters were set in motion several months prior to the previous election cycle. However, he was unsuccessful in truly understanding the sentiments of these voters.
James Carville, a Democratic strategist, cautioned protesters in a widely circulated and expletive-filled video on X that their actions could inadvertently aid Trump in securing a second term by causing divisions within the party.
Dilara Sayeed, the president of the Muslim Civic Coalition, a non-profit organization based in Chicago, stated that the party continues to be disconnected from its electorate, particularly young voters and people of color.
Abbas Alawieh, a former senior congressional aide and community organizer who played a key role in Michigan’s ‘Uncommitted’ campaign, warned that the party’s leadership was in serious danger of repeating the errors of the Vietnam era.
Comparison of Size, Scope and Intensity
Kevin Kruse, a professor at Princeton University, noted that by 1970, the scale and fervor of the protests had escalated, with some gatherings drawing tens of thousands, even hundreds of thousands of participants. The draft had a personal impact on many students.
He pointed out that some of these protests had turned violent, a stark contrast to the predominantly peaceful demonstrations seen so far in response to Israel’s war in Gaza.
“On the eve of the shooting, the ROTC (Reserve Officers Training Corps) building was set ablaze. This wasn’t merely a group of students peacefully protesting in tents on the campus grounds,” he explained.
The shooting ignited a new wave of anti-war protests across the United States and even as far as Melbourne, Australia, where a crowd of 100,000 assembled in protest. In the days following the shooting, nearly 100,000 individuals gathered in Washington, DC.
Kruse also mentioned that Columbia University’s initial response in April sparked protests in solidarity, albeit on a much smaller scale. He suggested that the Columbia protest might have fizzled out if the administrators had chosen to patiently wait it out until the summer break.
More Gender Diversity
In 1970, the U.S. had a college student population of approximately 7.2 million, with women making up 41% of this number, and Black students comprising a mere 7% of the total.
Fast forward to the present day, the U.S. boasts over 15 million undergraduate students. The demographic breakdown as per the National Student Clearinghouse Research Center, is as follows: white students constitute about 41%, Latino students represent 18%, Black students account for 11%, and Asian students make up 6%. Women have a higher representation on college campuses than men.
During the late 1960s, the women’s movement and the civil rights movements were also reaching a fever pitch. However, these groups were less cohesive and more in conflict than they are today, according to Jim Zogby, a protester from the Vietnam era and the founder of the Arab American Institute.
He characterizes the current generation as intersectional, stating, “These are the same young individuals who have been at the forefront of the Black Lives Matter movement, the women’s march, the protests against the Muslim ban, and the gun safety rally.”
Lessons learned from 1968 protests
A number of student activists have drawn inspiration from the student-led movements of 1968 for their own campaigns. Matthew Vickers, a third-year student at Occidental College in Los Angeles, is among the numerous students who have established protest camps in response to Israel’s conflict in Gaza.
“The majority of the Palestinian solidarity movement has been directly influenced, both tactically and morally, by the movements of the sixties. I believe the similarities are strikingly clear,” stated Vickers.
Alifa Chowdhury, a third-year student at the University of Michigan, is one of the coordinators of the protests on her campus. Their protest camp is situated precisely where students in the ’60s demonstrated against the Vietnam War.
“We are building upon actions that have been taken in the past; this is not a novel occurrence. We are standing on the shoulders of that protest history today,” Chowdhury articulated.
In the last instance when an antiwar movement encountered a generational split, a significant number of young individuals abstained from participating in the 1968 presidential election between Mr. Nixon and Vice President Hubert Humphrey. Mr. Nixon secured victory in the Electoral College by winning four states with a margin of less than 88,000 votes in total. Could history be on the verge of repeating itself?
