American Spring
Antiwar protests spread across the United States, and they're not over yet.
Correction: The photo of ultra-orthodox Jews holding Palestinian flags was at Columbia University, not City College of New York.
Dear Friend and Reader:
FOR THE FIRST TIME in many years, antiwar protests have spread among college and university campuses in the United States. I don’t remember this happening in all the time I’ve been covering student activism in all of its forms since around 1983.
In that era, there were anti-apartheid protests, though they were limited in scope and focused on specific targets like boards of trustees, who controlled where universities invested. This also worked with towns, cities, states and corporations.
And we are seeing them again — only being sold with a spin. Pres. Biden Thursday morning fully endorsed a crackdown against the “violent extremists pushing anti-Semitism and foreign ideologies.”
Planet Waves has visited three of these protests, at Columbia University — the epicenter — as well as a state school called the Fashion Institute of Technology in Manhattan, and at SUNY New Paltz, an upstate campus. This article contains reports from all three.
Your Minute of History
But first, a minute of history. To have nationwide protests on U.S. campuses is highly unusual.
There have been student protests that swept across specific systems, like the tuition hike rebellion at the City University of New York (CUNY) in April 1991. But that was confined to one system; even though upstate campuses in the State University faced the same tuition hikes, there were nearly no objections there. The Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 partly involved campuses, but mostly it was conducted in city centers.
So this is a highly unusual turn of events, and may be the first nationwide (specifically) student uprising since the spring of 1970. The murder of four students at Kent State University in Ohio on May 4, 1970 made campus protests seem like a not-so-appealing idea — that was the point.
On Friday’s Planet Waves FM, my guest will be Laurel Krause, whose sister Allison was one of the four students shot and killed that day.
First Tent Encampment at Columbia University
The movement for a ceasefire by Israel in Gaza, and the demand for divestment from Israel, seems to be coming primarily from students. It began at Columbia University in New York City on April 17 — less than two weeks ago.
When Nemat (Minouche) Shafik, the president of Columbia University, ordered the arrests of students after just one day of living in tents on the campus lawn, I knew that would spark a national student movement.
When the tent city returned, she threatened to bring in the Army National Guard. Note, she is trained in economics, and I would bet you a loaf of sourdough bread and a gallon of kimchi that she has never seen the inside of a sociology classroom, and is clueless about 1960s history.
Campus administrators overplay their hands so often, they’re more predictable than trains in Germany. She then had the police back on campus earlier this week, removing students from Hamilton Hall, a frequent scene of building takeovers; there were more than 100 arrests.
Protests have now spread to hundreds of campuses across the United States, always in the form of a tent encampment. While there are reports of the protests being infiltrated, that is often true — but I don’t think it’s an issue most places. Where some form of property damage or violence occurs, it might be so.
Kylie Harper has been visiting the protests at Columbia University. I asked her if she could feel any hatred toward Jews. She replied:
Not a trace. I stood talking to a Jewish organizer for over 30 minutes while (presidential candidate) Jill (Stein) was interviewed. They held a seder for Passover at the encampment. … Naomi Klein spoke there about Abraham coming down from the mount to see the nation of Israel worshiping the golden calf. She said that too many Jews today are idol worshiping, and that the idol they're worshiping is Zionism.
Drawing the Line at Property Damage?
Many observers say they “draw the line” when a protest crosses over into causing property damage, but as Laurel Krause pointed out, these students are protesting genocide — as was her sister Allison that day on the Kent State campus. There is no comparison to broken windows and spray paint.
Everyone seems to agree that at least 30,000 Gazan civilians have been killed — including thousands of children — and that they had nothing to do with the Oct. 7 attack blamed on Hamas.
The problem with property damage, besides needing to fix it, is that it constitutes a crime for which the police can be invited onto the campus and students can be arrested — even if they are not the ones who caused the damage.
Meanwhile, leaders of Jewish student organizations at Columbia have told their constituents to go home and stay home, fearing for their safety. Yet a pro-Palestinian group of Jewish students held a seder (a Passover ritual) within the Columbia encampment, which to me demonstrates that the protest there is not about antisemitism.
Student leaders at the SUNY New Paltz encampment who I interviewed Wednesday night were speaking sincerely of the beauty of the Jewish faith and culture; I am sensitive to this discussion. That’s not so anti-Semitic, either. Many Jews were present, and Jewish-adjacent people.
[I’ll have the interview on Friday’s Planet Waves FM.]
In my view, the dividing line is when Jewish students are in fact threatened or their movement is obstructed. Actual student protesters, well trained in political correctness and inclusiveness, understand this instinctively.
For many, it’s their personal credo. As far as I can tell, where there is harassment, it’s coming from off-campus influences.
We are in a time when many words have been rendered meaningless, or have been reversed in their meaning. It’s ridiculous to claim that anyone who objects to the conduct of the government of Israel has something against the Jewish people or the Jewish faith generally. If there is a good argument supporting that idea, I have not heard it.
Late-Night, Outdoor Study Session
The New Paltz encampment more resembled a late-night, outdoor finals study session than a protest. They had organized security, food and a published set of rules, complete with an emergency contact QR code. The camp was set away from academic buildings, on a grassy quadrangle with several dorms surrounding it.
Still, the college president, Darrell Wheeler (who presents himself as pro-free-speech) threatened to “crack down” on the protest on its first day. That implies police intervention, which (with 100 to 200 students involved) would have to come from off-campus police. He too has not done his calculations. New Paltz is still heavily populated by old-school antiwar lefties; I envision that community members would show up and get arrested in support of the students.
The problem with this whole concept is that the students are not breaking any laws. There is nothing to arrest them for. Meanwhile, New Paltz police chief Robert Lucchesi knew nothing about the possibility of a raid when I spoke to him Thursday afternoon.
“In general practice, we don’t patrol the campus,” Lucchesi said. “That’s up to SUNY New Paltz campus police.” He retires in a month; my intuition says the longtime chief does not want to leave office on such a sour note as arresting a bunch of kids for studying outside.
Is He Kidding? Statement from the President
SUNY New Paltz replied to my query about the potential for arresting protesters with a statement from its official spokesman, Andrew Bruso, who speaks specifically for Pres. Wheeler:
Yesterday (Wednesday), a small unsanctioned group, including some SUNY New Paltz students, set up tents and other temporary structures on campus grounds, in violation of policies that are clearly outlined in our Student Handbook. President Darrell P. Wheeler spoke to the demonstrators on site, listened to their concerns, and advised them that their actions — specifically the presence of the tents – constituted conduct violations. He expressed an intention to maintain an open dialogue and to promote a path of de-escalation. The University will not tolerate any hatred, bigotry, racism, intolerance, antisemitism, Islamophobia or violence on our campus and will take necessary actions to ensure a safe and successful conclusion to our academic year.
Unsanctioned? Is he kidding?
This is not a pep rally for the football team; it’s a protest against genocide. Note, the campus can only point to presumed violation of its own regulations (against pitching tents), not state or local laws; and from what I could tell, there is nothing to de-escalate because there is no escalation unless he makes one.
And he cannot call for off-campus law enforcement to raid the campus unless there is a crime in progress.
Here’s my take, as someone who has covered SUNY since 1983 and SUNY New Paltz since 1989 — with devotion and passion — here is my opinion. If Pres. Wheeler arrests those young men and women for living in tents for a week or two, it will be his undoing.
He is a new arrival in New Paltz, and he underestimates the passion of the old-school, anti-war left in New Paltz and the surrounding hills, who see this as a legitimate antiwar protest and are thrilled that it’s happening. He underestimates his support on the faculty. Even if he is not forced to resign immediately, he will throw shade on the rest of his tenure, and be seen as reactive, authoritarian, ineffective, insecure, and a tool.
Many people in the community still remember and revere Pres. John Neumaer, who openly invited students to protest against the Vietnam War.
The Astrology of the Protests
I’m hosting a discussion of the campus protest issue on the Planet Waves FM Substack. People have different suspicions that this movement is purely AstroTurf, meaning phony grassroots, organized from the outside. One potential indication of that is the fact that the protests spread from campus to campus quickly.
But news travels at the speed of light in the digital age. And when there is a student movement in process, developments on one campus inspire developments on another. Over the past two weeks, the message students are sending is for their campuses to divest from companies doing business with Israel.
Students are taking inspiration from the anti-Apartheid protests of the 1980s, which were themed on the demand to divest — and it worked. It was the ultimate boycott. Getting institutions and countries to divest from the Apartheid regime brought it down. That astrology, by the way, involved Uranus semisquare Pluto, a kind of recall of the 1960s Uranus conjunct Pluto.
That aspect is shaped like a wedge, with a built-in hammer. It got a result.
Uranus — a revolutionary planet, often involved in uprisings — was in the center of the action. Uranus also showed up for the 1991 protests at the City University of New York (CUNY), for Arab Spring and Occupy Wall Street 20 years later in 2011, and also for the current wave of protests.
There were other factors — such as the April 8 total solar eclipse — but the protests at Columbia University started just three days before the conjunction of Jupiter and Uranus. This is suitable for campus protests, as Jupiter is an excellent astrological sigil for large campuses and higher education generally.
A Few More Thoughts on the Chart
In my view of modern history, very little progress happens without student involvement. So the April 17 chart is a kind handprint of what this student movement is about. If I were to explicate the aspects, I would have to write a thousand more words. So I will save that for a video and give you my impressions.
To me, the chart expresses the pent-up sense of resentment and betrayal by young Americans, who realize the capitalist system is largely a ripoff and a war machine. There is anger at unjust authority and its false values. There is a sense of injury and trauma (represented by contact with two centaur planets, Chiron and Nessus) that has the potential to be fetishized, in the contemporary style. On a bad day, self-righteousness could be an issue — six planets in Aries warn of that.
But those same planets also describe commitment and determination. There is an evolutionary impulse running through the chart — this is evident in the very last degree of Aquarius rising. I consider this an exalted degree associated with emerging from one state of development to another, and being met by more advanced souls. If nothing else, sincere participants feel they are serving positive ends and taking part in an evolutionary process.
Placed right on the brink of the Jupiter-Uranus conjunction, there is a theme about identifying new values in the face of past injuries. And the chart speaks boldly about thinking locally and acting globally. There is anger, and the potential for anger to be transmuted into something constructive. The chart, in many different ways, says: this is about something bigger, and describes vast spiritual influences at work.
I have seen many dark, dismal charts: the Reichstag fire is the worst of them, followed by the John F. Kennedy assassination, and the sly, insidious chart for the Sept. 11 incident.
The Columbia University protest chart has none of those imprints, and none of that feeling. Though there is some evidence to the contrary, I think that the students who are involved are speaking and acting from the heart.
That’s my report, from the planets and the front lines.
with love,
Here is our report on the New Paltz arrests.
https://planetwaves.substack.com/p/and-the-whole-wide-world-is-watchin
Thanks for this reporting, Eric. I've not been able to gather much from the MSM about what the students themselves are doing or thinking. That led me to write about how I hope they will dream bigger than just divestment, which I think is an impossible red herring. We need to imagine the world we DO want, not just push against the frustrating and unsatisfactory world that is. https://jenniferbrowdyphd.substack.com/p/what-phoenix-will-be-born-from-these