This article originally appeared on Haaretz. Sign up here to get Haaretz’s free Daily Brief newsletter delivered to your inbox.
As campuses across the country emptied out for winter vacation last year, university leaders were hoping against hope that the protests sparked by the events of Oct. 7 might die down once the students returned.
The break from campus life, they wanted to believe, would stifle the movement that had been picking up steam ever since the Hamas massacre and Israel’s devastating retaliation.
It would turn out to be wishful thinking. Not only did the protests gain even more momentum once the students returned to campus in January — the spring semester of 2024 would go down in history as the most politically explosive since the Vietnam War era more than half a century earlier.
Encampments protesting the Gaza war would sprout up on hundreds of campuses across the United States. Thousands of students would be arrested, suspended and subjected to other disciplinary action, as riot police stormed campuses. Buildings would be overtaken, windows smashed. And countless graduation ceremonies would be disrupted by walkouts and rallies.
With campuses once again empty for winter vacation, it is an opportune time to take stock of what has changed and why over the past year.
Administrators had good reason to be concerned that the protests might intensify when students returned to campus this fall, given the mounting death toll and growing humanitarian crisis in Gaza. But that didn’t happen.
In fact, protests have been few and far between since September, hardly drawing a fraction of the numbers of last spring. There have been no building takeovers, few arrests and, on the rare occasion students have tried to set up new encampments, they have been torn down immediately.
Data tracked by researchers at Harvard’s Nonviolent Action Lab and the Crowd Counting Consortium — a network of experts who collect publicly available information on protests, strikes, riots and other political actions across the United States — illustrate how dramatic the change has been.
Last spring, the consortium logged more than 3,200 pro-Palestinian protests on U.S. campuses.
This fall, the number dropped to 1,100. Last spring, there were protests at 410 schools. This fall, there were protests at 240. Last spring, 3,200 pro-Palestinian student protesters were arrested. This fall, their number dropped to 80.
According to Jay Ulfelder, program director of the Nonviolent Action Lab, the nature of the protest activity has also shifted, with a significantly greater share of actions falling into the quieter categories of vigils and “study-ins.”
“Another new twist this fall was the wave of sukkahs erected on campuses by Jewish students during Sukkot with explicit messaging opposing genocide and supporting Palestinian liberation,” he notes.
“In all cases, I think these trends reflect the creativity of student organizers in trying to sustain the momentum from the spring in the face of stricter campus rules and police repression.”
Indeed, Ulfelder does not believe the protests have fizzled out because of a lack of commitment or passion. Instead, he blames new regulations introduced this past fall, as well as the fallout from the crackdown on campuses last spring.
“If you arrest or suspend a bunch of organizers in the spring, clearly those organizers and networks are going to have a hard time bouncing back and organizing new things in the fall,” he says.
Absolute bans
Since the start of the fall semester, many universities and colleges have imposed absolute bans on encampments. Others have restricted protests to certain designated areas of campus, often away from the main hubs. At many campuses, demonstrations are prohibited after certain hours. At some, signs and banners of a political nature are no longer allowed.
Jonah Rubin, senior manager of campus organizing for Jewish Voice for Peace, the anti-Zionist group that has played a vital role in the movement, sees these steps as the main reason for the protest movement’s failure to maintain momentum in the fall.
“Students and faculty are being banned from campus for participating in peaceful, at times even silent, protest — and in some cases universities are pressing criminal charges against students,” Rubin said in a statement to Haaretz. “Despite this, students continue to mobilize, organize and demand divestment — including on the 20-odd campuses where students erected Gaza Solidarity Sukkahs this fall.”
Many of the changes on campuses were prompted by complaints by Jewish students, alumni and donors. They charged that, in defending the free speech rights of the protesters, many universities were exposing their Jewish students to discrimination and harassment. Indeed, New York University went so far this fall as to update its student conduct guidelines to ban the use of the term “Zionist” as a pejorative.
“We’ve seen a few very significant positive changes this semester,” says Adam Lehman, president and CEO of Jewish campus life group Hillel International. “We have seen far fewer mass protests and many universities really upping their game when it comes to addressing issues of discrimination affecting Jewish students. They’re definitely responding more quickly, more aggressively and more effectively when these issues arise.”
But while the number of incidents may be decreasing, says Lehman, the nature of the incidents reported this past semester has him deeply concerned.
“We at Hillel assign an intensity rating to every incident reported to us,” says the organization’s leader. “The average intensity has increased by 25 percent from last year to this fall. In concrete terms, that represents a higher share of targeted vandalism, target threats and harassment, as well as full-on physical assault.”
And yet, Lehman takes heart that this, too, will change — in no small part thanks to the November election results.
“It is quite possible that with this new administration, paired with a Republican Senate and House, we will see even more pressure on universities to comply with Title VI requirements,” he says, referring to the law that prevents discrimination based on race and ethnicity in programs that receive federal funding.
“To be clear, we are a nonpartisan organization, but we always appreciate political support when it comes to protecting the civil rights of Jewish students.”
The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law is behind dozens of discrimination complaints against U.S. universities and colleges lodged since the Oct. 7 attack. Some of them have resulted in federal investigations and lawsuits.
Alyza Lewin, president of the center, says that while the campus protests this past fall have been smaller and less frequent, “the narrative on campus that equates Jews and Zionists with evil and calls on excluding them from campus spaces not only continues, but in many situations, is becoming normalized.” As a result, she says, her organization “is still inundated with calls for support and assistance.”
Shira Goodman, vice president of advocacy at the Anti-Defamation League, has observed a similar trend. “We still saw incidents this fall, certainly around the one-year anniversary of Oct. 7, although not as many, not as often and not everywhere,” she says. “But the ones we did see involved much more problematic rhetoric. So, while students may no longer be taking over buildings, after [Hamas leader Yahya] Sinwar was killed, we saw many students walking around with Hamas flags.”
A case often cited as evidence of how radical the protesters have become and how some of them increasingly embrace terrorism and justify violence is Columbia University Apartheid Divest. This coalition of anti-Israel student groups has been the driving force behind many of the protests at the Manhattan campus.
Last spring, Khymani James, a leader of the Columbia encampment, was barred from campus after a video clip emerged in which they were quoted saying that “Zionists don’t deserve to live” and “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” In response, the coalition posted a statement on its Instagram account distancing itself from James and noting that “we believe in the sanctity of all life.”
This fall, the coalition walked back the statement and apologized to James for alienating them.
‘Like a fever dream’
While there have been radical voices in the movement from the start, notes Dov Waxman, a professor of Israel studies at UCLA, they appear to have become more dominant this year.
“It may sound like the movement has become more militant because the core activists and groups like Students for Justice in Palestine are the ones still engaging in these protests, whereas others who joined in last year — particularly in the spring and who were protesting what they saw as violations of freedom of speech as well as what they believed to be the genocide in Gaza — have drifted away. What you have left now is the hard core.”
He believes students have drifted away because of the new rules adopted by universities, as well as the greater enforcement of existing rules. “You can call it a more repressive approach toward protests or, alternatively, a zero-tolerance approach to harassment. But students are understandably wary of being disciplined, so there’s a chill in the air,” says Waxman.
At the same time, he doesn’t rule out the effect of simple fatigue: “We’re seeing a decline in protests on the streets as well. It indicates a broader kind of fatigue. And when you add the fact that people on the left in America are exhausted and also demoralized by the election, that also plays into it.”
Luca Robinson, a sophomore at UC Berkeley, recalls being shocked by some of the things he saw and heard during his first year at the university. “I’d be sitting in Hebrew class and outside, you could hear this mob chanting ‘Intifada, intifada,'” he says. “It was super-weird and uncomfortable.”
Campus life has changed for the better this year in that respect, he adds. “The protests seem to have lost traction. Even some Jewish kids I know here on campus who used to join the protests, they’ve stopped going. What I hear from them is that the core group has gotten way too radical, and it made them feel alienated. I’d hear them say things like ‘This is not chill anymore’ or ‘We’re against the war but not into all the rest of this.'”
Noah Lederman, a sophomore at Columbia, often rubs his eyes in disbelief when recounting some of the scenes he witnessed on campus last spring. “It feels unreal when I think about it, like a fever dream,” he says.
Even in the best of circumstances, he says, it would have been difficult to sustain that level of action for another semester — which is why he doesn’t feel particularly heartened by the fact that things are somewhat calmer this semester.
“Just because the protests aren’t as big doesn’t mean the underlying antisemitic, anti-Israel sentiment has gone away in any way, shape or form,” says Lederman, who wears a kippah.
“Because the rhetoric has become much more insidious and malicious, there are times I feel just as unsafe, if not more, compared with last semester.”
Rubin of Jewish Voice for Peace see things very differently, claiming the universities “are playing into the demands of the ascendant far right, gravely endangering freedom of speech not only for Palestine solidarity activists, but for all social movements.”
Still, he says the groups behind the campus protests have succeeded in their latest efforts to change minds and force administrations to take some action against Israel. He mentions victories “such as at Yale, where the student body voted overwhelmingly for divestment from weapons manufacturers arming the Israeli military, and at San Francisco State, which recently divested its endowment from companies that facilitate violations of international law and human rights, such as by Israel.”
Rubin added, “Even if it is a bit less visible than the spring, the movement to stop the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza and to support Palestinian liberation is continuing to shift both public opinion and policy.”