The Language of Apocalypse As We Envision a Better Future on College Campuses
This essay reflects the perspective on recent months’ campus protests from Jeremi, a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. On Friday, we’ll share a different perspective from Zachary, who just finished his freshman year at Yale.
By Jeremi Suri
The most frequent criticisms of campus protesters in 2024 allege that they are “unrealistic” and “spoiled.” We are told that calls for drastic changes in U.S. foreign policy toward the Middle East abandon long-standing American geopolitical interests in a strong military, intelligence, and economic partnership with Israel. We are also told that calls for divestment from businesses that militarize the region neglect the deep interconnections in global finance. For the most cynical of observers, universities depend on the prestige, talent, and wealth generated by current global investments, and the students who criticize them seem as attached to these benefits as ever. Unlike some of their predecessors in earlier eras, students are not calling for revolutionary changes in an economic system that privileges university education.
These cogent arguments carry some truth, but they assume that U.S. foreign policy is somehow more rational, strategic, and coherent than the positions articulated by the protesters. If, however, the scholarship on U.S. foreign relations in the last two decades has taught us anything, it is that this assumption about methodical policy-making is fundamentally wrong-headed. Although presidents, secretaries of state, and national security advisers are serious people with clear goals, they respond – like students – to diverse pressures and prejudices, especially in a volatile election year. We are not witnessing a set of self-assured “grand strategists” confronting an unruly mob of students. What we see both on our campuses and in the halls of government are emotional, frightened, frustrated, and confused people struggling to gain some control over events they see driving rapidly to disaster. The campus green and the policy conference room mirror one another more than we realize.
The language of apocalypse infuses both spaces. Democracy is on the line for students and government officials alike. So is the basic stability of the international system.
Students point to reports from the United Nations, the Guardian, and other reputable sources that describe the mass killing of civilians, famine, and overall despair for two million people in Gaza. They condemn Israeli government violence that exceeds previous limits and appears oblivious to worldwide demands for restraint articulated by the International Criminal Court and nearly every major country, including the United States. Students who support Israel, although not necessarily the government of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, find themselves on the defensive, often shouted down for their views. These students often feel that they are under attack from insults they perceive as threatening and anti-Semitic.
U.S. government officials who are committed to Israel’s self-defense point to the continued aggression of Hamas (which organized the most deadly attack on Jews on October 7, 2023 since the Holocaust) and Iran (which launched approximately 300 missiles at Israeli territory on April 13, 2024.) They warn of escalating anti-Semitism around the world and growing calls for the destruction of Israel throughout the Middle East. A wider war, including Iran, Egypt, Syria, Turkey, and even Russia is a lingering nightmare that American officials are desperate to prevent, but they are also frustrated with the Israeli government’s excessive and disproportionate use of force against civilians.
Understanding the context
The stakes are very high for everyone, and no one sees an easy path to peace and stability. Instead, powerful and vocal actors are staking out ever-stronger, angrier, and more extreme positions driven by fear. Some protesters want to shut down parts of their universities for fear that the United States will otherwise do nothing to stop the mass killing of civilians. Counter-protesters want to silence those they condemn as anti-Semitic. University administrators want to prevent any disorder (“another Columbia”), calling in police to break-up protests and encampments, even when they are peaceful. And politicians, especially Republicans like Representatives Elise Stefanik and Virginia Foxx, want to discredit popular progressive voices by tarring them as violent and anti-Semitic. Confrontation, not compromise, has become the currency of survival for desperate and opportunistic leaders.
This larger political context – what we study as historians – is essential for understanding recent events on college campuses. Each institution is unique, with its own culture and local conditions, but each is also in the crosshairs of conflicting narratives of apocalypse. The future of democracy and academic freedom appear to be on the line in this maelstrom of escalating rhetoric. Our society generally silos different points of view in separate neighborhoods, school districts, businesses, and social media networks. Universities remain one place where the protesters, the counter-protesters, the administrators, the wealthy donors, the parents, and the politicians – each with their own agendas – come into direct conflict. And universities are forward-looking institutions, graduating their students with a “commencement” ceremony each year, so the multiplying fears about the future are urgent.
April and May 2024 were the months when political fears turned to campus violence – largely ordered by scared university leaders who feared for their jobs. College presidents responded to their own opposition to protesters’ demands for more say in university policies, and the pressure of fearful parents and politicians, by calling in the police to manhandle, arrest, and even suspend demonstrators. Instead of standing firmly behind their responsibility to protect students, leading administrators exposed them to physical harm and professional penalties because they had the audacity to question authority, almost entirely peacefully. One need not accept building occupations or large encampments to affirm that the students involved with those protest actions are, like their predecessors in prior generations, expressing legitimate policy criticisms. Politically engaged students, who do not resort to violence, should not have their lives ruined by panicked administrators – that was the tradition on every major university campus before 2024.
At the University of Texas at Austin the crackdown was more brutal than elsewhere. The president of the university, a very mild-mannered and moderate man, was convinced by the example of other campuses and police reporting he still has not shared, that his institution was on the verge of being overrun by “outside agitators” allegedly paid to cause trouble. He also faced personal pressure from Republican state politicians and wealthy donors to shut down pro-Palestinian voices associated with widespread criticisms of recent draconian legislation that prohibited all diversity training and recruitment on campus. Protests at UT had been small and modest since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, but the president and his closest advisers feared an onrush of new demonstrations in late April 2024, as Columbia University and other campuses struggled with encampments, and congressional committees demanded strong responses. The appearance of a protest contagion across schools provided UT leaders with both urgency and justification for preventive action. As the regents who oversee the university later bragged, Columbia-like student behavior would never be tolerated in Texas.
On April 24, 2024 the president of UT called in state and city police to help campus officers arrest demonstrating students on the South Mall, a traditional site for peaceful protests. The police arrived more than one-hundred strong, with riot gear, weapons, horses, motorcycles, and zip ties. They stood menacingly in front of the protesters who were shouting “Free Palestine” and displaying a single hand-made sign with that language. I had just finished teaching my graduate seminar in a nearby building, and most of the students I saw walked past the protests until they noticed the police presence, which provoked surprise and anger.
The protesters looked like typical undergraduate students, they were loud but not threatening when assembled on the South Mall, and their numbers were not much greater than the police presence in front of them. Very concerned by this scene (and my knowledge of past protests that had turned violent when police arrived) I spoke directly to a number of Austin and campus police officers, asking them not to harm the protesters. The police officers were polite and quite frank that they were following orders to disperse an “unlawful” crowd. Why were the protesters unlawful? Because they did not have permission to assemble and to speak.
A contradiction of conservative principles of free speech
That answer contradicted the principles of free speech that our campus leadership and state politicians had reaffirmed in recent years to protect conservative voices. In 2019 Governor Greg Abbott had signed legislation affirming: “that all persons may assemble peaceably on the campus of institutions of higher education for expressive activities, including to listen to or observe the expressive activities of others.” This law explicitly protected the rights of expression for speakers deemed unpopular and offensive by the university community. “Viewpoint neutrality” was central to what the governor and others demanded, appropriately, from the university. Protesters had a right to speak on the South Mall, or any other public campus space.
The university ignored this free speech legislation. Minutes after my midday conversation with the police officers called to campus on April 24, they attacked the peaceful demonstrators. I did not see a single student weapon or a single act of violence from the students, and none were ever charged as such. The police marched into the crowd and they physically lifted men and women out, zip tied them, and arrested them. I could not tell why they chose particular protesters, often from the middle of the crowd, and not others. The police did not harm the men and women they arrested in any intentional way, but the act of forcibly lifting their bodies, removing them from the crowd, and apprehending them was inherently violent. It required three or four officers for each arrest.
The police violence provoked a growing group of students around the scene, most of whom arrived after they learned (probably on their phones) about the police violence. Within a few minutes, the crowd of maybe 200 had at least doubled, with numerous students shouting “off our campus” and other nasty words. What had been a pro-Palestinian demonstration quickly became an anti-police protest. Law enforcement arrested 57 people that day, all of whom were released by the district attorney because the arrests lacked sufficient probable cause for criminal charges. The campus was shattered with widespread shock and anger at university leadership.
Defenders of the crackdown, including state politicians and counter-protesters, claimed that the demonstrations were organized by “outside agitators,” who numbered about half of those arrested, and that they were inherently anti-Semitic. That argument was made even more forcefully on April 29, when another group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators assembled on the South Mall, and the police again charged the crowd, this time with less of a state police presence and more reliance on city and campus officers. 79 people were arrested at the second incident, tents and other items from encampments not yet assembled were confiscated, and pepper spray and flash bangs were deployed by police to break-up a very large student crowd supporting the protesters.
These two incidents of violent repression on campus had a chilling effect for free speech. Small protests and counter-protests continued, but they were cautious in their rhetoric and careful to avoid challenging the university administration or the police. An atmosphere of palpable fear now surrounded any effort to condemn Israeli policies or university investments. Although not illegal, these popular criticisms faced evident suspicion for being somehow anti-Semitic and arrest-worthy. Most students, faculty, and staff did not want to be branded with those labels, or spend a night in jail.
Numerous students and colleagues, especially those with a connection to the Arab world, told me of their fears and their reluctance to speak up again. I should also say that many of my students and colleagues who sympathize with Israel also shared their discomfort with what was still an evident pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel sentiment among most campus groups. In a climate of fear and repression, it became even more difficult to differentiate legitimate arguments against Israeli government policies from anti-Semitism and Islamophobia.
A summer calm amid unanswered questions
The summer heat has brought some needed calm to UT and other campuses, but it also leaves many questions unanswered. How will government and university leaders rebuild space for serious discussion about U.S. policy changes around Israel, Gaza, and the larger Middle East? The current stalemate will only seed more violence in the fall if changes are not made in the region and within universities. Fear has bred more fear and violence. The war has indeed come home, yet again. Students and other citizens crave more than heated rhetoric and apocalyptic warnings of doom.
It is incumbent on leaders at various levels – in government, in universities, in local communities – to offer new ideas for hope and reform. The protests of recent months have proven that the fear surrounding Israel and its neighbors divides us more than ever. The only alternative is to lean away from fear – and police and repression – and embrace what universities are supposed to be about: fact-based education, open discussion, and creative compromise. As in previous eras, the protests that a far-away conflict inspired on our campuses can find some resolution, or at least some de-escalation, from the work we do as scholars to talk and think.
We have to stop attacking one another first. We have to focus on the facts on the ground – in the Middle East and in the United States – not the overheated rhetoric of fearful men. And we need courageous university leaders who reject the posturing of the past few months for outreach with the smart, passionate, and caring people who populate our universities. Students and faculty are the solution, not the problem.
Also see in:
German, Turkish, Chinese, Spanish
Jeremi Suri holds the Mack Brown Distinguished Chair for Leadership in Global Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin. He is a professor in the University's Department of History and the LBJ School of Public Affairs. Professor Suri is the author and editor of eleven books on politics and foreign policy, most recently: Civil War By Other Means: America’s Long and Unfinished Fight for Democracy. His other books include: The Impossible Presidency: The Rise and Fall of America’s Highest Office; Liberty’s Surest Guardian: American Nation-Building from the Founders to Obama; Henry Kissinger and the American Century; and Power and Protest: Global Revolution and the Rise of Détente. His writings appear in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, Atlantic, Newsweek, Time, Wired, Foreign Affairs, Foreign Policy, and other media. Professor Suri is a popular public lecturer and comments frequently on radio and television news. His writing and teaching have received numerous prizes, including the President’s Associates Teaching Excellence Award from the University of Texas and the Pro Bene Meritis Award for Contributions to the Liberal Arts. Professor Suri hosts a weekly podcast, “This is Democracy.”