Columbia University and other schools have taken steps to try to address students' concerns over safety and freedom of expression. Follow for live news updates.
To be fair, Vietnam was a war being waged directly by the US. That's not to say that I think the protests will be ineffective; if they weren't having some effect then we wouldn't be hearing about them. However, the situation is somewhat different from the Vietnam war. That's why (if I understand correctly) they're mainly protesting to end US involvement as opposed to trying to make Israel stop. Ending US involvement will probably result in Israel stopping, but there's no guarantee and so the main idea is to make sure the US is not complicit. At least that's my understanding of the nuance when it comes to the situation.
That’s true. I don’t believe campus protestors are under the mistaken impression that they’ll turn the heart of Netanyahu. Even his own people are calling for his resignation.
Ending or reducing US involvement, however, would be a substantial shift in a continuous, 40-year-long support policy.
If worked you mean the war went on for another 8 years after the protests started then yes.
People are free to protest. It doesn't work but you are free to do it. What does work is voting, what does work is making sure your political leadership never gets a moment of happiness in public ever again.
It’s true that it didn’t change things immediately. The protests really made a difference when it affected the draft, leading to the end of the supply of soldiers.
The war went on on for another 8 years. That isn't in any sense of the word an accomplishment. It took 7 years to go from Kennedy announcement to the moon it took 8 years to stop a war with flower power.
Just because some poor 18 year olds were sad about being drafted (rightfully so) didn't end the war. In fact now that you are mentioning this I wonder if there were more deaths involved. Maybe having less ground troops made bombing from airplanes more likely to occur which added to civilian deaths in Cambodia and Vietnam.
So what do people want to do? You want to try the strategy that didn't end or stop from happening the Vietnam or Iraq war with the Middle East one or do you want to try something different? I imagine the same performative protests will continue because it really isn't about peace, it is about being seen in a certain light.
Let me tell you kids about 2003 and going to Washington D.C. Mulithour bus rides, biggest protest in US history, all the polls showed the support was within margin of error of half.
They're protesting for a number of things, including things like divesting university funding from Israel to cutting US weapon shipments to Israel. Will the protests have a direct effect on Israel? No. They might have an indirect effect however.
It's the beginning of something bigger. If US universities divest, it will make it easier for EU universities to divest. Once that happens it will be easier for other organizations and corporations to divest, etc.
Wasting thousands of dollars to turn their campuses into trashy tent-cities and ultimately accomplish nothing? They probably go to their parent's upper-class homes at night to sleep, and stop for artisanal coffees on their way back to protesting in the morning.
A lot of these universities, especially ones like Columbia, MIT, Yale, Cornell, Stanford and Harvard, are "rich people" universities. They'll survive.
Tbh I'm kinda surprised that we haven't had an increasing number of rich parents telling the schools to go fuck themselves because their silver-spooned babies are having their things trashed and finding themselves in jail.