We have been here before, in fact, 56 years ago. Then, in 1968, the anti-Vietnam war movement engaged in teach-ins, protests, and occupations, some violent, some not, in the streets and on campuses. Anti-war demonstrators disrupted the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, were quelled by a “police riot,” and helped elect Richard Nixon president. American involvement did not end for another 5 years. Now, in 2024, a similar movement to end the Israeli-Hamas war is engaging in the same tactics in the same places and disrupting college environs, with tent cities replacing teach-ins, and protests and occupations prompting police responses. The movement may prompt another police riot at the DNC in Chicago and help elect Donald Trump president. Like Hubert Humphrey, Joe Biden may not see the light to higher moral ground until it is too late. The American involvement in the Middle East is not likely to end anytime soon.
The wars—the Vietnam War and the Israeli-Hamas war—have important similarities, with American involvement in both morally problematic. In Vietnam, America betrayed its democratic principles by supporting South Vietnam’s refusal to hold promised elections; it knew that Ho Chi Minh would defeat Bao Dai. In Gaza, America betrays its human rights principles by supplying and tolerating overreacting or undisciplined Israeli forces killing civilians in numbers beyond military justification and displacing city populations from their homes and workplaces. In both wars, American weaponry meant to kill combatants—Viet Cong soldiers and Hamas militants—killed disproportionately large numbers of civilians. Yet there is an important difference. In a predominantly rural country, American weaponry destroyed little of Vietnam’s infrastructure; in a predominantly urban enclave, it is wreaking unimaginable damage on Gaza’s infrastructure, housing, and commerce.
The wars have other important differences: their rights and wrongs, the reasons for fighting them, and the combatants themselves. Most people viewed the war in Vietnam as a struggle between democracy and communism; I viewed it as a struggle between residual colonialism and emergent nationalism (Ho Chi Minh was more nationalist than communist, and the CIA knew it). The Vietnamese in the southern and northern zones of the country fought with the assistance of their allies, America, and Russia and China, respectively. Yet, despite the fighting, both sides were Vietnamese, one people, one culture. Reunification after the end of fighting was relatively easy. In Gaza, the war is a struggle between an internationally recognized state, Israel, characterized by the protesters as a colonial state, and a Palestinian enclave, Gaza, ruled by Hamas, with its antisemitic, exterminationist, and expansionist ambitions. Both sides fight with the support of their allies, America and Iran, respectively. So the conflict is between different polities, Israel, and Gaza and the West Bank; different peoples, Whites (mainly) and Arabs; different religions, Judaism and Islam; and different cultures. After the fighting ends, the creation of two stable, mutually secure states seems a big stretch.
The dynamics of the rumpuses on campuses are also different. In the Vietnam War, the small number of Vietnamese on American campuses played little or no part in the domestic turmoil. But the use of American troops in an increasingly unpopular war ensured the involvement of the American people as well as campus demonstrators as long as the war lasted. In the Israeli-Hamas conflict, larger numbers of Americans—Jews or Israeli supporters and larger numbers of Arabs or Muslims or Palestinian supporters—on campuses are mutually hostile. However, since American troops are not involved, any involvement of the American people is likely to be small and short-term, and the intensity and duration of campus protests uncertain. For now, the conflict abroad parallels the conflict at home.
This parallel means that the nature of the conflict in the Middle East and America makes lasting resolution of the issues and lasting termination of the conflict difficult and perhaps impossible to achieve. The long-standing and complicated array of overlapping and interacting issues is unlikely to be resolved in either place any time soon. Balancing the claims of one side vis-à-vis the other side is the largest part of the problem. Good intentions and pious wishes notwithstanding, no one is likely soon to win the argument which diplomats have thus far failed to win or at least resolve in practical decisions tolerable to both sides.
Where international politicians have failed, American politicians are unlikely to succeed. As during the Vietnam War, so now during the Israeli-Hamas war, politicians are needlessly and recklessly taking sides. Then, politicians opposed campus protesters against the Vietnam War and often smeared them as communist sympathizers (a few were); now, they oppose pro-Hamas or pro-Palestinian campus supporters and smear them as antisemites (a few are). So, once again, they are making things worse by letting reactions to domestic protests resist and reject the views offered by dissenters. In the Vietnam War, protesters were right (even as the fighting continued, the government knew they were right). In the Israeli-Hamas war, they have at least one valid point: America has pursued an unbalanced, imprudent, and self-damaging policy for decades in ignoring the plight and rights of the Palestinians.
Then, politicians kept some distance between themselves and the campuses. Today, not so much; they seem determined to intrude themselves into rumpuses on campuses in disregard of likely, especially damaging consequences. When the Vietnam War ended, America left Vietnam, and politicians gave little or no further attention to those who had protested. When the Israeli-Hamas war achieves a cessation of hostilities, America will remain involved in the Middle East, and politicians will have at least small numbers of vociferous on-campus partisans, if not violent protesters, actively and acrimoniously advocating for the sides which they supported during hostilities. Little will change the dynamics of the debate. On the issues, pro-Palestinian protesters are not entirely right—ignorance, intolerance, and ideology mar their cause—, but politicians are mostly wrong.
Not surprisingly, the controversy in this country is generating more heat than light, with politicians of both parties fanning the flames. Rather than attempting to quench each burning issue, I resort to stating the obvious. Combat zones are different from campuses. The point of armed combat is to secure political objectives despite opposition from an enemy; the point of college education is research, teaching, and service. The basis of this triad of interrelated functions is truth, its pursuit, and its dissemination. So campuses are, or should be, the best places in America to enable informed debate of the issues and to develop some practical decisions on how to manage an intractable conflict and moderate contentious arguments. To this end, college leaders must establish the conditions for free speech and free association, and enable the focus of college resources on the controversy itself.
Unfortunately, college leaders have, over not months or years, but decades, squandered their moral authority to lead their campuses in these purposes. While modern conservatism grew in reaction to judicial decisions and political legislation advancing civil rights, the humanities and social sciences oriented their approaches to, and shifted their standards of, scholarship and instruction in their academic disciplines to emphasize their political and social dimensions: race, gender, class, and colonialism. The now largely abandoned phrase “political correctness” signifies the judgments used to define acceptable campus and classroom speech and behavior related to these topics. Dissenting views of students were discouraged or disincentivized; of faculty, censured; and of invited speakers, uninvited or harassed. Colleges developed speech codes and “safe areas” to control what was not PC. Thus, limitations on free speech have become ingrained in college administrations, academic departments, and student bodies.
Yet sensible correctives are available and implementable. Minimally, colleges should develop a code of conduct applicable to all campus personnel—officials, staff, service personnel, faculty, and students—which states the standards, procedures, and penalties for those subject to it. They should declare that they will vigorously enforce it and, to hold themselves accountable, report their enforcement to their trustees. The code should declare rules against verbal and physical intimidation and harassment of people, disruptions of classes and lectures, occupations of buildings, and the like. They should permit speech of any kind however offensive except speech which intimidates or threatens individuals or groups, or approves, threatens, or incites violence anywhere, at home or abroad. They should permit demonstrations but disallow encampments. They should encourage teach-ins and other means of facilitating discussion among interested parties. The code should prohibit faculty from using research or teaching to indoctrinate or propagandize students. They should declare that they do not take positions on public issues. And they must, not should, resist the intrusion of politicians into college affairs and thereby protect their unique mission. Sadly, whether the long-term acquiescence of college leaders and the long-term involvement of faculty in the moral, political, and pedagogical slackness on campus and in courses can be reversed and establish their credibility in time to serve current needs is doubtful. Expect both turmoil at colleges and tumult in Congress to make the problem worse, not better, in this election year.
I conclude with a statement of my main positions on this Israeli-Hamas conflict. They are that the United States suspend all military assistance in offensive but not defensive weapons to Israel for the duration (Israel needs defensive weapons to repel attacks from Iran and its proxies, Hezbollah and Hamas); make all military assistance contingent on the urgent and effective delivery of humanitarian aid to Gazans; contribute with others to rebuilding Gaza; and revise American policy toward Israel to require its compliance with international law (most particularly the abandonment of its West Bank settlements). A revised policy late to do the right thing is better than a policy never doing it.
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