Last Thursday, during the musical humanities class I teach at Columbia University, two students gave a presentation to the class about composer John Cage. His most famous work is “4′33′’”, which invites us to listen in silence to the noises of our surroundings for exactly four minutes and thirty-three seconds.
I had to tell the students that we would not be able to listen to that work that afternoon, because the noises around us would not have been the sounds of birds chirping or footsteps in the hallway, but of the sound of angry chanting from protesters in front of the college building. Lately this noise has been almost continuous for days and nights, including the perverse stanzas that shout “From the river to the sea”. Two students in my class are Israeli; three others, I know are American Jews. I couldn’t see them having to sit around and listen to this stuff as background music.
I thought about what would have happened if the protesters had instead been chanting anti-black slogans or even something like “DEI must die” to the same tune as “Sound Off” to which “Do rio ao mar” was adapted. They wouldn’t have lasted even five minutes before masses of students screamed louder and drove them off campus. Sayings of this kind would have been condemned as serious ruptures in civilized exchange, hailed as a threatening return to segregation and classified as a form of violence. I bet most anti-Gaza War protesters would actually interpret them that way. But why do so many people think that weeks of protests against not just the war in Gaza, but the very existence of Israel, are nevertheless acceptable?
Protesters camp at Columbia University, which postponed police action saying negotiations have advanced, New York, April 24, 2024 Photograph: Michael M. Santiago/AFP
Although I know that many Jews will disagree with me, I do not believe that anti-Semitic hatred is the reason for this feeling as much as opposition to Zionism and the war on Gaza. I know some of the protesters, including a couple who were arrested last week, and I find it very difficult to believe that they are anti-Semitic. Yes, there can be a fine line between questioning Israel’s right to exist and questioning the Jewish people’s right to exist. And yes, some of the rhetoric surrounding the protests crosses that line.
Conversations I’ve had with people warmly opposed to the war in Gaza, signs and posts on social media and other environments, and anti-Israel and generally far-left comments insert these confrontations into a larger battle against power structures — here in the form of what protesters they qualify as colonialism and genocide — and against whiteness. The idea is that Jewish students and faculty should be able to tolerate all of this because they are white.
To a certain extent, I understand. Pro-Palestinian rallies and events, many of which have taken place here over the years, are not in themselves hostile to Jewish students, faculty and staff. Discord will not always be trivial. But the relentless attacks of the current protests—daily, loud, louder, through the night, and using increasingly furious rhetoric—go beyond what anyone should endure, regardless of their whiteness, their privilege, or their power.
Debate on social media has claimed that the protests are peaceful. Some of the time they are; This varies depending on the location and day — generally what happens inside the campus gates is a little less noisy than outside. But beating drums are relatively constant — people disagree about how peaceful that sound might be just as they disagree about the nature of anti-Semitism. What I know for sure is that even the most peaceful protests would be considered outrages if they were interpreted, say, as anti-black — even if the message was coded, as in a silent group of people holding MAGA signs or wearing t-shirts stating “All Lives Matter.” ”.
And what’s more, classifying this as something peaceful stretches the meaning of the term almost implausibly. There is a strange peace when local rabbis ask Jewish students to hurry home as quickly as possible, when an Arab-Israeli activist is harassed on Broadway, when the angry songs become so constant you can barely stand to listen, and when the It seems normal to see posters and costumes portraying Hamas members as heroes. One recent night I saw a father arriving with his young daughter from the protest, giving the last vigorous beats on the drum he carried, nodding his head affirmatively at her in a direct greeting, hammering his perspective into the little girl’s mind. This is not peaceful.
I understand that the protesters and their fellow travelers feel that this is all the appropriate response, social justice on the march. They have heard that virtuousness means taking aim at the battle against whiteness, its power front and center, contesting the abuse of power however necessary. I, for my part, think that the war in Gaza is no longer constructive — or even coherent.
But the problems are complex in ways that this uncompromising form of battle against power cannot resolve. Legitimate doubts about the definition of genocide remain, as well as about the extent of a nation’s right to defend itself and about fair divisions (which are historically not limited to Palestine). There is a reason many consider the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the most morally challenging clash in modern history.
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When I studied at Rutgers University in the mid-1980s, protests were against investments in South Africa’s apartheid regime. There were similarities to the current demonstrations in Columbia: A large group of students set up camp right in front of the Rutgers student center on College Avenue, where dozens of students spent the night for weeks on end. There was singing, as well as the inevitable street theater and an element perhaps necessary to protest effectively: one guy even lay down in the middle of College Avenue to block traffic, borrowing a line from the Vietnam War protest playbook.
I don’t recall South Africans on campus feeling personally harmed, but the biggest difference was that, despite seeking to make their arguments loud, over a long period of time, and sometimes even rudely, the protesters were not trying to impede academic life on campus. campus.
Pro-Palestinian protesters camp at Columbia University, New York, April 23, 2024 Photograph: Bing Guan/The New York Times
On Monday night, Columbia announced that classes will be held online for the rest of this semester for the safety of students. I assume protesters will continue throughout the two main graduation days, tarnishing one of the most special days in the lives of thousands of graduates to rebuke the “imperialist” war abroad.
Today’s protesters no more hate the Israeli government than protesters in the past hated the South African government. But they have pursued their goals with a markedly different direction—in part because of the stubbornness of the anti-racist academic culture and in part because of the influence of iPhones and social media, which inherently encourage a heightened degree of performance. It is part of the underlying structure of protests that protesters are filmed from multiple angles for the entire world to see. The person gets excited.
But these changes in moral history and technology are unlikely to comfort Jewish students in the here-and-now. What began as an intelligent protest became, in its uncompromising and unceasing fury, a form of abuse. / TRANSLATION BY GUILHERME RUSSO
