There seems to be little chance of removing the poisonous atmosphere within the American higher education sector as a result of the Gaza War, which has exacerbated mistrust already existing within it.
In the aftermath of the surprise attack in which Hamas killed 1,400 people in Israel, National Students for Justice in Palestine published a “toolkit” to assist chapters nationwide in planning a day of resistance on college campuses. They referred to the rampage—in which hundreds more people were kidnapped and kept captive—as a “historic win for Palestinian resistance.” The vast majority of those killed were civilians.
For many conservatives, who had long mistrusted schools and universities as progressive outposts feeding the next generation dangerously extreme ideologies, that was a bridge too far. A 2024 presidential candidate from Florida named Ron DeSantis ordered state universities to remove the student group, claiming its members were illegally supporting Palestinian militants under a state law that makes it illegal to “knowingly provide material support” to U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas. DeSantis gained notoriety by stoking the flames of the culture wars.
It wasn’t difficult to predict the dispute.
College campuses have long been hubs of activism, with youthful, dynamic students pushing senior citizens toward the next big social or political change.
However, the Gaza War has exacerbated mistrust both outside and within the higher education sector, and there doesn’t seem to be any chance of clearing the poisonous atmosphere anytime soon.
According to Zach Greenberg, a senior program officer on the campus rights team of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE, “this is one of the most heated and controversial issues on college campuses – not just now but in the recent past.” Thus, “we see a lot of advocacy and protest when the conflicts flare up, and then naturally a lot of pushback against that.”
In recent years, pro-Palestinian solidarity has moved from the extreme left farther into the mainstream in tandem with the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement and an increasingly authoritarian Israeli administration.
One of the more famous advocacy actions was when the Palestine Solidarity Committee and Graduate Students for Palestine at Harvard released a now-famous letter signed by over two dozen other student organizations, stating that they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” In other places, videos have surfaced of students demolishing posters depicting Israelis held captive by Hamas. Several anti-Israeli statements, such as “Divestment From Zionist Genocide Now” and “Glory to our Martyrs,” were projected onto a library at George Washington University.
The good news, according to Coleman, who authored “The Way Out” in 2021 as a manual for overcoming such toxic polarization, is that there are instances of communities that have successfully broken free from these tendencies. One such society is Costa Rica, which survived a horrific civil war in 1948. According to his studies, the majority of individuals in those cultures must be weary of the status quo, fatigued, and miserable.
“From a macro standpoint, that’s good news,” he remarks, pointing out that most Americans are fed up with politicians’ never-ending squabbles and their failure to find solutions to issues. “You want a lot of people to become frustrated and begin to doubt their own role in that.