Activists Bernardine Dohrn, left, and Bill Ayers smile as they look over the University of Chicago United for Palestine encampment on the main quad of the University of Chicago, on April 29, 2024. Ayers and Dohrn are former Vietnam War-era activists who co-founded the Weather Underground anti-Vietnam war group.
“From the beginning of the encampment, I have said that we would protect free speech and the ability to dissent until it either prevented us from carrying out the operations of our university or threatened the safety of the members of our community,” said DePaul President Rob Manuel last week, adding that the encampment had “crossed that line.”
Chicago police cleared the pro-Palestinian encampment on DePaul University’s campus on May 16, 2024. Protesters moved to a nearby gas station to continue their demonstration. On the Senate floor, the progressive leader and University of Chicago alum warned that the war in Gaza could become President Joe Biden’s Vietnam, adding that former President Lyndon Johnson had declined to run for reelection in 1968 amid anti-war opposition.
However, the pro-Palestinian encampments have been much smaller “both in terms of the number of campuses and percentages of students involved,” compared with the anti-Vietnam war demonstrations of the 1960s and early 1970s, said Robert Cohen, professor of history at New York University and the author of several books about free speech on college campuses.
Northwestern University students, protesting against Vietnam War and the shooting of four Kent State University students, gather outside the Rebecca Crown center on the Evanston campus on May 7, 1970. “Whenever a university employs heavy-handed tactics to remove protesters, it only increases the protest,” added Young, who said he had demonstrated in favor of civil rights and against the Vietnam War during his youth.Former University of Illinois Chicago professor and Vietnam War-era radical Bill Ayers recently spoke at the pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of Chicago, which he described as a peaceful and loving “utopian community.
“Today’s campuses are far more diverse than they were half a century ago, and, as best I can tell, the overwhelming majority of students are not focused on the protests,” he said. “Another difference is that today’s movement has few clearly identifiable leaders. One result is little message discipline, which has created an environment in which the most extreme voices are widely reported as if they speak for all protesters.
Source: Education Headlines (educationheadlines.net)
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