Last fall, of course, there were heated protests and counter-protests, including defaced posters of Jewish hostages around my New York neighborhood and chants about Palestinian genocide in a local park. But tempers cooled, even as hostages languished and deaths in Gaza mounted.
I remember congratulating one university president last December for not having made headlines. Remarkably, the school’s quads hadn’t appeared in a single viral video. This president said the secret was giving demonstrators on both sides an opportunity to speak and grieve — but, crucially, away from each other. Emotions were raw, the president said. The only way to keep the peace was to keep everyone apart.
This seemed depressing at the time. Had Americans given up on the idea that exposure to opposing views could be constructive? At places dedicated to the free exchange of ideas, no less?
Now, that president’s strategy seems wise.
Our adversaries discovered long ago that Americans were becoming so alienated from one another that merely bringing us into the same space was sufficient to ignite conflict. Recall the 2016 election, when Russian operatives were seeding disinformation — the original “fake news” — across social media to sow discord. One of the strategies, a Senate intelligence report found, was siting opposing political rallies in the same place to create fights. For instance, two separate Russian-controlled Facebook groups planned simultaneous “Stop Islamization of Texas” and “Save Islamic Knowledge” rallies on the same block in Houston in 2016.
This election cycle, bots are not orchestrating the dueling rallies. Americans are deliberately showing up at the same places, seeking out their political opponents and spoiling for a fight.
Don’t get me wrong, disinformation is still spreading across social media (about Gaza, among other issues) and encouraging public pugilism. And adversaries abroad are still planting or at least amplifying some of the most inflammatory content. But Americans are authoring and sharing it, too, especially when the material plays to their political biases.
Meanwhile, political leaders and pundits have exploited these vulnerabilities. They learned that there’s great political (and fundraising) value in selectively quoting the other side or in the humiliating, viral social media “dunk.” Not unlike our adversaries abroad, U.S. leaders seek clout by becoming conflict entrepreneurs.
To wit: The recent re-escalation of campus conflict began because Congress called Columbia University President Minouche Shafik to testify about her handling of campus antisemitism.
As a regular target of antisemitism, I agree the subject is worthy of public scrutiny. But lawmakers were out to shed heat, not light. At the hearing, both Republicans and Democrats engineered viral videos by berating Shafik for personnel decisions and the intricacies of the student disciplinary process. Perhaps these politicians should’ve run for openings on Columbia’s board of trustees instead of Congress.
Unsurprisingly, the day after Shafik’s public flagellation, Columbia brought in police to clear pro-Palestinian student encampments. Alas, this only martyred the students and inspired copycat protests nationwide.
In the days since, any hope of civil discourse has disintegrated. Arrests and tear gas have been deployed across other campuses. Classes and commencements have been canceled. Damning, highly shareable footage shows some protesters don’t actually know what they’re protesting. Others have called for the killing of Jews. Meanwhile, in some instances, cops have violently manhandled peaceful students and faculty.
Outsiders have eagerly entered the brawl. In New York and elsewhere, non-student agitators have shown up to heckle students or police. Federal lawmakers such as Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) and Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) have made pilgrimages to Columbia (to help cool things down, surely). Somehow a multi-millennia-old Holy Land conflict, playing out through terrorism and famine, has been neatly converted into campaign memes.
Both left and right, and both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian factions, are calling for the resignation of Columbia’s president. For opposite reasons of course: She’s being too hard on the protesters, or maybe too soft. This is reminiscent of the bipartisan rage at Facebook and Twitter after the 2016 election and during the pandemic. Depending on your politics, these platforms engaged in either too much censorship or too little. But everyone could agree they were hoppin’ mad at tech companies. It was too fun not to be.
Like social media platforms, college campuses are no longer town squares where citizens hash out how we understand our common values. They are boxing rings. There are just too many factions, here and abroad, that get utility from the fight.
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