The Hamas-Israel war is dividing college campuses

A view of a black, white, green and red flag, people grieving, people with a Free Palestine sign, hands holding a candle

By Ryan FonsecaStaff Writer

Oct. 16, 2023 6:30 AM PT

Good morning. It’s Monday, Oct. 16. Here’s what you need to know to start your day.

Israel-Hamas conflict divides college campuses
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And here’s today’s e-newspaper

The Hamas-Israel violence conflict is dividing college campuses

Tense demonstrations unfolded across California’s college campuses all week after Hamas militants killed more than 1,400 Israelis, and Israel declared war, laid siege to the Gaza Strip and flattened neighborhoods with bombs. The death toll in Gaza has topped 2,600 and is growing fast.

“The already yawning gulf between students supporting Israelis or Palestinians widened,” Times reporters Teresa Watanabe, Priscella Vega, Debbie Truong and Jenny Gold wrote in a recent story chronicling the campus conflicts.

Students and faculty at UCLA, UC Berkeley, Stanford, USC and Cal State Long Beach told them the climate on their campuses has created a chilling effect on speech and efforts to discuss the conflict civilly. My colleagues wrote:

While universities are supposed to be bastions of open inquiry, academic freedom and robust debate, the escalating Israel-Hamas war has elevated campus tensions across the country this week, underscoring how much those values have withered as polarization hardens amid the social media age.

Stanford was among the universities that made headlines in the last week. Campus leaders wrote that some Palestinian students reported receiving threatening emails and phone calls, while some Jewish students have voiced concerns about antisemitism on the campus.

The school is also investigating allegations that an instructor downplayed the Holocaust in class and grouped students into “colonized or colonizer groups depending on their family countries of origin,” my colleagues reported.

Officials there have declined to weigh in on the conflict, saying that while Stanford is “unambiguously opposed to all forms of racial, ethnic, or religious hatred,” the university does not take positions on geopolitical issues and news events.”

“This is grounded in a principled belief that the appropriate role of university administrators in relation to geopolitical events is not to take positions or issue statements, but to create an environment in which faculty and students are free to develop and exchange ideas free from institutional orthodoxy,” administrators wrote in a recent statement.

At UCLA, two professors who planned an “emergency teach-in on the crisis in Palestine” were met with threats and harassment that led them to hold the event online for safety concerns.

Students across the state expressed fears of being doxxed for expressing viewpoints critical of Israel and worried they’d be labeled antisemitic, similar to what happened to some Harvard students.

With some students grieving lost loved ones, angry over this latest eruption of bloodshed and fearing what’s next — both for the Israeli and Palestinian people overseas and for the people speaking out here in the U.S. — some are finding it difficult to find a peaceful path forward.

“I’ve spent my whole career trying to build bridges and try to hear from other voices and understand the Palestinian perspective,” ChayaLeah Sufrin, executive director of Beach Hillel, told The Times. “I feel very hopeless about the situation.”

Read more of the Times coverage

Gaza hospitals near breaking point as U.S. starts evacuating Americans from Israel.
Israelis and Palestinians confront a terrifying new reality.
Palestinian Americans stuck in Gaza as all-out Israeli invasion looms.
As Israel prepares a Gaza invasion that could kill thousands, the U.S. resists publicly calling for restraint.
The war between Israel and Hamas is testing the Republican Party’s isolationist shift.

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