Get ready for a long, hot summer in many cities across the United States as pro-Palestinian protesters take campus demonstrations and occupations to the streets, warns City University of New York (CUNY) law professor Jeffrey Lax.
“I think it’s gaining momentum,” he told The Epoch Times. “I don’t know where the next thing will be, or even what the next thing will be, but I think it’s going to continue to gain steam over the summer.”
With commencements underway at universities and colleges across the country, pro-Palestinian protests that saw ad hoc encampments erected on more than 80 campuses appear to be tapering off, with few graduation ceremony disturbances reported over the weekend.
As of May 13, nearly 2,900 have been arrested on at least 63 college campuses in 22 states since the April 18 arrests of 108 Columbia University students on their campus in Manhattan, New York, according to tallies by the Associated Press and The Epoch Times.
Mr. Lax, a former Columbia University law professor, is outspoken in his criticism of Columbia and other schools’ efforts to protect Jewish students against what he cites as blatant, overt anti-Semitism, especially since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack that spurred Israel’s assault on Gaza.
Fail Columbia
That’s not surprising, Mr. Lax maintains, because, for years, faculty unions and other campus associations have been led “by the most radical” Marxists who make no secret of their contempt for the United States.“The Marxists want [protests] to shut down infrastructure,” he said. “They want this country to defund the military and the CIA and the police and all these, obviously critical parts of the American infrastructure, because they don’t want America to exist.”
Mr. Lax maintains that faculty unions are orchestrating students, in concert with Islamists—an odd, volatile coalition that won’t fade as campuses empty and summer nears.
“So even though the Marxist and Islamist have nothing in common—they share no values at all—the only thing they share is a common enemy, which is America and Western culture and democracy and capitalism,” Mr. Lax said, adding that similarities in protest tactics, rhetoric, and materials confirm that they are “definitely not spontaneous.”
“These are highly coordinated efforts funded by Marxist groups,” he said.
“I’ve seen no evidence of that whatsoever,” said Kelly Benjamin, spokesperson for the American Association of University Professors (AAUP), which includes more than 500 campus chapters and 39 state organizations.
AAUP on May 6 denounced “cowardly” campus administrations for calling for police to arrest protesters. However, Mr. Benjamin said that there is no concerted effort by faculty unions to stoke students, although what individual members and chapters do can vary.
“Ultimately, we’re very much concerned about what’s happening on college campuses and the way that the protests have been handled. We have a number of statements, not just [regarding] this particular specific round of protests, but around the issue in general when it comes to academic freedom and when it comes to extramural speech, which we defend,” he said. “It’s part of our core academic principles.”
When the first encampment was set up at Columbia in April, Mr. Lax said he knew then that whatever the administration did there would set the tone for what would happen elsewhere.
“I said this needs to be dealt with strongly and swiftly because if they don’t do that and shut it down quickly, this will spread like wildfire,” he said.
“They didn’t do that, and that’s what happened—clearly, it has spread like wildfires.
“This is definitely going to continue, but it may change. You may end up with an ‘Occupy Wall Street’-type thing. Who knows? I mean, they may occupy other government buildings. Who knows?
“But I think they’re going to continue to cause havoc and damage because that’s what they mean to do, that’s what these protests are meant to do—shut down American infrastructure.”
