Amid the peace deal between Israel and Hamas, and even as other antisemitic student protests have been reined in by the intervention of the Trump administration, students at Oberlin University have decided that now is the time to renew their protests.
On Friday, 25 students scuffled with police in an incident that involved the discharging of pepper spray and a concussion, according to the Oberlin Review, the college’s student newspaper.
Apparently, students — who were wearing face masks to hide their identities as well as keffiyehs — assembled in front of the building where the college’s board of trustees was meeting, the Hotel at Oberlin. (RELATED: DOJ Targets GWU, UCLA, Settles With Columbia and Brown for Antisemitism Claims)
They were banging “pots, pans, and drums” and blowing whistles, all well calling on the board to “divest” from Israel — meaning refuse to invest in any company that does business with the state of Israel. When the protesters attempted to enter the Hotel at Oberlin to disturb the board of trustees’ meeting, police intervened to stop them from trespassing.
“Several students were shoved to the ground, with one student taken to the hospital afterward,” reported the student newspaper, “where they were diagnosed with a concussion.”
The students then entered the building from the other side. Police intervened to remove them from the building. One officer deployed pepper spray as part of that effort.
The students weren’t done. After several students were seen washing the pepper spray out of their eyes, they “were blocked from reentering by six Oberlin Police and Campus Safety officers who stood in the doorway,” according to the Oberlin Review. They continued their chants around the doorway. When an officer told them to move back, they refused. Reinforcement officers from the Lorain County Sheriff’s Office then showed up at the scene, eventually ending the protest. (RELATED: Post-Identity Antisemitism: The New Obsession With Israel)
The protest, which came the same day that the ceasefire came into effect between Israel and Hamas, followed a “week of action” by, the newspaper claimed, a group of students “unaffiliated” with the student group Students for a Free Palestine. (RELATED: Trump in Jerusalem
The incident was a repeat of the violent protests that disturbed campuses across the country under the Biden administration, but that had mostly been put to rest under the Trump administration. In a January executive order, “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism,” Trump pledged to use “all available and appropriate legal tools[] to prosecute, remove, or otherwise hold to account the perpetrators of unlawful anti-Semitic harassment and violence.” His Department of Education warned 60 universities about their failure to protect Jewish students from discrimination and punished Columbia University for its failure to do so by pulling out $400 million in federal grants. (RELATED: Three Major Universities Face Congress Over Campus Antisemitism)
As a result, this year, and this semester in particular, the antisemitic protests had largely come to a halt. But the two-year anniversary of Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre of Israeli civilians earlier this month did invite some protest activity by student groups, though none involved the intensive police intervention that occurred at Oberlin.
At the University of California, Los Angeles, students marked Oct. 7 by holding a “floral procession” for the stated purpose of “honor[ing] and remember[ing] the lives stolen by the Zionist state.” The Students for Justice in Palestine affiliate group wrote on Instagram, “On October 7th, 2023, the people of Palestine righteously engaged in decolonial struggle.” The group was earlier this year indefinitely banned as a campus organization.
Meanwhile, at the University of Pennsylvania, Penn Students Against the Occupation held a rally off-campus to mark Oct. 7. They likewise released a message stating their support for the massacre: “Tuesday is October 7, the 2-year anniversary of Al-Aqsa flood, the valiant offensive launched by the Palestinian resistance in response to 75 years of Zionist occupation and genocide.”
Students at George Washington University and the University of Michigan also held protests on Oct. 7.
It’s not surprising that Oberlin is the school to continue to play host to the most rabid of pro-Hamas advocacy…
It’s not surprising that Oberlin is the school to continue to play host to the most rabid of pro-Hamas advocacy, even after many other radicals have moved on from their most disruptive activities — and even after the beginnings of a peace deal have been reached. The school has been known for half a century for its left-wing extremism and student protest movements.
The university administration has also been known to encourage protest activity, as was seen in the student protests surrounding Gibson’s Bakery. In those protests, students cried racism after a bakery store clerk attempted to stop a black Oberlin student from shoplifting, and the student’s friends responded by beating up the store clerk. The school was ordered to pay Gibson over $36 million after it was found to have supported the protests. During this year’s commencement address at Oberlin, students drowned out the speech of the chair of the board of trustees with chants, all while he spoke on the importance of civil disobedience. (RELATED: Oberlin Students Worry That Gibson’s Defamation Lawsuit Is Stifling Progressive Activism)
The college responded weakly to this latest protest last week, simply calling it “regrettable” rather than denouncing the students’ criminal activity.
Director of Media Relations Andrea Simakis said, “It is regrettable that the situation escalated to this point and that police were required to take action.”
“The safety of our campus and community is our highest priority,” she wrote. “We also respect our students’ right to express their views through peaceful protest. However, when demonstrations escalate into physical confrontation, that crosses a line.”
Oberlin’s protests could be the last whimper of campus radicalism in support of Hamas as the war seemingly comes to an end. Or, more likely, they could mark just the start of perennial postwar protests that will go on long after the war ends, driven by stubborn opposition to Israel’s right to exist and a willful glossing-over of Hamas’s atrocities.
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