As a new academic year gets underway in the United States, students and faculty have braced for pro-Palestinian protests like those that roiled U.S. campuses in the spring amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. On Sept. 3, classes, and protests, resumed at Columbia University, which was the epicenter of activism in April.
In the spring, student demonstrators across the country sought a range of goals, including the expression of solidarity with the Palestinians, an end to U.S. military aid to Israel, a permanent cease-fire in Gaza, and university divestment from businesses linked to Israel. At many universities, administrators called on campus police or local law enforcement to clear protest encampments, often resulting in student arrests. Some universities suspended or expelled student protesters or barred them from graduating.
The Teaching, Research, and International Policy (TRIP) Project at William & Mary’s Global Research Institute, with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, recently surveyed international relations scholars at U.S. colleges and universities about their views on the conflict in the Middle East and related student protests. The results reported below are based on responses from 733 IR experts—nearly all of whom are political scientists—surveyed between June 25 and July 14. (Complete results can be found here.)
The foreign-policy experts we surveyed overwhelmingly disapprove of ongoing Israeli military action in Gaza and say the issue is a very important one to them in the U.S. presidential election in November. They also believe that the student protests will hurt the Democratic Party in that election. But IR scholars say the protests will not be particularly effective at achieving one of their major goals: university divestment from businesses that profit from Israeli military action.
At the same time, these faculty members are divided over whether universities should divest and whether students should have a say in where their schools’ endowments are invested. However, they are clear that universities should not boycott collaborations with Israeli universities and scholars in response to Israeli action in Gaza.
Experts Oppose Israeli Action in Gaza
Both IR experts and the U.S. public oppose ongoing Israeli military action in Gaza, but the experts do so at a much higher rate. The scholars whom we surveyed overwhelmingly disapprove of the Israeli response to the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack: Nearly 77 percent disapprove, compared with less than 17 percent who approve of the military action in Gaza. The U.S. public is somewhat more divided but still opposed: According to a March Gallup poll, 55 percent disapprove of Israeli military action in Gaza, while 36 percent approve.
There are unsurprisingly strong partisan differences in people’s responses—which are stronger among academics than among the U.S. public. Eighty-one percent of self-reported Republican experts approve of Israel’s military response, compared with 64 percent of Republicans among the public. Similarly, 85 percent of self-reported Democratic experts disapprove of Israel’s policy, compared with 75 percent of Democrats among the public.
On Gaza and the Presidential Election
Both the strength of expert opposition to Israeli military action in Gaza and the partisan differences among IR scholars likely help explain the importance that these experts place on the issue. When we asked how important they considered a list of foreign-policy issues in the 2024 U.S. presidential election, 65 percent of respondents said the conflict in Gaza was “very important” or “extremely important.”
By this metric, foreign-policy experts considered the conflict to be more important as an election issue than numerous other issues, including conflict over Taiwan or the South China Sea, global public health, immigration, international terrorism, U.S. economic and military aid, and trade. Of the issues we asked about, experts only ranked the conflict in Ukraine and climate change as more important than the conflict in Gaza.
Despite the partisan nature of the issue, Republican, Democratic, and independent experts agreed on its importance to them in the presidential election. Remarkably similar percentages of each group of respondents—68 percent of Republicans, 66 percent of Democrats, and 63 percent of independents—identified the conflict in Gaza as very or extremely important in the upcoming election. (It is worth noting that our sample of experts overwhelmingly identify as Democrats: 66 percent are self-reported Democrats, 25 percent are self-reported independents, and just under 4 percent identify as Republicans.)
So, how might the Israeli military action in Gaza—and the pro-Palestinian campus protests—influence the outcome of the U.S. presidential election? The foreign-policy experts agree that the issue does not bode well for Democrats in November. Our survey launched when U.S. President Joe Biden was still running for reelection, so the question asked about the electoral effects for Biden, not Vice President Kamala Harris, now the Democratic nominee.
It is difficult to estimate how Harris’s name at the top of the ticket might shape experts’ predictions about the effects of this issue on the election. Harris has not broken with Biden’s strongly pro-Israel policies, but she has publicly expressed greater concern for the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.
At the time, 51 percent of the IR scholars we surveyed thought that the student protests would make U.S. voters less likely to vote for Biden, whereas only 2 percent thought that protests would spell trouble for the Republican nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump. And while nearly one-third (31 percent) of respondents thought that the protests would help Trump’s electoral chances, a scant 1 percent thought they would help Biden.
There is substantial agreement across party lines that the protests over the conflict in Gaza would make voters less likely to support Biden. Among IR experts, 56 percent of Republicans, 51 percent of Democrats, and 52 percent of independents thought that the university protests would hurt Biden. Interestingly, there was less agreement about the extent to which the protests made voters more likely to vote for Trump: 52 percent of Republicans but only 30 percent of Democrats and 31 percent of independents said the protests would make U.S. voters more likely to pull the lever for the Republican nominee.
On University Divestment and Academic Boycotts
It’s unclear whether the student protesters intend to influence the result of the U.S. presidential election. But they do want to pressure their universities into divesting their endowment funds from companies that do business in or with Israel. Have they been successful in this regard? The IR faculty don’t think so: 62 percent of respondents thought that the demonstrations would have no effect on whether universities elect to sell their investments in companies with ties to Israel, while only 27 percent thought that they would make universities more likely to divest.
The IR experts are divided over whether the colleges and universities where they teach should divest and whether students should have a say in that decision. Our survey respondents were more likely to have an opinion on universities selling their investments in companies doing business with Israel than were members of the U.S. public, presumably because the respondents study IR and most work at colleges and universities.
Of the surveyed IR scholars, 40 percent supported divestment, compared with 23 percent of the public, as measured in a May Economist/YouGov survey. Similarly, 45 percent of scholars opposed divestment, compared with 35 percent of the public. Large segments of the public were “not sure” what they thought about divestment, possibly because of lower levels of knowledge about the conflict and about the university system.
Interesting patterns emerge among different categories of respondents. For example, women faculty were far more likely (54 percent) than men (35 percent) to support divestment. Similarly, 43 percent of Democrats but only 15 percent of Republicans favored universities selling their investments in companies tied to Israel. The partisan gap is narrower among the public: According to the Economist/YouGov poll, 27 percent of Democrats and 21 percent of Republicans favored divestment. Women, meanwhile, were less likely than men to advocate that universities sell investments in companies that might profit from the war in Gaza.
The IR experts were evenly split on whether students should have a say in where their colleges’ financial endowments are invested. When asked this question, 41 percent of the surveyed scholars said yes, while 41 percent said no. Again, women scholars were more likely than men and Democrats more likely than Republicans to want students to have a voice in investing their schools’ endowments.
IR faculty may disagree about whether schools should divest and whether students should be involved in such decisions, but their commitment to academic freedom runs deep. When asked whether their universities should boycott collaborations with Israeli universities and scholars—including study abroad programs, co-authorships, visiting scholars, and speakers—the experts resoundingly said no. Of those surveyed, 86 percent opposed cutting these academic ties, while only 7 percent expressed support.
This result is particularly striking since the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) recently reversed its long-standing policy of opposing academic boycotts. Although we do not know whether IR faculty members are representative of the broader AAUP membership, their preferences do not align with the policy change.
Sizable majorities of both the IR experts and the U.S. public disapprove of the Israeli response to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack. Despite this widespread opposition, IR professors are more dubious about the goals of the pro-Palestinian protests that dominated college campuses in the spring and have returned this fall. Scholars were more likely to oppose than to support university divestment from companies doing business with Israel and were evenly split on whether students should even have a say. They came down strongly in favor of continued collaboration with Israeli academics.
Additionally, most of the surveyed scholars agreed that the protests are unlikely to achieve real change in university policy; respondents felt that the protests may even make U.S. voters more likely to support Trump in the U.S. presidential election on Nov. 5. The experts’ cynicism about the campus protests underscores the significant but complicated role that the demonstrations and faculty perspectives will play in shaping both campus policy and broader political outcomes as the election draws near.