Pro-Palestinian protests return to campuses adding election complication

Students are barely back on campus, but pro-Palestinian protests have already returned, putting a divisive issue back in the spotlight that Democrats had hoped the nomination of Vice President Kamala Harris might allow them to move beyond it.

While few expect this fall’s protests to match the size or ferocity of last spring’s, when tent encampments roiled campuses and several university presidents lost their jobs amid criticism of their handling of the demonstrations, the new round of protests will come just as Democrats try to organize college campuses to mobilize voters for the November election.

“This isn’t going away. We’re not going away. Young people and their pursuit of justice and equity everywhere is not going away,” said Rania Batrice, a Palestinian-American Democratic strategist.

University administrators spent much of the summer break planning for potential fall protests, with many campuses imposing new policies to crack down and head off potential disruptions.

The University of California and California State University system has imposed a “zero tolerance” policy against camping, obscuring faces with masks, and blocking pathways. The University of Pennsylvania has banned demonstrations in classrooms, offices, residences and many other public areas on campus.

Yale is hiring an administrator for a new position tasked with managing and de-escalating protests. The University of South Florida now requires registration and prior approval for not only protests, but any planned event involving signs, tents or amplified sound.

And Columbia University — the epicenter of the national debate over campus protests, which led its former president to resign last month — has limited access and stepped up security, with students now required to show identification to enter campus grounds and a fence and private security guarding the quad that protesters occupied in May.

Critics, including the American Association of University Professors, say these new policies “discourage or shut down freedom of expression” in order to “appease politicians" who called for a crackdown, putting campuses once again at the center for bitter free speech debates.

The spring protests, and universities’ handling of them, became a major national controversy and frequent target of conservative media and Republican lawmakers, who argued the scenes of chaos on campuses showed the weakness of progressive institutions and Democratic officials in the face of radical lawbreaking

Still, despite the new restrictions, when classes began Tuesday at Columbia, pro-Palestinian protesters made themselves heard and someone splashed blood-red paint on a landmark campus statue.

Campuses across the country have seen an uptick in protests as students return, with an umbrella organization for campus pro-Palestinian groups calling for a national day of action on Sept. 12.

“Harris may want to punt on the issue of American weapons being used by Netanyahu to harm civilians, but with student protests returning, she can’t avoid it,” said Waleed Shahid, a Democratic strategist who worked with the uncommitted delegates to last month’s Democratic National Convention.

The delegates, who were elected as a protest of President Joe Biden’s support for Israel’s war in Gaza, pleaded for a speaking slot at the convention but were rebuffed. After a brief sit-in outside the convention hall, the Uncommitted delegates returned and politely listened to Harris’ acceptance speech without disruption.

Harris’ campaign and other Democrats had hoped that anti-climax would be the end of an issue that has roiled the Democratic coalition since Hamas’ Oct. 7 terror attack. Harris' campaign declined to comment.

“Youth anger over the use of U.S. weapons could dominate the headlines and fracture the Democratic coalition,” argued Shahid.

Student activists also spent the last few months preparing for the fall semester, attending a “summer school” with veteran activists and promising to return to campus with new tactics to get around restrictions.

“We will seize control of our institutions, campus by campus, until Palestine is free,” reads a recent letter signed by dozens of campus chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine.

A new NBC News Stay Tuned/Survey Monkey poll of Gen Z voters found that half support Harris, while 34% support former President Donald Trump, 6% support someone else and 10% say they likely will not vote.

Most Gen Z voters were focused on other issues, with just 8% picking Israel as their top priority, suggesting the protesters are a small, but vocal minority of their classmates.

And while much of the protest activity has taken place on elite campuses in liberal states, it is also playing out in campuses in politically important battlegrounds like Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, Wisconsin and North Carolina.

Nowhere has that been more evident than in Ann Arbor at the University of Michigan, a state with a large Arab and Muslim population and one that Harris likely needs to win in November.

Four demonstrators were arrested last week during a pro-Palestinian “die-in” protest aimed at disrupting Festifall, a major annual campus event.

Pro-Palestinian students essentially took over the student government in elections last spring on a promise to shut it down, making good on that pledge by withholding all funds to student groups. They say they will not distribute the money, raised from students through fees until the university promises to divest from companies making money from Israel’s war in Gaza (the administration has stepped in to temporarily fund the groups).

Adam Lacasse, the co-chair of the University of Michigan College Democrats and president of the group's statewide chapter, said protests are quieter and Democratic enthusiasm higher than last spring when some students were uncomfortable vocally supporting Biden or fear of being singled out by pro-Palestinian students.

“I still think it’s a very prominent issue and a lot of students still really care about it. But I don’t think the enthusiasm around it is like it was around in the spring,” he said. “I feel a lot more comfortable wearing a College Dems shirt while walking around campus now.”

Students are now enthusiastic about Harris in a way few ever were about Biden, Lacasse said, adding that he thinks the vice president or her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, would be warmly received if she visited campus — mostly.

“There would certainly be protests,” he said. “Any large event on campus this fall, there are going to be protests, but especially if one of them visited. Still, I still think it would be more beneficial than harmful."