Will Israeli-Palestinian conflict protests, encampments resurface when college resumes?

Alon Leshem, a rising senior at the University of Pittsburgh, is energized to finish his computer science degree and to take secondary field of study courses involving Israel and Palestine.

But, like other Jewish students at Pitt and elsewhere, his enthusiasm is tempered by knowing fall could bring renewed pro-Palestinian encampments, antisemitic chants and other ugly acts that suddenly have left him and his Jewish peers isolated on their own campus.

“It’s hard feeling like you’re not accepted, and it’s even harder to feel like people hate you on the basis of your identity,” Leshem, 21, of Cranberry told TribLive. “There’s the fear of what will people do if they know who I am? If they know that I was born in Israel, that I moved here when I was 5?

“It’s hard to think about.”

Across the nation, college and university leaders entered summer saying they had learned lessons from the vandalism, mass arrests and other turmoil on their campuses spawned by the Israel-Hamas War.

In a couple of weeks, as students return for a new academic year, what those leaders learned may be put to the test.

The Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression has seen an uptick in inquiries from institutions as they update policies intended to safeguard free speech while keeping their campuses safe.

“With the war in the Middle East continuing, and with a chaotic election season approaching, I think the expectation is that you’re still going to have a lot of very passionate students on campus when they get back in the fall,” said Ryan Ansloan, senior program officer for policy reform with Philadelphia-based FIRE.

In some cases, he said, schools are considering where protests should be allowed while making sure organizers meet specific rules and are connected to sanctioned student groups.

Historically, world events that spark campus unrest come and go. Anti-apartheid protests of the 1980s and the Vietnam War demonstrations a decade before roiled campuses, too.

But they brought social change and enabled schools to put into practice one of their most touted values: free speech.

This latest flashpoint — including calls to divest from Israel — comes at a time when confidence in higher education is shaken.

“To some degree, this is unprecedented in terms of the scale and the potential long-term harms that this could have for the trust in the university,” Ansloan said. “There is a risk that if universities don’t provide a safe environment that is also respective of free speech rights, it will take a long time to get that trust back.”

Surging protests

Nationwide, antisemitic acts already were on the rise. But they surged after the Oct. 7 terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel that killed 1,200 people, and the ensuing military campaign by Israel in Gaza that has killed tens of thousands more.

As of July 31, 1,851 antisemitic incidents on college campuses had been reported since Oct. 7, a 700% increase from last year, according to Hillel International in Washington, D.C.

Leshem, who spoke with TribLive last week, earlier joined Jewish students from Penn State University and the University of Pennsylvania in testifying before a state Senate Education Committee hearing on campus antisemitism.

“It has become increasingly difficult to go about our day-to-day lives on campus,” Leshem told the panel. “When we held a vigil for the victims of October 7th the day after the attack, and, before any Israeli response, we were met with masked protesters chanting to ‘globalize the intifada.’ ”

Pitt saw two encampments during the spring in the shadow of the university’s Cathedral of Learning, one lasting a week in April and a second — a barricaded encampment — that lasted 30 hours and saw scuffles with campus police.

Encampment supporters tell a far different story, saying they are peacefully standing up to what they call Israeli genocide inside Gaza. They contend that Pitt leadership, including Chancellor Joan Gabel, are complicit and that police are the aggressors.

“As a student who is a person of color and comes from poverty and being first gen, I can’t allow myself to stand for something like this,” said one protester who gave a first name only, Katelynn.

Gabel, in turn, insisted that Pitt is committed to free expression and peaceful protest but said leaders of the June encampment were not affiliated with the university and that its landmark 42-story classroom tower was defaced.

“What we saw last night, and continue to see, are attempts to destroy property at the historical core of our campus, as well as accompanying action that in no way elevates open inquiry or allows for peaceful advocacy,” she wrote in a June 3 message to campus.

From his travels on and around campus, Leshem recognized some of the protest participants, adding to his unease.

“We are constantly left wondering which of our classmates, which of our professors, which of our neighbors are secretly harboring extremist beliefs, supporting our destruction and opposing our very existence,” Leshem said.

Mackenzie Borine, a fourth-year student at Penn State studying Hospitality Management with a minor in theater, told the Senate committee of an incident at the Hillel building in State College near campus.

“One evening, a group of students including myself were having dinner with a guest talking about the culture here on campus regarding antisemitism and anti-Israel demonstrations,” she said. “Someone banged on the window and had a sign that read ‘Free Palestine.’ It startled all of us and left us scared to leave the building.”

Borine and Leshem said their universities had been responsive to their concerns.

Dan Marcus, director of the Ed and Rose Berman Hillel Jewish University Center of Pittsburgh (JUC), also praised Pitt and Carnegie Mellon leaders and their police forces.

But Jewish students, he said, are facing an environment unlike any he’s seen in nearly a quarter century working for the JUC.

“It’s just heartbreaking. We’re hearing over and over again the feeling of isolation, of fear, intimidation that Jewish students are feeling just because they’re Jewish,” he said.

“We have never experienced this level of hate, of Jew hatred. And, unfortunately, that’s the context and the language that I’m using now, because we’ve crossed the Rubicon,” he added. “And that’s what we know our students and we as a community, a society are experiencing.”

Marcus testified that in late January, a planned speech drew 150 to 200 protesters to Hillel, which is on Forbes Avenue between Pitt and Carnegie Mellon.

The crowd “closed down the streets and proceeded to chant the hate that you’ve been hearing today, ‘from the river to the sea,’ ‘globalize the intifada,’ — banging drums, looking to disturb the event and create anxiety, intimidation and fear among the students.”

Jewish students, including one who had a panic attack, were jostled by the crowd and needed help from Hillel security to get into the building, Marcus testified.

Last fall, leadership of some of the nation’s top universities faced political and donor backlash for responses to the war that seemed tepid. University of Pennsylvania president Liz Magill resigned in December, amid fallout over her unwillingness to say under repeated questioning from members of Congress that calls on campus for the genocide of Jews would violate the school’s conduct policy.

As spring commencements approached, some among the scores of pro-Palestinian encampments that proliferated on campus were allowed to stand, while others were cleared.

For instance, Penn student Ben Messaf testified that an encampment on campus that was already prohibited by Penn policy remained for nearly two weeks in April, until it was cleared by authorities.

Balancing protest rights with safety

In an interview, state Sen. David Argall, R-Schuylkill County, chair of the Senate Education Committee, said some schools did not take advantage of resources they already had to curtail trouble.

“I think what we learned is that many of the colleges and universities have policies in place to protect their students. Enforce them,” he said.

But there also needs to be an educational aspect to how schools respond.

“Some of the protesters understand how extreme the chants are,” Argall said. “Others have no idea of the impact of some of those words.”

Pitt has created what it calls a task force on free speech. Carla Panzella, vice provost for student affairs, was not available to be interviewed about its role in the upcoming year. The university already adopted Discourse and Dialogue as an academic focus last year and is extending it for 2024-25.

Pitt says it managed to balance protest rights with safety even during the second encampment. Protest leaders, in turn, accused Pitt police of employing brutal tactics.

“The violent response from the university will not be forgotten. We ask the chancellor to reconsider the way she is handling the situation,” said Karim Alshurafa, who described himself informally in June as a spokesperson for Palestinians in Pittsburgh, part of the Pittsburgh Palestine Coalition. “Suppressing the voices of her students can only lead to worse actions and potentially people getting hurt.”