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Brian Lehrer: It's The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. Here's how polarized the political situation surrounding Columbia University is right now. People on both sides of that polarization are calling on Columbia's president, Minouche Shafik, to resign, and people on both sides are suing the school. Pro-Palestinian students rallying on campus yesterday chanted, "Resign, resign, resign," over Shafik's decision to call in the NYPD last Thursday, which resulted in around 100 students arrested and many of those students suspended.

Also, yesterday, 10 Republican members of Congress from New York wrote a letter to Shafik calling on her to resign, in part because she didn't call in the NYPD until Thursday rather than earlier in the week. Shafik had been called to testify before a Republican-led congressional committee last Wednesday, and she said, in part, this.

Minouche Shafik: Columbia strives to be a community free of discrimination and hate in all its forms, and we condemn the antisemitism that is so pervasive today.

Brian Lehrer: Asked what she was doing about that antisemitism, Shafik described some steps the university is taking.

Minouche Shafik: Our actions included support for students, enhanced reporting channels for incidents, hiring additional staff to investigate complaints, developing new policies on demonstrations, holding listening forums to model respectful behaviors, launching educational programs, and forming a task force of our senior academic leaders to propose solutions to antisemitism.

Brian Lehrer: Columbia University president, Minouche Shafik, last Wednesday in Congress. The worst of the expressions of antisemitism and harassment of Jewish students in this wave took place after that. One video, for example, posted by multiple news organizations, showed someone holding a sign with an arrow pointing to pro-Israel demonstrators, and the sign said, "Al-Qassam's next target." Al-Qassam is the military wing of Hamas.

How in this polarized environment can universities balance the needs for security, anti-discrimination, and freedom of speech? The former Columbia president, Lee Bollinger, was on this show last month when things were already tense at Columbia. He didn't claim to have the solution to the polarization, but he described the essential tension like this in a bit of a stretch-out answer. This is two minutes of Lee Bollinger here last month.

Lee Bollinger: It is a very, very difficult time at Columbia but at other universities and in the society. I think there's no question that there is a really appalling rise of antisemitism in the country, and it manifests itself on American campuses. There is also Islamophobia, and that's a terrible thing as well. I think that the problems have to be thought about in this way. Antisemitism, just focus on that is, of course, a horrendous thing.

We all condemn it. We all should be doing everything we can to stop it just as we do with other forms of discrimination. We also have a deep commitment to freedom of speech, and that has been interpreted over the past century as protecting really terrible speech as well as great speech. We know that neo-Nazis have been protected, the Klan has been protected, and this is a deep commitment in the society.

These two things, these two great values of not discriminating against people invidiously, and having freedom of speech that includes, unfortunately, but necessarily, speech advocating discrimination and worse, those two great principles are colliding and they're colliding on American campuses. I think it's extremely important for leaders to speak out about these matters.

I tried to do so multiple times over the course of my presidency. I know that that's happening with the new administration and Minouche Shafik, who is the president, my successor, and trying to do everything they can to try to combat these evils on the campuses. It's a very difficult environment, and I have great empathy for them.

Brian Lehrer: Former Columbia University president, Lee Bollinger, here on March 27th. This is not just about Columbia. As many of you know, there were arrests at Yale and NYU in the last day. Encampments sprung up at The New School, MIT, and the University of Michigan, also in recent days at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and at Miami of Ohio, and I'm sure others.

Out at the University of Southern California, the scheduled commencement address by the graduating class valedictorian Asna Tabassum was canceled over what the school says is security concerns, not Tabassum's pro-Palestinian statements, but protestors there on Sunday, obviously, weren't buying that and demanded that the valedictorian not be silenced.

What's going on on campus and what's the right way forward? What is the right balance between free speech and stopping hate speech, intimidating speech, speech that condones violence, or between autonomy and calling in the police and the underlying issues that compel either side since October 7th? With us now, Kate Hidaglo Bellows, staff reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education, who covers health and safety on college campuses.

She covered the Columbia campus over this weekend. She's based in DC. Kate, thanks very much for coming on with us. Welcome to WNYC.

Kate Hidaglo Bellows: Thank you for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, our phones are open as we do for people with any relationship. Before everybody calls in, listen for a second. We want to give first priority to anybody with any relationship to any of this on any campus and with whatever point of view as we try here at least to be a place where people with different points of view are not only free to express yourselves but also we hope respectfully listen to each other. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Specifically, if you have any connection to any of the schools involved.

Are you a current student or a faculty member at Columbia or NYU or The New School or Michigan, USC, or anywhere else? 212-433-WNYC. Have you felt subjected to anti-Semitic slurs or intimidation or even violence or subjected to arrest or other action by the police or the administration that you feel was unjustified? Let us hear your experiences and your opinions. 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Call or text.

Are you an alum, a donor, maybe an accepted student or parent of an accepted student for this coming fall at any college that's been in the news? 212-433-9692. Do you want President Shafik of Columbia to resign because she hasn't done right by your side one way or the other, and how does the other side also calling for her resignation inform your thinking about your own position if it does? 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692.

Again, with Kate Hidaglo Bellows, staff reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education, who covers health and safety on college campuses. Kate, can you first give us the scope of what you're seeing develop across the country now? I mentioned several colleges that have been in the news in the last few days. I got Miami of Ohio and UNC down in Chapel Hill from your reporting. Do you have a sense of how much, for example, encampments are being erected as the new wave now of pro-Palestinian expression?

Kate Hidaglo Bellows: Sure. We have seen protests across the country escalate in the last couple of days, in part spurred by what happened at Columbia with the arrest of the students last week. Right now, it's mostly concentrated on the coast and largely at elite universities, but that doesn't mean that's what it'll be to continue, but yes, all the colleges that you've mentioned have had encampments arrested and some have had arrests and disciplinary action towards students.

Brian Lehrer: You wrote an article called Arrests at Columbia Protests May Signal a Shift in the Campus-Activism Playbook, Experts Say. That focused on calling in the police on Thursday. What was the shift the headline referred to?

Kate Hidaglo Bellows: Sure. For the last [unintelligible 00:09:37], colleges have taken a back seat to not intervening in protests, and that has actually--

Brian Lehrer: Sorry, you dropped out there for one second. You said in the last decade. Is that the timeline you were saying?

Kate Hidaglo Bellows: Yes, about the last decade. Can you hear me?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Kate Hidaglo Bellows: Okay, great. In the early 2010s, there was obviously the Occupy movement that also manifested on college campuses. There's a famous incident at UC Davis in which police pepper-sprayed some protestors. That generated a lot of outcry. Since then, colleges have taken a backseat. They haven't intervened as much. There haven't been as much disciplinary action, but now, we're seeing them being a little bit more willing to intervene.

I think that partly is because they have generated a lot of backlash from donors and alumni. College presidents are frankly fed up with the rhetoric they're hearing on college campuses, so they're willing to take more action.

Brian Lehrer: You say from the rhetoric they're hearing on college campuses, we got a text right away that says, "Anti-war in Palestine does not mean antisemitism." Obviously, almost everybody accepts that premise. What are they fed up with?

Kate Hidaglo Bellows: They are frankly fed up with the disruptions to campus life. At Columbia, there are those encampments. They take up a large patch of the green space in the center of campus. They feel like it's blocking egress and affecting the life off campus, but it's also generating a lot of bad press, frankly. They are willing to take a harder stance against it, calling in the police. One thing that we have seen though is that there's a separation between what's going on right off of Columbia's campus and what's happening on the campus.

Those lines have been blurred recently in media coverage, which has also been frustrating for the administration. Off-campus, you are seeing a bit of a harder rhetoric from people not affiliated with the university who have flung anti-Semitic statements to Jewish students walking on the street. On campus, some would argue that the rhetoric there is also anti-Semitic, but there haven't been as many violent protests there.

Brian Lehrer: The fact that the arrests were for trespassing at Columbia for having so many tents set up on the main lawn, rather than only arresting people to stop rioting per se, that's the shift that your article is referring to, right?

Kate Hidaglo Bellows: Right.

Brian Lehrer: The university's position is that you can't just direct a tent city in effect, sorry, over the whole main communal outdoor space and keep it there. What's the argument some of your sources cited for allowing them to stay long-term if people were making that argument? I see from your reporting, there is some past precedent for things like that.

Kate Hidaglo Bellows: Yes. The students and some faculty members who are taking up that space argue that they're not disrupting the learning environment, that people are welcome to avoid it, that they're not disrupting classes or taking up indoor space. Outdoors is very different if they're holding up a building. At Pomona College, last month, we saw students go into the president's office, and she had to call the police to evacuate them. That's different. With outdoor protests, colleges may be less willing to intervene and have students arrested.

Brian Lehrer: Here is one of the Columbia students who was arrested and suspended. Her name is Iris Chang, saying it's a ridiculous way to deal with her.

Iris Chang: It says that I was arrested because I was trespassing, but I was a fully enrolled student at the time, and since, I have been suspended for my arrest. I find that to be a logical fallacy.

Brian Lehrer: That's a student on one side subject to that but an indication of the polarization. Here's another Columbia student, a counter-protestor, Karen Lichtbraun, explaining why she was protesting outside of Columbia's gates.

Karen Lichtbraun: It's boiled over now, so I am not shocked by it. I'm livid that it's gotten to this point.

Brian Lehrer: Correction, that person protesting against antisemitism was not a student but felt that she needed to come to campus to protest the antisemitism that she described there as boiling over. On your reporting trip to campus over the weekend, Kate, what kinds of things that reflected either of those clips or not did you see?

Kate Hidaglo Bellows: Sure. When I got onto campus and I'll-- It's in my reporting, but they allowed reporters two hours to walk on the campus because at that point they were still requiring university IDs to get onto campus. I saw the tent encampment, and protestors who were in the encampment, were streaming in and out of it. Then there was a group of pro-Israel students on the side who were just quietly mulling around, and occasionally, they would engage with a pro-Palestinian activist, but there was no-- nothing really escalated beyond a little heated conversation that was very different from what I was seeing off campus.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take some phone calls. Obviously, a lot of people are calling in. We are getting multiple points of view on the phone. Allison in Pound Ridge, New York, you're on WNYC. Hi, Allison.

Allison: Hi. Thank you for taking my call. I'm an alumni of Columbia University, and I'm a parent of a student at The New School, a Jewish student. The last year literally has been living hell. She can't go to class. She feels intimidated. If she makes it through a class without crying-- I just think that the universities above all have an obligation for student safety and well-being, and really what's happening is a climate of fear. It's not just one individual thing that's going on the campuses, but all these things together are literally creating a climate of fear for Jewish students.

Brian Lehrer: What has your daughter described in particular, in her case?

Allison: Being blocked to go to class, being blocked to get onto elevators, students refusing to talk to her in classes, going to meetings of small groups, and being ostracized. No one will listen to your opinion or talk to you, everybody going out for coffee after class and not inviting you. It's really just [crosstalk].

Brian Lehrer: Does that appear to her to be just on the basis of her being Jewish, not expressing any particular point of view about the IDF in Gaza, or anything like that?

Allison: Yes. She's actually appalled by what's going on with the treatment of Palestinians. We have close Palestinian friends. It's really being targeted based on her ethnicity. She's almost graduating. She's been there a long time, and it's only been since October 7th that this has been happening.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you for your call, Allison. I appreciate it a lot. Kate Hidalgo Bellows from The Chronicle of Higher Education, that's the kind of thing that's so disturbing and seems so new to a lot of Jewish Americans that this kind of thing would be happening on college campuses if it's as described just on the basis of being Jewish.

Kate Hidaglo Bellows: Yes. This is something that has been really appalling to a lot of Jewish Americans. Some of these schools are under Title VI investigations for allegedly failing to protect students against discrimination based on shared ancestry, race, or national origin. It's very much on the minds of Jewish Americans, especially those who have students at these colleges. They describe a climate of fear as Allison just described.

Brian Lehrer: I want to-- I'm sorry, did you want to finish your answer? Go ahead.

Kate Hidaglo Bellows: No, no. You can go ahead.

Brian Lehrer: Oh. Just to say, I'll come back with you in a few minutes to your reference to Title VI and what law governs any of this on any side of that because I know people are talking about Title VI. We're going to take another caller now, Nina in Harlem, who I think has a different point of view. Nina, you're on WNYC. Thank you for calling in.

Nina: Hi, Brian. Thank you for taking my call. I'm an alum of the school and currently work for the university as well.

Brian Lehrer: Of Columbia. Right?

Nina: Yes, of Columbia. As an educator, I can't tell you how appalled I was by students being arrested on campus. It was really, really tough to see. The support that faculty came out yesterday with the walkout to show that this is a university first and foremost, and I do want to say that like the previous caller, that's appalling to hear just like you said. A campus should feel safe. It should feel like a place where students are allowed to grow and take risks and apply all of these wonderful, really groundbreaking things that they're learning in the classroom.

To have that taken away from them was really, really tough. I do want to talk a bit about how the safety and the feeling of not feeling safe on campus has much to do with the response of this administration. In conjunction with that, I feel like the president really, really should resign at this point. The disproportionate response with the NYPD is not something that you can just brush aside.

I also live in the neighborhood. I've lived in the neighborhood now for 12 years. There has been almost nonstop helicopter presence in this neighborhood now since Wednesday. This morning they had maybe three or four going, "Before 6:00 AM. Before 6:00 AM." This type of response to just score political points is really not going to do anyone, any student, any faculty member, any service in any way, shape, or form.

Brian Lehrer: It appears to you just to score political points rather than to actually protect anybody's safety on campus?

Nina: Well, I feel that the disproportionality of it was to score political points. The fact that it happened the day after her hearing that the NYPD marched in and took away just 100-plus students on their buses. I feel like that was purely to score political points and at the cost of the safety of all of our students. That's just my feeling as a member of the community and as a member of both the Harlem community and the Columbia community,

Brian Lehrer: Do you have any reaction to those Republican members of Congress and other people in the conservative media, for example, and others who are saying they're advocates for the safety of Jewish students calling for President Shafik to resign? Here you are calling on President Shafik to resign and many others who agree with you. She's getting it from both sides. How does that strike you?

Nina: Sorry to interrupt you, but yes, I think that the president was caught in a very tough place, and I do think that it's a little bit ridiculous that there's right-wing MAGA Republicans that are talking about antisemitism when really, they have no place to because of all of the rhetoric that they've been spouting and hatred that they've been spouting on their platforms. I do think that because of the way that she responded, she can't take that back.

I also think that this is a bit Columbia's fault because this president, she did not have ties to the university. She didn't come from a pure education background. She was working for the World Bank or whichever bank she was working for for years before she came here. I don't think she responded in a way that one would if they had core values that are rooted in pedagogy that is for student growth. It is unfortunate that she's getting it from both sides. I think that from what we have seen in the recent history of what these right-wing Republicans are doing, I don't think their word matters at all.

Brian Lehrer: Nina, thank you very much for your call. Those are callers with two very different sets of concerns. Funny enough, I'm not sure they would disagree with each other on what they each brought up as their core concerns, but I guess it's a question of what you center, right, Kate, or which seems the more urgent thing to deal with.

Kate Hidalgo Bellows: Right. Yes, exactly. I do want to talk a little bit about what students are asking for since we haven't gotten to that yet. They want their institutions to divest their endowments from military weapons and [unintelligible 00:23:32] manufacturers, including those based in Israel. They're saying that, these are the pro-Palestinian activists I'm referring to here, they're saying they don't want to be complicit in genocide and they've passed referendums calling for divestment from Israel. I just want to ground that in explaining what students are fighting for here.

Brian Lehrer: That demand, which is the point of the encampment, at least at Columbia, is almost getting lost for all the talk about the encampment itself and the antisemitic incidents around it. They said they would stay until Columbia divests from businesses involved with Israel. Are protestors at other encampments, since you're reporting on the scene around the country, getting that specific, or is it becoming about the right to camp and about the Israeli military response to October 7th generally?

Kate Hidalgo Bellows: I think there is a sense from observers that we've lost the plot here. A lot of it does have to do with the right to camp out. I think for the protesters at Columbia, getting arrested only strengthened their cause. They came back wanting to rebuild the tents, and their peers were building the tents, and it inspired students at other universities to build their own encampments, which I think goes against what the president of Columbia was hoping for.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. I guess that could go down as a strategic mistake or at least their grounds for second-guessing it. You can only wonder what would've happened if Columbia allowed the protest tents to remain up for these last few weeks of the semester, the semester is almost over, if it would've just petered out. Right?

Kate Hidalgo Bellows: Yes. I also want to add that there is a time pressure here because graduation is coming up. When I was on Columbia's campus, there were seats set up for the commencement address. Well, there's multiple commencement ceremonies there, but students are going to have to leave eventually, or pulling them off the campus will be even stronger.

Brian Lehrer: We're going to take a break and then continue. If you're just joining us, we're talking about what's going on, not just at Columbia, but at many campuses now in the New York area and across the country with Kate Hidalgo Bellows who covers security and health at college campuses for The Chronicle of Higher Education. We'll get to more of your calls at 212-433-WNYC.

Since Kate just brought up graduation, we're going to talk immediately when we come back about the situation at the University of Southern California where they canceled the scheduled commencement address by their valedictorian who is a hijab-wearing Muslim student who has expressed pro-Palestinian views in the past over what the school calls security concerns, but a lot of students aren't buying that. Stay with us.

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Governor Hochul: I've never seen a level of protests that is so person-to-person and is so visceral.

Brian Lehrer: Never seen a level of protest that is so person-to-person, so visceral. If that wasn't entirely clear, Governor Hochul there speaking yesterday as we continue to talk about the scene on campus in New York, in California, in Michigan, in North Carolina, in Ohio, Massachusetts, and elsewhere with Kate Hidalgo Bellows who covers safety and health on college campuses for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Kate, I haven't seen you do an article on the USC situation and the cancellation of the commencement address by the valedictorian. Do you have anything to report there or just from your reading of other reporters for you as somebody whose beat is explicitly safety on campus? The school says they canceled the speech for safety reasons, not for content reasons.

Kate Hidalgo Bellows: Sure. Several of my colleagues have been covering what's going on at USC and we're seeing safety come up again and again. With Tabassum, they [unintelligible 00:27:54] the speech for safety reasons, but many said that they were trying to silence-- Many of the pro-Palestinian protestors were saying they were caving to pressure from outside and trying to silence her voice. Now USC has just done away with all commencement speeches for this year.

Brian Lehrer: What do you think is going to happen there because there's a backlash protest? I saw one reported on Sunday, maybe there are more ongoing, by students who are saying, "Come on, we're safe," or, "You can protect us and still have this speech by the valedictorian."

Kate Hidalgo Bellows: I don't want to speculate on what will happen, but I do think we are going to see commencement protests across the country this May.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take another caller from back in New York. Here is a high school senior, I believe, who has been accepted to The New School for next fall. It's Hudson in Manhattan. Hudson, you're on WNYC. Thank you very much for calling in, and congratulations on your pending graduation.

Hudson: Hi, thank you. Yes, I'm accepted to Parsons. I was wondering if any students currently there who are involved in the demonstrations have an opinion on whether I should come there or not and go into debt paying The New School thousands of dollars and giving them money to their endowment, which may or may not be supporting genocide. I also wanted to make the point that no one is making any comparison to the Kent State Massacre, which happened decades ago on basically the same premise of students peacefully, completely harmlessly, protesting the innocent killings of young people on the other side of the world.

They were, of course, massacred and killed. I live right near Columbia, and really, it would only take a couple of crazy protestor people, who are just not students, in crossing the line to provoke the hundreds of NYPD officers in riot gear and causing a repeat of the Kent State Massacre. I think people should really be researching the parallels there.

Brian Lehrer: In fact, we're going to do a call-in at the end of the show for people, a generation or more up from you, who participated in or were college students during the protest era of the 1960s and early '70s, that massacre at Kent State. Of course, I'm sure the administration, Hudson, get ready for college-level debate, would say something like, “Just because we call in the NYPD to keep order on our campus doesn't mean that we haven't learned the lessons of Kent State and they're going to start shooting people.”

What would you say if somebody from The New School or any other school said to you something like that?

Hudson: I don't think we arm police officers with guns-- They have guns and we know the dangers of the NYPD. I don't think that's a very relevant argument because if you go up there to the Upper West Side, the most dangerous thing there, you can feel it, is the police officers with batons and shields and everything. That's the most dangerous thing there. It's not the protestors. If it was a Zionist protest that had just dozens of people, everybody knows that there would be no NYPD there. It's a thing of politics.

Brian Lehrer: Do you think you might actually turn down your acceptance to The New School and go re-shopping for a school to go to, who uses its endowment or whatever finances in ways that you vetted and know you support?

Hudson: Yes, definitely. I don't think I could really afford The New School, anyway, because it's incredibly expensive already. That's definitely going to affect my decision coming up this week.

Brian Lehrer: Hudson, thank you very much. Thanks. Interesting call, Kate. On the other side of it, I wonder if you've reported on parents of Jewish students, I've seen some coverage of this, who are high school seniors who've gotten accepted into various universities wondering if it's safe for them, where on that side, they certainly don't see the police as the main threat. They see antisemitism, like the first caller was describing, and violence that might even stem from that as the main threat, and also, having second thoughts about schools they applied to in the fall and got the acceptance recently when the world has kind of changed.

Kate Hidalgo Bellows: Yes. I did a story about that a couple of months ago about how religious institutions, small private colleges, and certainly Jewish institutions like Brandeis and Touro, have angled themselves to recruit Jewish students by positioning themselves as a safer place for them. When I talk to Jewish students at some of these Ivy Leagues that have had the protests or some of the elite colleges, I should say, that have had the protests, they were hesitant to-- They didn't say that they wanted to transfer.

They were very vehement that they didn't want to transfer because if they did, their schools, they were saying, wouldn't have a Jewish community. You're seeing that Jewish students really do want to stay on their campuses. They just want their colleges to do a better job of keeping them safe.

Brian Lehrer: Another way that the situation at Columbia is polarized and they're getting it from both sides is lawsuits from both sides against Columbia. Before we run out of time, I want to touch on that with you. At least, one, for not protecting Jewish students sufficiently, and another, for violating free speech rights of protesting students. Are other campuses being taken to court or having calls from both sides for their presidents to resign that you know of?

Kate Hidalgo Bellows: Sure. Very much so. [chuckles] Yes, at several institutions, they have faced a lot of criticism from their student bodies and from parents and have received calls for resignation. Obviously, we saw too in the fall with the resignations of the president of Harvard, Claudine Gay, and the president of the University of Pennsylvania, Liz Magill.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned earlier Title VI and investigations of schools that are going on under Title VI. I think that was also in the Republican Congress member's letter to Columbia President Shafik, a reference to Title VI, saying she should resign. Explain to everybody, what's Title VI?

Kate Hidalgo Bellows: Sure. Title VI obligates institutions that receive federal funding, which most nonprofit universities receive federal funding, that they have an obligation to protect students against discrimination based on race, shared ancestry, or national origin. We've seen a flood of Title IX complaints filed against colleges based around failing to ensure an environment free from Islamophobia, antisemitism, anti-Palestinian hate, stuff like that.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take one more call. El in Westchester, you're on WNYC. Hello, El. I think you're responding-

El: Hello.

Brian Lehrer: -to one of the other callers. Yes.

El: Yes, [unintelligible 00:36:16]. We hear it a lot, unfortunately. I just want to say, please, if anyone is claiming to be pro-peace or pro-Palestinian, distance yourself from the supporters of Hamas, supporters of more terror. If you hear those people saying again and again-- The most disturbing video, I don't know if you saw it, is how they did whatever they call it, I don't know, women shield. They look like zombies from the movie The Wave. As long as you stay Zionist and not Jew, then it's okay to be so hateful.

It's so full of hate. It's so harassing and so much bullying. I cannot see how can people keep showing as if it's pro-stopping the violence. They want more violence just against the Zionists as if now they're enemies of the world. It's supported, for sure, funded by all sorts of organizations who hate the US, who want to cause this riot. Please, whoever is really thinking about the region, thinking about the children in Gaza, the children in Israel, distance yourself from those people who only promote more war.

Brian Lehrer: El, thank you very much for your call. What do you think the protestors' response would be to that mother? She identifies herself calling in saying that if the protestors say they're for peace, then they're not doing enough to her here to distance themselves from Hamas violence. I'm sure a lot of protestors would disagree with that, but there's certainly a perception out there, and especially when it does spill into antisemitism and referring to Jews as Zionists or Zionists generally, rather than specific critiques of how the military operation is being carried out.

Kate Hidalgo Bellows: You're asking me, right?

Brian Lehrer: Yes.

Kate Hidalgo Bellows: Okay, I just wanted to make sure. From the pro-Israel side, students and faculty members who subscribe to those beliefs have said that Zionists is just a dog whistle for Jews. They're also saying, like what El said, that there's a double standard against Israel. The pro-Palestinian students are asking Israel to stop bombing Gaza, but they are not holding Palestine to account. They don't actually believe in just a ceasefire from Israel.

Pro-Palestinian students or activists respond to that by saying that the effect on Gaza is disproportionate. Obviously, we've seen 34,000 deaths according to the Gaza Health Ministry. When they look at the numbers, they're saying that it's not disproportionate, but on the pro-Israel side, they would say that they feel like Israel has an obligation to protect itself, and it's being held to a higher standard. Whereas, people are dying all over the world and there isn't as much attention on that.

Brian Lehrer: Well, we're not going to solve the Middle East today. We're not going to solve campus today, but we've heard callers with multiple points of view, as we try to do here, and listen to everybody and report factually and with context. I'm sure some of you think that we fail at that as well, but believe me, we try in good faith, and that's all we can do.

We will follow up on this in about an hour with a call-in specifically for people from the 1960s, 1970s campus generation.

What kind of echoes of that era, which this is being compared to in some respects, does all of this have for you? That'll be in about an hour. For today, or for now, we thank our guest from The Chronicle of Higher Education, Kate Hidalgo Bellows, who covers campus security and health. Thank you very much for joining us.

Kate Hidalgo Bellows: Thank you so much, Brian, for having me.

Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. More to come.

 

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