Protesters at colleges vow to continue their activism

Other students say they hope to find common ground

- By Jaweed Kaleem and Daniel Miller

PRO-PALESTINIAN protesters set up an encampment at UCLA last year.

(RINGO CHIU For The Times)

At California universities Monday, the ceasefire in Gaza — and the accompanying hostage and prisoner exchange — emerged as an inflection point for the future of a student-led protest movement that for two years has roiled campuses.

The activism, along with its contentious aftermath, continues to reverberate as pro-Palestinian organizers and Jewish community leaders reckon with the tumult touched off by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

For months in 2024 — shortly after the onset of the deadliest and most destructive war between Israelis and Palestinians in history — college campuses in the U.S. convulsed in often confrontational protests. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations surged in the spring of that year with encampments where activists demanded campus policy changes, including U.S. university divestment of billions of dollars from weapons companies.

On this front, their activism largely foundered. In California, not one major university agreed to full divestment demands, which included boycotts of partnerships with Israeli universities. And campus policies did change — with university officials cracking down on protests and enforcing zero-tolerance policies against rule-breaking.

But David N. Myers, a UCLA professor of Jewish history, said student protesters appear to have helped change American views on Palestinians and Israel.

“Is the protest movement a failure? Well, if the measure is universities have cracked down, maybe,” Myers said. “But if the measure is general trend lines in American public opinion, I'm not so sure. And that should be a wake-up call to the pro-Israel movement.”