History rhymes Crackdown on moral outrage will only favour the political right

I've been spending the last several weeks trying to find out what's really going on with the campus protests. I've met with students at Berkeley, where I teach.

- Robert Reich

I've visited with faculty at Columbia. I've spoken by phone with young people and professors at many other universities.

My conclusion: while protest movements attract an assortment of people with a range of motives, this one is centred on one thing - moral outrage at the slaughter of tens of thousands of innocent people in Gaza. To interpret these protests as anything else - as antisemitic or anti-Zionist or anti-American or pro-Palestinian - is to miss the essence of what's going on and why.

Most of the students and faculty I've spoken with found Hamas's attack on 7 October odious. They also find Israel's current government morally bankrupt, in that its response has been disproportionate.