Outside agitators, then and now
In the statement she issued after the arrest of 90 anti-Israel protesters who violated campus rules, Dartmouth’s president noted that “many” of those arrested were “unaffiliated” with the college. Similar reports have come from other campuses plagued by the wave of lawlessness.
According to the mayor of New York, 30 percent of those arrested at Columbia were outsiders. At City College, the number was said to be 60 percent.
It’s not surprising that outsiders are providing critical mass to the protests. It may be that majorities of college students are anti-Israel, but that sentiment alone isn’t enough to cause kids to get arrested. Most students willing to make that level of commitment are likely to be either Arab-Americans, Arab exchange students, or the most hardcore of left-wing radicals.
There aren’t enough students who fit one of these descriptions to comprise a substantial group of lawbreakers. Hence the need for the “unaffiliated” to bolster the ranks.
It was different in the late 1960s. The percentage of students enraged by a war that they might well have to fight in, and by the seeming futility of that war, was large enough that outsiders weren’t needed. The group of five dozen or so students arrested with me for taking over the administration building at Dartmouth consisted entirely (or almost entirely) of Dartmouth students, some of their girlfriends, and a few alums (more on them later).
Now let’s turn to the role of “outside agitators,” then and now. No doubt, some of the current protesters unaffiliated with the various colleges under siege have joined in only as foot solders. However, according to the Wall Street Journal, trained professional organizers are at the forefront of the agitation.
The political tactics underlying some of the demonstrations were the result of months of training, planning and encouragement by longtime activists and left-wing groups. At Columbia University, in the weeks and months before police took down encampments at the New York City campus and removed demonstrators occupying an academic building, student organizers began consulting with groups such as the National Students for Justice in Palestine, veterans of campus protests and former Black Panthers.
Nor is the participation of the longtime activists limited to consultation. At least eight of those arrested at Columbia stand out for their recurrent involvement in protest-related activities, according to this source, which names them.
Are outsiders funding the protests? According to the New York Post, the answer, at least at some colleges, is “yes.”
Copycat tent cities have been set up at colleges including Harvard, Yale, Berkeley in California, the Ohio State University and Emory in Georgia — all of them organized by branches of the Soros-funded Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — and at some, students have clashed with police. . . .
At three colleges, the protests are being encouraged by paid radicals who are “fellows” of a Soros-funded group called the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights (USCPR).
The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has also contributed generously to anti-Israel activists, according to the Post.
“Outside agitators” also played a role in the protests of the late 1960s. At Dartmouth, the non-student who helped organize and guide our unlawful activity had graduated from the college the year before. (I’ll call him John because that was his name.) Upon graduation, he became a professional organizer and “agitated” at other colleges in addition to Dartmouth.
John’s friend Paul, an alum from the same class, also participated in the building takeover. I got to know him because we were housed in the same cellblock. I thought he was very cool for a student radical.
Paul was from the Philadelphia area and after graduation became an organizer at college campuses there. Most of what I remember about our conversations pertained to the Philadelphia Phillies, but I do recall him telling me that Swarthmore students were more politically sophisticated than students at Penn and Dartmouth.
To get back on point, we see that both sets of protests movements — the ones in the late 60s and the ones today — were aided by outside agitators. The big difference is that the outsiders of the 1960s weren’t funded by billionaires and foundations.
In the 60s, the main group that organized campus protests was Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). According to no less an authority than J. Edgar Hoover, SDS got most of its money through fees from its 100,000 or so members. Early on, SDS also got money from Martin Peretz (who would later found buy The New Republic) and from the United Auto Workers. However, I doubt they were still funding it in the late 1960s.
Some critics said SDS received funding from foreign communist regimes, but I’ve never seen evidence that this was the case. It’s possible, however, that other, less prominent, radical groups like the avowedly Maoist Progressive Labor Party (PLP) got foreign money. And the PLP had a few adherents at Dartmouth. But I’m skeptical of claims that foreign money played much of a role in the campus unrest of the 1960s.
What I can say is that the current set of outside agitators (1) is better trained and funded than their 1960s counterparts and (2) has a network of radical mentors (1960s antiwar campus protesters, former Black Panthers) that radicals of the 1960s mostly lacked. The “old left” of the 1930s left wasn’t fond of the “new left;” nor was the new left looking to the old version for guidance. (“Never trust anyone over 30,” and all that.)
One more thing. The present day protesters have much more faculty support for their agitation than we had in the late 60s. Back then, some professors sympathized strongly with the protesters, but they were very reluctant either to participate in unlawful activity or to help plan it. No faculty member at Dartmouth did either, at least not on campus.
I’ll conclude by saying that, in a narrow sense, the current lawless protests are less threatening than those of the 1960s because they have less student backing. The protesters will gain some minor concessions, but won’t make real inroads the way we did (with the removal of ROTC from campus, for example).
In a broader sense, however, today’s protests may be more threatening — and not just because of the anti-Semitism that drives them. They are more threatening because they have more outside support — including support from wealthy players with connections to one of our political parties.
That support won’t enable the anti-Israel protesters to get their way this time around. But it is something upon which future radical protests can build.