You call that a protest? UI can’t match the elites
The not-so-big doings continued Wednesday on the University of Illinois campus, where small groups of anti-Israel protesters sleep in their tents, hang out and eat pizza.
Give them credit. They remain full of themselves even as they are ignored by thousands of other UI students going about their business.
It’s pretty small beer, all things considered. Just a few hundred people participated last week in what was billed in advance as a “walkout at noon, followed by a march down Green Street and then a community event near the Swanlund Administration Building.”
There are bigger crowds at Kam’s on a weekend night than the one aimed at bringing the UI to its knees with protesters’ list of “demands.”
The numbers since have dropped even further— it’s a veritable drop in the ocean of the UI student body— after protesters moved to another lower-profile locale to continue their futile, but apparently emotionally fulfilling, virtue signalling.
The protesters had their big moment on Friday, when they forced cancellation of the 5K race that preceded Saturday’s Christie Clinic Illinois Marathon.
They also engaged in what amounted to a shoving match with police over the administration’s effort to remove protesters’ tents.
But, even in that context, it’s clear the UI’s protesters can’t compete with their brethren at elite schools like Columbia and Harvard, where there are real clashes with police over illegal activity masquerading as free speech.
It’s hardly equitable that spineless administrators at those institutions face genuine problems while the UI’s spineless administrators get a pass. But, then, life is unfair.
Despite the protest writ small, local protesters continue to mimick their more outspoken brethren elsewhere.
They charge the UI is “complicit”— a vacuous cliche— in the current war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza.
They demanded the UI divest itself of stock in any company that does business in any way with Israel. But if the UI is to sell stock in, for example, Caterpillar, someone would have to buy the stock.
How would a meaningless change of ownership advance the protesters’ cause?
Then there’s the genocide issue. Civilian casualties are, of course, terribly disturbing. They might decline if Hamas fighters stopped using civilians as human shields.
But what, really, can be done by the protesters here to end aMiddle East conflict that has roots going back centuries and, semi-officially, began with the 1947-48 civil war from which Israel emerged as an independent state?
Little has changed since then except for the passage of time. Israel continues to exist, and Israel’s foes continue to pledge to drive Israelis into the sea.
Not even the Urbana City Council, which recently called for a cease-fire, has the clout to change that.
(Council members might have better luck calling for a cease-fire in Chicago and other major U.S. cities.)
There’s an element of monkey see, monkey-do to this business. If students and hip faculty members elsewhere are protesting, why shouldn’t the equally morally superior here express their moral outrage?
Peaceful protest certainly has its place. But the lack of enthusiasm on campus for the protests has revealed its place here is marginal.
That hasn’t dimmed the enthusiasm on some campuses. But outside the bubble of the Ivy League and a few other elite campuses, protesters are attracting much attention from very many while converting very few.
They say war is hell. So, too, can be social protests without sufficient protesters.
Jim Dey, a member of The News-Gazette staff, can be reached at jdey@news-gazette.com or 217393-8251.
