Sen. John Fetterman, D-Pa., on Sunday slammed the anti-Israel protests that have taken over college campuses nationwide as working against peace in the Middle East, adding that he’s frustrated that those taken hostage by Hamas during the Oct. 7 attack on Israel have not been put first.

Fetterman, who has been outspoken against the protesters, wondered why they are demonstrating against Israel and not Hamas, which he says has refused a recent cease-fire deal during his appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“These kinds of protests haven’t been helpful, and ironically, they are actually working against peace in the Middle East as well,” Fetterman said. “And it’s also very strange to me that they’re not actually protesting for a cease-fire now. There’s been a very valid cease-fire that’s been on the table now and Hamas has refused to take that on.”

“And I don’t know why if we’re going to protest, why aren’t we protesting that, demanding Hamas to take that kind of a cease-fire,” the senator continued. “And that would end all of the trauma and chaos going on there in Gaza.”

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Fetterman went on to say that he does not support any kind of conditions being placed on Israel, and instead he put responsibility for the current situation entirely on Hamas.

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“The situation could end right now if Hamas just surrendered and they just sent all of those hostages home again,” the senator said. “That’s also a thing that I’ve been frustrated, too, is that those hostages should really be in front of the conversations about the situation in Gaza. Sending them home would really, again, end all of this immediately.”

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The war in Gaza began after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel in which the terrorist organization killed 1,200 people and took about 250 people hostage.

In May 1969 a National Guard helicopter hung over the campus of UC Berkeley, spraying protesters with what The Times then described as “heavy clouds of tear gas.”

It was the sixth consecutive day of campus demonstrations over plans to develop the land known as “People’s Park.” An ambitious governor who would go on to become president had called in 2,300 National Guard troops and hundreds of Highway Patrolmen. They brought shotguns, rifles and bayonets.

The problems, then-Gov. Ronald Reagan said in a feisty televised appearance, all started because universities “let young people think they had the right to choose the laws they would obey, as long as they were doing it in the name of social protest.”

Reagan was unapologetic in his response to protests on the campus, which was also home to large demonstrations against the Vietnam War. He called student protests “orgies of destruction.”

Almost exactly 55 years later, California campuses are again overwhelmed by student uprisings and police crackdowns, including violent clashes last week at UCLA. This time, over the Israel-Hamas war.

And another ambitious California governor is responding with a very different approach.

Gov. Gavin Newsom has lingered in the background as universities grapple with student protests, which have led to at least 200 arrests at UCLA, three injuries at UC Berkeley and forced classes to move online at Cal Poly Humboldt.

While he’s met privately with law enforcement officials and university leaders, Newsom has yet to speak to the news media about the unrest. He directed the state’s office of emergency services to support police response on campuses when requested by local agencies, but did not activate the National Guard. He took to social media last week to condemn the violence at UCLA, with a written statement saying “The right to free speech does not extend to inciting violence, vandalism or lawlessness on campus.”

Students and activists assemble on the campus of UC Berkeley for a protest related to the nearby People’s Park on May 19, 1969.

(Garth Eliassen / Getty Images)

On Thursday, hours after the arrests at UCLA, Newsom posted a video promoting expanded national monuments that showed him at a creek beneath the trees on a sun-drenched hillside — a move seen by some as tone-deaf.

For a governor who is rarely shy about grabbing the spotlight on controversial issues, including new abortion restrictions and mass shootings, Newsom’s response to the campus upheaval has been noticeably low-key.

Reagan and Newsom are political opposites and led California at very different times. In many ways, their divergent responses to campus unrest reflect how they presented themselves to the voters who elected them. Reagan, a Republican, ran for office during an earlier period of campus protests and had promised to “clean up the mess at Berkeley.” Newsom, a Democrat, campaigned as a champion for legalizing marijuana and gay marriage, and supported ending California’s decades-old tough-on-crime policies.

But the responses also reflect different political eras and highlight the complexities posed by the Israel-Hamas war, particularly for Democrats.

A lone demonstrator stays behind to argue with National Guard troops who moved in to help California Highway Patrol officers break up a rally on the UC Berkeley campus on May 16, 1969.

(Associated Press)

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“Reagan’s moves fit the political environment and the political dynamic of the time,” said Sherry Bebitch Jeffe, a retired professor at the Sol Price School of Public Policy at USC.

“Newsom understands that if he [gets] out front, he risks alienating, at this point in time, critical constituencies he doesn’t have to.”

Young people, progressives, people of color and Jewish voters are all important constituencies for Democrats, Bebitch Jeffe said, but the party is split over President Biden’s response to the Israel-Hamas war.

The divisions have created an opening for Republicans, even in Sacramento where they lack power. That didn’t stop GOP leaders from calling a news conference in the state Capitol last week to call for cutting state funding for administrators at campuses where protests turned violent, and rescinding Cal Grant scholarships from students engaged in criminal acts.

“It’s unacceptable that our governor has largely said very little about this and taken very little action to quell what has been going on on our campuses,” Assembly Republican leader James Gallagher (R-Yuba City) said Thursday.

Some Democrats have been raising alarms about the climate on California campuses for months.

In a letter in November, a month after Hamas attacked Israel, members of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus called for “immediate action” from University of California President Michael V. Drake and California State University Chancellor Mildred García to protect Jewish students from what they called an “explosion of antisemitism.”

Newsom, too, sent the university leaders a letter then calling on them to do more to stop threats against students who were “targeted because of a Jewish, Arab, or Muslim identity.” He wrote that “some faculty have inflamed the discourse with violent rhetoric. This is unacceptable and demands action.”

California Gov. Gavin Newsom speaks during an event in San Francisco on Nov. 9, 2023.

(Jeff Chiu / Associated Press)

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In March, well before the protests had reached the level of violence they did this past week, the Jewish caucus introduced a bill that would require California college leaders to adopt policies “prohibiting violence, harassment, intimidation and harassment” specifically when it comes to any events that “call for or support genocide.”

Democrats leading the legislation have emphasized that they aren’t trying to limit free speech, but the American Civil Liberties Union opposed the bill, saying it goes further than federal laws that already do not protect hate speech or violence under the 1st Amendment and that it could allow universities to “silence a range of protected speech based on viewpoint alone.”

Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), who is a co-author of the campus bill and signed the letter to university leadership, said he supports the right to protest, especially on college campuses.

But what’s happening now “crosses a line,” he said.

“What’s different here is in addition to the protest, we have the targeting harassment of one specific group of students — Jewish students,” he said. “I want them to be able to protest the war in Gaza and to call for a cease-fire and to call for peace. … that’s healthy. But you have some people who are going well beyond that and saying antisemitic things, and it is undermining what they’re actually protesting for.”

The governor has taken quiet actions in recent weeks by convening Jewish and Muslim leaders, publishing a plan to combat antisemitism and communicating with Palestinian American communities about Islamophopia. He has said he supports Biden’s call for a cease-fire in Gaza.

Newsom has no direct authority over California’s public universities, but does exert influence as an ex officio member of the UC regents and the Cal State Board of Trustees. That gives him some responsibility for what happens on campus, said Bill Whalen, a fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institute who was a speechwriter for GOP Gov. Pete Wilson.

Demonstrators occupy a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA as authorities breach and break up the encampment on Thursday.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

“The governor technically is the landlord of these operations,” Whalen said. “Even if he’s behind the scenes, you would hope that he is very active.”

But the politics within the Democratic Party make it difficult for him to be too forceful, Bebitch Jeffe said. Newsom is supporting Biden’s reelection campaign while also navigating divisions among Democratic voters who are torn over U.S. support for Israel.

“If you’re Gavin Newsom and you don’t know whether it will help or hurt you, just leave the battlefield,” Bebitch Jeffe said. “And that’s apparently what he’s done.”

Times librarian Scott Wilson contributed research for this article.

On Oct. 7, 2023, a series of pivotal events unfolded that could shape the landscape of the upcoming November election. 

That was when Hamas staged its audacious, terrifying raids into Israel,  launching a Middle East conflagration which dwarfs the wars of 1967 and 1973.

The subject of abortion remains a prominent factor in this fall’s election. But the Middle East has the potential to supersede that. The schism which is cleaving the Democratic Party is now on full display in quadrangles across the country. Photos of occupation, tent cities and ransacked university buildings are now a staple of the daily news consciousness. This all comes nearly 54 years to the day of the massacre at Kent State University in Ohio.

Democrats are struggling to balance the First Amendment rights of students on top of support for human rights in Gaza. But a thread of rampant antisemitism permeates many of these demonstrations. This isn’t lost on voters. Democrats are torn between criticizing the protests and not alienating their base.

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A cynic might argue that Republicans are exploiting the Democratic schism. But the GOP really doesn’t need to do much. The daily collegiate contretemps speaks for itself.

Neither party frankly has much of a legislative agenda for the rest of the year. The foreign aid package is complete. TikTok is on the books. Months of work on a bipartisan border security package evaporated within minutes over the winter. Nothing exists in a vacuum. So, the university melees simply presented the GOP with an opening. And the GOP is seemingly better equipped to grapple with the issue than Democrats.

“Students are students, and you’re going to have demonstrations. And that’s just part of being a college student,” said Rep. Bobby Scott, D-Va., the top Democrat on the House Education Committee. “There’s a difference between protesting against the war and being antisemitic. And many of the protests have slipped into antisemitism.”

House Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., led the charge to challenge higher education. Johnson deputized multiple committee chairs to launch a myriad of investigations and hearings into prospective wrongdoing by universities, failures to protect students and threats of switching off the financial spigot for colleges.

“The biggest supply of money comes from us. And so we’re taking a look at how to condition that money on how they handle their campuses in situations like this,” promised Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky.

House Republicans have already targeted higher education for months – with great success. Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., bragged “one down, two to go,” after University of Pennsylvania’s Liz Magill stepped down in December following her congressional testimony about collegiate antisemitism.

By January, Stefanik added another trophy to her collection, the resignation of Harvard’s Claudine Gay. Gay also stumbled at the same hearing as Magill. It’s notable that Stefanik graduated from Harvard in 2006.

“Two down,” Stefanik said at the time.

MIT President Sally Kornbluth remains on the job after that fateful December hearing. But now, Stefanik and other Republicans are pursuing Columbia University President Minouche Shafik after demonstrators stormed Hamilton Hall.

“President Shafik has allowed campus to be taken by mob rule,” said Stefanik. “She must be immediately removed.”

Students march on Columbia University’s campus in support of a protest encampment supporting Palestinians despite a 2 p.m. deadline issued by university officials to disband or face suspension in New York City April 29, 2024. (REUTERS/David Dee Delgado)

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The issue about the university unrest was practically served up to Republicans on a silver mortar board. Expect a public thrashing for other university presidents at another hearing before the House Education Committee on May 23. 

The House Oversight Committee has jurisdiction over Washington, D.C. That’s why House Oversight Committee Chairman James Comer, R-Ky., summoned Washington, D.C., Mayor Murial Bowser and D.C. Police Chief Pamela Smith for a session next week. Comer is “deeply concerned” that the D.C. police rejected a request from George Washington University to help “remove antisemitic and unlawful protesters” from the campus.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona recently sent a letter to university presidents in which he blasted the harassment of Jewish students. In particular, Cardona said Jewish students were subject “to verbal abuse” and found swastikas on their doors. Others were told to “go back to Poland.”

“These and other such incidents are abhorrent,” wrote Cardona.

But Republican lawmakers believe Cardona and the federal government were slow to probe potential civil rights violations on campuses. Cardona appeared before a Senate hearing earlier this week.

“Do you think right now that this administration is upholding Title VI?” Sen. Katie Britt, R-Ala., asked.

Title VI is part of the Civil Rights Act that bars discrimination based on race, color or religion.

“We are with the resources that we have,” said Cardona. “The number of cases has tripled since 2009. And we have 58 less people (to investigate now).”

Hundreds of students protest outside the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on the campus of UCLA in Los Angeles May 1, 2024.  (Keith Birmingham/MediaNews Group/Pasadena Star-News via Getty Images)

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Cardona asked for an additional $22 million this budget cycle to hire more investigators and open up additional campus probes. But expect that to be a flashpoint. Especially after Republicans aim to trim funding for the Department of Education.

“Republicans tried to cut it by 25% for the FY ‘24 budget. And the result was flat funding,” said Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y., the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee.

The GOP is also angling to slash funding for universities lawmakers believe failed to protect students.

“If you’re going to break the law, violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, you’re going to have your federal funds removed,” warned Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, R-W.Va., the top Republican on the panel that handles education dollars. 

“Think of the research dollars that go into some of these universities. Think of the federal student aid that goes into these universities. Think of the buildings that were built with federal funds.”

Cardona agrees with some senators about the cash flow.

“Ultimately, if a school refuses to comply with Title VI, yes, we would remove federal dollars,” Cardona testified.

But some lawmakers suggest it’s challenging to determine when a school crosses the line.

“There’s natural tension between the First Amendment (and the) criminal code, Title VI, to make sure that students can have an environment free of hatred and hostility,” said Scott. “And it’s going to be difficult to decide.”

But the politics may be a little clearer.

Voters see chaos on campus. Some on the right are skeptical about higher education to begin with. Democrats are torn about the conflict in the Middle East. Republicans won the House partly because they flipped seats in New York. That’s why freshmen members of Congress, like Reps. Mike Lawler and Anthony D’Esposito, both New York Republicans, have been outspoken about protests at Columbia.

This maelstrom of demonstrations at colleges and universities is now officially on the ballot this fall. And Republicans have demonstrated they believe the milieu works in their favor.