PROTESTS: WHAT DO THEY ACHIEVE? NOT MUCH

This is the title I chose for my personal blog, which is meant to give me an outlet for one of my favorite crafts – writing – plus to use an image from my favorite sport, golf.  Out of college, my first job was as a reporter for the Daily Astorian in Astoria, Oregon, and I went on from there to practice writing in all my professional positions, including as press secretary in Washington, D.C. for a Democrat Congressman from Oregon (Les AuCoin), as an Oregon state government manager in Salem and Portland, as press secretary for Oregon’s last Republican governor (Vic Atiyeh), and as a private sector lobbyist.  This blog also allows me to link another favorite pastime – politics and the art of developing public policy – to what I write.  I could have called this blog “Middle Ground,” for that is what I long for in both politics and golf.  The middle ground is often where the best public policy decisions lie.  And it is where you want to be on a golf course.

If I am an expert, “protests” is not one of the categories.

For these reasons:

• Over 40 years involved in public policy in the State of Oregon, I saw many protests on the steps of the State Capitol.
• I had no idea what they achieved, other than, I guess, a sense of satisfaction for those protesting who sometimes got media coverage.
• I don’t remember a public policy issue where protests served a function of bringing parties together to solve a problem.

So it is that I am concerned lately with what’s happening on many college campuses around the country, even though what I know is from a remote location.

Protestors are roiling – there’s one of my favorite words again – as they contend higher ed administrators are favoring the Israeli side in the current Middle East war.

Here’s the way the Wall Street Journal described the situation at the current fulcrum of the debate, Columbia University.

“Columbia Faces a Day That Lays Out Its Troubles:  Protesters, who stayed in their encampment, continue to negotiate with administrators.  

“Columbia University awoke Wednesday to a calendar that lays bare the breadth of its troubles.

“House Speaker Mike Johnson was expected on campus to visit with Jewish students.  The university president, Nemat Shafik, was preparing to confer with the university Senate, which could censure her as soon as Friday.  

“And protesters and university officials were negotiating over the possible dismantling of an encampment that is dominating a swath of the campus lawn.  Overnight, the university and protesters narrowly avoided another confrontation that could have involved the police.”

Administrators at campuses across the nation have been struggling to balance two competing interests — free speech rights, including anti-Israel speech, versus the need to protect Jewish students.

The Washington Post reports that some demonstrations have included hate speech, threats or support for Hamas, the armed group based in Gaza that led attacks on Israel on October 7, sparking the war.

Also, this from Washington Post commentator Meagan McArdle:

“Why campus protests against Israel probably won’t be effective:

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“An alien who landed on our planet during the current news cycle could be forgiven for concluding that the biggest foreign policy issue facing America today is what the U.S. government should do about Columbia University’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.  Otherwise, why would throngs of protesters be crowding the campus to protest actions more than 5,000 miles away?

“The short answer is that they are advocating for a cease-fire in Gaza, for an academic boycott of Israeli universities, and for the administration to divest all of Columbia’s finances, including the endowment, from companies and institutions that profit from Israeli apartheid, genocide and occupation in Palestine.”

Divestment, McArdle adds, has become a popular idea on campus, meant to wound companies that offend protesters in various ways, from running private prisons, to manufacturing firearms, to producing fossil fuels.  

She adds that “it’s not clear what effect this has had on anything other than the returns of the endowments.”

Also, this in the Washington Post regarding the latest move by Texas Greg Abbott to mold his political image:

“As word got out that pro-Palestinian protesters were planning to occupy a lawn on the University of Texas campus, Governor Greg Abbott made a dramatic move:  Calling in more than 100 state troopers with orders to clear them out.

“With that decision, which led to dozens of arrests amid video of riot-clad troopers on campus, Abbott sought to reassure his party — and the rest of the country — that Texas would not countenance a replay of the extended protester camp at New York’s Columbia University.

“It was the latest move by Abbott to position himself as one of the most assertive red-state governors in America, eager for a fight with the political left under the national spotlight.”

Back to my ideas and concerns about protests.

Based on my experience in Oregon – admittedly not in international affairs – I repeat that I do not think protests don’t do any good. 

Better for those who favor protests as a way to express themselves to cultivate relationships with those in power or influence and use those relationships to seek results, even if those results produce solutions in the middle, not on either the right or left extremes.

I fear college administrators will continue to face these protests, which, for me, also recall the Vietnam War era when I was in college.  The school I attended, a relatively small one in Seattle, did not have many protests.  But protests roiled campuses around the country as America fought its way through, by hindsight, what was a stupid war, if any war can be other than stupid.