Protests - and mass protests - are one of the best and most powerful weapons a democracy to try and influence policy. Elections are rare, but expressing public sentiment in that way is an effective tool.
Universities obviously house a population that is particularly primed for such protests, due even down to physiology of the people there. It has always and hopefully will always be thus.
As several have said, Columbia's leadership did the wrong thing. The police should never have been called. I don't really think that's up for debate. De-escalation and an avoidance of violence should always be the perogative. There are plenty of similar protests you're not reading about because they're just peaceful protests.
The Biden administration (and to be fair, most administrations in western countries) has made a rod for their own backs which makes such protests an incredibly difficult situation to address. Which is good, it should make the contrast sharper, and hopefully make the protests more impactful.
All of that is true. I don't even think it's controversial.
Where things get a little more difficult is around stuff not being discussed on here imo, because of the nature of the Gaza/Israel discussion becoming so all in or nothing. If a protest around almost any other topic deliberately invoked the ending of a people, that would be met with some pushback. If a leader explicitly called for murdering those that disagree with them, it would give pause to some observers about that leader's actions, and those of his/her group. But not in this case. If the protests involved a group of people who had literally and not long ago almost been wiped out of existence, there would probably be some understanding of why there's a sensitivty to calling for certain terms. But not today.
I have to hope the collective amnesia around why the world is so sensitive to anti-semitism is just generational. It is not anti-Palestinian or pro-genocidal to say that. Calling for a ceasefire, an end to needless Gazan deaths does not require that. The path to an actual, longer peace actually necessitates nuance, complex opinions and compromise. But that is not allowed at the moment. Righteous indignation is the only path forward, and if you're not with us you're genocidal scum who deserves no quarter.
When discussion was still permitted in the proper Israel thread, I tried to point out that 'don't kill babies' is not an answer to a problem spanning generations. And that view was brushed aside, because, I assume, it's very easy to simply say 'don't kill babies' and feel better.
All this time has passed and I see almost no-one proposing any kind of solution. No one even wants to talk about solutions anymore. They want the conflict, the violence, the pathos. And so it shall continue.
