Speaker Mike Johnson on Wednesday mentioned President Biden ought to take motion, together with probably sending within the Nationwide Guard, to quell pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia College and on different campuses throughout the nation that he mentioned had grown violent and antisemitic.
“There’s govt authority that will be acceptable,” Mr. Johnson mentioned throughout a information convention on the steps of Columbia’s Low Library, the place he was booed and heckled by some onlookers. “If these threats aren’t stopped, there’s an acceptable time for the Nationwide Guard. We have now to deliver order to those campuses.”
Various hard-right Republican lawmakers, together with Senators Tom Cotton of Arkansas and Josh Hawley of Missouri, have not too long ago known as for troops to be despatched in to crack down on pro-Palestinian protests on campus. Mr. Cotton did the identical in 2020 when he mentioned navy drive must be used to place down riots throughout the nation amid the civil unrest that adopted the demise of George Floyd, a Black man who was killed by the police in Minneapolis.
America has a grim historical past of using the navy to quell campus protests. In 1970, the Ohio Nationwide Guard opened hearth on antiwar protesters at Kent State College, killing 4 college students and wounding 9 others.
Organizers of most of the campus teams main protests across the nation have mentioned they denounce violence and antisemitism. However as tensions have risen in latest days, some demonstrators have used anti-Jewish and anti-Israel slurs and different threatening language, and a few have expressed sympathy for Hamas. In a single occasion, a masked protester shouted, “We’re Hamas. We’re all Hamas.” And in accordance with the campus Chabad at Columbia, Jewish college students have been verbally harassed with calls to “return to Europe” and “cease killing youngsters.”
Jewish college students on many campuses have reported feeling unsafe, whereas many pro-Palestinian protesters have mentioned they’re being lumped with threatening actors in an try and silence them.
Mr. Johnson, who’s battling a rise up on his proper, is the newest Republican to insert himself into the more and more tense cultural second unfolding on college campuses in response to the Israel-Gaza warfare in efforts to reap political benefit. Republicans have tried to make use of the battle, which is dividing progressives and posing a political drawback for Mr. Biden, to place the tutorial left on the spot and place themselves because the social gathering extra steadfast in its assist for Israel and anxious with the protection of Jews.
Mr. Johnson’s go to to campus got here days after the Home authorised $95 billion in overseas support for Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan, a transfer that put Mr. Johnson’s job on the road because the laborious proper, against backing Kyiv, revolted over the spending bundle.
On Wednesday, Mr. Johnson, who met with Jewish college students privately earlier than his information convention, seemed to be in search of a possibility to reclaim some conservative credibility and highlight a difficulty that unites his social gathering. He mentioned that Dr. Nemat Shafik, the college president whom he additionally met with briefly, ought to resign if she can not instantly get the scenario underneath management. He known as her a “very weak and inept chief.”
And he accused progressives of stoking antisemitism in America.
“Highly effective folks have refused to sentence it, and a few have even peddled it themselves,” he mentioned. Mr. Johnson mentioned that Congress wanted to “revoke federal funding to those universities if they will’t preserve management.”
Mr. Johnson’s temporary remarks had been interrupted by jeers from college students, together with one who known as him “racist.”
“Don’t lie about what’s occurring on campus!” one other shouted at him.
A big crowd assembled as Mr. Johnson spoke, constructing to a whole lot and at one level breaking into chant of “Free, Free Palestine!”
Mr. Johnson, trying perturbed by the interruptions, coolly responded: “Get pleasure from your free speech.”
He mentioned he was there “to proclaim to all of those that gnash their enamel and demand to wipe the state of Israel off the map, and assault our harmless Jewish college students, this straightforward fact: Neither Israel, nor these Jewish college students on campus, will ever stand alone.”
The mounting unrest on campuses has splintered Democrats who had been already divided over the battle, with many on the left expressing sympathy with the pro-Palestinian protests, which embrace some Jews. Others within the social gathering voice concern for Jewish college students experiencing a hostile setting at their colleges.
A gaggle of Home Democrats together with Representatives Josh Gottheimer of New Jersey, Dan Goldman of New York, Jared Moskowitz of Florida and Kathy Manning of North Carolina toured the Columbia campus with Jewish college students earlier this week and known as on the college to take stronger motion to guard them.
However Mr. Goldman additionally cautioned in opposition to calling for Dr. Shafik’s rapid resignation.
“It is extremely simple and really politically expedient to easily name for the resignation of anybody who doesn’t do precisely proper in each scenario,” he informed reporters.
Consultant Ilhan Omar, Democrat of Minnesota — whose daughter, a Barnard School scholar, was suspended final week for her involvement in a pro-Palestinian encampment at Columbia — appeared on Tuesday on the College of Minnesota to reward pro-Palestinian protesters there.
Consultant Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat of New York, known as the protests at Columbia “peaceable” and denounced a call by the college administration final week to name within the New York Metropolis police to arrest greater than 100 scholar protesters who had organized the encampment on a faculty garden and refused to depart.
The administration’s transfer got here a day after Dr. Shafik assured Congress throughout a heated listening to that Columbia was dedicated to taking severe motion in opposition to antisemitism on campus, together with by suspending college students and disciplining sure college members.
However the extraordinary step didn’t quell the calls from the precise for her resignation. And it solely enraged the scholars concerned within the protests.
Some Columbia college members have known as the college’s motion an “unprecedented assault on scholar rights.”
Mr. Johnson on Wednesday mentioned he had a easy message for the scholars concerned within the pro-Palestinian protests: “Return to class, and cease the nonsense,” he mentioned. “Cease losing your dad and mom’ cash.”
Liset Cruz contributed reporting.
