From New England to Southern California, students are engaging in a polarizing bid to protect their anonymity even as they demand universities and governments be held to account.
Hundreds of students outside the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on the campus of UCLA in Los Angeles on Wednesday May 1, 2024. Over the past week, Fabiola, a sophomore at Columbia, joined an encampment on her university’s quad, risked suspension and disrupted campus life, all in an effort to draw attention to the Palestinian cause.
A bloodied pro-Palestinian protester is given aid after he was beated by counter-protesters at the protest encampment on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles early Wednesday morning, May 1, 2024. Administrators called in law enforcement officers after violent clashes broke out, a university official said early Wednesday. CHP officers in riot gear took down a pro-Palestinian encampment on the UCLA campus early Thursday morning in Westwood on May 2, 2024.
CHP officers in riot gear took down a pro-Palestinian encampment on the UCLA campus early Thursday morning in Westwood on May 2, 2024. A dispersal order was issued Wednesday evening and by 3:30 a.m. Thursday, officers advanced on the encampment. Hundreds of students outside the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on the campus of UCLA in Los Angeles on Wednesday May 1, 2024.
Los Angeles, CA – May 01: A man dances around with a flag from the state of Israel, as people surround him outside, the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on the campus of UCLA in Los Angeles on Wednesday May 1, 2024. An injured person gets help at a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA late Tuesday, April 30, 2024, in Los Angeles. Dueling groups of protesters clashed at the University of California, Los Angeles, grappling in fistfights and shoving, kicking and using sticks to beat one another.
In interviews, a dozen student demonstrators across the country cited the risk of being doxxed by pro-Israel groups accusing them of antisemitism, featured by news media or captured in viral videos. Several were intimately familiar with the torrent of online harassment, rescinded job offers and death threats that can follow. A small number also profess concerns about viruses spreading in close quarters.
And yet, on campuses already rife with tension over the Israel-Hamas war, sympathy only goes so far among fellow students and university leaders trying to restore order. Some Jewish students fear the anonymity is giving dangerous new license to protests that have already been pocked by antisemitism. Others have likened the appearance of some male protesters, who wrap kaffiyehs or other scarves around their heads so that only their eyes are exposed, to members of Hamas or the Klan.
“On the one hand, I can empathize,” said Michael Kazin, a historian of social movements and politics at Georgetown University, who was hit with a police billy club as an anti-war protest leader at Harvard in 1969. Other campus protesters in his generation were shot by the National Guard, or lost deferments from the draft to fight in Vietnam because of their activism.
“In the moment, it’s always hard to take these kinds of stands,” he said. “They wouldn’t be significant if they weren’t difficult, and they wouldn’t be difficult if they weren’t significant.”Though it’s impossible to know how employers might view the protests in years to come, being kicked out of school or branded an antisemite on high-profile websites could stick with student activists for decades.
Beyond masking, protest organizers have taken other steps to try to protect participants and tightly control their message in news reports and on their own social media accounts. “Be conscientious; you do not want to risk the possibility of hurting your comrades and yourself,” it read.
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