Juan Cole: Israel, Gaza and Campus Protests, Part I Sea Change Radio

Pro-Palestinian student protests are erupting on college campuses all over the country, often resulting in aggressive responses from local law enforcement. This week on Sea Change Radio, the first half of our two-part discussion with noted Michigan University history professor and Middle East scholar, Juan Cole. We look at the Israeli attacks on Gaza, discuss the unrest it has caused on campuses around this country, and examine how the right-wing parties in both the US and Israel are trying to leverage the conflict to their own benefit.

Narrator | 00:02 - This is Sea Change Radio, covering the shift to sustainability. I'm Alex Wise.

Juan Cole (JC) | 00:19 - So they're weaponizing their position in Congress to attack, uh, the university presidents, and also they're in some ways in cahoots then with some of these very wealthy donors who are also donors to their campaigns, to use their political position to curb freedom of speech for Americans.

Narrator | 00:40 - Pro-Palestinian student protests are erupting on college campuses all over the country, often resulting in aggressive responses from local law enforcement. This week on Sea Change Radio, the first half of our two-part discussion with noted Michigan University history professor and Middle East scholar, Juan Cole. We look at the Israeli attacks on Gaza, discuss the unrest it has caused on campuses around this country, and examine how the right-wing parties in both the US and Israel are trying to leverage the conflict to their own benefit.

Alex Wise (AW) | 02:25 - I am joined now on Sea Change Radio by Juan Cole. Juan is a professor of history at the University of Michigan. Juan, welcome back to Sea Change Radio.

Juan Cole (JC) | 01:36 - Thank you so much.

Alex Wise (AW) | 01:38 - I've really wanted to speak to you for quite some time. I wanted to get your perspective on the college protests that are stemming from the Israeli Hamas conflict. First, why don't you, if you can summarize these college protests and, and it's a tough question because there's a wide range of not only the scope of these protests, but on the clampdowns from campus to campus, but maybe for people who haven't really been following in that closely, kind of fill them in on what's been happening around the country in the last month or so.

Juan Cole (JC) | 02:11 - The protests are a response by these undergraduates, mainly undergraduates, to the ongoing Israeli military campaign against Gaza. I think the young people on campus are, are living this war in a way that their elders are not. They've seen the war unfold daily on their phones. They see the horrible clips of wounded, civilians, displaced people, health problems, uh, that have been imposed by the war, on TikTok, on, uh, on Instagram and, and so forth. They follow news clips on BBC and so forth. And the elders don't, I mean CNN and other major US cable news outfits, you couldn't accuse them of ignoring the war, but they haven't covered it intensively. I watch a lot of cable news, and as far as I can tell these days, it's all about Trump's trials and these inside the beltway panels that discuss things endlessly, you don't see very much news from the front.

Alex Wise (AW) | 03:22 - It's expensive to cover. It's a lot cheaper to just have a panel of people talking about Trump. 

JC | 03:27 - It's for their bottom line. Also, you know, the, the corporate news is selling advertising. I mean, it's selling us toilet paper and fast food. And you have to wonder whether scenes of, uh, wounded babies covered in flies from Gaza is, is actually going to, uh, is help their bottom line. And, uh, I think there are a lot of reasons for which they simply haven't covered this, uh, story in any intensive way. And of course, they can't with their own reporters. And that's another, uh, problem for them is, is a news organization. You get caught, you know, sometimes if you depend on somebody else's feed,