Biden keeps quiet as Gaza protesters and police clash on college campuses
WASHINGTON — President Joe Biden remains silent on student protests and police action, while Republicans try to turn campus unrest over the war in Gaza into a campaign cudgel against Democrats.
Tensions have been rising at colleges and universities for days as some protesters refuse to remove encampments and administrators turn to police to forcibly clear them, sparking clashes that have captured the attention of politicians and the media.
But Biden’s last public comment came more than a week ago, when he condemned “anti-Semitic protests” and “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
The White House, peppered with questions by reporters, has gone only slightly further than the president. On Wednesday, press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden was “monitoring the situation closely,” and she said some demonstrations had crossed a line separating free speech from unlawful behavior.
“Taking over a building by force,” like what happened at Columbia University in New York, “is not peaceful,” she said. “It’s just not that.”
Biden has never protested much. His career in elected office began as a county official when he was just 28 years old, and he has always embraced the political importance of compromise over zeal.
As college campuses shook with anger over the Vietnam War in 1968, Biden was studying law at Syracuse University.
“I’m not really into body armor and tie-dye shirts,” he said years later. “You know, I’m not.”
Despite White House criticism and Biden’s refusal to heed protesters’ demands to end US support for Israel, Republicans blame Democrats for the disorder and have used it as a backdrop for press conferences used.
“We need the president of the United States to speak on the issue and say this is wrong,” House Speaker Mike Johnson, a Republican from Louisiana, said Tuesday. “What is happening on college campuses now is wrong.”
Johnson visited Columbia last week with other members of his caucus. Republicans in the House of Representatives sparred with protesters Wednesday as they spoke to the media at George Washington University in Washington, DC.
Former President Donald Trump, his party’s presumptive nominee, also criticized Biden in an interview with Sean Hannity on Fox News.
“Biden has to do something,” he said. “Biden is supposed to be the voice of our country, and that’s certainly not a big voice. It is a voice that no one has heard.”
He repeated his criticism Wednesday at a campaign event in Waukesha, Wisconsin.
“The radical extremists and far-left agitators are terrorizing college campuses, as you may have noticed,” Trump said. “And Biden is nowhere to be seen. He didn’t say anything.”
Kate Berner, who served as deputy communications director for Biden’s campaign in 2020, said Republicans already tried the same tactic four years ago during protests over the killing of George Floyd by a police officer.
“People rejected that,” she said. “They saw that it was just fear-mongering. They saw that it was not based on reality.”
Beyond condemning anti-Semitism, the White House has been reluctant to engage directly with the issue.
Jean-Pierre repeatedly rejected questions during a briefing on Monday.
When asked whether protesters should be disciplined by their schools, she said that “universities and colleges make their own decisions” and “we are not going to intervene from here.”
When she asked whether the police should be involved, she said: “That is up to the colleges and universities.”
When asked about administrators rescheduling graduations, she said “that’s a decision they have to make” and “that’s up to them.”
Biden will make his own visit to a college campus on May 19, when he will deliver the commencement address at Morehouse University in Atlanta.
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Associated Press writer Adriana Gomez Licon in Miami contributed to this report.