Biden tackles campus protests, deplores 'chaos'

President Joe Biden talks and gesticulates

These may be the biggest campus protests "in the United States, in the 21st century," NYU social scientist Robert Cohen said to The Associated Press

(Image credit: Peter Zay / Anadolu via Getty Images)

By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US

published 3 May 2024

What happened

President Joe Biden offered his first public remarks Thursday on the ongoing college campus protests over Israel's war in Gaza, striking a balance between safeguarding free speech and deploring unlawful behavior. Biden's unscheduled remarks followed days of criticism over his relative silence as hundreds of students have been arrested during increasingly fraught, and occasionally violent, confrontations with police and counterdemonstrators.

Students have a "right to protest but not a right to cause chaos," Biden said. The protests, along with what many have seen as heavy-handed responses from universities and local law enforcement, "put to the test two fundamental American principles": free speech rights and the rule of law. "Both must be upheld," he said.

Biden also rejected Republican calls to send in National Guard troops to quell the unrest. Some Democrats had been "frustrated" by Biden's "reluctance to speak out" and "pressed him to publicly address the campus uprisings," The New York Times said. Biden has "walked a careful line of denouncing antisemitism while supporting young Americans' right to protest and trying to limit longer-term political damage," Reuters said.

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Rafi Schwartz has worked as a politics writer at The Week since 2022, where he covers elections, Congress and the White House. He was previously a contributing writer with Mic focusing largely on politics, a senior writer with Splinter News, a staff writer for Fusion's news lab, and the managing editor of Heeb Magazine, a Jewish life and culture publication. Rafi's work has appeared in Rolling Stone, GOOD and The Forward, among others.