Photo by Gray Nocjar, The Observer
Introduction
The Journal of Higher Education warned just the other day, “Campus Protests Are Coming Back. Students and Administrators Are Digging In.” Indeed, Notre Dame’s new president, Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., has just issued a statement in which he declared the university’s openness to free speech on controversial issues but also put all on notice that the school’s rules respecting regulation of demonstrations will be enforced.
It is timely, therefore, to review what happened at Notre Dame during the past academic year respecting the Hamas/Israeli conflict. The short of it is that the university handled well the relatively small student demonstrations and accompanying arrests and that there was no reported antisemitism on campus; but that, on the other hand, Father Jenkins’s statements on the conflict were largely disquieting while faculty events and activities evidenced a pro-Palestinian tilt.
We begin with what Father Jenkins had to say.
Father Jenkins’s Statements
Shortly after Hamas’s murderous assault on unsuspecting civilians and Israel’s retaliatory bombing, Father Jenkins issued a remarkably limp statement. In a single sentence and with no mention of Hamas, he simply said he was “saddened by the outbreak of war” and deplored “the killing of non-combatants” — by both parties, for all one could tell.
Some seven weeks later after widespread criticism of belated and feeble statements from leaders of major universities, Father Jenkins joined a statement inspired by Yeshiva University that condemned Hamas. But the University did not publicize the statement as it had the earlier one. Rather it simply shared the statement on the school’s X-account, where it quickly disappeared under more recent posts.
Finally, last February Father Jenkins issued a statement calling for “an immediate, permanent ceasefire combined with the release of all hostages on both sides,” to be followed by “dialogue” by Israel and Hamas “in pursuit of a sustainable, peaceful settlement.”
He thereby adopted Hamas’s key demand “that Israel give an up-front commitment for a complete end to the war” without, however, citing the Church’s “just war” doctrine as his reason. He simply referred to news reports he had read and to Pope Francis’s gauzy aphorism “Nothing is solved by war.”
A singular, let us say, feature of the statement was Father Jenkins’s offer of Notre Dame’s “assistance and support” to Hamas and Israel in negotiations.
Campus Events
There have been faculty and student panel presentations on the conflict that have also leaned Palestinian.
The faculty panel, which was sponsored by the Kroc Institute, included a Palestinian student and a faculty member who participated in the first campus demonstration. While panelists condemned the Hamas attack, much of the discussion centered on setting the “context,” i.e., the alleged repression by Israel of Palestinians.
Experts affording a measured perspective were ready at hand, but none were included. See, e.g., Dr. Daniel Philpott’s discussion in The Irish Rover of the Hamas attack and the anti-Israel student response and also his analysis of the application of the Catholic Just War doctrine to the Israeli invasion.
As for the student panel, it is enough to say that it was sponsored by the university-sanctioned Student Voices for Palestine and Muslim Student Association of Notre Dame.
There have also been several minor pro-Palestinian vigils and demonstrations by relatively small groups of students, one of them outside the hall where Israeli philosopher Yoram Hazony delivered a lecture about antisemitism on university campuses and another outside the entrance of South Dining Hall where students drew 11,000 keys to commemorate the number of Palestinians killed in Gaza since Oct. 7.
Similarly, there has been a predictable increase in pro-Palestinian campus outreach through social media, fundraising, and movie screenings — mostly by Student Voices for Palestine.
There is, too, a Notre Dame chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine, but we could identify only two members through their signatures on a letter to the Observer. And there is a more active if shadowy group named OccupationFreeND that displays Pro-Palestinian material on Instagram and promotes an open letter to Fr Jenkins that has not yet surfaced with signatures.
Finally, It is worth mentioning that, prior to the current conflict, both the Kroc Institute, which staged the recent faculty panel described above, and the Ansari Institute, initially funded by local Muslim philanthropists and led by a former dean of faculty at a Muslim college, sponsored pro-Palestinian presentations. See here and here. The latter featured a faculty member who joined the first student demonstration which we recount next.
Demonstrations and Arrests
In these circumstances, it is unsurprising that student activists would mount more serious demonstrations. When they did, the University was prepared and acted decisively to maintain order. Whether the students will be sanctioned, however, remains in doubt.
The Notre Dame Observer has published here, here and here the fullest accounts of the two student demonstrations so far. Here’s a summary:
The first Demonstration
The first demonstration on Thursday evening April 25 was notable for the almost serio-comic image of a small number of demonstrators marching around campus for several hours, many wearing Palestinian headgear, waving Palestinian flags, and chanting anti-Israel slogans, while trailed by police and competing with fireworks at a nearby campus celebration for Father Jenkins.
Around 75 students and faculty participated. Both ND and South Bend police followed on foot and on golf carts and bicycles, with backups in parked cars. The police prevented the demonstrators from setting up tents, sometimes by force, but otherwise did not interfere.
The demonstrators demanded Notre Dame disinvest from industries that “facilitate the Gaza genocide and war crimes,” and they gave speeches, recited poetry, and chanted “From the river to the sea” and “Notre Dame you can’t hide, you’re condoning genocide.”
Except for minor kerfuffles over tents, the demonstration was peaceful, and the University allowed it to continue until It broke up shortly before midnight.
The Observer noted, “It was unclear why the University allowed the protest to continue despite its requirement that demonstrations be approved beforehand.”
The Second Demonstration
After a week, the students staged a confrontation that resulted in seventeen arrests for criminal trespass and three for resisting arrest.
The affair began with a meeting near Hammes bookstore at which leaders read a letter to Father Jenkins stating student demands. Then, rejecting school officials’ requests to disband, the group marched to the center of the campus, trailed by police while police drones with spotlights hovered overhead.
There, acceding to a student request, Provost John McGreevey and another faculty member met with demonstrators in a “torrential downpour.” Rejecting student demands, they said they were meeting, not negotiating. “Protestors were offended by what they felt was a lack of respect.”
Police then told the demonstrators they would be arrested if they didn’t disband. A number left, but ten graduate students, six undergraduate students, and one staff member “linked arms and sat in a circle.” Police thereupon handcuffed them and “carried or dragged” to police cars those who resisted.
All were charged with criminal trespass and three in addition with resisting arrest. Those three spent the night in jail but were released the next day when the resisting arrest charges were dropped.
Hearings on the charges are scheduled for later this month.
The University’s early brief statement simply reported that a “small group of individuals” had broken the rules about demonstrations on campus and that several had been arrested after repeated warnings.
After “hundreds of professors and faculty members” urged the university to drop all disciplinary charges against the students” and others criticized the police, Father Jenkins issued a more detailed — and welcome — statement. He commended the police for their “measured and appropriate action”; he underscored the importance of university rules designed to “ensure a peaceful and orderly campus“; and he declined to request dismissal of the trespass charges or to bar university disciplinary proceedings while at the same time saying he expected leniency in light of all the circumstances.
(Note: University disciplinary proceedings are confidential. Therefore, we are unlikely to know the outcomes.)
Conclusion
In a time of widespread strident, sometimes violent, student anti-Israel protests, faculty activists, and wobbly administrations, Notre Dame has fared rather well so far. The comparatively small demonstrations were closely monitored by police and ultimately put down, and the administration has made no concessions to student demands. The anti-Israel faculty and student voices have been heard but to little visible effect. Student antisemitism appears minimal. And Father Jenkins’s questionable statements have passed quietly into the archives.
But the new school year has opened, and Gaza and the Mideast are still aflame. Perhaps Father Dowd’s statement we cited at the outset foreshadows an even more rigorous application of the University’s rules of conduct.
Let us know what you think in the comment section below.
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Oremus
Good and gracious God, Your Son Jesus Christ loves us with an infinite love manifested to us by His suffering and death on the Cross.
On the Cross, His most Sacred Heart was pierced by the lance of a Roman soldier, a sign of the cruelty of man and the infinite love of the God-man who forgives even as He is wounded.
As we honor His pierced Heart, we acknowledge our own sins and failure to love Him as He deserves to be loved. We also make reparation to His Most Sacred Heart for all the sins, offenses, sacrileges, and blasphemies leveled against it.
In Him, every single human being—created male or female and in the image and likeness of Triune God—finds his or her true perfection. In Him, the original order and beauty of creation—marred by sin and rejected in prideful disobedience—is gloriously restored.
Grant that by our own own faithful obedience, humble witness, and fervent prayer we may honor, worship and praise His Most Sacred Heart that His grace may heal our troubled and sinful world.
We make our prayer through the same Sacred Heart of Jesus. Amen!
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