Column: Campus protests about humanity, aloha

As a college professor working with students for decades, it’s no mystery to me why university students across the U.S. are occupying tented camps on campuses: It’s about aloha.

These protests are not pro-Hamas or anti-Jews. The overwhelming majority of the on-campus students involved in these university protests are neither “terrorists” nor antisemitic. In fact, Jewish students are abundant and central within these protests, as are Muslim and Christian student protesters. It’s not about religion, it’s about having empathy and respect for our common humanity.

Students know that, according to a Gallup poll released on March 27, at least 55% of the U.S. population disagrees with the U.S. government’s position on Gaza, while only 36% of Americans agree. The remaining 9% are undecided. Students are well aware of a gap between what the majority of U.S. citizens are asking for and what the executive and legislative powers at the top are actually doing in the name of the United States. Students see a glaring disparity between a democratic ideal “of, by and for the people” and one that appears to be more “of, by and for the supply and indiscriminate use of weapons of mass destruction.”

Although certain right-wing media outlets are unrelentingly and sensationally attempting to have us believe otherwise, ugly taunts and nasty handwritten signs are primarily from deliberate troublemakers on the streets, not from organized university protesters.

The hearts of our nation’s young university students have been powerfully stirred for more than a half year, first by the massacre of Oct. 7, and then through witnessing on social media what’s been going on in Gaza and the West Bank ever since. As Palestinian children and their mothers, fathers and grandparents are killed daily, students’ hearts go out to these civilians they cannot help. For seven months students have felt saddened, helpless, frustrated and powerless, a textbook case of alienation due to not feeling heard, not being taken seriously, not being able to affect their government’s policy.

Their consciences have impelled them to dramatic peaceful action. What other alternative do they see before them? They feel called to take peaceful public action, hopefully to have their voices heard by an intransigent government.

Empathy and compassion are universal human capacities worth holding high, and have traditionally been cast as the “soul” of an authentic democracy. Today’s university students see their government as acting from a militaristic mentality that kills not only innocent human beings, but democracy’s soul. They are speaking out through the only channels they see as being available to them in order to be heard.

These students are not “terrorists,” they are not “haters” (though they themselves are hated by many). They also represent a vastly larger group of working U.S. citizens who are not being heard by their government, and who are seeking enforcement of existing national and international laws and policies mandating respect for human decency.

Ronald D. Gordon is a professor of communication at the University of Hawaii-Hilo.