Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reflected on how students at Columbia University, where she teaches, “transformed” from having “respectful” conversations about the Israeli war to “nasty” protests against the country that she described as “not student-led.”
“We basically sat down for about 45 to 50 minutes and answered questions. The questions were really raw. We had students from Palestine. We had students from Israel. We had students from all over the Middle East. We had students from Asia and of course other parts of the world, and they were struggling to understand what it all meant. But it was a respectful, informative, open dialogue. And at the end of the dialogue, the students literally erupted in applause,” Clinton told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview that aired Sunday morning about a class she taught as war broke out in Israel last year.
Clinton co-taught a politics course at Columbia University called “Inside the Situation Room,” and spoke with students on the Wednesday following Oct. 7, the day Hamas launched attacks on Israel that sparked the ongoing war. Clinton said that after the “open dialogue” on campus, she “witnessed a shift in discourse on campus that was not student-driven.”
“Within a few days, we were hosting the event and we started getting protests. The dean, myself and our guests were yelled at and called all sorts of names. What happened during that time? The best explanation I can give is that there were already groups around the country, and especially on certain campuses like Columbia, that were planning protests and disruptions. And I watched it change from being student-led to being externally funded and directed, even though students were involved,” she said.
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Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks during a panel at the Vital Voices Global Festival in Washington, DC on May 5, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Clinton added that “to this day” she still doesn't know how outside funding or influence led college students to take part in anti-Israel protests.
2023-24 College YearAgitators and student demonstrators flooded university campuses across the country to protest the Israeli war, and incidents of anti-Semitism soared, with Jewish students publicly stating that they did not feel safe on some campuses.
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Pro-Palestinian supporters hold a protest rally on the Columbia University campus in New York City on April 29, 2024. (Spencer Pratt/Getty Images)
On the Columbia University campus, for example, protesters occupied the school's Hamilton Hall building, while UCLA, Harvard, Yale and other universities worked to remove student camps where protesters gathered to demand that the elite schools completely divest from Israel.
The former secretary of state also said that when confronting university students about their anti-Israel views, they failed to understand the historical context surrounding Israeli and Middle Eastern politics.
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Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks onstage during the launch event for her book, “Something Lost, Something Gained,” at the Dolby Theater on September 20, 2024 in Los Angeles. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)
“A lot of videos on social media were conveying not only one side of the conflict but a completely anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, pro-Palestinian view. For me, that was disastrous because I have formed my opinions over the years. I am willing to sit down and discuss with anyone, but it's difficult to discuss with people who have strong opinions that are not based on facts or history,” she said.
“When I tried to speak to students, not just at Columbia but elsewhere, I was met with slogans, attacks and very inflammatory language. I said, 'So do you know what happened at Camp David in 2000?' and they said, 'No.' I said, 'Do you know what happened in 1947?' and they said, 'No.' I said, 'Do you know how difficult relations were?' and they said, 'No.' I said, 'Do you know that there are Arab Israelis, some of whom are in the IDF?' and I got no answers. And then this constant 'from the river to the sea'. What does that mean? Which river, which sea? That bothered me,” Clinton said.
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Clinton said that so far this year, it has been “a much quieter, much more educational environment.”
Hillary Clinton and Fareed Zakaria speak at the 10th annual Women in the World Summit at the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on April 12, 2019 in New York City. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images)
She condemned the harassment of Jewish students on university campuses, saying the atmosphere had quickly shifted from “legitimate” dialogue between students opposed to the country's foreign policy to blatant anti-Semitism.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators protest against the war between Israel and Hamas at the University of Wisconsin Maron Library in Madison, Wisconsin, April 29, 2024. (Getty Images)
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“This was yelling at Jewish students and preventing them from participating in classes and clubs. It was awful. There were other very disturbing things going on here. And we now see evidence of clear foreign funding, foreign influence and TikTok's algorithms that have been anti-Israel from the beginning. So I think universities have an obligation, of course, to protect free speech, but also to protect students from harassment and behavior that disrupts their learning,” she said.
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