Will College Protests Over the Gaza War Matter in the Election?

Republicans tied campus unrest to their party platform. But the intensity may have fizzled.

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Colleges have rolled out new rules to mute the demonstrations that made headlines last school year, but protesters have vowed to keep at it nevertheless.

Good evening! College students are returning to campus, and with them comes the potential for new campus protests. Alan Blinder, who covers higher education for The Times, takes a look at a big question that could shape the weeks between now and Election Day. — Jess Bidgood

By Alan Blinder

Campus protests over the war in Gaza made headlines last school year, helping topple college presidents and giving Republicans an opening to portray Democrats as weak and accuse academics of doing too little to stop antisemitism.

That has injected back-to-school season with a little more political tension than usual. Republicans pledged in their party platform to make campuses “safe and patriotic again,” and they may be hoping that new scenes of chaos on campus can help them blunt Democratic momentum after a summer of political upheaval.

It’s far from clear, however, that protests will return this fall with the same intensity of the spring, or how much attention voters will pay if they do.

I cover higher education for The New York Times, and reported extensively on the campus protests and their fallout, which spurred testy hearings on Capitol Hill and even became fodder for “Saturday Night Live.”

Tonight, I’m taking a look at why this fall might feel different from the last academic year — and why political strategists on both sides of the partisan divide doubt that protests and the Republican attacks on universities that have come with them will significantly sway voters.

“Republicans have developed the theory or something that higher education is the gateway drug to socialism, and I’ve never thought that was very powerful,” said Stuart Stevens, a top strategist for the 2012 Republican presidential campaign of Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor who is now a senator from Utah.

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