In Defense of Woke Zoomers

Campus protest and the circuitous path toward political maturity

A protestor at Columbia University waves a Palestinian flag through the bars. Photo by Wikimedia Commons.

I’ve been meaning to write this piece for a while. I just didn’t know how or when.

John McWhorter

’s op-ed, published this week in The New York Times, was the motivation I needed to finally put pen to paper.

Entitled, “I’m a Columbia Professor. The Protests on My Campus Are Not Justice,” McWhorter’s op-ed is emblematic of a particular ideological current in the domestic political conflict surrounding Israel’s war on Gaza. This ideological current can be broadly characterized as center-right, anti-woke, and pro-free speech. Many of its prominent representatives are close to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), an organization which I have supported and written about here on Handful of Earth. Besides McWhorter, other prominent public intellectuals in this current include

Jonathan Haidt

,

Coleman Hughes

,

Bari Weiss

, and

Batya Ungar-Sargon

.

In his op-ed, McWhorter argues that the anti-war protests at Columbia University are “beyond what anyone should be expected to bear up under regardless of their whiteness, privilege or power.” He writes: “I presume that the protesters will continue throughout the two main days of graduation, besmirching one of the most special days of thousands of graduates’ lives in the name of calling down the ‘imperialist’ war abroad.” McWhorter concludes his piece by arguing that “What began as intelligent protest has become, in its uncompromising fury and its ceaselessness, a form of abuse.”

There are two core issues at stake in McWhorter’s op-ed. The first is his perspective on the war in Gaza itself. The second is his analysis of the anti-war demonstrations in the United States and the political psychology of the young activists spearheading these protests.

I am most interested in the second issue, but will briefly address the first, since it is, in many ways, the elephant in the room when McWhorter and his ilk weigh in on discussions and debates about Israel and Palestine. By putting words like “imperialist” in scare quotes and stating that his issue with Israel’s assault on Gaza is strategic or tactical rather than moral or political (the war is “no longer constructive or even coherent,” to quote from the op-ed), McWhorter firmly positions himself on the side of broader American-Israeli interests and actions in the region. Reading his op-ed, one is also left with the impression that the Columbia University protests consist of random acts of outrage against a foreign actor halfway across the globe. This is a disingenuous position. It is abundantly clear that the demonstrations at Columbia and elsewhere are directly opposed to American funding and arming of Israel’s war.

Protestors at Columbia University fly a Palestinian flag and raise signs with the slogans “Ceasefire Now. Let Gaza Live!” and “Fund the Bronx, Not War!” Photo by Wikimedia Commons.

Much more could be said about McWhorter’s passing comments on the substance of the conflict. Suffice it to say that his problem with the campus protests is not simply about the form that they take, but also about the fact that they directly challenge his deeply held—and emotionally-charged—view of the conflict. Despite the definitional questions that he gestures to in the piece, one has to perform an involved routine of mental gymnastics not to describe what is happening in Gaza as a genocide. Whatever we choose to call “it,” the facts are not kind to McWhorter’s sanitized view of the ongoing Israeli war on Palestine. 

Let me now turn to the second issue at stake in McWhorter’s op-ed. This is the issue that I’ve been meaning to write about for some time, but have found it nearly impossible to do so. Just to think about it makes me feel more “politically homeless” than I already do as a CEIS.

McWhorter, along with the other public intellectuals mentioned in the opening of this piece, has been a strident critic of (for lack of a better term) “woke” politics on American college and university campuses. I agree with many of his critiques of campus identity politics. He states in this week’s op-ed that “the single-mindedness of antiracist academic culture” coupled with the “the influence of iPhones and social media, which inherently encourage a more heightened degree of performance” have set the tone for the demonstrations at Columbia. While I am not currently on an American campus myself to see this in action, I am well-acquainted with the PEIS political personality type and find McWhorter’s analysis highly plausible.

I believe that McWhorter and similar critics of the campus demonstrations are, in fact, correct about the ideological allegiances and psychological compulsions of a significant segment of the protestors. The combination of Ibram X. Kendi-style “antiracism” and generalized American white guilt with a healthy dose of petite bourgeois moralism and the ever-alluring dopamine hit of social media activism that drove much of the Black Lives Matter movement is very much at play in the protests at Columbia and other campuses. Moreover, it’s not hard to imagine many of the same masked pro-Palestine protestors shouting down covid dissidents as “anti-vaxxers,” “fascists,” “eugenicists” and “white supremacists” just a couple years back.

I have been canceled by many of my peers over disagreements on topics like BLM and covid. Many of these same people are now vocal supporters of the Palestinian cause. I have no personal affinity with these new self-styled “pro-Palestinian” campus activists. Many of them, at best, want nothing to do with me and, at worst, are actively hostile on a personal and political level. Yet I still believe that McWhorter is wrong to condemn these protestors, and even more mistaken to describe the protests themselves as “a form of abuse.”

I stand by this conviction for three reasons.

First, on a purely political level, there is a categorical difference between slogans like “Defund the Police” and “Ceasefire Now.” “Defund the Police!” was an extremely unpopular slogan that clearly emanated from the deracinated recesses of the liberal arts seminar room. “Ceasefire Now,” on the other hand, resonates with a broad section of the American people who want peace and an America First foreign policy.

“Defund the Police” was never a feasible political demand and was, therefore, never treated as a serious threat by the ruling class. In contrast, “Ceasefire Now” poses a direct challenge to the American war machine and, thus, pits the protestors against some of the deepest of deep state interests. For many of these protestors (especially the Gen Z ones who dominate campus demonstrations) this is the first time that their political activism has put them at loggerheads with the citadels of power in the United States. Their earlier obsession with issues like racial microaggressions, gender identity, and mental health services was often actively encouraged by campus administrators and the progressive face of American imperialism. Despite the broader political immaturity of many of the protestors, the fact that they are being substantively political for the first time cannot be overlooked and, in my view, should be actively commended.  

Second, I believe that generosity must be a primary tenet of any serious politics. In an America that is arguably more polarized than ever, we simply cannot afford to write people off out of spite. Despite my disagreements with the MAGA movement on issues such as the urgency of the ecological crisis and the need to heal America’s racial wounds, I have consistently endeavored to give the benefit of the doubt to Trump supporters. See, for example my article from July 2016, entitled “I Ain’t Afraid of No Trump,” and my 2021 book review, “Populism, Political Realignment, and the Professional-Managerial Class,” among other writings.

The current wave of campus anti-war protests, like the MAGA movement, undoubtedly has its fair share of distasteful characters. More to the point, the views of many of these protestors on issues other than the Israeli–Palestinian conflict do not align with my own, to say the least. However, this is not a reason in and of itself to attack the protests in the way that McWhorter does in his New York Times op-ed. Indeed, McWhorter’s rhetorical shadowboxing feels more like an ideological proxy war with woke campus politics than it does a serious engagement with the very real foreign policy and free speech issues at stake in the current domestic debate on Israel and Palestine.

McWhorter is quick to invoke the supposed need to protect his Jewish students from the anti-war protestors, but seems to have little interest in engaging with the ethical insights of the Jewish tradition itself. As I have argued previously on Handful of Earth, we ought to take the Jewish theological claim seriously that “the world is built on gratuitous kindness.” Extending political generosity to “the other” is a moral imperative within this framework, an imperative that McWhorter rejects in his blinkered view of the conflict.

Third, I believe that certain lessons can only be learned by doing. No protest movement is perfect. The most important question is whether the core or essence of the movement is redeemable. I don’t believe that the current campus protests themselves can be explained away entirely as a motley crew of woke Zoomers acting out their confused academic theories and personal guilt complexes for the social media stage. I suspect that many of the protestors are also acting out of a sincere response of shock to the sheer brutality of the Israeli regime and the feeling of horror that the United States government is making this level of inhumanity possible.

McWhorter claims that Columbia University protestors aim to “all but shut down campus life” and have attempted to “block traffic” on College Avenue. Assuming his reports are reliable, I suspect that this approach will make the protestors more enemies than friends in the long run. But oftentimes it takes the experience of actually engaging in these kinds of tactics to understand their limitations.  

I’ve been there myself. In one of the more embarrassing episodes from the leftist adventurism of my late teens and early twenties, I blocked traffic in Delhi, India (of all places) during a protest in solidarity with the initial wave of the Black Lives Matter movement in 2014. I doubt that anyone whose day was inconvenienced by this brief political stunt even knew what the demonstration was about. But that experience and the feeling of regret that followed it after I became more politically educated instilled in me a visceral understanding of the follies of ideologically and psychologically immature activism. While one doesn’t always have to learn by doing, the lessons learned from personal experience often have a staying power that vastly exceeds abstract theory.

The author at a protest in solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement. Delhi, 2014. Photo by Scroll.

While writing this piece, I dug up the text of a speech I had given at the same protest. These two paragraphs stood out to me:

Obama is on the side of capital and supports the protection of private property against the uprisings in the US. Obama also supports the racist settler colonial state of Israel and its genocidal violence against Palestine. Furthermore, he has bolstered global white supremacy through the bombing of Libya, the arming of right-wing terrorists in Syria, and the recolonization of Africa through the US military’s AFRICOM program.  

The enforcement of US white supremacy is not limited to the domestic sphere; it is central to the international reactionary force of US imperialism. We must see Michael Brown in the dead bodies of the Obama administration’s drone warfare victims and in the wake of the rampages of so-called US “globalization.”

Could I have provided airtight definitions of “settler colonialism,” “genocide,” “terrorism,” “white supremacy,” “colonization,” or “imperialism” as a 21-year-old student activist? Probably not. But behind the immaturity of my bombastic rhetoric was a sincerely held moral and political conviction. This was the conviction that eventually led me on a circuitous path toward political maturity. There have been many detours and dead ends along the way, but the core sentiment behind my involvement in this protest has been an indispensable anchor and guide for my subsequent political growth.  

I see myself in the woke Zoomers leading campus anti-war protests in the United States. Even if most of them would bristle at being associated with me today, I am willing to look past this because I believe that at least some of them are in it for the right reasons. I hope that they will use these formative political experiences of their late teens and early twenties as life lessons.

McWhorter laments the “the trap of the overprotected childhood” in another column at The New York Times. Now he believes that his Jewish students should be shielded from the sounds of chants that they may find triggering and that the chanting students themselves are engaging in a “form of abuse.” Apparently the overprotected childhood must now give way to the overprotected young adulthood.   

The last thing these protestors need is another paternalistic lecture from the likes of John McWhorter. While I’m sure I would prefer McWhorter’s company at dinner over a table full of woke Zoomers, I will still defend the woke Zoomers against McWhorter’s attacks. Only when young people have the freedom to act politically can they embark on the circuitous journey toward political maturity.