Watch: University protests and Palestine – the exam questions Biden can’t get right

In New York, Los Angeles, Texas and everywhere in between, campuses have been seized by demonstrations in support of Palestine.

Police have moved in to dismantle a sit-in protest at Columbia, and clashed with Gaza protesters in California.

The protests have created a crisis for university administrators, who have been faced with demands that their institutions divest from companies linked to Israel, cancel planned projects with Israeli universities, and condemn what the protesters describe as “genocide” in Gaza.

They have also been faced with a surge of anti-Semitic hate speech, the targeting of Jewish students and some support for the October 7 attacks.

For those in charge of these elite institutions, dealing with these protests is a delicate balancing act between safeguarding free speech on campus – a major talking point for the political Right – and protecting students and their studies from threats and disruption.

President caught in crossfire

One of those caught in the crossfire is Baroness Shafik, the president of Columbia University.

Lady Shafik is a former Whitehall mandarin and deputy governor of the Bank of England, so she is no stranger to fierce debates about foreign policy.

But her university has become the centre of the global student uprising over Gaza. After she threatened students who refused to leave a tent encampment with suspension, they barricaded themselves into a university building and had to be removed by the NYPD.

She says she had no choice but to involve the police because the protesters were breaking the law – but she is already being accused by the students of being a dictator and of siding with Israel over the war.

At the University of Texas, UCLA and others, administrators have taken a zero-tolerance approach, sending in the police far earlier and forcibly removing protesters who refuse to leave.

Comparisons with 1968

Of course, American students running protests is hardly a new phenomenon. The Gaza encampments are already being compared to some of the biggest campus demonstrations of all time, over the Vietnam war in 1968 and apartheid South Africa in the 1980s.

The protesters claim they are on the right side of history, and hope that their encampments will do more than change university policy – they want to send a message to the White House.

Headache for Biden

The lead-up to the next presidential election in November has already been dominated by debates about the crisis in the Middle East, and Joe Biden’s support for Israel after Hamas launched its terror attack on October 7.

Mr Biden is losing support among some young liberals who are generally a core demographic for the Democrats in a general election.

The president has been tough on the protesters so far – accusing them of hate speech and of spreading anti-Semitism.

Other Democrats, including Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, have said police will continue to break up demonstrations that cross the line between peaceful protest and mob rule on campus.

Donald Trump, Mr Biden’s opponent in November, has blamed the White House for allowing students to become “radicalised”.

Obviously, Gaza is a long way from the US and many voters may not have given much thought to the war when thinking about which way they will vote. But for a lot of people here, these protests have turned it into a live political issue – for which some think Mr Biden is responsible.

What comes next

The university officials I have spoken to are desperately hoping to get to the end of this academic year, and graduation ceremonies, without this situation getting worse.

The consensus seems to be that the only way these protests will end is if there is a ceasefire in the Middle East that ends Israel’s bombardment of Gaza.

In the meantime, students are soon heading home for the summer, and some are expected to take their protests to the Democratic national convention in Chicago in August.

After that, they could return to campuses with renewed vigour, just in time for the presidential election.

The students are digging in their heels. They’re asking an exam question that Biden probably feels he’ll never be able to answer correctly.

The election deadline is looming and the anxiety dreams are getting worse.

This isn’t going away anytime soon.