At famously loud Berkeley, pro-Palestinian protests have grown quieter
BERKELEY, California — The pro-Palestinian activism that exploded this spring at the famously liberal University of California, Berkeley has hit a lull ahead of the presidential election.
There is no trace of the sprawling tent protest that activists organized on a central campus plaza in April and May. Demonstrators can no longer block foot traffic on campus thoroughfares. And the rallies that do occur between classes rarely make front-page headlines.
Vice President Kamala Harris' ascension to the top of the Democratic ticket in July ignited a wave of support that washed out dissenting voices on the left when most student activists were off campus. Since then, the national movement has not been able to pressure Democrats with the same vigor that had President Joe Biden on the ropes earlier this year.
"It definitely is a different political moment," said Luca Dhagat, co-chair of the Young Democratic Socialists of America chapter at UC Berkeley, a group that has been involved in pro-Palestinian organizing at the university.
Neither former President Donald Trump nor Harris, who grew up in Berkeley, is centering the issue on the campaign trail, instead making their closing pitches about the economy, immigration and abortion. The war in Gaza ranks low among issues most important to voters, with 6 percent naming it their top concern in a Harvard University poll from mid-October.
Back on campus, tougher free-expression rules from university administrators and California state lawmakers have had a chilling effect on protests.
Dhagat drew a comparison to racial justice protests after the summer of 2020: "When we don't see much in terms of actual change or actual improvement, people get demoralized."
Pressure from above
University administrators' summertime push to ward off future encampments has made it harder to organize events that directly pressure campus leaders, multiple pro-Palestinian activists said, adding that it has also made many students fearful of facing disciplinary consequences.
Ashmitha Keshavan, an activist and sophomore at UC Berkeley, said organizers have hosted "literally hundreds" of rallies and have seen participation dwindle over time.
"People are burned out. They're tired," Keshavan added. "There's no safe option that could actually mean something."
The new rules at UC Berkeley reflect a wider encampment ban reinforced this summer across the university system's 10 campuses. They also prohibit protesters from blocking major corridors like the iconic Sather Gate, where pro-Palestinian activists impeded foot traffic for days this spring.
UC President Michael V. Drake said the policy update aimed to maintain "delicate but essential balance" between free speech rights and campus safety. "While the vast majority of protests held on our campuses are peaceful and nonviolent, some of the activities we saw this past year were not," he wrote in an August message to campuses .
State lawmakers that same month passed a suite of legislation designed to rein in Gaza protests and combat a rise in antisemitism on California's college campuses.
The measures, which Gov. Gavin Newsom signed in September , secured wide bipartisan support from lawmakers in Sacramento but drew opposition from the American Civil Liberties Union. In a letter to legislators earlier this year, the civil liberties group argued changing university codes of conduct would "only serve to chill the speech of students."
The ongoing movement
Pro-Palestinian protests at UC Berkeley this fall have been less disruptive to university operations. But they haven't been free from controversy.
A coalition of student groups hosted an Oct. 8 walkout outside Sproul Hall to support Gaza and Lebanon that attracted hundreds of supporters as well as a smaller counterprotest. A handful of signs at the event contained rhetoric endorsing violence, according to footage taken by NBC Bay Area and a report from student newspaper The Daily Californian — including one that read "Israel Deserves 10,000 Oct 7ths."
Rich Lyons, UC Berkeley's new chancellor, said in a video message shared with campus last week he was "deeply concerned" about the signs as well as reports of threats made toward protesters.
"Normalization of violent rhetoric only brings us closer to actual violence, which is the antithesis of all that we stand for," he said.
Matt Kovac, spokesperson for the UC Berkeley chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, in a statement to POLITICO called the debate over the sign "UC Berkeley's latest effort to divert attention from its complicity in the escalating US-Israeli genocide."
"We are talking about tens of thousands of Palestinians being starved in Gaza and they want to talk about ... a sign," Kovac wrote.
Kovac said activists at Berkeley have shifted their efforts more toward localized policy goals — in particular, divesting campus endowment funds from companies involved with Israel or the weapons manufacturing industry. The UC Board of Regents previously supported divestment resolutions related to the 2006 war in Sudan and South African apartheid , and in 2020 became the largest educational institution in the country to fully divest from fossil fuels , following a lengthy, student-led pressure campaign.
Pro-Palestinian activists have seen limited success on that front. The UC Berkeley Foundation, which manages the campus's endowments, established a task force to examine whether its investments follow existing ethics principles, an idea that former Chancellor Carol Christ backed in May . Activists gained additional traction in October, when UC Berkeley's student Senate voted to join a coalition of campus groups demanding UC schools divest campus endowment funds from weapons manufacturers.
"This is important," Kovac said. "It's bolstering our case that this is the consensus on campus."
Yet it's unlikely either step will result in foundation leaders fully agreeing to protesters' demands. Christ did not agree to discuss divestment from companies based solely on connections to Israel, for example, and the task force has yet to issue recommendations.
