Data Analysis Confirms That Anti-Israel Protests “are overwhelmingly an elite college phenomenon”
Nate Silver re Washington Monthly protest data analysis: “Of course the stereotype was that these protests were concentrated at expensive elite colleges but I didn’t realize the rather extreme extent to which that’s actually true.”
The anti-Israel, anti-American, anti-western, anti-capitalist, pro-Hamas, ‘by any means necessary’ campus protests and Tentifadas are not a working class movement.
But you knew that, because we have covered dozens of these protests and even casual observations reflect that, with some exceptions, this is a movement of elite kids at elite schools. Those casual observations are substantiated by a deep analysis by the lefty Washington Monthly (WM).
Nate Silver comments on the WM analysis:
“Of course the stereotype was that these protests were concentrated at expensive elite colleges but I didn’t realize the rather extreme extent to which that’s actually true.”
Of course the stereotype was that these protests were concentrated at expensive elite colleges but I didn't realize the rather extreme extent to which that's actually true. https://t.co/WwykjT2gj1
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) May 24, 2024
From the Washington Monthly analysis, Are Gaza Protests Happening Mostly at Elite Colleges?
We at the Washington Monthly tried to get to the bottom of this question: Have pro-Palestinian protests taken place disproportionately at elite colleges, where few students come from lower-income families?
The answer is a resounding yes.
Using data from Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium and news reports of encampments, we matched information on every institution of higher education that has had pro-Palestinian protest activity (starting when the war broke out in October until early May) to the colleges in our 2023 college rankings. Of the 1,421 public and private nonprofit colleges that we ranked, 318 have had protests and 123 have had encampments.
By matching that data to percentages of students at each campus who receive Pell Grants (which are awarded to students from moderate- and low-income families), we came to an unsurprising conclusion: Pro-Palestinian protests have been rare at colleges with high percentages of Pell students. Encampments at such colleges have been rarer still. A few outliers exist, such as Cal State Los Angeles, the City College of New York, and Rutgers University–Newark. But in the vast majority of cases, campuses that educate students mostly from working-class backgrounds have not had any protest activity. For example, at the 78 historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) on the Monthly’s list, 64 percent of the students, on average, receive Pell Grants. Yet according to our data, none of those institutions have had encampments and only nine have had protests, a significantly lower rate than non-HBCU schools.
One thing that was surprising was that protests were less common at private colleges and universities, the likely explanation being that public universities are generally much larger, and you only need a couple hundred protesters to create the dynamic, so it’s easier where there are larger populations:
When you separate out private and public colleges, the difference becomes even more stark, as the next chart demonstrates. At private colleges, protests have been rare, encampments have been rarer, and both have taken place almost exclusively at schools where poorer students are scarce and the listed tuition and fees are exorbitantly high.
Out of the hundreds of private colleges where more than 25 percent of the students receive Pell Grants, only five colleges have had encampments.
Protests and encampments have been more common at public colleges. This is in part because these colleges just have more students, and only a few students are needed for a protest. Even at public colleges, though, there is a clear relationship between having fewer Pell students and having had a protest or encampment, as the chart below illustrates.
Here’s the key conclusion – richer kids have the luxury of protesting, working class kids don’t:
In other words, having high levels of student democratic engagement—at least according to the Monthly’s metrics, which are the most extensive we know of—is far less correlated with protests and encampments than admitting low percentages of poor and working-class students.
What, then, does explain why colleges with large numbers of students of modest means are far less likely to have had protests and encampments? Our best guess is that poorer students are just focused on other concerns. They may have off-campus jobs and nearby family members to see and take care of…. Students burdened with multiple responsibilities—like having to work a low-paying job to pay for college to get a better-paying job—are unlikely to devote what little free time they have to protesting about an issue they don’t see as a high priority….
Whatever the cause, the pattern is clear: Pro-Palestinian protests are overwhelmingly an elite college phenomenon.
But you knew that.
That doesn’t make the Red-Green Alliance among elites any less dangerous. Terrorist groups in the west traditionally have been drawn from the wealthy and the elites. These may be dangerous people, but they are elite dangerous people. This is not a mass working class revolution.
Seems like something on which Republicans could “pounce,” particularly considering the burning and tearing down of American flags at these protests.
[Featured Image: Columbia protest building occupier demands humanitarian assistance.]
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Comments
So you’re saying, “Follow the money” works? Who would ever have thought of that?
No, “follow the money” means looking at who profits. In this case the students we’re talking about aren’t making any money from their protests; on the contrary, they’re wasting money, and the link here is that they are the ones who can afford to waste money, while those who can’t are sticking to their studies.
The takeaway for me was that luxury beliefs don’t translate into action or are far less likely to come into physical reality; mob protests, encampments, occupation of buildings, by those without the financial luxury to do so. IOW financial resources does correlate to protest b/c the folks with less immediate stake to lose, trust fund students and/or those with high income/status Parents can absorb a negative consequence more easily. Thus financial status is a good predictor for who would act upon their luxury beliefs. Not quite follow the money but still useful.
Having spent nearly 30 years teaching a lot of Pell Grant students, I can tell you that in large part they are focused on getting a good job after graduation. Protests might screw that up, so very few such students will participate. College students may be ignorant, but they’re not all that stupid.
Is it possible that the class these less wealthy kids spring from has values that are more conservative than the elites?
Who profits from disrupting countries? George Soros? Others? So is funding disruptions for profit actionable?
Nobody profits. It’s not being done for profit.
But assuming someone were, then no, that doesn’t make it any more actionable than doing it for no profit.
Nobody profits. It’s not being done for profit.
Likely it’s being done out of the profits (lavish subsidies) in hand at the ‘elite’ schools, who can afford to boost their oh-so-eddicated mobs with legal support, publicity etc.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Soros didn’t have some sort of financial stake in disrupting the US. This man found refuge in England after the war, and then made his billions by destabilizing the pound. It has always seemed to me that Soros was more dangerous as a friend than an enemy.
Profit is more than just money, Milhouse. And with these campus protests, it’s about power, influence, and controlling a narrative. That’s the “profit” to be had.
It cost a lot of money to get that God damn stupid
The Real Reason For The Campus Protests
😂
As I said elsewhere, this is some of the intellectual fetishism prevalent in the Ivy leagues. Practicality doesn’t always reach those ivory towers.
Of all the bubbles available, the one surrounding the Ivy League is probably the cushiest and (so far) the safest. Few there want to mess that up.
The early 20th century British upper class was shot-through with spoiled Marxist wastelings. The “boys of the public school character,” referred to themselves as the “New Men,” and merrily betrayed King and Country.
Today, we would call them soybois.
There were more than few in the British upper classes who got sucked into the admiration of ‘strong men’ such as Mussolini, Hitler and Stalin. The seduction when it occurred mostly had Tory becoming fanboys for Fascism while the others broke for Communism. Of course the two systems have far more in common than most will admit. Britain still had a lot of class baggage from the Victorian era to work through and some of the upper class seemed to want to assert themselves to break a budding trade union movement and a demand for a far less rigid social structure.
Don’t leave out FDR and his cronies all of whom admired authoritarian regimes in the Soviet Union, Germany, and Italy.
They were traitors, plain and simple. While the fascists seem to have withered into oblivion during WWII, the communists, as demonstrated by the Cambridge Five, remained loyal to communist Russia well after the war. We too had our traitors: Alger Hiss for example, as well as the Rosenbergs. Ours didn’t remain unknown for nearly as long as the English. They seem to have been well protected by the English class system. I think the US is showing signs of being at the same stage as England in the 1920s, when the groundwork was being laid for accepted treason. It’s a scary thougfht.
Orwell writes about this in “The Lion and the Unicorn.”
Protests of the Privileged
I wonder how many of the protestors were the spoiled only offspring of their parents?
How many were geeks all their lives until they found a group or a cause that would accept them?
History is replete with examples of how vulnerable such people are to being recruited by subversive leaders,
More like an effete college routine
Being pro terrorist automatically removes Universities from any “elite” status.
Those universities should have their nonprofit status revoked.
The analysis clearly shows that should a French style revolution in this country take place, the guillotine would be reserved for the fatuous, wine swilling, useless educated liberal female “Antionettes”.
They hate Jews, they hate people, they hate themselves.
“Let them eat cake.”
No wonder why so few liberal women are CEOs, and no surprise that those who do become CEOs quickly tank those companies.
Hey! I like wine!
Nothing wrong with liking wine, unless it is done by fatuous, useless educated liberal female “Antionettes”
A dangerous combination.
United, we stand. Divided, they fall.
It is beyond time for divorce.
Professional Democrat model works in politics too. That is why libs have more money and don’t have to work. Trust fund babies like the Rockafeller are an example.
These demonstrations also seem to be heavily female.
working class doesnt want ANYYY of their money taken by the government to fund anyone ,,even causes they believe in
they can donate it themselves
but the poor and the elites are in bed together and want the working class crushed>>slaves
the anger of the poor coupled with the arrogance of the elites
women are doing their job to rile up the males to fight “for them”
it always works………. at some point
It seems the elite, liberal lifestyle does not provide basic values to live by, what used to be called the Eternal Verities. So they act out on issues they don’t understand, in a desperate effort to give their lives meaning. It’s all pretty pathetic.
It would seem that this anti-Israel thing is a top-down phenomenon funded by anti-Israel money originating in (extremely) wealthy anti-Israel countries.
But we foolishly permit this funding to continue.
Those who pay the piper get to call the tune.
It won’t stop.
Why would it stop?
Imho the “elite” colleges is where these huge $$$$ were invested first. But it will spread to every nook and cranny
Why wouldn’t it?
What … George Soros offered to pay their college debt if they did this?
I found this little bit of news quite interesting:
https://nypost.com/2024/05/25/us-news/columbia-encampment-supplies-found-amid-dorm-room-trash-outside-school/
It seems the protesters weren’t as “oppressed” or “average” as the media would like to have us believe. Rich little snots who either came from leftist snot parents, or rich little snots trying to tick off their parents. Either way, you can be sure this news won’t make it to MSNBC.
Totally irrelevant to the primary discussion, but what is the extreme outlier with the relatively low tuition and the very low Pell Grant percentage (it looks like <10% Pell grant recipients, and just over $20000 tuition) in the private institutions chart? Those four schools in the bottom left corner are all intriguing, as they are all outliers with no protests and no-extortionary tuition. I'd be interested to see which institutions fall into that category. Somehow, I suspect that they don't have big grievance-studies programs, and therefore focus more on actual education.