Data Analysis Confirms That Anti-Israel Protests “are overwhelmingly an elite college phenomenon”

Data Analysis Confirms That Anti-Israel Protests “are overwhelmingly an elite college phenomenon”

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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