The White House danced around issues Tuesday regarding the series of pro-Palestinian demonstrations taking place on university campuses across the country, condemning features of racism from some demonstrators while also declining to declare if President Joe Biden planned any type of contact with the activists.
Kids began camping out on the natural at Columbia University next year, resulting in more than 100 detention, and protests have even spread to Yale University, Harvard University, the University of North Carolina, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Michigan in the ensuing days. Some of the activists are immediately calling for Biden to alter his plans according to Israel and its insulting in Gaza.
Biden actually condemned the “vile feedback ” made by some activists in a statement issued on Passover Monday, and White House assistant press secretary Andrew Bates expanded on those opinions while speaking with reporters on Tuesday.
“We may speak out against the alarming wave of racism because silence is collusion, ” Bates said. “ While every American has the right to quiet opposition, calls for violence and physical harassment targeting Jewish kids and the Jewish community are clearly racist, inexcusable, and dangerous, and they have no place on any school campus or anywhere in the United States of America. ”
Still, when pressed by reporters on any plans to engage with the protesters or congressional lawmakers supporting the student activists, Bates declined to give specifics.
Biden met with Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY ) on Monday but the White House did not expand on the subject of the meeting. Ocasio-Cortez joined Biden at Monday’s Earth Day celebration in Virginia, where she lauded the “leadership ” of the student protesters at Columbia. The president, in turn, suggested that he planned to speak with Ocasio-Cortez after the event about the situation in Gaza.
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“We know that this is a painful moment for many communities, ” Bates continued. “We respect that, and we support every American’s right to peacefully protest. That’s something that we have been consistent about. But as I said, when we witness calls for violence, physical intimidation, hateful, antisemitic rhetoric, those are unacceptable. We will denounce them. The president knows that silence is complicity and that ’s why he uses the platforms he has to try to ensure that our fellow Americans are safe. ”
]Tuesday’s gaggle can be heard in full below.
