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As protests and attempts to quell them spread from New York to Los Angeles and many states in between, President Joe Biden finds himself caught in a series of political and diplomatic crosscurrents without an easy solution.
He is opposed to lawlessness and the takeover of campus buildings and has strongly condemned dark instances of antisemitism. But he is also mindful of students’ right to protest, even when the anger is directed at his own policies toward Israel.
At the same time, he is navigating a highly sensitive moment in the Gaza war, as officials pursue a fresh proposal to secure the release of hostages held by Hamas. The plan, if agreed to, would result in a temporary pause in the fighting — an outcome some Biden advisers hope could lower the temperature at home.
For the president, the dueling domestic and foreign policy challenges have imposed a unique burden six months before the election. It’s a rare moment that puts the demand for strong presidential leadership at odds with empathy, a trademark of his public persona.
The Biden campaign is closely watching the protests unfold, particularly those in battleground states, and advisers are keenly aware of the domestic political consequences of the administration’s policy toward Israel but remain hopeful the crisis in the region eases by the fall.
“If politics was driving this, the president obviously would have changed course months ago,” a senior Democratic adviser told CNN, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive topic inside the campaign. “But there is not a simple political solution to this. It’s driven by complex policy decisions without easy answers.”
One of the biggest worries, the president has told allies, is the impact of images of disorder on campuses and cities across America.
So far, Biden himself has said little about the unrest that has gripped certain college campuses. He told reporters at an Earth Day event on April 22 that he condemned antisemitism, but also “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”
The comment, which drew accusations of “both-sides-ism” from some Republicans, was his last public remark on the matter. Since then, Biden has avoided questions about the protests. The administration position on the unrest has been conveyed through spokespeople and in written statements instead, and Republicans, including House Speaker Mike Johnson, have tried calling the president out on the issue, even saying this week Biden should visit a college campus.
The White House on Wednesday sought to answer questions about Biden’s relative silence by pointing to his condemnation of antisemitism.
“No president, no president has spoken more forcefully about combating antisemitism than this president,” press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre told reporters when asked why the country hadn’t heard directly from Biden about the protests.
“It is important that students and communities feel safe here and at the same time, we are going to be really forceful here and continue to underscore how antisemitism is hateful speech,” she added later.
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Demonstrators supporting Palestinians in Gaza barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall at Columbia University in New York City on April 30.
Jean-Pierre said Biden would deliver the keynote address next week at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s annual days of remembrance ceremony on May 7, describing his speech as intended to “discuss our moral duty to combat the rising scourge of antisemitism.”
Still, she did not preview any remarks specifically meant to address the situation on college campuses.
On Tuesday, White House officials sharply condemned the takeover of a building at Columbia University, voicing a rebuke of tactics they said went too far. And in a proclamation noting Jewish American Heritage Month, Biden decried “the ferocious surge of antisemitism” on campuses and elsewhere.
“These acts are despicable and echo the worst chapters of human history,” Biden wrote in the proclamation. “They remind us that hate never goes away — it only hides until it is given oxygen.”
Yet already, Biden’s political rivals have seized upon the images of violence — and Biden’s relative public silence — to claim the president is absent.
“Biden is supposed to be the voice of our country and it’s certainly not much of a voice. It’s a voice that nobody’s heard,” his Republican rival in November’s election, former President Donald Trump, said in a phone interview on Fox News on Tuesday evening.
A Biden campaign spokeswoman, Lauren Hitt, said in response to Trump’s comments that it was the former president who had a record of fanning violence.
“While Donald Trump stood proudly with white supremacists and encouraged violent crack downs on peaceful demonstrators, Joe Biden defends our First Amendment and strengthened protections against antisemitism and Islamophobia,” she said.
Biden administration officials say they are watching with concern as the campus protests spread across the country, though haven’t detected signs of “bad actors” among the demonstrators.
And they have left all policing decisions to individual universities and local officials. When asked about the prospect of sending in the National Guard to quell protests — a scenario that would immediately draw comparisons to the deadly shooting of four students by guardsmen at Kent State University in 1970 — the White House has said that decision is left to governors.
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Pro-Palestinian protesters chant at University of Chicago police as a student encampment is dismantled on Tuesday, May 7.
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Maintenance staff and waste disposal crews clean up after police cleared a pro-Palestinian protest encampment on the campus of the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia on Friday, May 10.
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Protesters carry Palestinian flags during the University of Michigan's main commencement in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on Saturday, May 4. Protesters were removed from ceremony after
briefly interrupting the proceedings. No one was arrested, according to Melissa Overton, the university's deputy police chief and public information officer.
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Pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrate on the New York University campus on May 3.
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Police officers block off an area on the Portland State University campus in Portland, Oregon, on May 2.
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Pro-Palestinian protesters demonstrate on the George Washington University campus in Washington, DC, on May 2.
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Protesters deface a car after a man
drove it toward a crowd at Portland State University on May 2. The driver stopped just short of a group of protesters and sprayed them with "some kind of pepper spray," police said.
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Activists make protest signs inside a pro-Palestinian encampment at George Washington University on May 2.
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Emma, right, sheds a tear as she and her friend Aryn listen to the names of Israeli hostages as they attend a pro-Israel rally at George Washington University on May 2.
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A protester is detained at the University of California, Los Angeles, on May 2.
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Pro-Palestinian protesters stand their ground after police breached their encampment at UCLA on May 2.
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Police take down a barricade as protesters gather at an encampment at UCLA on May 2.
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Pro-Palestinian protesters gather outside Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus after a group created an encampment inside the building in New York on May 1.
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A man is detained after a scuffle as pro-Palestinian protesters rally outside Fordham on May 1.
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Pro-Palestinian demonstrators rebuild a barricade around an encampment at UCLA on May 1. Before police were deployed to campus, pro-Palestinian protesters and Israel supporters
were clashing at the school, according to multiple reports.
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Police officers stand guard after clashes erupted on the campus of UCLA.
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Counter-protesters attack a pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA.
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Police use a vehicle named "the bear" to enter Hamilton Hall, which was occupied by protesters at Columbia University in New York on April 30.
About 300 protesters were arrested, according to the NYPD.
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Police detain a protester at Columbia on April 30.
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Pro-Palestinian protesters climb a fence during demonstrations at The City College of New York on April 30.
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An NYPD bus transports arrested demonstrators at Columbia on April 30.
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Protesters confront police at The City College of New York on April 30.
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NYPD officers march into Columbia on April 30.
Seyma Bayram
Protesters occupy Columbia's Hamilton Hall early on April 30.
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Protesters barricade themselves inside Hamilton Hall on April 30. Dozens of protesters
were occupying Hamilton Hall, one of the campus buildings also occupied during 1968 student protests, according to a social media post from Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine.
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A protester breaks the windows of the front door of Hamilton Hall in order to secure a chain around it and prevent authorities from entering early on April 30.
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Protesters at Brown University celebrate April 30 after
reaching a deal with the administration to end their encampment in Providence, Rhode Island. The university agreed to hold a vote on divestment from companies that support Israel, according to the protest group.
Seyma Bayram
Columbia University students gather for a picket organized by the Student Workers Union (UAW Local 2710) on April 29.
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Pro-Palestinian protesters confront a Texas state trooper at the University of Texas in Austin on April 29.
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A protester at Columbia University wears the university's disciplinary notice on April 29.
Diane Handal
Demonstrators march past Low Library while chanting "Free Palestine" on Columbia's campus on April 29.
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Students from George Washington University stand on top of police barricades as they protest in Washington, DC, on April 29.
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Pro-Palestinian students and activists participate in a demonstration at UCLA on April 28.
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Students and pro-Palestinian supporters occupy a plaza at New York University on April 26.
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Georgia State Patrol officers detain a demonstrator on the campus of Emory University during a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Atlanta on April 25.
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Jewish students wave Israeli flags as a counter-protest near a pro-Palestinian camp at UCLA on April 25.
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Texas state troopers try to break up a pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Texas in Austin on April 24.
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Students at the University of Texas at Austin watch a protest from a classroom window on April 24.
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Students are arrested during the protest in Austin on April 24.
There were dozens of arrests. University police had warned students in an email that they faced more arrests if they didn't disperse from the site.
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Protesters link arms at Emerson College in Boston on April 24.
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House Speaker Mike Johnson speaks to the media on the campus of Columbia University after meeting with Jewish students on April 24. He called on the school's president to resign during a
tense news conference where the crowd repeatedly interrupted him and at times loudly booed him and other Republican lawmakers who were with him.
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Demonstrators' tents are set up on Columbia's campus in New York on April 24. The school is also preparing for graduation ceremonies.
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Demonstrators work on a banner April 24 at Swarthmore College in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.
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Protesters demonstrate at the University of Texas in Austin on April 24.
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Demonstrators and Texas state troopers face one another in Austin on April 24.
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Police stand near protesters at the University of Southern California on April 24.
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New York police officers stand near protesters outside the main entrance of Columbia University on April 24.
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Columbia students prepare to camp overnight on April 23.
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A group of Jewish and non-Jewish students gather at the Columbia encampment
to celebrate Seder, a ritual feast at the start of the Jewish holiday of Passover. Columbia student Cameron Jones told CNN: "I am Jewish and, to me, Passover symbolizes perseverance and resilience. I think this encampment represents those two ideals because we have seen the university take countless measures to try to suppress our student activism, and here is us persevering through that."
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A makeshift memorial at Columbia, seen on April 23, pays tribute to Jewish hostages taken by Hamas in October.
Andres Kudacki/The New York Times/Redux
Students protest near New York University on April 23.
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Students at the University of California, Berkeley, set up an encampment at Sproul Hall on April 23.
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Pro-Palestinian demonstrators sit at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, on April 23. University police
arrested at least 45 protesters the day before and charged them with criminal trespassing after they refused orders to leave.
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Police and protesters face off at New York University on April 22.
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Police officers clear away tents from an encampment at New York University on April 22.
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People watch from a window as New York University students set up a tent encampment on April 22.
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Students and pro-Palestinian supporters rally at The New School in New York on April 22.
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Students rally at an encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge on April 22.
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A pro-Palestinian protest is held at the steps of Columbia's Lowe Library on April 22.
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Some Columbia professors rally in support of their protesting students on April 22.
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Israeli flags are reflected in the sunglasses of a demonstrator in front of Columbia University on April 22.
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Student activists set up camp at a New School cafeteria on April 21.
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Pro-Palestinian protesters gather outside a Columbia building on April 20.
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Police officers stand near barriers as pro-Palestinian protesters gather outside of Columbia on April 18.
If protests are still raging by the fall, Biden could well become the first Democratic president since the Vietnam era not welcome to visit college campuses, which have long been a critical piece of turnout efforts for younger voters.
Biden plans to deliver two commencement addresses later this month, at the US Military Academy at West Point and at Morehouse College in Atlanta. His planned speech at Morehouse has already drawn some consternation on campus, though there are no plans for it to be canceled. Some Biden allies expect there to be protests during the event.
For the president, allegiance with campus protests is not necessarily ingrained. He has written that he felt little affinity for antiwar protesters who demonstrated on college campuses in the 1960s, including at Syracuse University, where he studied law.
“They were taking over the building,” he recalled in a memoir. “And we looked up and said, ‘Look at those assholes.’ That’s how far apart from the antiwar movement I was.”
Perhaps at no point in American history has a foreign policy challenge had the potential to weigh so heavily on domestic politics – particularly with American boots not on the ground. And now, the protesters are coming from within Biden’s own coalition.
Karim Safieddine, a doctoral sociology student at the University of Pittsburgh, stood outside the United Steel headquarters last month with a group of demonstrators taking a stand against Biden as he visited Pittsburgh.
“Our tax money is going into policies that Joe Biden is engaging in and we have a responsibility to stop it,” Safieddine said. “If there is indeed a will to stop this conflict, it can be stopped.”
Asked whether he could vote for Biden again, as he did in 2020, he said: “I do not believe so and I do believe that many people will not be voting for Joe Biden.”
Heading into the summer campaign season, with both parties bracing for demonstrations at their respective political conventions in Milwaukee and Chicago, the president’s political advisers concede the televised images of protests are not helpful for his re-election bid. But several aides point to concerns about the appearances of a breakdown in law and order more than a worry that young voters will support Trump.
Todd Richmond/AP
Police start removing tents erected by protesters on the University of Wisconsin, Madison campus on Wednesday, May 1.
Biden’s team also believes that other issues — namely the economy and abortion — will be more decisive factors in November, including for young Americans.
Dahlia Saba, an electrical engineering graduate student at the University of Wisconsin, helped organize a protest vote in the state’s primary earlier this month. She bristled at the question of whether her opposition to Biden could help Trump.
“We reject the idea that the Democratic Party feels like they have to coerce people into voting for them by leveraging the threat of another candidate that is worse,” Saba said. “We want to see a democratic system where our politicians reflect our values, rather than threatening us with someone who is the worse of two evils.”
Barry Burden, who leads the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin, said he believes Biden is on the cusp of facing a modern-day version of the fraught tensions of the Vietnam era.
“He does have this problem of a kind of nagging protest vote on the Democratic side because of his handling of things in Gaza,” Burden said. “We don’t know if that will still be a prime issue come November, but at the moment it’s something that’s dogging him and probably would give him some pause about visiting a college campus.”