[ALBSA-Info] NYTimes.com Article: Campuses Split Over Afghanistan

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Campuses Split Over Afghanistan

October 15, 2001 

By JODI WILGOREN


 

ANN ARBOR, Mich., Oct. 12 - The Eugene V. Debs cooperative
house here on the University of Michigan campus is a house
divided. 

A flowered sheet hangs over the porch, painted with a huge
peace symbol, the message "No More Dead" and a picture of a
bomb with a red line through it. Inside, the long- haired
students who gather nightly over vats of vegetarian food
all want peace. But some wonder if it is possible without
bombs and body bags. 

"If we don't drop bombs, there's still no peace," said Beth
Nagalski, a junior, one of 21 students who share the house
filled with raggedy couches and mismatched dishes. 

"This doesn't seem right," Jen Dombrowski, a junior from
Grand Rapids, Mich., said of the airstrikes in Afghanistan,
"but what else can we do?" 

The dissension here, in a left-leaning house on the liberal
Michigan campus, reflects the quandary facing the fledgling
antiwar movement that has been sprouting at colleges and
universities across the country since Sept. 11. 

While there have been scores of fervent rallies on more
than 100 campuses, they have been staged by small bands of
committed organizers, veterans of the labor struggles and
affirmative action battles of recent years, and in many
cases have faced strong opposition, even among leftists who
previously sympathized with their causes. 

The peace movement - students here and around the nation
are reluctant even to use the word "antiwar" - has
benefited from the wave of student protests that culminated
in the antiglobalization demonstrations in Seattle and
Genoa, Italy, and student sit-ins for higher wages for
Harvard's lowest-paid workers. 

Many of the new organizers are leaders of those previous
campaigns and are linking the war on terrorism to racism at
home and imperialism abroad, issues that they have been
rallying about for years. 

"This attracts people who already had some sort of grudge
before this," said Michael Frazer, a graduate student at
Princeton, where the Princeton Peace Network's chants of
"One world, no war" have been matched by the Princeton
Committee Against Terrorism's flag-waving and a cappella
patriotic songs. "There is this love of the 60's on the
part of these activists," Mr. Frazer said. 

Even at Wesleyan University in Connecticut, where students
helped coordinate a "national day of action" with rallies
on Sept. 20, only a few dozen students participated in a
classroom walkout last Monday, the day after the bombing
began. 

"This ambivalence is definitely there," said Robert Loevy,
a political science professor at Colorado College in
Colorado Springs who studies social protest. 

Still, here in the birthplace of the antiwar teach-in, and
at other prominent colleges, seeds of protest might yet
blossom. 

In the current climate, many students are shunning slogans
and signs in favor of educational leaflets and teach-ins
about nonviolence as a philosophy and about Islam and
Afghanistan. They are focusing on racial profiling - scores
of non-Muslim women here have donned head scarves on
Fridays in solidarity with those who have faced
discrimination - rather than the more complex questions
about United States foreign policy. 

"No one can say, `Make love, not war,' " said Lara
Jirmanus, who participated in the sit-ins before graduating
from Harvard last spring, and who has helped coordinate
antiwar activities this fall. "It's not like you want war
and we want peace. Who wants war? What we're saying is that
this isn't going to work, to go and attack more people." 

Here at Michigan, advocacy organizations quickly morphed
into peace groups. (Students here, as at Berkeley and
Princeton, are teaming up with left-leaning professors,
though far fewer than in the Vietnam era, and perennial
protesters from their communities.) 

"Being American does not mean blindly supporting the
American government," said Fadi Kiblawi, 20, a Kuwaiti-born
Palestinian who went to high school in St. Louis and is
among the peace group leaders. "It means using your civil
rights to say what you think America should be." 

Instead of bombing targets in Afghanistan, these students
suggest prosecuting Osama bin Laden and other terrorism
suspects through an international war tribunal. They fault
the United States sanctions against Iraq and Israel's
occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, as well as
Western economic policies throughout the third world, for
inciting anti-American hatred. 

Even if few civilians are killed by allied bombs, they say,
the action will create millions more Afghan refugees. 

"There are institutions in place that can bring justice in
a way that is not retaliation," said Jackie Bray, 19, a
sophomore from Ridgewood, N.J. "The idea of wiping out
every terrorist across the world is very appealing, but
it's not very realistic." 

The Michigan Daily - Tom Hayden, author of the Port Huron
statement and founder of Students for a Democratic Society,
was once its editor - has been critical of the military
campaign, but a divided Michigan Student Assembly passed a
pro- war resolution on Tuesday. 

For every co-op house with a peace banner there is a
fraternity with a flag hanging from its window. At each
antiwar gathering, a handful of counterdemonstrators show
up with flags and soon swell to a modest crowd. 

"Instead of being a conservative organization with these
conservative views, we've all of a sudden become the hub of
patriotism on campus," said Peter Apel, a senior, whose
Young Americans for Freedom chapter has been coordinating
the pro-war protests. 

Many on the 38,000-student campus are preoccupied with
midterm exams, not military policy. The Diag, the
crossroads of the Ann Arbor campus, was decorated this week
with banners advertising Homecoming 2001, National Coming
Out Day, and "All Nations, Campus Ministry." 

In the center of the Diag, young men tossed a lacrosse
ball, part of a 100-hour fund-raising marathon (they are
donating 10 percent of the proceeds to New York
firefighters). 

"We stayed out of it, just trying to stay in the middle,"
said Jason Hall, a sophomore, referring to the dueling
antiwar and pro-war rallies as he played catch in the rain
on Thursday night. "This campus is so active. Everything's
a huge deal around here."

http://www.nytimes.com/2001/10/15/education/15ANTI.html?ex=1004379931&ei=1&en=c97d81ced3c529d9



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