A Bystander to ’60s Protests, Biden Now Becomes a Target
The New York Times
For President Biden, the campus unrest over the Gaza war recalls peace protests of his youth. But this time he cannot easily bypass the turmoil.
When students took over Hamilton Hall at Columbia University in April 1968, a young Joe Biden was studying law 250 miles away, just weeks from graduation. Protests and chanting and tie-dye shirts were not his style. “I was in law school,” he later recalled. “I wore sport coats.”
Now, 56 years to the day after the police stormed Hamilton Hall to evict demonstrators in one of the most iconic moments of the 1960s protest movement, Mr. Biden has no more affinity for their modern-day successors rousted by officers from the same university building they had seized to voice outrage over Israel’s war in Gaza.
Having traded up from sports coats in the Syracuse University law school library to suit coats in the Oval Office, however, Mr. Biden cannot simply shrug off the uproar on American college campuses as he once could. This time he is not just a disdainful bystander but one of the targets of the discontent, challenging him to navigate the treacherous waters of campus politics better than Lyndon B. Johnson did in 1968.
Mr. Biden has sought to walk a careful line in recent days as protests have mushroomed across the country and in some cases led to suspensions and arrests like Tuesday night’s nationally televised police raid at Columbia. While he expresses support for the free speech rights of students to oppose his support for Israel, he has condemned antisemitism directed at Jewish students. But as the political far left calls him “Genocide Joe” and Republicans blame him for the campus chaos, the president has sought to stay personally out of the fray as much as possible.
He made no comment on Tuesday after the latest Columbia building takeover, leaving it to a spokesman to condemn the action as an “unacceptable” move crossing the line from disagreement to disorder. “The president believes that forcibly taking over a building on campus is absolutely the wrong approach,” the spokesman, John F. Kirby, told reporters hours before officers cleared the hall. “That is not an example of peaceful protest.”
He added: “A small percentage of students shouldn’t be able to disrupt the academic experience and the legitimate study for the rest of the student body. Students paying to go to school and wanting an education ought to able to do that without disruption, and they ought to be able to do it and feel safe doing it.”
The Constitution sets a two-term limit for presidents. Still, Donald J. Trump has repeatedly floated the idea that he might like to stay in the White House beyond his next term.
In other testimony, law enforcement witnesses placed the suspect, José Ibarra, at the scene of Ms. Riley’s killing, mainly through cellphone and GPS tracking data.
The warning, which extends beyond the city to include 10 other counties in New York state, was announced as wildfires burned and residents continued to await meaningful rainfall.
A new curriculum would focus on Christianity more than other religions. A kindergarten lesson on the Golden Rule, for example, would teach about Jesus and his Sermon on the Mount.
A suspect was arrested Monday morning in connection with the stabbings, which occurred across a broad swath of the borough over several hours and left a third person critically injured.
The 99-year-old house on Boston’s North Shore is battered and uninhabited. And yet, it is beloved by artists and locals — so much that they helped pause its demolition.
Slashing the original $15 toll raises questions about whether a smaller revenue stream could delay projects or lead to higher costs for New York’s public transit agency.
The group’s actions in Columbus on Saturday, part of a recent pattern of white supremacist incidents in the country, were condemned by officials around the state.
As a Senate recount plays out, at least four counties are ignoring an order from the State Supreme Court that undated or misdated mail ballots cannot be counted.
The voluntary evacuation plan was put in place in areas affected by the Jennings Creek wildfire. Officials encouraged residents of 165 homes to move out temporarily.
In a court filing, the judge said the conviction of Melissa Lucio, whose scheduled execution in 2022 was halted, should be overturned. The state’s highest criminal court will now decide.