Pro-Palestinian protests have disproportionately taken place at elite colleges, according to number-crunching by Washington Monthly. Their analysts used data from Harvard’s Crowd Counting Consortium with news reports of encampments and then matched that data to the percentages of students at each campus who receive Pell Grants. Protests and encampments have been rare among colleges with high percentages of Pell students (which are mostly from moderate and low-income families). For some reason, poor students do not appear to care about Gaza as much as elite students do.
One of the more recent examples took place on Monday when a group of pro-Palestinian students at Princeton University attempted to stop a Memorial Day parade.
Additionally, Axios conducted a survey in May asking college students which issues are most important to them. Only 13 percent say the conflict in the Middle East is most important. That’s behind healthcare reform at 40 percent, educational funding at 38 percent, economic opportunity at 37 percent, civil rights at 36 percent, climate change at 35 percent, gun control at 32 percent, immigration policies at 21 percent and national security at 15 percent.
While polls extending to all Americans — not just college students — often have more people worried about foreign relations or defending against terrorism, the top issue remains economic concerns. It’s difficult to care about global issues when you are worried about getting food on the table.
Of all the universities that have agreed to specific student demands as a result of encampments, only two will bring specific aid in the form of covering the cost of education for several Palestinian students. If the conflict is an issue they truly care most about, it would be interesting to know how many elite students are using their own funds to directly bring relief to those in Gaza.
