At California universities Monday, the ceasefire in Gaza — and the accompanying hostage and prisoner exchange — emerged as an inflection point for the future of a student-led protest movement that for two years has roiled campuses.
The activism, along with its contentious aftermath, continues to reverberate as pro-Palestinian organizers and Jewish community leaders reckon with the tumult touched off by Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.
For months in 2024 — shortly after the onset of the deadliest and most destructive war between Israelis and Palestinians in history — college campuses in the U.S. convulsed in often confrontational protests. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations surged in the spring of that year with encampments where activists demanded campus policy changes, including U.S. university divestment of billions of dollars from weapons companies.
On this front, their activism largely foundered. In California, not one major university agreed to full divestment demands, which included boycotts of partnerships with Israeli universities. And campus policies did change — with university officials cracking down on protests and enforcing zero-tolerance policies against rule-breaking.
But David N. Myers, a UCLA professor of Jewish history, said student protesters appear to have helped change American views on Palestinians and Israel.
“Is the protest movement a failure? Well, if the measure is universities have cracked down, maybe,” Myers said. “But if the measure is general trend lines in American public opinion, I’m not so sure. And that should be a wake-up call to the pro-Israel movement.”
Amid the protests, allegations of antisemitism surged on campuses and Jewish students and faculty protested violations of their civil rights. Their complaints have prompted aggressive investigations by the Trump administration that are at the center of his goal to overhaul higher education to adhere to a sweeping conservative agenda that goes far beyond protections for Jewish communities.
Pro-Palestinian activists vow to continue
In interviews, pro-Palestinian students who participated in last year’s encampments and protests this year said the ceasefire was welcome news, but only fulfilled part of what led them to take to campus greens.
“While the news of a ceasefire is welcome, nothing fundamentally changes at UCLA or colleges in general,” said Dylan Kupsh, a doctoral computer science student at UCLA who was part of an encampment last year that was attacked by pro-Israel vigilantes.
“Our university is still invested in the oppression of Palestine. Students won’t rest until the university divests,” said Kupsh, who has faced student discipline procedures for participating in actions that the university alleges violated campus policies.
Student organizers in California said the ceasefire will infuse new energy into their activism, which has been accused of minimizing the plight of Israeli hostages and being antisemitic.
“We can momentarily feel a little bit of happiness, there is at least momentary end to the genocide,” said Ryan Witt, president of Students for Justice in Palestine at Cal State Channel Islands, which held a campus protest and vigil in support of Palestinians last week.
“There have been pictures of children in Gaza celebrating. I’m not dismissing that. But also recognizing that we need to keep fighting,” said Witt, who is Jewish.
Amanda, a student at USC who participated in pro-Palestinian encampments, said concerns remain on her campus.
“We see that our school, like all the others, is very worried about being seen as antisemitic by the government, so they are even stricter about protests and speech than they used to be,” she said.
Graeme Blair, a professor of political science at UCLA, said the climate for pro-Palestinian activism on campuses had worsened, and the government now aggressively treats pro-Palestinian speech as being antisemitic.
“The Trump administration is using every federal lever from the Justice Department to the Education Department to the State Department to crack down on antisemitism,” Blair said. “Universities like UCLA are, on their own and because of Trump pressure, continuing to arrest, discipline and fire people speaking out.”
For Jews on campus, ‘a chapter is ending’
Myers, who is Jewish, said the release of Israeli hostages felt like “the door to a very dark chamber has been opened and light has begun to peek out. At the same time, I can’t help but think of the next frame, which is the frame of pictures of Gaza, which is in a state of complete and total devastation.”
Among pro-Israel Jewish communities on campuses nationwide, there is also a sense of relief.
Jewish student groups had regularly gathered on campuses, including last week, for candlelight vigils, songs and prayer services to honor dead and living hostages in Gaza and their families two years after the Oct. 7 attack.
Many Jewish students have ties to Israel, whether from visiting or through family members who lived there and knew victims of the Hamas attack that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. About 20 living hostages were back in Israel this week, while Israel released roughly 1,900 Palestinian prisoners. According to the Gaza Health Ministry, more than 67,000 Palestinians were killed during Israel’s war.
Sophia Toubian, an information studies graduate student at UCLA, said she hoped the hostages’ release is “actually a chapter ending.”
“I hope that it is a long-lasting peace, and it doesn’t just start right back up again — and that that translates into our experience here, both at school and just in the world.”
Toubian, who is Jewish and pro-Israel, said the pro-Palestinian protest movement had achieved at least some of its objectives.
“Every building that I go into on campus … without fail, I’m seeing something up on the wall about Palestine — supportive of Palestine,” she said.
“It wasn’t there before, and … it’s kind of up there in a way, like, ‘Yeah, of course, we all agree that this is the way that this should be, and so we’re going to show support of this thing.’ In that sense, it does feel like a success.”
And yet, UCLA senior Gal Cohavy, who is pro-Israel, said the tenor in Westwood has improved in recent months.
Cohavy said he hoped that the hostages’ release and the stop in fighting could allow people across the ideological spectrum to find common ground.
“I wouldn’t be surprised to see more real conversation going on, and perhaps bridging a gap between the two sides and seeing cultural progress,” he said.
In a statement, Ha’Am, a Jewish student-run publication at UCLA, said now the “atmosphere has changed.”
“Since October 7, 2023, Jewish spaces have been places of grief, quiet, and emotional support for a community in turmoil. Today, as we enter those same spaces, the atmosphere has changed. There is a genuine sigh of relief in the air, a collective exhale, and the comforting knowledge that our brothers and sisters on the other side of the world are finally safe once again,” it said.
Lasting consequences among students
While pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel students expressed approval over the events in the Middle East, both have faced lasting consequences of divisions on campus.
Reports of antisemitism as well as anti-Muslim and anti-Arab incidents have increased at colleges since 2023. Arrests, suspensions and expulsions of pro-Palestinian students and groups have also grown, though the vast majority of Los Angeles students detained by police during last year’s protests did not face criminal charges.
At UCLA, two Students for Justice in Palestine groups were banned this year for vandalizing the Brentwood home of a UC Board of Regents member who is Jewish with imagery that Jewish community leaders said used antisemitic tropes.
Among California universities, Stanford endured one of the more charged episodes.
A group of pro-Palestinian students there face felony vandalism and trespassing charges after they were accused of breaking into and vandalizing the university president’s office during a 2024 protest. This month, a Santa Clara County grand jury indicted the remaining 11 students, which pushes the case toward a trial.
Staff writer Karen Garcia contributed to this report.
