“We’re in a Struggle for the Soul of the University”: Students and Faculty Reflect on the Spring Protests Against Israel

Pod and Man at Yale

In the newest episode of Pod and Man at Yale, Claire Barragan-Bates ’25 and Owen Tilman ’27 return to the podcast to reflect on the spring protests and the charges against the students who wouldn’t leave. They then discuss the alarming lack of diversity among the Yale faculty in light of a new Buckley Institute report and how it impacts the campus:

• Claire Barragan-Bates: “It’s crossed the line from just being a normal college experience protest to being disruptive at the point where these protesters broke the law.”
• Owen Tilman: “You know that’s one of these ridiculous… false premises of the anti-Israel movement, that somehow by setting up encampments, and disrupting traffic and gluing you’re hands to the street, that you’re somehow gonna convince people that your cause is worthwhile.”
• Barragan-Bates: “The erosion of our free speech rights on campus will be the demise of the university so I think that institutional neutrality is a huge step in the right direction.”
• Tilman: “That is the most evil component of being in such a politically homogeneous environment. It’s sort of assumed that you agree with all of these incredibly contestable claims about the nature of the other side. And it’s just taken to be true.”
• Tilman: “The fact that you can only name drop 4 Republicans, maybe, out of 356 people across a bunch of different departments. And then you can have 10 out of these 14 departments with no Republicans, I think is pretty damning.”

For the expert interview, Yale Professor of Political Science and Philosophy Steven B. Smith talked about how the protests impacted him—particularly when watching fellow faculty participate—and why he chose to show the protestors that he isn’t afraid to support Israel:

• Professor Smith: “It was different from previous protests. Many of these had a personal direction to it targeting not only a policy that students objected to or a war that they might have objected to… it seemed to be opposed to the very—in some cases, not everybody of course—the presence of Jews and Jewish students here.”
• Smith: “It is a shocking thing to know, to think there are people on the faculty—antisemites, real antisemites. Somehow you never quite think these are the people around you who are employed at a serious place like this.”
• Smith: “There’s a lot of moral intimidation that goes on with this... But I thought it was, to me, important to say there’s somebody on the faculty at least who is willing to push back against this aggressive protest movement.”
• Smith: “We are in a struggle for the soul of the university. I really do believe that.”

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