Pro-Palestinian protests at universities in the US are showing no signs of slowing down. But they aren’t limited to the United States. At The University of Sydney, in Sydney, Australia, students have set up a temporary encampment modeled on US ones. And students at other universities around the world are following suit.
It wasn’t so long ago when US colleges and universities dismissed Islam as a serious subject of study. A broken arm set off the chain of events that sent Philip Khuri Hitti from Lebanon to Princeton, where he created the first program in Near Eastern Studies in the US.
When a Chinese economics professor at Peking University complained about being blackballed for political reasons, faculty at his partner institution, Wellesley College, tried to offer their support in an open letter. What happened is a lesson on the limits of US influence in China.