This may be a very Thomas Friedman kind of thing to write, but I went out for a walk this morning in the aftermath of the second wave of arrests on campus made of students who were camped out in solidarity with Gaza and I ended up chatting with a parent who lives on the Upper East Side and whose child is a student at Gallatin. She was walking her dog and said she had come by every day this week to see what was going on.
She told me that Gallatin faculty had circulated an email disputing the official account. I said that I thought that was correct, that I had seen nothing that comported with what the communications from the president’s office have suggested about violence, danger, or outside agitators.
She told me her son had started in Tisch, that it had been his dream, I thought she said since he was one and a half but that can’t be, but that he had transferred to Gallatin because of all the “woke bullshit” in Tisch. Like this, she gestured at where the encampment had been.
Oh.
She told me she had been coming down to walk her dog and take pictures to send to her mom, to show her what is happening in New York. She told me they are Jewish.
She told me that yesterday as she walked her dog, she felt safe standing next to one of the NYU security guards who was ex-military and that when one of the students from the encampment approached to ask her to keep protesters’ faces out of any photos she might take, she moved closer to him. She felt safer that way. She made a point of telling me he was a big, Black guy.
She mocked that girl and another who was wearing an anarchist jacket and had thick chains around her boots and was taking photos like she was a fashion photographer.
She told me she felt threatened, that she could “see the anger in their eyes.”
She asked: Do I think the students are motivated genuinely by not wanting people do die or do they hate Israel. I told her I try to give my students the benefit of the doubt and that I really do think they just don’t want people dying but maybe don’t fully understand the implication of everything that they’re saying.
She asked: Do I think they care if Jews die.
She fawned over my son. She asked does my husband also teach at NYU. She told me about a practice of bibliomancy that some of her Iranian friends — “not Jewish, real Iranian” — practice with the book of a poet whose she couldn’t remember and maybe I knew who it was.
I couldn’t possibly divine.
