\n<\/p>\n
The world is watching what is happening on American campuses with shock, pride, relish and alarm. Scenes from the protests \u2014 and of the arrests of protesters \u2014 have been top news around the world from Bogot\u00e1 to Berlin, Tehran to Paris.<\/p>\n
In some countries, including France, students have staged protests of their own, though not with the scale and intensity of those in the United States.<\/p>\n
Some applaud the protests. Others, particularly in countries ruled by authoritarian regimes, view the crackdowns as proof of America\u2019s hypocrisy on human rights and freedom of speech. Still others see them as the latest sordid chapter of America\u2019s ongoing culture wars.<\/p>\n
In some ways, the protests and the response to them are a Rorschach test for the world \u2014 the analysis often offering more insight into local politics than into America.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Here is a selection of views from around the world.<\/p>\n
Many in France, including Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, see the pro-Palestinian protests as another example of the dangers of \u201cwoke\u201d culture \u2014 \u201cle wokisme\u201d \u2014 which they worry is being imported from the United States and threatening core French Republican values.<\/p>\n
On Friday, police officers charged into<\/a> an elite university in Paris, Sciences Po, to remove students who had occupied the building overnight. The protesters had demanded the university condemn what they called \u201cthe ongoing genocide in Gaza\u201d and review its partnerships with Israeli universities.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n It was the second time the police have done so in the past nine days \u2014 something many say they have never seen before at the university, which was founded in 1872 to educate the country\u2019s future leaders.<\/p>\n Mr. Attal denounced an \u201cactive, dangerous minority\u201d of student protesters who he said wanted to impose \u201can ideology come from across the Atlantic.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Whether in the United States or France, the protests are seen by many, especially on the right, through the same lens as past movements such as #MeToo and Black Lives Matter, which the French establishment has analyzed dismissively as reductive and divisive, a threat to social cohesion.<\/p>\n \u201cOne of the characteristics of wokisme is to divide the world into dominants and dominated, oppressors and the oppressed. Today, what we see happening on American campuses is a view classifying Israel as the oppressor and Palestine as the oppressed,\u201d said Chlo\u00e9 Morin, a political analyst who recently published a book<\/a> denouncing wokisme. \u201cAs a result, they can\u2019t accept antisemitism exists and that Jews can also be victims.\u201d<\/p>\n A well-known academic and expert on the Islam, Gilles Kepel, offered a similar analysis. \u201cWokisme multiplies the narcissism of small differences, which means no society is possible,\u201d he wrote in the newsmagazine L\u2019Express. \u201cIt is a mortal danger for democratic societies.\u201d<\/p>\n Supporters of the protests dismiss the notion they are imported from American campuses. They point out that students at Sciences Po had staged protests long before the Columbia campus erupted.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is no copycat going on here,\u201d said Pierre Fuller, a professor of Chinese history at Sciences Po, who in late March organized a professors\u2019 petition calling on the university to condemn both Israeli policy in Gaza and Hamas\u2019s hostage taking.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIf it\u2019s a woke imitation, I\u2019d rather be woke than someone who supports genocide,\u201d said Jack Espinose, 22, a public affairs student at Sciences Po who was among the students dragged out by the police on Friday.<\/p>\n A right-leaning talk show broadcast across Egypt recently gave an unexpected amount of airtime to the arrest of an economics professor at Emory University. The show\u2019s host seemed particularly taken with the image of her head being slammed into concrete by a police officer during the breakup of a campus protest, holding the image for two minutes.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s the real White House,\u201d the host, Ahmed Moussa, said with evident relish. \u201cAny words the Americans said before, just do not believe them. Only believe what you see.\u201d<\/p>\n Mr. Moussa, who once said he was proud to be patriotically serving the ruling military and the security agencies, is among several top Egyptian TV personalities to pounce on harsh tactics used by the police on U.S. campuses as a way to criticize Washington, which for years has put Cairo at the receiving end of admonitions about human rights.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Footage of officers pummeling or dragging students has run on a loop on many news channels. Moustpha Bakry, a member of Parliament with his own TV show, said the U.S. had lost its credibility as a champion of liberties.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cYou\u2019ve fallen in the swamp,\u201d Mr. Bakry said.<\/p>\n Nashat Dehi, a leading TV host at the channel Ten, widely believed to be linked to the country\u2019s intelligence agency, said Cairo was no longer obliged to respond to the annual U.S. State Department Human Rights Report on Egypt.<\/p>\n \u201cThe U.S. administration is doing its own intifada to counter the universities\u2019 protesters,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Germany\u2019s news media has covered the U.S. protests much more extensively than those that occurred on its own campuses in recent months. In particular, they have narrowed in on episodes of antisemitism.<\/p>\n A recent headline in Die Welt read, \u201cWith smiling faces they preach hatred against Jews.\u201d Articles posted on its website about the protests are tagged as \u201cantisemitic protests.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n That focus offers a vindication to German decisions to ban many antiwar protests<\/a> and discourage public criticisms of Israel in the name of fighting antisemitism. That approach has come under international censure, particularly for its chilling effect on the arts world<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cMust it be assumed that the Middle East discourse in New York and London should be considered exemplary?\u201d wrote one commentator in the left-leaning newspaper Taz.<\/p>\n One place where American campus protests have received almost no coverage is China, where state-run media has made little mention of them in the past week.<\/p>\n The most likely reason: Chinese authorities do not want student protests on their own campuses, said Jean-Pierre Cabestan, a professor emeritus of political science at Hong Kong Baptist University. \u201cThey worry that the students will use that as an excuse to get mobilized,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The main exception is Guancha, a nationalistic website with a long history of condemning the United States. On Thursday, it prominently displayed articles suggesting that the protests showed divisions in the United States symptomatic of a broader decline in social cohesion.<\/p>\n Other Chinese news organizations with an intended audience outside China, as well as covert influence operations, have seized on the opportunity<\/a> to amplify the protests and inflame tensions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n While Chinese officials have said little to their own population, Hua Chunying, the chief spokeswoman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, has criticized the United States on X, which is blocked from view in mainland China.<\/p>\n She posted<\/a> a video montage of scenes of American police wrestling with protesters together with a question, \u201cRemember how U.S. officials reacted when these protests happened elsewhere?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The country\u2019s two largest newspapers, El Tiempo and El Espectador, published editorials supporting the student protests this week.<\/p>\n At El Tiempo, editors saw the violent student arrests as an opportunity to remind readers of the humanitarian crisis in Gaza, so it doesn\u2019t \u201cbecome part of the landscape,\u201d said Federico Arango, the opinion editor. He said he had lost count of the number of editorials the newspaper had published about the war.<\/p>\n \u201cHopefully, the protests don\u2019t end only in controversy,\u201d Mr. Arango said. \u201cHopefully, people see that those students aren\u2019t there for or against Biden or Trump. I think what those students want is for people to see the tragic reality the Palestinian people are going through.\u201d<\/p>\n This week, the country\u2019s left-leaning president, Gustavo Petro, announced he was severing diplomatic ties<\/a> with Israel. He described the Israeli government\u2019s actions in Gaza as \u201cgenocidal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n At the National University in Bogot\u00e1, a public institution known for student movements, walls featured painted slogans like, \u201cIt\u2019s not a war, it\u2019s a genocide\u201d and \u201cDon\u2019t stop talking about Palestine.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWhat\u2019s important is showing your discontent, showing that you\u2019re not turning a blind eye to what\u2019s happening in the world,\u201d said Yadir Ramos, 22, a psychology student.<\/p>\n Iran\u2019s state media have been closely covering the protests on American college campuses, considering them proof of America\u2019s double standards regarding freedom of speech.<\/p>\n Pictures of riot police raiding Columbia University were splashed across the front pages of several conservative newspapers in Iran on Thursday, with headlines reading, \u201cThis is how America treats students,\u201d and \u201cCrackdown and expulsion are the price of being liberal.\u201d<\/p>\n Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian expressed concern about the safety of American student activists and protesters. Last week, on X<\/a>, he posted<\/a> a video of police officers tackling students and handcuffing them, calling it \u201crepression\u201d and saying it \u201cclearly shows the dual policy and contradictory behavior of the American government toward freedom of expression.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Many ordinary Iranians have also taken to social media to express dismay that U.S. universities, which they perceived as bastions of freedom of expression and debate, had called in the police.<\/p>\n Raika, 45-year-old resident of Tehran who asked her last name not be used for fear of retribution, said that the violence reminded her of when she was a college student in Iran and plainclothes security agents raided the Tehran University campus, beating and arresting students who were staging a sit-in.<\/p>\n But, at least, she said the students in the U.S. had access to a fair and independent judicial process.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Reporting was contributed by Erika Solomon in Berlin; Jorge Valencia in Bogot\u00e1, Colombia; Farnaz Fassihi in New York; Keith Bradsher in Beijing; and Joy Dong in Hong Kong; Emad Mekay in Cairo; and S\u00e9gol\u00e8ne Le Stradic in Paris.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nEgypt: \u2018The Real White House\u2019<\/h2>\n
Germany: \u2018Hatred Against Jews\u2019<\/h2>\n
China: Wary Silence<\/h2>\n
Colombia: A Reminder<\/h2>\n
Iran: American Hypocrisy<\/h2>\n