The prestigious campus that lays bare Kamala Harris’s double problem on Israel and Gaza

At Stanford University, the Democratic nominee is losing Muslim-American votes while at the same time she has dismayed Jewish students

The tranquil campus of Stanford University is an unlikely setting for bitter divisions that threaten Democratic prospects in next month’s presidential election.
It was founded by a Republican politician, funded by the defence industry during the Cold War and employed vice-president Kamala Harris’s father as an economics professor.
However, the campus has also been the site of pro-Palestinian protests which broke out during the week of the first anniversary of the October 7, 2023 atrocities, when Hamas terrorists massacre around 1,200 people, including many women and children, and 252 were taken hostage.
The attack, the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, triggered an Israeli invasion of Gaza which in turn has killed some 42,000 Muslims there and metastasised into a regional war.
At Stanford, it led to a 120-day “Sit-In to Stop Genocide”—the longest-running demonstration in the university’s history — and triggered accusations of anti-Semitism from Jewish students.
Matt Wigler, co-president of the Jewish Law Student Association at the university, said that a backlash against Jews began almost immediately. “Right here in White Plaza, a transit hub of campus, the centre of everything, were chalkings on October 8 saying things like ‘Destroy the Jew’ and ‘Let Israel Burn’.
“Some of my classmates cheered for the beheading of babies, mass rape and young people like them being slaughtered at a music festival that had been organised around principles of peace.
“It was a real moment of disappointment in the academic community where people’s ideological commitments and filters overcame their humanity and blocked them from being able to empathise with Jewish and Israeli people who are suffering a horrifically traumatic experience.”
Similar protests and divisions were seen on campuses across the country, and although the white-hot fervour of the debate has abated for now, the tension at Stanford over events taking place more than 7,000 miles away remains palpable.
The prestigious California university is emblematic of US politics nationally. Many Muslim Americans will not support Ms Harris because of her pro-Israel stance while, at the same time, Jewish voters are dismayed by the strident anti-Israel voices in her party.
In an election that rests on a knife edge, a handful of Muslim and Jewish votes in the Rust Belt could be the difference between a second term for former president Donald Trump and Ms Harris becoming America’s first black female commander-in-chief.
“Muslim voters, Arab voters and pro-Palestinian voters are going to attempt to punish Harris and Biden in this election,” said Hamza El Boudali, a Moroccan American software engineer who led protests in Stanford before graduating in March.
“They want to make it clear that, you know, genocide is not acceptable, and what the Biden administration did, what Biden and Kamala did by contributing to funding, arming, supporting, providing diplomatic cover to vetoing any UN resolutions against Israel and their actions in Gaza is a red line.
“Even though we’re a small percentage of the total US population, it’s going to hurt them in swing states that matter in this election, like Michigan.”
Mr El Boudali, 24, said he would vote for Jill Stein, the Green candidate, “regardless of how evil Trump is to Muslims” because to back Ms Harris would be “giving a rubber stamp approval” to mass murder.
“Trump is just as Zionist as the other side,” he said. “But we’ve survived four years of Trump before, and 40,000, if not many, many more, Palestinians have not survived four years of Biden.”
Mr Wigler, 27, who taught politics at Eton for a year from 2020 and is a committed Democrat, said: “There are a lot of Jewish voters who historically have voted Democratic, who are concerned right now…and those voters are going to be decisive in this election, especially in places like Pennsylvania, which has a large Jewish population.”
It was important, he said, that Democrats do not follow the path of the Labour Party in Britain, where anti-Semitism surged under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, who described Hamas and Hezbollah as “friends”.
Governor Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania had been widely tipped to be Harris’s vice-presidential running mate and, although Wigler does not believe that anti-Israel pressure from leftist Democrats led to Harris picking governor Tim Walz of Minnesota instead, “the whole ‘Genocide Josh’ campaign that you saw emerge was certainly anti-Semitic”.
Trump, he noted, had “put historic investment into trying to sway Jewish voters to cross the aisle and vote for Republicans this time — we’ll see whether or not that’s a successful effort, but I think that in large part depends on what kinds of rhetoric we hear from the Harris campaign in the coming weeks.”
Stanford has a dark past regarding Judaism. In 2022, the university confirmed that it had restricted the admission of Jews in the 1950s. The president condemned this “appalling anti-Semitic activity” and declared it an “ugly component of Stanford’s history”.
Earlier this month, some 60 students, many dressed in black and wearing Palestinian keffiyehs, gathered in the law school courtyard for a “Community Vigil for Gaza” to “commemorate one year of the ongoing Palestinian genocide”.
Speaker after speaker denounced Stanford, US policy and what one called “the relentless and genocidal actions of the illegitimate Zionist entity”. There was no mention of Hamas or the October 7 massacre.
Another denounced “settler colonial violence” and thundered: “Stanford University trumpets its commitment to institutional neutrality, and yet it funds weapons research and spreads undemocratic, oppressive ideology. The university sanitises our government’s participation in genocide.”
A resolution backed by “Students Against Apartheid in Palestine” calling for “divestment” by the university from all firms connected to Israel was supported by almost three-quarters of Stanford students who voted in elections in April.
In June, 400 pro-Palestine students walked out of Stanford’s Commencement Ceremony while an occupation of the president’s office resulted in 13 arrests. Having tolerated the protests for many months on the grounds of free speech, a line had been drawn by the university.
Mr El Boudali said: “When people talk about rising anti-Semitism, it’s often very one-sided. They don’t mention the much, much more severe incidents involving Palestinian students…Some student says they feel uncomfortable because there’s a pro-Palestine protest and that gets labelled as an anti-Semitism incident.”
Mr Wigler rejects this. “The price of admission into the broader Stanford community as a Jew has been to hate yourself louder and more vocally than even the worst anti-Semites on campus hate you,” he said.
“There have been literal parties where the price of admission into the party has been to say the password ‘f— Israel’ to go in and be a part of social life.”