Are the Youth Out of Control—or the Old Out of Touch? | Opinion

"Hope I die before I get old," sang The Who's Roger Daltrey about a half century ago, in perhaps the ultimate cultural reflection of antagonism between generations. It seems to never change: Older people think the youth are gullible and confused, and the youth think the old are "out of touch." Rarely has this phenomenon been on starker display than now.

Many older Americans have watched with amazement and horror as pro-Palestine protests gathered steam on college campuses, veering toward what seemed to them as bizarre support for Islamist terrorists and even hatred of America itself. Now some universities—including Columbia where I was a grad student—have called in the cops. There is handwringing and angst about where to draw the line on free speech.

It shouldn't be so hard. Whether the students are right or wrong is immaterial to the question of whether they should be allowed to continue the protests. The reasons to break up some of the protests are clear.

First, they featured hate speech not as an exception. One of the leaders of the Columbia encampment actually appeared on video declaring that "Zionists don't deserve to live" and suggested people "should be glad" he wasn't "going out murdering" them. Zionists are those who think Israel has a right to exist and their number includes me as well as President Joe Biden, by his own declaration.

Second, many of the protests became genuinely dangerous and threatening to Jews—with the declaration of "Zionist-free zones" and with police keeping Jews away, which in some cases has meant off campus.

Third, there is a limit to the disruption that a university can tolerate until the free expression of one group with deeply held opinions ends up being unfair to all others trying to get an education.

Lastly, it is clear that many of the protests included non-student agitators who have no business being on campus, and indeed were threatening to other students.

So far, so simple. Where it gets more complicated is when you do examine the content of what is being said.

It is odd when people deny that the massacre of Oct. 7 was an act of barbarism that—especially with Hamas threatening to repeat it—justified and perhaps even required a response. But it is also OK to believe Israel's response has gone too far and that the Gaza war should end.

Many Israelis think this as well—but this is not the dominant message coming out of the protests. What we are hearing—not just in selective interviews but in the main chants by crowds—is support for Hamas and for its maximal aim of eliminating Israel from the map of the Earth "by any means necessary." It's OK to call on divestment from Israel, too—but then again, why are the students focusing on Israel alone, and not, say, China or Sudan? It's reasonable to point out a double standard and ask where it comes from.

More than anything, it is fair enough to ask the pro-Hamas students whether they really want to support a movement that sees gay people as not deserving to live, believes in an aggressively patriarchal society in which women are property, and would instill an Islamic theocracy on any territory it captures. If they don't, then they're actually rather stupid, and if they do, they're dangerous.

Hamas is a terrorist group so defined by the United States, and it has committed atrocious terrorism for over 30 years with the aim of scuttling the two-state solution that would grant the Palestinians independence. That's because they prefer eternal war until they get not a share of the territory but eliminate Israel.

Students who support Hamas should be treated exactly like students who support neo-Nazis or the Ku Klux Klan. Their views should not be protected under free speech any more than the views of those who want to restore slavery. They should be expelled, and if they are in the U.S. on a visa they should be deported.

But the real issue is bigger than anything to do with Israel, and it brings us back to the generation gap. The support for Hamas appears to be slotting into a wider "wokeism" that places a huge premium on promoting the interests of groups who have been disadvantaged. The Palestinians have become a symbol for those, and the facts don't matter much in such cases.

It is largely a schism in the American left. American liberals—who wanted to build a better world by making it color-blind—are watching in stupefaction how their kids want to make a better world through color-obsession.

Where we thought individualism was idealism—Peter Fonda motoring down the highway on a chopper—they think identity is idealism. If that sounds like the opposite, it's because it is. To be fair, the MAGA cult has scrambled the American right, as well, but not to this extent.

On the other hand, while liberals are confounded and may suspect it will end in violence, it's not like we are leaving behind a perfect world. We are leaving behind a world in which there are no careers or pensions and where the shorelines are receding. So, perhaps it's wise to just let the youth go where they may.

There is something poignant about this degree of generation gap, because my generation—now in late middle age, the parents of the college students—had fooled ourselves into thinking that we had the system beat. I remember my 1970s and 1980s conviction that our culture and views were impervious to any challenge.

We were guilty of a conceit similar to that of the historian Francis Fukuyama, who argued in the early 1990s that democracy had won the argument of ideas.

One could take the long view and conclude that there are always periodically such convulsions of youthful dissatisfaction that seem silly to the experienced, or the jaded.

Take the 1968 global student riots, most notably associated with France. These began as student demonstrations against the conservative policies of the government, dissatisfaction with the education system, and concerns about unemployment and living conditions for young people. But the protests escalated and drew in many others and became a call for sweeping social and political changes, including an end to capitalism and consumerism. In the United States, similar protests focused on opposition to the Vietnam War.

The war ended with a U.S. defeat, as I wrote last week—but capitalism and consumerism are very much still with us. And the youth of 1968 grew up. Many became quite conservative—in line with the famous maxim that argues: "If you're not a liberal when you're young, you have no heart—and if you're not a conservative when you're old, you have no brain."

It is therefore perhaps comforting to note that Daltrey and his fellow Who front man Pete Townshend did not die at all. Now around 80, they are still producing rock albums. They seem, indeed, not very much different, and quite glad to be old.

Dan Perry is the former Cairo-based Middle East editor and London-based Europe/Africa editor of the Associated Press. Follow him at danperry.substack.com.

The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.

CORRECTION: Due to an editing error, the last names of members of The Who were misspelled.