View host Whoopi Goldberg appeared to hold back tears as she defended students protesting at colleges across the country, saying it was “one of the great rights as an American to stand up and say something is wrong.”
There have been more than 700 arrests by police to break up the protests, which spread across the United States to at least 76 universities last week and are growing, and Columbia University warned protesting students on Monday. disperse or face suspension while your camp continues to burn for 14 days.
As Whoopi, 68, discussed the ongoing protests with her co-hosts on Monday’s episode of the ABC show, the studio fell silent as she bowed her head and composed herself before saying, “Since I haven’t said anything, I’m sorry, I have to do this.
‘One of the great rights as an American is to stand up and say something is wrong. It doesn’t matter what your color is, if you are a woman, a man, it doesn’t matter, and we must teach our people to be alert. Part of our problem is that the media takes the best click bait.”
Whoopi Goldberg appeared to hold back tears during Monday’s The View as she defended students protesting at universities across the United States.
Columbia University students gather to march and demonstrate in support of a campus protest camp supporting Palestinians on April 29.
Many students camped out on the Columbia University campus last week.
Protesters confront NYPD officers outside the main entrance to Columbia University on April 24.
He continued: “So you see the same signs or you see the same people, but you don’t see the people who are doing peaceful things and saying, ‘This is what we want to do.'”
“I would caution the media to be very careful about what they’re doing and how they’re handling this because what they seem to be doing is pushing a narrative that people are rejecting, that students are rejecting, which I’m excited to see.” because I like it when students get angry and say, “We want a change to be made.”
It appears that the Sister Act star had initially promised The View executive producer Brian Teta that she wouldn’t give a speech. She then added, “Unfortunately, I see that Brian is looking at me out of the corner of his eye and starting to get upset because I said I wasn’t going to say anything,” before joking, “So he knows me for the liar that I am.” am.’
However, Whoopi wasn’t the only one on the panel who felt passionate about the issue, as Sunny Hostin argued: “I think, in my opinion, we need to change the framing of these campus protests.”
‘I think college campuses have been the site of anti-war protests for as long as I can remember. I think the recent protests have not even reached the scale of the large student protest we saw in the late 1960s against the Vietnam War, or even in the 1980s against the practice of apartheid in South Africa.
‘During apartheid we saw calls to divest from South African companies, and that was very successful. Nelson Mandela said that he believed that was what led in many ways to South Africa being liberated from that system, so I think these are anti-war protests, and I think it’s very worrying that we frame them as pro-Palestinian protests or pro-Palestinian. Israeli protests.’
Sunny, a mother of two, continued: ‘These are anti-war protests, and students I have spoken to at many of the Ivy League schools tell me this is a humanitarian crisis.
“What we also don’t talk about enough is the fact that 35,000 people, mainly Palestinian women and children, have been killed.”
At one point, Whoopi tilted her head and seemed to take a moment to compose herself.
Sunny Hostin argued that “we need to change the framework of these university protests”
Ana Navarro (left) and Alyssa Farah Griffin also joined the conversation with Sunny.
And he added: “What we also do not talk about, I think enough, is that for some reason the discussion about policies against Israel that the UN has called war crimes, which the International Criminal Court is investigating as war crimes, what we do not do “What I’m not saying is that they are people, they are civilians and that we must protect them.”
Earlier, Whoopi had told the panel: “Obviously, and let’s be very clear about this, no one supports any anti-Semitic hate speech and students fear for their safety, but do they have the right to peacefully protest to end the violence?” ?
‘Isn’t this part of being an American and also standing up when you see something that’s wrong?’
Former White House aide Alyssa Farah Griffin then decided to respond and give her opinion.
‘Well, that’s the fundamental question. “There is the right to free speech and the right to assembly, but Jews also have the right to feel safe on college campuses,” the 34-year-old began.
‘This is what I will say: as a Lebanese-American I am disgusted to see flags of Hezbollah, a terrorist organization, flying on American college campuses, and I understand that these young people are going out to protest for peace, protesting for a ceasefire.
‘But I also want to say that there was a ceasefire before October 7. Israel has proposed two since then, Hamas has rejected them, and Hamas’s own statutes in Article 13 state that it rejects any peaceful solution, any negotiated piece.
Sara Haines shared her frustration over the impact on students’ education and urged universities to “step up”
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik issued a statement saying that many Jewish students have been forced to leave campus due to the “intolerable” atmosphere created.
Columbia University has asked protesters to sign a document pledging to “voluntarily leave by 2 p.m.” on Monday, or be evicted from the camp and suspended from the Ivy League.
‘And beyond that, we’ve seen this language turn into something much more radical, anti-Semitic, saying that Jews have no place on campus.
“I talked to Alex Edelman’s brother, he had his kippah ripped off on campus and someone grabbed his neck simply for existing as a Jew.
“People need to call this out: Jews live in fear of white nationalists on the one hand and far-leftists, who frankly side with terrorists in some cases, on the other.”
Sara Haines weighed in and shared her frustration over the impact on students’ education and urged universities to “step up.”
‘That’s the part that bothers me: there are parents everywhere who simply want their children to learn. We have graduations cancelled, we have in-person classes cancelled,” she said.
‘The university should provide the forum, it should not put its finger on the scale. We should encourage young people to be uncomfortable with their thoughts, to think critically and to protest about everything, but we also need to make sure that this does not lead to anarchy, chaos and violence, and it is getting there right now. many of these campuses.’