Campuses Venues for Rallies, Politics

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BERKELEY, Calif. (AP) _ On a tree-shaded plaza at the University of California at Berkeley, two leaflet-covered tables have become the latest flash points for a school with a long history of debate.

One table has fliers advocating divestment from Israel. The other has the opposite message, promoting the purchase of Israeli bonds. Some observers think such activism is a sign of something larger.

A new generation is rallying here and at campuses across the country on the conflict in the Middle East and other issues, rekindling old passions and offering a taste of what future anti-war protests might look like.

Thirty eight years after the Free Speech Movement at Berkeley created the blueprint for college activism, the new protesters are tuned in and turned on. Where protest leaders of the past mustered their troops by stapling fliers to telephone poles, today they flip on high-speed modems.

"This generation really seems to yearn for connections and meaning," said Molly Schaller, an assistant professor of counselor education and human services at the University of Dayton in Ohio.

Schaller, who follows student culture, sees a shift as Generation Y, which grew up with the Internet at its fingertips, takes over from Generation X, raised in the "Me Decade" of the 1980s.

Today's students "know a lot. They have a lot of information, and that's what calls them to action," said Schaller.

While students at other campuses around the nation have been moved to act on issues ranging from banning sweatshop labor to ending racism, Berkeley has been roiled by Middle East conflicts _ a subject that has sparked raucous demonstrations.

Thirty-two students face possible suspension for taking over a campus building in a demonstration promoting the divestment campaign in April.

County prosecutors have dropped trespassing and other charges against the pro-Palestinian students, but Berkeley decided to go ahead with the hearings, saying school rules must be upheld.

Students' attorney Anne Weills said administrators are overreacting to "a very simple, small sit-in." The students have sued.

"I imagine there are going to be a lot of protests that are coming down the pike. I imagine that I will begin to join them," said Linda Williams, a Berkeley film professor who signed a faculty petition supporting the protesters.

It's familiar ground for Weills. In 1964, she was a civil rights organizer working with Berkeley students on the Free Speech Movement.

Pro-Israeli students, many of them members of the Israel Action Committee, have held counter-rallies and debates. Their Israeli bond-buying drive, Project Invest, is also spreading online.

Jewish students say the atmosphere has become tense; vandals threw a cinder block through the window of the campus Jewish center and wrote anti-Semitic graffiti.

Leaders of the pro-Palestinian student movement condemn these unsolved attacks, but they too feel targeted, especially since Sept. 11, and say they're unfairly called anti-Semitic merely for opposing Israel's policies.

Similar debates have roiled other institutions, with some students at Harvard, MIT and Princeton, among others, backing the Palestinian cause by campaigning to get U.S. universities out of stocks that do business in Israel.

So far, the new generation of protesters hasn't reached the magnitude of the 1960s-era protests at Berkeley and other campuses. Still, they're getting noticed.

"The tree of free speech is once again getting some water poured on it," said David Goines, a Free Speech Movement veteran watching from the sidelines. "And that's good."

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On the Net:

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Image Caption: Pro-Israel protester Micki Weinberg shouts at pro-Palestinian demonstrators on the University of California, Berkeley campus in this April 9, 2002 file photo. A new generation is rallying here and at campuses across the country on the conflict in the Middle East and other issues, rekindling old passions and offering a taste of what future anti-war protests might look like. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma, File)