President Biden will set foot on a college campus on Sunday for the first time since universities across the country became hotbeds of protests against the Israel-Hamas war.
Biden is giving a commencement address at Morehouse College, a historically black college in Atlanta, a move that has angered students and faculty at the school and whose president said he would end the ceremony before allowing police to intervene to stop any potentially disruptive behavior.
The speech will see several issues that plague Biden converge: the uproar among Democrats over his unpopular foreign policy toward Israel, along with his struggles to retain young and black voters, who will be key to his re-election. And all this while in a battle state he narrowly won in 2020.
“The president giving the commencement address at Morehouse, in front of the nation’s preeminent black men’s college, is a nod to the fact that black men and young voters are really thinking about not voting in this election — and he realizes, and the campaign realizes he has to do something to try to bring them back, bring us back into the fold,” said Georgia-based Democratic strategist Fred Hicks.
Some strategists are skeptical that the crowd at Morehouse could erupt into protests on Sunday, but Hicks said he wouldn’t be surprised if there were demonstrations or protests at, if not during, graduation.
“It’s very risky,” Hicks said of Biden’s appearance, arguing that any protests would also open the potential for the president’s positive messages to be “drowned out.”
Many black Americans, however, have expressed solidarity with the Palestinian cause as the conflict in the Middle East intensifies. A march survey of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace found that nearly seven in 10 black Americans would like the U.S. to call for an immediate ceasefire — and while 42 percent of black respondents said they felt no connection to either Israelis or Palestinians, 45 percent One hundred said they felt connected to Palestinians over Israelis.
The Biden administration, while remaining confident that no problems could arise during the commencement address, has tried to get ahead of any potential problems.
Steve Benjamin, head of the administration’s Office of Public Engagement, met with Morehouse College students and faculty earlier this month. Students during the rally expressed concern that the president might overshadow the graduation, NBC News reported, and that his speech might sound like a campaign speech amid recent campus controversy across the country.
Benjamin told reporters Thursday that he “talked about everything” with the Morehouse students and that “the common thread was that they wanted to make sure we were centering young people.”
“People have different thoughts about what they would like to hear,” Benjamin said. “We listened very carefully. We received these messages and shared them with the president and his speechwriting team.”
Benjamin said he is not worried about Biden’s speech overshadowing the graduation.
“I’m confident the president will have the opportunity to interact with faculty, staff and students while he’s there, and I know he looks forward to that,” he said.
Morehouse President David Thomas, however, told CNNthat the school will not allow “disruptive behavior that prevents the ceremony or services from proceeding in a manner that those in attendance can participate and enjoy” and said it would stop ceremonies “on site” rather than let the police intervene and take people out of the “zip tie” event.
But Thomas also told the Associated Press that “in many ways, these are the moments Morehouse was born for.”
White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden saw his speech as a “pivotal moment” for seniors who entered college amid the coronavirus pandemic and are now graduating under a cloud of protests.
“We understand how deeply personal this moment is for many Americans across the country. We were very clear about that,” Jean-Pierre told reporters.
By speaking at Morehouse, Biden will come face to face with a voting bloc he needs if he has a chance to win the White House again.
A New York Times poll published earlier this week found Biden leading Trump among Black voters, 63% to 23%, a significant decrease from the 87% of Black voters who voted for Biden in 2020.
The poll also found that Trump and Biden are only narrowly separated among voters ages 18 to 29, a group Biden won by double digits in 2020. The campaign has made a concerted effort to reach both critical blocs.
And in Georgia, a state where Biden flipped blue in 2020 for the first time in decades, polling averages from Decision Desk HQ/The Hill indicate former President Trump is up 6 points, six months before Election Day. election.
Biden’s speech comes as a number of college campuses — from Columbia University to the University of California — have taken center stage this spring in demonstrating the conflict in Gaza, with some calling on their universities to divest funds that support the Israeli military. The protests also focused on the tens of thousands of Palestinians who have been killed in Gaza since October, when Israel launched its offensive following that month’s deadly terrorist attacks by Hamas, which killed nearly 1,000 Israelis.
Biden said protesters have the right to protest peacefully, but condemned more extreme aspects of the protests, speaking out against vandalism, the seizure of buildings and the cancellation of graduation ceremonies, as was the case at Columbia University.
Strategists said Biden will have to strike the right balance between striking a celebratory tone for graduates and acknowledging the tense political moment.
“He has to address the tone of the country in general and that there is an underlying frustration, unfinished business,” Hopkins said, “when it comes to addressing civil rights in this country and, frankly, around the world.”
This story originally appeared on thehill.com read the full story
