From The Atlantic: The events of the past three months seem almost perfectly engineered to spark campus unrest. In January, mass-deportation operations led to the brazen killing of U.S. citizens at the hands of masked immigration agents. In February, the Environmental Protection Agency declared that it would no longer regulate greenhouse-gas emissions. A few weeks later, the Trump administration joined forces with Israel to launch an attack on Iran without congressional approval. One might expect left-leaning college students to have practically started a revolution.
But campuses across the country—places where, just two years ago, students occupied buildings and colonized the quad to protest Israel’s war against Hamas—are strangely silent. These days, those same students mostly head to class. The extent of the change is jarring. David Sengthay, a Stanford senior and the head of the undergraduate-student senate, told me that protests typified the university’s history, up to and including his first two years in Palo Alto. But by the time he returned as a junior, in fall 2024, something was different...
Sengthay said that he and other Stanford students had envisioned college as a “playground for free speech and democracy” before the greater responsibilities and pressures of adult life. They’ve since discovered that the rules of the game have changed.
Full story at https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/03/campus-protests-trump-iran/686518/.
