Hillary Clinton condemns anti-Israel campus protests, says 'outside' groups influenced students: 'Nasty'

Former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reflected on how students at Columbia University, where she teaches a class, "morphed" from holding "respectful" dialogue on the war in Israel into holding "nasty" protests against the nation that she said were "not student-led." 

"We basically sat down and answered questions for 45, 50 minutes, and the questions were really raw. I mean, we had a student from Palestine, a Palestinian student. We had a student from Israel, we had students from across the Middle East. We had students from Asia and obviously the rest of the world, struggling to understand what all of it meant. But it was a respectful, informative, open dialogue, and literally at the end of it, the students applauded," Clinton told CNN's Fareed Zakaria in an interview that aired Sunday morning of a class she held last year when war broke out in Israel. 

Clinton co-teaches a political course at Columbia University, titled "Inside the Situation Room," where she joined Columbia University students on the Wednesday following Oct. 7, when Hamas launched attacks on Israel and sparked the ongoing war. Clinton said following the "open dialogue" on campus, she witnessed rhetoric on campus "morph into something that was not student-led."

"Within a few days, we were doing an event, and we started being protested – the dean and I and our guests – and being screamed at, being called, you know, all kinds of names. What happened in that period? And the best I can sort of unpack it, is that there, there were already existing groups within our country, and particularly on certain campuses like Columbia, who had talking points, they had a plan for protest and disruption, and I watched it sort of morph into something that was not student led, even though students participated, but which had outside funding, outside direction," she said. 

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Former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks during a panel at the Vital Voices Global Festival on May 5, 2023, in Washington, D.C. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

Clinton added that "to this day," she's still not sure how the outside funding and outside influence swayed college students to join the anti-Israel protests. 

During the 2023-24 college school year, agitators and student protesters flooded college campuses nationwide to protest the war in Israel, which also included spiking instances of antisemitism and Jewish students publicly speaking out that they did not feel safe on some campuses. 

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Pro-Palestinian supporters demonstrate with a protest encampment on the campus of Columbia University on April 29, 2024, in New York City. (Spencer Platt/Getty Images)

Agitators on Columbia’s campus, for example, took over the school's Hamilton Hall building, while schools such as UCLA, Harvard and Yale worked to clear spiraling student encampments where protesters demanded their elite schools completely divest from Israel. 

The former secretary of state went on to say that when she pressed college students about their anti-Israel views, they lacked historical context surrounding politics in Israel and the Middle East. 

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Hillary Rodham Clinton speaks onstage for a celebration of the release of her book "Something Lost, Something Gained" at Dolby Theater on Sept. 20, 2024, in Los Angeles. (Amy Sussman/Getty Images)

"A lot of the videos on social media gave not just a one-sided view of the conflict, but a totally anti-Israel, pro-Hamas, not just pro-Palestinian view. And for me, it was distressing, because, look, I have my own opinions formed over many years. I am willing to sit down and have a conversation with anybody, but it's difficult to have conversations with people who hold strong opinions with no factual and historical basis," she said. 

"And so in trying to talk to students, not just at Columbia, but elsewhere, I would be met with slogans. I would be met with attacks, and, you know, very inflammatory language. And when I would ask, ‘Well, what about, do you know what happened in 2000 at Camp David?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you know what happened in 1947?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you know how difficult the relationships have been?’ ‘No.’ ‘Do you know that there are Arab Israelis, and some are serving in the IDF?’ None of that. And this whole chanting of, you know, ‘from the river to the sea.’ What does that mean? What river, what sea? That's what bothered me," Clinton said. 

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Clinton said that so far this year, it "has been much quieter" with "a much more educational environment."

Hillary Clinton and Fareed Zakaria speak during the 10th Anniversary Women In The World Summit at David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center on April 12, 2019, in New York City. (Mike Coppola/Getty Images)

She condemned the harassment on college campuses against Jewish students, saying the temperature quickly changed from holding "legitimate" dialogue among students disagreeing with a country's foreign policies to open antisemitism. 

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators protest the Israel-Hamas war at the University of Wisconsin Library Mallon on April 29, 2024, in Madison, Wisconsin. (Getty Images)

"This was screaming at students who were Jewish, it was blocking their entry into classes or into club activities. It was nasty. And so there was something else going on here that was very troubling. And we now, you know, have seen evidence of, you know, obviously foreign money, foreign influence, the algorithms on TikTok, which were anti-Israel right off the bat. And so I think that a university particularly has an obligation to, of course, protect free speech, but also to protect students against harassment and against the kind of behavior that interfered with their learning," she said. 

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