US student protests and the youth vote

From Our Own Correspondent

BBC

News, News Commentary

4.4 • 1.3K Ratings

🗓️ 4 May 2024

⏱️ 29 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Kate Adie introduces stories from the US, Portugal, the South China Sea, Argentina and Antarctica.

University campuses across the US have been gripped by protests over the war in Gaza, with students demanding their schools divest from Israeli interests. Nomia Iqbal considers the ramifications of the protests for Joe Biden, who will need the youth vote on his side if he is to win re-election in November.

In the days after the Hamas attacks, some 200,000 Israelis were evacuated from Israel's border regions with Gaza and Lebanon, and moved into temporary accommodation. While some have since decided to return home, others have decided to seek safety further afield, as Mark Lowen discovered in Lisbon.

Confrontations between the Philippines and China are on the rise in the South China Sea, as the countries clash over a territorial dispute. Jonathan Head saw this maritime feud up close, while on board a Filipino coastguard ship as it came into contact with a Chinese patrol.

Argentina's President Javier Milei was elected last year on a manifesto of slashing public spending. Yet, with inflation at 300 per cent, prices are still spiralling, and another national strike is on the horizon. Mimi Swaby discovers it’s a crisis that continues to affect all corners of this vast country.

And we’re amid the icebergs and marine life of Antarctica, as Janie Hampton recounts her voyage to trace her family connections to the continent - revealing how the downfall of the Soviet Union led to the cut-price sale of a British research base.

Series Producer: Serena Tarling Editor: Richard Fenton-Smith Production Coordinator: Katie Morrison

Transcript

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0:00.0	BBC Sounds, music radio podcasts.
0:04.6	Hello, today Lisbon has long proved a popular destination for digital nomads,
0:11.8	but we hear about a newly emerging international community, asylum seekers from Israel.
0:19.0	A standoff in the South China Sea, our correspondent was on board a Filipino ship as it squared off with the Chinese
0:27.1	Coast Guard over an increasingly tense territorial dispute. In Argentina, as unions call for a second national strike over President
0:37.0	Milay's economic reforms, we travel to the country's southern tip to hear how people feel there. And from English bus stops to the replica of a village pub,
0:49.2	we visit a former British base in Antarctica, which was sold to a Ukrainian buyer for just one pound.
0:57.0	But first, university campuses across the United States have been grouped by protests over the war in Gaza in recent weeks,
1:06.4	with students demanding their schools, many with massive endowments, divest from Israel. Authorities have delivered a robust response. In New York
1:17.3	police arrested hundreds of protesters after they took over a building at
1:21.8	Columbia University,
1:23.7	and there have been arrests across the country,
1:26.7	from California to Texas to Wisconsin.
1:30.0	Nomea Iqbal considers the ramifications of these protests for Joe Biden and
1:36.1	whether this will galvanise the youth vote for the coming election.
1:40.5	If there's one thing President Biden can rely on, it's the support of the very
1:45.3	liberal city of Washington DC, but there were some cracks at the latest
1:49.7	pro-Palestinian protest camp that had been assembled this time at George
1:54.0	Washington University. Politicians often tell the public don't take
1:58.3	voting for granted, but 20-year-old student Tandaway told me, actually, they shouldn't take us for granted.
2:06.0	With a kaffia draped around her neck, she had arrived on the steps of the university to join
2:10.2	dozens of demonstrators to demand divestments from Israeli institutions.
	...

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