Brontë Wittpenn/San Francisco Chronicle/AP

Hundreds gathered to call for a cease-fire in Gaza and to read the names of Palestinians killed, at the University of California, Berkeley, Nov. 16, 2023.

When campus police removed Selena Lacayo from a pro-Palestinian sit-in on the night of Oct. 25, it was her first arrest. She was one of 56 students and one employee at the University of Massachusetts Amherst who were later charged with trespassing outside the chancellor’s office.  

But it wasn’t Ms. Lacayo’s first protest. Last spring, she marched with fellow students under the banner of prison abolition to call for the eviction of the university’s police force from campus. 

To Ms. Lacayo, a first-generation college senior whose major is women, gender, and sexuality studies, resisting the “prison-industrial complex” and Israeli military actions in Gaza is part of the same struggle. The common enemy is “Western imperialism” that, as she sees it, oppresses people in formerly colonized countries and those living in marginalized communities. 

Even students in the United States have “been directly affected by war and militarism” and need to organize to defend their rights, she says.

Her protest was part of a wave of Israel-related student activism that has roiled campuses across the U.S. since Oct. 7, when Hamas militants massacred 1,200 civilians in southern Israel and took more than 200 hostages. While some young people have voiced solidarity with Israel and supported its retaliation against Hamas, the plight of Palestinians in Gaza, where 17,000 have been killed according to Gaza officials, has galvanized many more students to join rallies, marches, and sit-ins. 

To these students, U.S. support for Israel is complicity with a punitive military campaign that compounds the suffering of Palestinian civilians under Israel’s thumb. Polls show a generational divide on the issue, with younger voters more sympathetic to Palestinians than older voters are – a divide that threatens to undermine President Joe Biden’s reelection bid. 

To conservatives, the surge in anti-Israel student activism, including the willingness of some students and faculty to condone the Oct. 7 attack as an act of resistance to occupation, is evidence of antisemitism incubated by progressive educators. Liz Magill, the president of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned on Saturday after a firestorm of criticism over testimony she gave at a congressional hearing last week on antisemitism on campus. 

Republican lawmakers on the House Committee on Education and the Workforce had grilled Ms. Magill, along with the presidents of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on whether protests calling for the genocide of Jews constituted harassment. None offered a definite yes, responding that it depended on context and free speech protections. On Tuesday, Harvard’s governing board reaffirmed its support for President Claudine Gay’s leadership.

Mark Schiefelbein/AP

Harvard President Claudine Gay (left) speaks during a congressional hearing on antisemitism on college campuses, on Capitol Hill in Washington Dec. 5. University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill (right) resigned just days after the hearing, amid a firestorm of criticism.

Rep. Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina who chairs the committee, blamed a rise in antisemitism on a “race-based ideology of the radical left” that sorts society into “classes of oppressed and oppressor” in college curriculums. “Institutional antisemitism and hate are among the poisoned fruits of your institutions’ cultures,” Representative Foxx said. 

Still, the influence of the academy on pro-Palestinian activism isn’t clear-cut. Relatively few undergraduates enroll in classes dealing directly with postcolonial politics or anti-racism; experts say many arrive on campus with political opinions already formed, and that they are more likely to be influenced by social media than seminars. 

“I think people get their politics more from their home and their parents than from what they’re taught at the university,” says Robert Cohen, a historian and professor of social studies at New York University. ”The fact that the universities are a center of controversy – it’s a good thing,” he adds. “What I would worry about is if people aren’t speaking out.”  

A generation schooled in “social justice”

The college-age cohort that entered adulthood during the pandemic’s disruptions and economic anxieties and was swept up into the 2020 racial justice protests – the largest since the 1960s – seems primed to see global conflicts through a similar lens. Today’s student body is also more racially and ethnically diverse, and includes Arab Americans and international students attuned to Middle East politics. A cross-pollination of progressive groups on campus has cast the struggles of Palestinians as mirroring those of Black victims of police violence. Israel is accused of “settler colonialism” and “structural racism” in its occupation of Palestinian territories, language that evokes European imperial rule in Africa. 

At a recent pro-Palestinian rally held in Manhattan, a woman held a handmade sign that read, “We can’t breathe since 1948,” referring both to the 2014 chokehold death of Eric Garner in police custody and to the mass displacement of Palestinians after Israel’s founding in 1948.  

Natasha Sortland, a freshman at Northeastern University in Boston, joined a daylong sit-in on Dec. 1 to call for a cease-fire in Gaza. She’s also written several letters to her representatives in Congress. She says that while any civilian deaths are “horrendous,” focusing on the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 misses “the bigger picture” and doesn’t justify Israel’s deadly bombardment on Gaza. 

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Hatem Teirelbar, an Egyptian student at the University of Colorado Denver, joins a protest against the Global Conference for Israel in downtown Denver Nov. 30. “Being pro-Palestinian really does require supporting the Palestinian resistance, because they are the ones actually fighting for liberation and independence,” he says.

An environmental science major, Ms. Sortland became interested in social justice in high school in Zumbrota, Minnesota. She joined a youth-led movement in 2020 after George Floyd was murdered by police in Minneapolis, 70 miles away from her home. “It definitely strengthened my beliefs, just being around similar-minded people,” she says. 

Student support for Palestinian rights also may reflect a reaction to the partisan climate in Israel, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has led successive, increasingly extreme right-wing governments. Left-leaning students see Israel “being militaristic and led by someone who’s Trump-like, which is Netanyahu. So their sympathies are with the Palestinians,” says Professor Cohen, the author of several books on 1960s student activism. 

While older Americans recall Israel as the underdog in a hostile region, fending off Arab armies in the 1960s and ’70s, college-age voters came of age in a different era. “I think for a lot of younger activists, they’ve seen Israel mostly in the context of the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. Israel is seen as just a much stronger actor,” says Thomas Zeitzoff, an associate professor of public affairs at American University, who studies political psychology and political violence. 

Pro-Palestinian or pro-Hamas?

Many student protesters say their support for Palestinian civilians shouldn’t be construed as pro-Hamas, despite their adoption of chants like “from the river to the sea,” a slogan that many hear as a call to expel millions of Jews from what is now Israel. 

Some, however, do express open support for Hamas’ actions. Hatem Teirelbar knows which side he’s on. A senior at the University of Colorado Denver, the Egyptian national joined pro-Palestinian protesters last month outside a Global Conference for Israel held by a U.S. Zionist group that was planned before Oct. 7. Tensions over the war in Gaza led to heightened security at the event, held at a downtown convention center. 

“Being pro-Palestinian really does require supporting the Palestinian resistance, because they are the ones actually fighting for liberation and independence,” says Mr. Teirelbar, a political science major, as he gripped the pole of a large Palestinian flag in his gloved hands. 

An organizer for the Students for a Democratic Society in Denver, Mr. Teirelbar expressed support for the Oct. 7 attack on Israeli Jews. To disavow armed resistance, he says, is to ask “Palestinians to just submit to genocide.”

Luna, another student who came out to protest the next day, and who declined to give her surname, says she understands the plight of Palestinians in Gaza because her family is from Afghanistan. “We know what it’s like to have our country occupied,” she says. She wore a Palestinian kaffiyeh and a mask as she joined others shouting slogans like “Zionism is terrorism” at Jewish conference attendees.  

“I am not against Judaism. I’m against Zionism,” says Luna, who is enrolled at Metropolitan State University of Denver. 

Sarah Matusek/The Christian Science Monitor

Pro-Palestinian activists demonstrate outside the Global Conference for Israel, a Zionist event, in downtown Denver Nov. 30.

A Harvard-Harris poll in October found that half of respondents of ages 18-24 sided more with Hamas than with Israel, compared with 16% of the public overall. But that finding has been challenged; other polls have reported much lower levels of support for Hamas among Generation Z, though still more than among older generations. 

Palestinians make up a slice of a growing Middle East and North Africa demographic in the U.S. In 2020, the Census Bureau broke out this category for the first time, recording around 3.5 million residents, including mixed ethnicities; of these, 371,887 were of ages 18-24, according to the bureau. That means a greater presence on college campuses of students with roots in a region where opinion is broadly sympathetic to Palestinians, not Israelis. 

Jews make up a larger share of the U.S. population at 7.6 million. Most vote Democratic; many Jews were prominent in 20th-century civil rights movements and other progressive causes. But there’s also a generational divide over Israel among American Jews: In a 2021 poll by a Jewish organization, 38% of Jews under 40 agreed that Israel was an apartheid state, compared with 23% of those over 64. One-third of under-40s agreed with the statement that Israel was “committing genocide” against Palestinians, while only 15% of over-64s concurred. 

Still, many Jewish Democrats feel betrayed by young progressives’ embrace of anti-Israel rhetoric and their failure to forcefully denounce Hamas. In a Nov. 29 speech on the Senate floor, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, the highest-ranking elected Jewish official, said that “young people who yearn for justice” for Palestinians were being manipulated by “antisemites” and warned that liberal Jews no longer felt welcome on the political left.

Senator Schumer urged young Americans to learn the history of antisemitism and to understand the “scar tissue” that Jews carry from the Holocaust, which, he said, informs their fear of Hamas and other groups that seek the annihilation of Israel. “Can you blame us for feeling vulnerable only 80 years after Hitler wiped out half of the Jewish population across the world while many countries turned their back?”

Dividing Democrats 

While the wave of student activism protesting Israel’s military offensive has drawn national attention, Professor Cohen of NYU doubts it will become as significant as the protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s. The anti-apartheid protests in the 1980s aimed at South Africa, he notes, were also on a larger scale. 

One significant difference is that those protests didn’t have many voices on the other side. The Palestinian cause isn’t “going to unite the campus, because it’s polarizing,” Professor Cohen says. “It’s something that’s been divisive all along.” 

That divisiveness runs right through the electoral coalition that elected President Biden in 2020 and that Democrats will need to win again next year. Hence what looks like a protest movement over U.S. foreign policy and Mr. Biden’s leverage over Israel is also a domestic political battle in which the progressive wing of his party is trying to assert its own leverage. “It’s not just about the conflict there. It’s about broader issues and struggles within the Democratic coalition,” says Professor Zeitzoff of American University.

Back at UMass Amherst, Ms. Lacayo says she won’t stop protesting until the university divests from all Israeli-related assets and condemns Israel’s military offensive in Gaza. “Lives are being lost. It just feels, on a human level, to do nothing is not an option,” she says. 

She says some of her classes have informed what she calls her “politics of liberation,” but that she learned far more from her interactions on campus and by joining social movements. “I think most of what I’ve learned has been outside the classroom,” she says. 

Asked if she felt politically at home in the Democratic Party, Ms. Lacayo laughed. “I do not belong in that party, to be honest,” she says. 

On its website, UMass Amherst tells students, “Be bold. Be true. Be revolutionary.” Ms. Lacayo intends to do that, even at the risk of another arrest. “I think the UMass administration expects things to die down and next semester to be brand new. But we’re going to continue our actions until our demands are met,” she says. 

Mackenzie McCarty contributed to this report from Boston.

A new exhibit opened last week at the Tel Aviv fairgrounds under a title that has become infamous: “Nova, 06:29.”

For every Israeli, the name is immediately recognizable as the outdoor rave that turned into a massacre on Oct. 7, with over 300 young revelers killed and some 40 taken hostage. The time stamp connotes the moment Hamas’ cross-border assault from Gaza began, near the fields outside the Re’im kibbutz where the festival took place.

This past Saturday Israelis bought tickets and shuffled into a cavernous hall, now an authentic re-creation of the party itself complete with an empty stage and somber electronic music.

In the “camping area” are tents and coolers abandoned in a panic. Charred cars placed on top of each other in the “parking lot” are situated next to bullet-ridden port-a-potties. And the “lost and found” section features an entire boutique of clothes and makeup kits and shoes left by partygoers either now deceased or too traumatized to retrieve them.

The shoes in particular, one attendee says, evoke similar memorial exhibits for the Holocaust. The Oct. 7 attack was the heaviest loss of life in Israel’s history, with at least 1,200 dead, drawing comparisons in its savagery to the horrors of eight decades ago.

For over two months, as the devastating war that Oct. 7 spawned in Gaza has dragged on, Israelis are reliving it daily – in the media, on the street, and in conversations with each other and the world.

Lost from sight, and the public conversation, is the toll on Palestinians in Gaza, with over 18,000 killed and a million people displaced amid an ongoing humanitarian disaster.

“This gap between Israel and the world isn’t bridged or mediated,” says Meital Balmas-Cohen, a professor of media and political psychology at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “In both places the messages are too simple, for a situation that is very complicated.”

Neri Zilber

A tent, camping gear, and personal effects abandoned at the site of the Nova festival during the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas militants are displayed in an exhibit in Tel Aviv, Israel, Dec. 9, 2023.

Amos Harel, the veteran military correspondent for the Haaretz daily, points especially to an imbalance in Israeli television coverage. The cost, he says, is that Israelis have “no perspective” about the reality on the ground inside Gaza, and about why it has engendered so much liberal anger against Israel globally.

In Israel, heart-wrenching accounts from the survivors of Oct. 7, as well as the relatives of those killed, are aired in the media constantly.

On Israel’s leading Channel 12 television broadcast, this past weekend had a blow-by-blow account of a standoff between Israeli troops and Hamas militants inside a kibbutz where only two out of the 15 Israeli civilians being held hostage survived. Also featured: the story of twin babies orphaned after their parents were shot dead and the harrowing testimony from a Nova attendee who was moments away from captivity after watching her friends be murdered.

The families of the 240 hostages seized have also worked tirelessly to raise domestic and international awareness to free their loved ones.

Pictures of the hostages are omnipresent across the country: on highway billboards, in shop windows, and in schools. On Tel Aviv’s central Dizengoff Street, giant red-stained teddy bears are sat on benches, a reminder of all the children initially taken hostage as well.

With over 100 women and children released last month as part of a temporary truce deal, many are now speaking out about the trauma and abuse they suffered inside Gaza.

The mounting death toll of Israeli soldiers has also been widely covered in the media. Every night, short clips attempt to recount the life of an entire person, and his or her entire world.

This past Friday afternoon, one such funeral for a 25-year-old reservist was aired live by all the major media outlets. In the eulogy, the soldier’s father, former army chief and now senior government minister Gadi Eisenkot, summed up the national mood as he choked back tears.

“You told me that you and your comrades in the company feel that this is a just war, that all the hostages must be returned and Hamas must be defeated after the barbaric and cruel event they committed,” Mr. Eisenkot said, as Israel’s top leadership looked on, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Athit Perawongmetha/Reuters

A screen displays photos of people who were abducted by Hamas militants on Oct. 7, in Tel Aviv, Israel, Nov. 27, 2023. Photos of the hostages are everywhere to be found in Israel.

Such a phenomenon is not unique to Israel, Professor Balmas-Cohen submits.

“After a war or terror attack or natural disaster anywhere, there is always a ‘rally around the flag’ effect,” she says. “The same thing happened in Israel. In an instant, all the divisions were put aside and the public conversation united towards a common objective.”

The Israeli media in the current moment is no exception, Professor Balmas-Cohen adds, with the coverage rotating around not just personal stories of tragedy and heroism, but also military strategy and the Israel Defense Forces. The IDF spokesperson has now become a national figure, with his nightly briefings carried live to the entire country. The one exception in Israel is that criticism of the government, often muted during wartime, has continued unabated, even in right-wing outlets.

But what has been lost, some analysts say, is any sense of the other side in the war.

“The country and the coverage are wrapped inside a patriotic bubble,” says Haaretz’s Mr. Harel. “Yes, something terrible was done to us on Oct. 7. It’s a just war, and there’s probably no other way this time, but you can’t live in denial about what’s happening inside Gaza.”

Mr. Harel criticizes the television coverage beamed to the Israeli public in particular for being too “sterile”: vast scenes of destruction, but seldom few people and no close-ups of dead bodies, as is so prevalent in the international media.

“You may have half a minute in the [main] evening news of a faraway image of Gazans searching through the rubble, but it’s only usually in the context of Hamas losing control,” Mr. Harel says. “The news editors think they’re acting like ‘responsible adults,’ trying to shield us like we’re kids – ‘This isn’t good for you.’”

Dedi Hayun/Reuters

Members of the Be'eri kibbutz community view the release of hostages held in Gaza by the Palestinian militant group Hamas, as they watch the news from their temporary home in a hotel by the Dead Sea in Israel, Nov. 29, 2023.

Yet even for those Israelis fully aware of the reality inside Gaza, the lack of understanding from the world, even from Palestinians themselves, engenders deep frustration and furthers the sense of isolation and alienation. 

As one prominent Israeli expert on Palestinian affairs, who requested anonymity, puts it: “I feel like I can be empathetic toward the suffering on the other side, inside Gaza. But I don’t feel like that is extended to me and my own people for Oct. 7. Some we hear question whether it even happened.”

The expert has cut off contact, he says, with many Palestinian friends. In a similar vein, many Israelis have cut off contact with those outside Israel who are not similarly supportive of the military offensive in Gaza, just as the Israeli government has reconsidered ties with those foreign capitals and international bodies critical of the civilian and humanitarian toll inside the enclave.

This “us versus them” mindset – manifest now during the Jewish Hanukkah holiday as “the battle between light and darkness” – is a recipe for greater fear, anger, and polarization across Israeli society, says Professor Balmas-Cohen.

With the war not set to end anytime soon, regular Israelis will find it very difficult to break away and disconnect, even if just for a moment.

“You can’t run away from it. It’s everywhere,” she says.

At the exit to the Nova memorial exhibit in Tel Aviv, a small stand was selling commemorative T-shirts (for charity) in black and white colors. The festival logo, now sullied forever, had below it a simple tagline, connoting both resilience and defiance: “We Will Dance Again. 7/10/23.”

Thibault Camus/AP

Disposable, flavored electronic cigarettes known as puffs are displayed for sale at a tobacco shop in Fontainebleau, south of Paris, Dec. 4, 2023. Attracting teenagers with their sweet flavors, these devices are facing scrutiny for their environmental implications.

It’s nearly the end of lunch break and high school friends Candice, Kenza, and Jade sit cross-legged on the concrete courtyard next to a local grocery store in the east of Paris. Huddled on the sidewalk behind them are other small groups of teens.

Almost all have two things in hand: a cellphone and a disposable electronic cigarette, known in France as a puff. Most are colorful plastic canisters; one is white with flashing red and blue lights.

“Puffs don’t make your hands and clothes stink like cigarettes,” says Kenza, pulling a violet puff from her front sweatshirt pocket and taking a drag, as a plume of berry-scented smoke fills the space above her head. She withheld her last name because she is a minor. “You don’t have to go to a tobacco shop to buy them. You can get them on Snapchat.”

“Most people I know smoke puffs now, not cigarettes,” adds Candice, her blond hair gelled back in a tight bun. She is also a minor. “We have no intention of smoking cigarettes later on.”

The French government is not convinced. Last week, the French Assembly moved ahead a bill to ban puffs over environmental concerns – the plastic canisters are thrown out after around 600 inhalations – and worries that with their attractive packaging and easy access, they’re a gateway to smoking cigarettes, especially for young people.

Smoking remains the No. 1 cause of avoidable death in France. And while puffs, e-cigarettes, and other smoking substitutes were initially created to help people quit, they are increasingly being used as a first smoking experience among young people.

But unlike a decade ago, when twice as many young people smoked as today, a growing number of teens now say cigarettes are outdated, even “uncool” – something they’ve already tried and given up, or have no interest in experimenting with at all.

The puffs ban is expected to go into effect later next year, after the Senate votes on it. But experts debate whether it will be effective, or will only push young people to go to greater lengths to procure puffs. Some observers say the only way to stomp out smoking among teens – in all its forms – is through accountability and mutual respect.

“Should we go towards prohibition and fear, or empowerment?” says Elodie Gentina, a researcher and professor of marketing at the IÉSEG School of Management, and the author or three books on Generation Z. “Young people will always engage in risky behaviors as they build their sense of self and strive to be a part of the group.

“But we’ve found that instead of bombarding young people with the risks of smoking, if we can get them to participate in the discussions and give them feelings of autonomy, they’ll make healthier decisions.”

A new lure for teen smokers

Puffs first made their entry into the French market in 2021. Unlike more expensive e-cigarettes, which can be refilled with vape liquid cartridges, puffs are designed to be thrown away once empty. The brightly colored penlike tubes, available in flavors like marshmallow and bubble gum, offer roughly the equivalent of one packet of cigarettes’ worth of nicotine for around €8 ($8.64) each.

Although puffs are restricted for those under age 18, they’re easily procured through social media channels or shopkeepers willing to look the other way. According to a study by the nonprofit Alliance Against Tobacco, 13% of 13-to-16-year-olds in France had already tried puffs in 2022 and 28% of e-cigarette users say they started smoking with puffs.

“We’re seeing young people smoking e-cigarettes and puffs who have never smoked a cigarette before,” says Yana Dimitrovna, a tobacco prevention specialist at the French nonprofit National League Against Cancer. “Both contain nicotine and thus they’re vectors that generate addiction. And once [young people] have an addiction, there’s more of a risk they’ll eventually go to a cigarette as an adult.”

The proposed ban is hardly the first time the French government has addressed teen smoking. Since 2004, it has worked to restrict access and make it less inviting, by banning cigarette aromas and additives like menthol capsules, and progressively prohibiting smoking on school and university premises.

That’s in combination with a governmentwide plan to tackle smoking in France, including health warnings and neutral cigarette packaging, the removal of ads from public spaces, and continued price hikes. A pack of cigarettes now costs around €11. The government announced prices would go up to €12 in 2025 and €13 in 2026.

Instead of causing rebellion, those tactics have been largely dissuasive for teens. At the beginning of the 2000s, more than 40% of French 17-year-olds smoked regularly, according to the French Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (OFDT). Today, that figure is around 16%.

But e-cigarettes have escaped the phenomenon. The OFDT also studied how teens experiment with substances and found that compared with 2017, the use of all substances – including marijuana, alcohol, and illicit drugs – was down in 2022. All except for e-cigarette use, which rose by 9%.

“We’ve managed to de-normalize cigarette smoking by removing it significantly from films, raising prices, and offering subsidies to help people quit smoking,” says Amélie Eschenbrenner, spokesperson for the French nonprofit National Committee Against Tobacco. “The same needs to be done with e-cigarettes and puffs: neutral packaging and putting them in the cigarette aisle. Right now, they look like puff pastries.”

Information, not scare tactics

French anti-smoking nonprofits have found success by offering young people information about the harmful environmental effects of the tobacco industry as a way to incite them to stop smoking – instead of scare tactics.

The Alliance Against Tobacco and the National Committee Against Tobacco have both launched social media campaigns, highlighting the effects of cigarette butts on French beaches or the power of tobacco lobbyists.

“The decrease in teen smoking is in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has made young people question the world more, whether it’s physical and mental health, the environment, or moral issues,” says Ms. Gentina, the Gen Z researcher. “They’re worried about the environment. They want to eat well. They’re looking for brands that are authentic and align with their values.

“The tobacco industry goes against all that, and their greenwashing doesn’t work for young people anymore.”

But misinformation remains, and research by the Alliance Against Tobacco showed that 20% of smokers thought that cigarette butts and puffs were biodegradable. Still, for as much flak as puffs have received, the vaping industry has felt sorely misunderstood, and some say that e-cigarettes are still primarily used by those looking to stop smoking and not the other way around.

In the United Kingdom, the government went even further last spring when its National Health Service launched a nationwide campaign called Swap To Stop, encouraging the use of vapes instead of cigarettes in an effort to cut smoking rates.

“Puffs are a controversial product. They’re a disaster for young people and for the environment, but there are adults as well as young people who are using puffs to stop smoking,” says Sébastien Béziau, vice president of Sovape, a Paris-based vaping advocacy organization. “The government decided on this ban too hastily. You can’t ban something without promoting something else.”

The government is banking on the fact that making puffs difficult to access will create a full stop on demand. But some e-cigarette shops, like J Well Belleville in the east of Paris, expect the ban to be partially or totally repealed. Many young people say they’re confident they’ll be able to find puffs through social media or by going across the border, even if the ban goes into effect.

And other attractively packaged, seemingly innocuous tobacco products are creeping into the market, like nicotine pouches – small tea-bag-like pouches placed between the lip and gums like chewing tobacco – and nicotine pearls, which resemble pieces of chewing gum. All the more reason, say activists, to continue efforts to address teen smoking on all fronts.

“I’ve never smoked; it disgusts me. I really don’t see the point,” says Jade, hoisting her backpack over her shoulder before returning to class with friends Candice and Kenza. “But if I were going to smoke something, it would probably be puffs.”

With uncanny precision and attention to form, Yu Zeling snips away at the thin red paper. Her scissors seem to glide magically into place. After several minutes, she unfolds her creation: a bold and smiling Chinese zodiac pig.

An award-winning master of the ancient Chinese folk art of paper cutting, Ms. Yu fills her studio with cutouts of animals, people, and scenes so vivid that they seem to leap from the walls. Rich with symbolism, her art embodies village life in Ansai, a rural district in Shaanxi province on China’s rugged Loess Plateau. Ansai is a center of paper cutting – recognized in 2009 by UNESCO as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

Once practiced by almost every village woman, paper cutting has waned as China’s countryside has undergone vast changes in recent decades, with millions of young people leaving for cities and towns. “It’s a vanishing tradition,” says Wu Ka-ming, an associate professor of cultural and religious studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. 

Yet Ms. Yu and others are working to keep the folk art alive, even as it evolves away from its roots as adornment for farmhouses and local celebrations. Indeed, the Ansai native is serving as a rare bridge between the most skilled paper-cut artists of the 1980s – a golden era in paper cutting – and a new generation of heirs. 

“I love paper cutting,” says Ms. Yu with a smile as she carefully slips the eye-catching pig into a plastic sheet for display. “I just keep doing it!” 

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

Working without any pattern, Ms. Yu fashions a pig – a Chinese zodiac animal – in her Ansai District studio

From Tang dynasty to Cultural Revolution

Growing up in a hamlet deep in an Ansai valley, surrounded by terraced fields, Ms. Yu came to paper cutting in the late 1970s as naturally as she breathed the earthy air. 

“We were very poor, and when it was time to celebrate the [Lunar] New Year, we all put paper-cuts in the windows,” she says, recalling the holiday at her childhood home – a cave dug from a hillside – where her family of 10 eked out a living growing corn, beans, and sorghum. “Everyone did paper cutting,” she says, referring to village women.

The art originated in China in the centuries after paper was invented in A.D. 105 and proliferated during the Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-907). People first used the paper-cuts in sacrificial offerings and later fashioned them as decorations pasted on windows, doors, and walls during local festivals, weddings, and other celebrations. Paper cutting was practiced mainly by women, who were sometimes judged by the quality of their works.

Full of auspicious symbols from peasant life, the decorations heralded good weather, many offspring, long life, wealth, and happiness. Regions created distinct styles, with Shaanxi known for more crude, primitive designs. 

In the 20th century, political movements appropriated the vibrant paper-cuts, especially in Shaanxi. Mao Zedong and his Communist Party-led Red Army created a base in northern Shaanxi in the 1930s and used paper-cuts to mobilize support. After the 1949 revolution, propagandists mass-produced the folk art to depict people living happily under Communist rule. 

Party campaigns that intended to make art serve political goals increasingly suppressed the traditional content of paper cutting, which embodied religious beliefs, superstition, and romance. During Mr. Mao’s radical decadelong Cultural Revolution – launched in 1966, the year Ms. Yu was born – some Ansai peasant women artists were publicly criticized for making paper-cuts with traditional themes. 

But all this changed in the post-Mao years. Just as Ms. Yu was beginning to learn paper cutting, after she left elementary school in 1978 at the age of 12, China’s shift toward market economics and social opening began allowing for a revival of traditional culture. 

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

Ms. Yu's most complex piece features a “Snake Encircling Rabbit” design, representing bliss for a married couple.

Joining the masters

Using discarded newspaper, Ms. Yu first practiced cutting the image of a Chinese national flag that she saw in a school textbook. She says she “cut it 100 times” before she was satisfied. Then her aunt took over, introducing her to increasingly complicated traditional motifs.

“My aunt taught me very well,” she says. Farming by day, by night she would join female relatives to make paper-cuts, sometimes using them as patterns to embroider shoes and pillows.

Meanwhile, a research scholar named Chen Shanqiao began trekking from Ansai’s county seat into the hills and valleys to rural villages, rediscovering the true meanings embedded in the paper-cuts. Their power astonished him. In the mid-1980s, he recruited a few older village women who were masters in the craft to come teach at Ansai’s Cultural Center.

Ms. Yu married farmer Jiang Zhicheng, who admired her passion and skill. Inspired, Mr. Jiang took a few of his wife’s works to the local market in 1987, but he couldn’t sell them. So he went farther, riding his bicycle more than 25 miles to Ansai’s Cultural Center. Seeing the fine pieces, Mr. Chen immediately bought the paper-cuts and invited Ms. Yu to come train with the master artists, including Bai Fenglian, whose work was later recognized by UNESCO.

At last, Ms. Yu could devote herself fully to the art. “With her talent, she learned quickly and progressed a lot, and gradually caught up” with the master teachers, says Mr. Jiang.

After years of training, Ms. Yu became a master in her own right, winning one award after another. Her works are on display in museums. But she’s humble about her achievements. “I was, and still am, a farmer,” she says with a smile.

Reflections of rural life

Moving around her studio, she prefers to talk about the rural life and customs that she grew up with and that inspire her art. One paper-cut depicts a line from a northern Shaanxi folk song about parting lovers. Another shows a wedding tradition in which the groom combs the bride’s hair. 

“I make paper-cuts based on life,” she says. “Here in northern Shaanxi, we feed the pigs and till the land and care for the children.”

Hoping to carry on and grow the folk art, Ms. Yu volunteers to teach at free community training sessions. Paper cutting is also taught in Ansai’s public schools. “Some young people only want to sell the paper-cuts and quit if they can’t,” she says. But others enjoy the craft and keep it up, often seeking her advice, she adds.

Still, as Chinese villages empty out and rural rituals fade, Ms. Yu is aware of the need to go beyond perpetuating traditions and embrace new paper-cut experiments.

“Can there be innovation in terms of motifs, or does this intangible cultural heritage always have to be the reinvention of tradition?” says Dr. Wu, the professor. “Can they engage contemporary artists in a way that their artwork remains relevant to their lives? That is a major question.”

For her part, Ms. Yu tries to address this tension, and span the generations, by simply setting an example – demonstrating the ongoing,
intimate connection between her life and work. 

The most elaborate paper-cut in her studio is a large and ornate circular design that weaves together layer upon layer of significance: In the center, a snake (man) encircles a rabbit (woman), symbolizing marriage. Surrounding them is a ring of pomegranates (the seeds of which represent many children), peaches (the Chinese name for “peach” is also the word for “longevity”), and Buddha’s hands (a kind of citrus fruit representing bliss). A final outer rim, resembling a woven flower basket, also signifies longevity.

“My works,” she says, “have a lot of meaning.”

Colette Davidson

Krispy Kreme is the newest U.S. fast-food outlet in France. One week after opening, customers were still lining up to buy the novel delights.

I was riding the Paris metro when I saw it: a floor-to-ceiling advertisement featuring a half-eaten glazed doughnut, boasting that it was “the best croissant in Paris.”

I’d just spent four hours at a circus with my children and thought that, perhaps, my corneas had been burned out by all the strobe lights. But no, it was true.

As the metro doors closed, I had a moment to digest – though not yet literally: Krispy Kreme had arrived in France.

Last Wednesday, around 500 people lined up at the crack of dawn – some having camped out overnight – to attend the grand opening of the latest American fast-food chain to hit town. Paris’ first Krispy Kreme store, ironically located in the space once occupied by French multi-Michelin-starred chef Alain Ducasse, will be joined by 11 more around the French capital over the next three months. The sugary delights will also be available soon in supermarkets.

This should not have come as a surprise to me. Over the 15 years that I have lived here, I’ve seen the French love-hate relationship with American fast food play out in a number of ways. McDonald’s has become the lazy go-to Sunday meal for Parisian hipsters and French families alike. Starbucks is always so packed that you’re lucky to get a table and, if you do, more than likely to accidentally end up in someone else’s selfie.

And I’ll never forget the day my Spanish husband came home from work and told me excitedly about the new restaurant he’d discovered where they sold made-to-order burritos! You guessed it: Chipotle.

That all adds up to a substantial American presence. France is the biggest market outside the United States for both McDonald’s (€6 billion, or $6.5 billion, in sales last year) and Burger King (€1.2 billion).

Domino’s Pizza, Five Guys, and KFC, among others, have all set up shop here, with plans to expand.

Like the rest of the pack, Krispy Kreme can hope to build a French market through the Gen Z generation of customers, who have grown up watching their favorite celebs munching those rings of greasy dough on American TV series or in TikTok videos.

Still, if you are like me, you’re probably having trouble imagining a French person choose an unsophisticated, sugar shock-inducing doughnut over a refined, flaky croissant. And, surely, a French patron wouldn’t be caught dead actually dunking that doughnut into their café au lait?

But like McDonald’s – which has added French-produced meats and croissants to its local menu – Krispy Kreme is one step ahead of you. They’re offering delights such as gingerbread-flavored doughnuts and a less-sweet strawberry frosting to appeal to the Parisian palate.

That might be enough to sway French food snobs. And speaking for myself, while I can’t say I’d choose a doughnut over a pain au chocolat, I will admit that one of my secret “musts” each time I go back to the U.S. is a sour cream glazed doughnut from … Krispy Kreme. If I could avoid taking a nine-hour flight to sink my teeth into one of those little pieces of heaven, it wouldn’t be the end of the world.

Maybe the famous croissant and its ugly American stepsister, the doughnut, can coexist. If there’s one thing the French know, it’s food, so I’m confident they’ve got this.

Now, onto more pressing matters. I wonder how you say “Chocolate Iced Custard-Filled” in French?

Tristan McLaren/Courtesy of Lemon Pebble architects

A children's center in Vosloorus, near Johannesburg, designed by one of the few firms in South Africa owned by Black women. "People with low resources can still aspire to beautiful, functional spaces," says Tanzeem Razak, one of Lemon Pebble's founders.

In the United Nations climate summit drawing to close in Dubai, one benchmark of progress received little attention: Greenhouse gas emissions from buildings and houses in the United States have fallen by 8.4% this year, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. That is more than four times faster than the average annual rate of reduction since 2005.

It isn’t hard to see why that matters. Buildings contribute 42% of the global carbon footprint. Reducing emissions from heating, cooling, and lighting them is a key factor in slowing climate change, requiring practical steps like greening power grids and building materials.

But the U.S. decrease may be evidence of an even more important transition described by British economist Kate Raworth as “moving from growth to thriving.”

“We are already seeing a paradigm shift ... starting with a simple question: Must we build new?” wrote Lisa Richmond, a senior fellow with the climate change initiative Architecture 2030, in Architect Magazine. The question captures how architects are rethinking design in the context of global warming - starting with how buildings meet the needs of the communities they serve.

“Architects can’t operate outside of society,” said David Chipperfield, this year’s recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, the field’s most prestigious award. “We need society to come with us. ... Essentially, what we have to hope now is that the environmental crisis makes us reconsider priorities of society, that profit is not the only thing that should be motivating our decisions.”

That change in thinking helps explain one building trend in the U.S. For the first time since it started tracking such data 20 years ago, the American Institute of Architects reported this year that renovations outpaced new construction. Mr. Chipperfield’s approach to renewing old buildings, the Pritzker jury noted, reflects an “architecture of understated but transformative civic presence” blending austerity, use, and deference to history.

In other parts of the world such as Africa, architects are returning to traditional designs and local materials to find climate-sensitive solutions to the needs of a growing population. That requires renewing a sense of value in local ideas. “In the right context, there is a place for modernism,” Francis Kéré, an architect from Burkina Faso, wrote in The New York Times last week. “But there is also a need for architecture that, environmentally, works in Africa. ... It is essential to connect with the local community and explain what you are doing. ... Vernacular and modern techniques can work together.”

A recent U.N. study estimated that 75% of the global infrastructure that will exist in 2050 has yet to be built. “How much can we do with technology, and how much do we need to look at changing the way we live?” asked Todd Reisz, an architect based in Amsterdam, in The New York Times. As it shapes a post-carbon future, architecture is finding majesty in new forms of modesty.