Classes may be over and dorms emptied out for the summer, but the dramatic student support for Palestinian solidarity on a number of campuses hasn't wrapped up like final exams.
The first protest tent encampment went up in mid-April at Columbia University, sparking similar demonstrations at dozens of American colleges. The mostly peaceful protests have also seen some antisemitic incidents and flares of violence when encampments clashed with pro-Israel supporters. More than 2,800 people have been arrested since last month, as some schools called in law enforcement to clear the encampments. Other administrations reached agreements with students to end their encampments voluntarily after engaging in negotiations.
WATCH: Why many universities are rejecting protester calls for divestment from Israel
Protesters have voiced various demands, such as calling for their universities to disclose ties to Israel (including investments through endowment funds) and divest from businesses involved with the country– a tactic that echoes disinvestment campaigns against apartheid South Africa in the 1980s.
The PBS NewsHour asked experts what to watch for as these student protests head into the summer.
Will schools that agreed to discuss divestment ultimately act on those calls?
Some schools, such as Harvard, Brown and Northwestern, were able to negotiate an end to protest encampments on their campuses by agreeing to consider student proposals on divestment.
The calls for divestment were much broader at some schools than others, said Angus Johnston, a professor at Hostos Community College of The City University of New York who researches American student activism.
He added that many encampment organizers made other demands that would be "very, very surprising to see the colleges agree to, particularly in the short term."
"There are campuses where students are calling for a disentanglement of relationships with the Israeli government, Israeli institutions or with the Israeli military," he said. "And then in addition to that, there are calls for amnesty for the student protests. And there are also campuses which are making promises for stuff like material support for Muslim or Arab or Palestinian students on campus. And there are a couple of places [that] announced that they're going to offer these scholarships to Palestinians."
Historically, it's common for one side of a negotiation to lose a lot of the power that it had after reaching an agreement with the other side, said journalist Vincent Bevins, whose recent book "If We Burn" covers protest movements of the 2010s. "We know that it is possible for one side to walk away, not really suffer any consequence."
Whether or not universities follow through on their promises of divestment depends in large part on how powerful these protest movements remain outside of the encampments, said Bevins.
"I think that there's no reason to believe that just because you're no longer in a camp, you have lost all of your power," he said. "If indeed they remain strong, if indeed it becomes clear to administrators that there is serious pressure from below. And of course, they're not only listening for pressure from below."
WATCH: How some colleges and students have reached agreements over pro-Palestinian protests
Other pressures include from House Republicans, who have held at least three committee hearings in the past month on campus protests and alleged antisemitism. New York Gov. Kathy Hochul and New York City Mayor Eric Adams both condemned the protests. State legislators have threatened action against universities for not cracking down on pro-Palestinian protests enough, and influential university donors and trustees have also condemned the protests and threatened to withhold donations.
Johnston predicts that some students and administrators are going to find a way to meet in the middle, and some will not. "But it's not like this is an all-or-nothing plan," he said, adding that some demands – like not pushing charges against student demonstrators – are winnable "on the vast majority of these campuses."
What happens to the pro-Palestinian protest movement on campuses if there's a cease-fire, or the war ends?
Calls for a cease-fire have been a feature of many pro-Palestinian protests on signs and chants, but the idea has not been central to the demands of most of the protest encampments, Johnston said.
From his perspective, the protests are about more than the current war in Gaza. " "This war has brought into relief a division in American politics that has been brewing … for a very long time."
Support for Israel has enjoyed bipartisan consensus in the United States, though sometimes that support came with criticisms. Johnston said that support has also existed with an assumption that the dispute between Israel and Palestinians could be resolved with a two-state solution, Johnston said.
"This generation of college students have never known a moment when that felt possible. They have never seen a moment where they could imagine a viable two-state solution. So the war in Gaza has precipitated, this wave of protests and the crackdowns on the campuses have made it explode," Johnston said.
Bevins said the protest groups he's spoken with "are not directing their energies at Benjamin Netanyahu or even the U.S. government."
Instead, Bevins said, students are directing their demands at their university administrations and calling for disclosure of and divestment from companies that are profiting from or facilitating Israel's war in Gaza.
"Those are demands that have been around since I went to university 20 years ago and probably would not go away," he said, even if a cease-fire — and its potential to save lives and reduce suffering in the region — would be welcomed by some protesters.
Johnston said that because the issues between Israelis and Palestinians, such as the military occupation of the West Bank was ongoing long before the Hamas attack in Israel on Oct. 7 and was likely to continue, pro-Palestinian activism would also likely continue.
"The underlying crisis is one that did not start on Oct. 7. And until that's resolved, I don't see that the students are going to have reason to go back to their dorms," Johnston said.
Will the protest movement have an effect on the election?
Cook Political Report Editor-in-Chief Amy Walter said it is not known what effect the protests will have on the election five months from now.
"We know that there are plenty of voters upset with the policies of the Biden Administration, but not all of them are in encampments. We also know that, according to polling, the war in Gaza isn't a top issue for most Americans, including younger Americans," Walter said.
"What the protests do highlight is the frustration and upset that many people feel about a world that feels unjust and out of balance."
READ MORE: Half of U.S. adults say Israel has gone too far in war in Gaza, AP-NORC poll says
Among U.S. lawmakers, Johnston sees a Republican party that is essentially unified not only in its support for Israel generally, but support for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's far-right government, and a deeply divided Democratic party.
"Any time you have an issue that unites one party and divides the other, you can expect the party that's united to do everything they can to gain a political advantage," he said. "So we're seeing that the Republican party is pressing its advantage because it sees this as an electoral winner."
Johnston noted that the divide among Democrats — both in terms of public opinion polling and the views of elected officials — is largely generational, with older party leaders who came of age in an era where support for Israel was taken for granted. As a result, politicians like Biden and Nancy Pelosi have a hard time engaging with young people coming from a different perspective. "The worldview that they are encountering is alien to anything that they've ever had to deal [with] before in their careers," he said.
Republican candidates, on the other hand, are going to say that Democratic politicians are responsible for the "chaos, radicalism and the corruption of our youth," Bevins predicted. "I expect Republican lawmakers will, in the upcoming election, try to use the wave of campus protests to buttress their narrative about the recklessness or radicalism or dangerous nature of Democratic politicians."