A while back, 26 pro-Palestinian protestors at the University of Chicago, along with two faculty members, were arrested and booked for holding an illegal sit-in in the admissions office. Later on, the city of Chicago dropped the charges of criminal trespass (I don’t know why this happened), and up to now I haven’t been able to find out if the miscreant students were receiving any discipline from the University.
Now, according to the Chicago Maroon (our student newspaper), it seems that the protestors have not even been slapped on the wrist, but only lightly tapped on the scaphoid. For it appears that the students were simply assigned by the University to write an essay on their sit-in experience. They were not required to show contrition or to promise they wouldn’t violate campus rules again. Instead, they were allowed to reiterate their support for Palestine and their accusation that the University engages in genocide. They also complained that their speech was being suppressed, which of course is not true. Their speech wasn’t suppressed; what was suppressed was performing that speech in a place where it obstructed campus access.
The student newspaper, which I now think is deeply biased towards the pro-Palestinian side (they have about ten pro-Palestinian articles and op-eds for every pro-Israel piece), produced not a news article about this, but rather a piece written by some of the protestors in UChicago United for Palestine (UCUP)—a consortium of like-minded groups that loves to violate university regulations and, most of the time, goes unpunished.
Read their “essays” by clicking on the link below. Remember, this story is not news, but a political screed disguised as news (it is labeled “letters” and “viewpoints”, but those labels often are used for very long political diatribes). For some reason the paper gives huge amounts of space to UCUP and the Students of Justice in Palestine to publish “letters” that can be over 4,000 words long. The only op-ed opposing their disruption was mine, and although the paper promised several months ago to put up a long pro-Israeli piece, for some reason it hasn’t appeared. From the Nov. 28 issue:
Editor’s note: As The Maroon’s long-form and narrative features section, Grey City seeks to produce coverage that gives students a direct voice in reporting. As a separate report, Grey City will soon be publishing a story written by pro-Israel student organizer who has been active in recent campus demonstrations.
So far, bupkes. I’d like to see the Maroon publish something beyond my letter showing that it is reporting objectively in this kerfuffle. They claim to be, but I don’t believe them.
Click to read.
Here’s part of the UCUP intro in which they whine about having their speech suppressed:
On November 9, 26 students and two faculty were arrested by the University of Chicago Police Department (UCPD) during a sit-in at Rosenwald Hall in protest of the University’s investments in institutions complicit in the genocide of Palestinians. Though legal charges have been dropped, the University’s disciplinary process is ongoing. Gathered here are excerpts from statements sent by student arrestees to Associate Dean of Students Jeremy Inabinet of the Center for Student Integrity, which we were required to submit in order to address charges brought against us by another associate dean of students through the University’s “disruptive conduct” disciplinary process. Administrators have repeatedly tried to push pro-Palestine narratives into the shadows, away from the public eye, including by weaponizing UCPD and the Dean-on-Call program against student protestors, processing our arrests inside a university building to avoid the large crowd outside, and subjecting us to an internal disciplinary process under the dean of students—the very university structure that filed the disciplinary complaint against us and that likely authorized our arrest.
. . . . We share the following letter excerpts to expose and condemn the University’s failure to protect our rights to free expression, as well as its bad faith promise to uphold “political neutrality” on our campus. Despite all of our efforts, the administration has never agreed to meet with us. Instead, President Alivisatos has since met publicly with the Israeli Consul General to strengthen ties to Israeli institutions in the middle of a genocide, while disciplining Palestinian students and their allies. In such a climate of blatant non-neutrality and suppression, we come forward openly and share our statements, which would otherwise be arbitrated behind closed doors.
The University has bent over backwards to protect their rights to free expression, and meeting with the Israeli Consul is not violating official University policy. These students are angry and entitled, and the university repeatedly lets them get away with violating the rules. (A recent illegal “lie in” in a campus restaurant went completely unpunished despite the presence of a Dean and three campus cops.)
A few excerpts from the “my sit-in experience” essays. Names are given where they’re reported, though some students wanted to remain anonymous, and of course I’ve preserved that anonymity.
“I am disturbed to have to write this letter to explain my presence at a peaceful, anti-genocide action that took place in Rosenwald Hall on November 9. The University’s response to this action reflects a highly securitized and carceral approach that actively chills student voices and directly contradicts its “commitment to free speech.” (from an anonymous student)
***************
A coalition of Palestinian higher education institutions has issued a call for international academic institutions to:
- Call for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire, guaranteed by the UN.
- Urge immediate entry into Gaza of sufficient amounts of life-saving humanitarian needs (including water, food, fuel, medicine), equitably distributed throughout the whole territory of Gaza Strip.
- Demand UN protection for the 2.3 million Palestinian civilians trapped under siege in Gaza.
- Issue clear positions rejecting any ethnic cleansing.
- To support in dismantling the settler colonial and apartheid system and to achieve a just, comprehensive, and lasting peace.
In response, major U.S. academic institutions like UChicago have silently continued to profit from the destruction of civilian infrastructure like universities and the slaughter of innocent Palestinians…”
Sammy Aiko Zimmerman, Class of 2024
***************
We have all heard numerous times that the University of Chicago has articulated principles on political neutrality in its Kalven Report, discouraging administrators from taking a stance on socio-political issues outside of the University in the name of preserving free expression. The University’s stance on institutional political neutrality, said to preserve the principle and practice of free inquiry and critique at the departmental, faculty, and student level is admirable at first sight. But the further I have inspected it and observed its consequences, the more it seems to mask a refusal to challenge status-quo power relations which are destroying free expression, and the possibility of education itself. How can UChicago administrators claim to uphold core values and principles of free expression by ignoring the student body’s calls for a meeting, mechanically citing the Kalven Report to the media, and passively watching Israel systematically target journalists, drop bombs on university buildings in the Gaza Strip, and brutally incarcerate our fellow students at Birzeit University without charge? Is the appropriate ethical attitude to wait until after the genocide is consummated and only then hold an intellectually challenging history seminar about it?…”
Hassan Doostdar, Class of 2025
****************
Seriously, in what way are these students having their right of free speech abrogated? They’re engaging in civil disobedience, which is fine, but that gives them no right to beef, as some have done, for getting arrested. And pardon me if I don’t think that accusations of campus complicity in genocide are the moral equivalent of the civil rights protestors of the Sixties.
The administration here seems to have decided to let protestors either get away with violating campus regulations or giving them only very light punishment. This, of course, is not deterrence, and I hope that Jewish parents aren’t themselves deterred from sending their kids here.
“passively watching Israel systematically target journalists, drop bombs on university buildings in the Gaza Strip, and brutally incarcerate our fellow students at Birzeit University without charge? Is the appropriate ethical attitude to wait until after the genocide is consummated”
Where is the proof concerning all these claims?
Unfortunately the UC has shown no backbone in its’ dealings with these people, what are they frightened of? Or are they showing signs of “Islamophobia “?
What’s that line about “islamophobia”? Something about it being “invented by fascists, embraced by morons, etc.” who said that? Rushdie? So true.
D.A.
NYC
I looked it up. Islamophobia is “a word created by fascists, and used by cowards, to manipulate morons.”
It’s been misattributed to Hitchens, but apparently originated with one Andrew Cummins, a tweeter who goes by @Vodkaninja
kindness, repressive tolerance (Marcuse) come to mind…
BTW Here’s an interesting book I just got :
A Theory of Justice
John Rawls
Belknap
1999
… discusses civil disobedience, lots of other regular topics…
+1. I was introduced to John Rawls’ “Theory of Justice” (justice as fairness and the veil of ignorance) as an undergraduate in the late 60’s and it has served me well in decision-making over all these years.
OH! I see it now – so that book is the origin! I thought it was a paper of essay.
A book which is reviled by SJ-supporters. The veil of ignorance ignores one’s ‘positionality’ — ie, Rawls asks us to suppose that we do not know who we are, what background, ethnicity, race, religion, gender, etc, and to make our ethical decisions from within this unknowing state. This requires that we sublimate personal identity, which of course is something SJ-supporters must reject since all their claims start with personal identity.
John Rawls’ book is obviously a classic.
TP, I strongly recommend this short essay (access is free):
Joseph Heath: The futility of arguing against identity politics. Nov 25, 2023
https://josephheath.substack.com/p/the-futility-of-arguing-against-identity
Heath is a professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, with a Ph.D. from Northwestern (Evanston, Ill.).
+1
Very good article.
Your president Alivisatos has demonstrated himself to be an empty suit, exhibiting plenty of words and activities but no spine or real outcomes in protecting free speech on campus. The words and panel discussions of the so-called free speech program are cheap…they sound nice, but it appeared to be the case and is clear now from this posting that they signify nothing. I do not think that the late President Zimmer would have allowed and continued to allow the anti-Israel protesters (or anyone for that matter) to disrupt and intimidate regular students, faculty, and staff as we have seen over the past several months without a clear and public demonstration of some personal cost to the miscreants. Speeches and empty words without clear actions disgrace the high ideals of the Chicago Principles and the Kalven Report.
It seems to me from this and other responses at other universities, that university administrators want problems to go away far more than they want them to be solved. A pat on the Hamas-loving tuchus is likely to make the problem fade into memory, whereas serious disciplinary action—such as suspension or expulsion or arrest—is likely to fan the flames further. University administrators tend toward the former and not the latter. It’s human nature, I suppose.
I think it is the nature of the newish (last twenty or so years) genre of university president, a focused fund raiser who is politically so vanilla in viewpoints not to pis any donors off. They got away with it until Ackman and others provided a great awakening. We shall see how it plays out. A former university president told me back in 2007 that the College of William and Mary president who was ridden out of town on a rail for taking a strong stand on the presence of a cross in the College’s supposedly ecumenical chapel would have been a good provost but NOT a president. The provost, an academic can have strong opinions while the president, a political manager, must not. So far President Alivasatos has been a paragon of the go along to get along president…RMH must shudder in his grave.
I’m less worried about student protests and the discipline thereof than I am about how damn popular the whole Palestinian “cause” is. With its alliance with like minded groups like ISIS, Taliban, Hizballah, Al Qaida etc. One of which flew planes into my old place of work.
The woke stupidities of uni administration is a problem but is only representative of a much, much larger one.
D.A.
NYC
So, by requiring student protestors to stop blocking university functions, the U. of Chicago follows “a highly securitized and carceral approach that actively chills student voices.” And, horror of horrors, requiring them to write short essays “seems to mask a refusal to challenge status-quo power relations which are destroying free expression, and the possibility of education itself.” Faced with oppression on this scale, the UCUP idealists will undoubtedly turn to Ghandian satyagraha: we can expect them to announce a fast unto dinner: refusing to take in so much as a cheeto between lunch and 6 PM until the University agrees to nominate Hamas for the Nobel Peace Prize, and also awards all their essays a grade of A+.
Writing an essay. That truly is a pathetic punishment, particularly since it’s simply given the self-important students a platform to grandstand on again, entirely undermining even the nominal point of the exercise.