I think there’s little doubt that the pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel protests will once again roil colleges campuses this coming academic year. As protestors vow that they’ll continue their activities, legal or not, and as Israel continues to root Hamas out of Gaza, I fully expect more trouble come this fall.
So do colleges, which are at this moment preparing for such trouble by confecting new regulations and policies. We have two articles on this subject, one in the NYT (first below) and the other in the Times of Israel. Click each headline to read; if the NYT is paywalled, you can find the first article archived here.
Note about what’s below: Daniel Diermeier used to be the Provost of the University of Chicago; now he’s the Chancellor (equivalent to the President) of Vanderbilt University, where he’s still carrying out the Chicago Principles, including free expression and institutional neutrality. Indented text is from the press; text flush left is mine. An excerpt from the NYT about Diermeier’s address to this year’s entering class at Vandy:
Less than 10 minutes had passed before Daniel Diermeier, Vanderbilt University’s chancellor, told hundreds of new students what the school would not do.
The university would not divest from Israel.
It would not banish provocative speakers.
It would not issue statements in support or condemnation of Israeli or Palestinian causes.
Before the hour was up on Monday, he added that Vanderbilt would not tolerate threats, harassment or protests “disrupting the learning environment.”
As you see, Diermeier pulls no punches.
This month, Vanderbilt required all first-year undergraduate students to attend mandatory meetings about the university’s approach to free speech, with the hope that clear expectations — and explanations for them — would help administrators keep order after protests rocked American campuses toward the end of the last academic year.
“The chaos on campuses is because there’s lack of clarity on these principles,” Dr. Diermeier said in an interview.
Well, that’s one reason, and I didn’t hear his talk, but the universal hope in all of the new “solutions” to protests is based on the claim that students simply don’t understand how free speech works on campuses, including private ones like Chicago and Vanderbilt. An important difference between “college” free speech and speech in the public arena is that colleges can more easily create “time, place, and manner” restrictions so that while legal speech is allowed, it mustn’t interfere with the mission of the university: no sit-ins or trespassing, no loud megaphones that disrupt classes, no encampments to block access to parts of campus, no deplatforming of speakers.
The problem I see is that the protestors in many places already know about these restrictions, and are determined to violate them anyway. They regard this as a form of civil disobedience—but one that, unlike classical civil disobedience, does not accept any attendant punishment. Indeed, just a handful of protestors who violated university regulations last year received either civil or University punishment, so there’s no incentive to at least go through the motions of obeying free-speech regulations. From later in the article:
Even as some universities have prepared more rigorous rules and procedures, it remains to be seen how strongly or consistently they will be enforced. The lasting consequences of defiance are also murky. Officials nationwide ultimately dropped many of the criminal charges that protesters faced after the spring demonstrations, and school discipline is still pending for many students. Suspensions have often been lifted in the meantime.
This is why universities’ solution to bring more “clarity” to free-speech rules seems hopeless. The solution, I think, is simply to enforce the rules.
University presidents used summer break to huddle with police commanders, lawyers, trustees and other administrators to rewrite rules, tighten protest zones, and weigh possible concessions to maintain, or restore, order. Many have studied universities that temporarily defused tensions by striking deals with protesters.
But so far, universities are signaling little overt interest in negotiations.
On Monday, the University of California’s president, Michael V. Drake, told campus chancellors to ensure that their policies included bans on unapproved encampments and “masking to conceal identity.” Columbia University, where contentious protests helped drive Nemat Shafik from her 13-month-old presidency on Aug. 14, is limiting campus access. Northwestern University said that students would receive “mandatory trainings on antisemitism and other forms of hate,” with more policy changes coming.
“The question is how do we get more consistent in the way we respond to these issues — and clearer about what the rules are and what the tiered responses will be,” said Richard K. Lyons, the new chancellor at the University of California, Berkeley, a campus with one of the nation’s most robust records of protest. Dr. Lyons estimated that planning for demonstrations had consumed up to 15 percent of the summer for top administrators at Berkeley.
And there have been legal rulings that can force universities’ hands:
A series of recent court rulings, as well as investigations from Capitol Hill and the Department of Education, have created pressure on universities. A federal judge issued a preliminary injunction this month that said the University of California, Los Angeles, could not allow protesters to block Jewish students from campus facilities. (Although U.C.L.A. initially warned that the ruling threatened to “hamstring our ability to respond to events on the ground,” it decided not to appeal and said it would “abide by the injunction as this case makes its way through the courts.”)
Can you believe that UCLA defended the behavior of protestors to keep Jewish students away from their classrooms? Here’s a video of the blocking I remember at the time:
From an article on the UCLA ruling:
The complaint [by three Jewish students] alleges the protesters created a “Jew Exclusion Zone” where in order to pass “a person had to make a statement pledging their allegiance to the activists’ view.” Those who complied with the protesters’ view were issued wristbands to allow them to pass through, the complaint says, which effectively barred Jewish students who supported Israel and denied them access to the heart of campus.
Wristbands! Oy vey!
Our own University, like Vanderbilt, did not divest nor tolerate the encampments for very long, though it did give the encampers what I consider an overly long grace period.
The University of Chicago’s own experience this year suggests that even those deeply held principles do not always prevent turmoil. In May, the university brought in the police to remove an encampment that violated its policy barring unapproved tents.
At any rate, the divisions on campus are now so deep, and the protestors so sure of their moral compass, that I see no rapprochement, no matter how much universities inculcate students with the First Amendment or campus speech regulations.
The solution, which is Diermeier’s is simple, just follow through with campus speech violations by enforcing the rules. In my view, students will be loath to participate in illegal protests if they know that they’re going to be suspended, expelled, or have a punishment noted on their college transcripts. For even more than the students want divestment and a ceasefire, they want their degrees, an untarnished academic record. and jobs. I’m still baffled why many universities are simply letting the protestors off scot-free.
The Times of Israel simply lets us know that more disruptions of campuses are in store (click to read):
An excerpt:
The Student Intifada, a growing coalition of pro-Palestinian, anti-Zionist student groups, is making clear its intention to disrupt the fall semester on school campuses across the United States.
Across dozens of campuses currently opening their fall semesters, there are already calls for masked vigils in support of “Palestine.” Troublingly, many of the groups have gone from calling for demonstrations and encampments to condoning the use of violence and “the total eradication of Western civilization.”
Note that, as some like Douglas Murray have warned, the protestors are not simply anti-Israel, but anti-West and anti-Enlightenment. The article continues.
The Student Intifada’s roots can be traced to the National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), founded in 1993 at the University of California Berkeley. However, it’s picked up followers since the war in Gaza and then again with the media attention on Columbia University following last year’s highly-covered student encampment.
It’s worth noting that not a single Columbia student, despite illegal occupation and trashing of a university building faced legal charges (which the Manhattan DA dropped), and nearly none of them (perhaps none at all) faced severe university charges including permanent suspension (many ‘interim suspensions” were rescinded). More:
With the National SJP [Students for Justice in Palestine] as its guide, the movement isn’t limited to local SJP chapters. But it’s not so much the coalition’s reach that troubles some, but rather its refusal to engage with different perspectives.
“The movement is a belief cascade where those in the group compete with each other for acceptance. As they do that, their opinions become more and more extreme,” said William J. Bernstein, author of “Delusions of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups.”
Excuse my cynicism, but I don’t think introductory units on critical thinking, free speech, and civil discussion required for first-year students are going to solve this problem. More:
Across dozens of campuses currently opening their fall semesters, there are already calls for masked vigils in support of “Palestine.” Troublingly, many of the groups have gone from calling for demonstrations and encampments to condoning the use of violence and “the total eradication of Western civilization.”
Yep, all of Western civilization.
The Student Intifada’s roots can be traced to the National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), founded in 1993 at the University of California Berkeley. However, it’s picked up followers since the war in Gaza and then again with the media attention on Columbia University following last year’s highly-covered student encampment.
. . . “Expect to see zero compromise”
With the National SJP as its guide, the movement isn’t limited to local SJP chapters. But it’s not so much the coalition’s reach that troubles some, but rather its refusal to engage with different perspectives.
“The movement is a belief cascade where those in the group compete with each other for acceptance. As they do that, their opinions become more and more extreme,” said William J. Bernstein, author of “Delusions of Crowds: Why People Go Mad in Groups.”
“No matter how high their SAT scores were, they don’t have the critical thinking skills they need. They are incapable of putting themselves in other people’s shoes. They are utterly intolerant of other views,” Bernstein said.
. . . University leaders should expect the students to become more strident in their demands this fall, said Lauren Post, an analyst with the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism.
“They are going to increase their efforts to drive Zionist institutions off campus. They are going to make the average Jewish and Zionist student increasingly uncomfortable. We can expect to see zero compromise from these groups,” Post said.
. . . . In a July 31 Instagram post, the University of Chapel Hill SJP appeared to back the right to use violence.
“We emphasize our support for the right to resistance, not only in Palestine, but also here in the imperial core. We condone all forms of principled action, including armed rebellion, necessary to stop Israel’s genocide and apartheid, and to dismantle imperialism and capitalism more broadly. The oppressors will never grant full liberty to the oppressed; the oppressed must seize liberty with their own hands,” the post said.
The Times of Israel also emphasizes the lack of sanctions for violators, again mentioning my school:
There were an estimated 3,200 people, not all of them students, arrested at colleges and universities last spring, according to the Associated Press. Most of the charges against students have since been dropped.
Other universities, including the University of Chicago and Harvard, withheld degrees from some pro-Palestinian students facing disciplinary measures for their part in encampments and protests. Many of them have since received their diplomas.
About those “nonstudents” demonstrating at many colleges, which also happened at Chicago, it’s a simple matter to ask for IDs, something that students at the U of C must produce on demand. Then names can be taken and trespassers in unapproved demonstrations given the boot.
Two caveats. First of all, as always I am an exponent of free speech on all campuses, public and private. I’m even at the extreme of those free-speechers who think that someone shouting “gas the Jews” on campus in a situation that isn’t likely to provoke violence should not be punished. What I object to is students, with full knowledge, violating campus regulations and, by so doing, impeding the mission of colleges: access to learning. And I object to universities growling about this but doing absolutely nothing to the violators.
There’s a reason why speed traps work: those who speed do so at their own risk (and the risk of others), knowing that they’ll have to get a ticket and a fine. The result: if you know there are speed traps in an area, you slow down.
As an experiement on what happens when deterrence vanishes, read about Montreal’s Murray-Hill Police Strike in 1969. (This is also an object lesson for those who think that you can solve the problem of crime by getting rid of cops and using patrolling by locals.)
Second, I think students deserve a warning when engaged in illegal demonstrations before they’re disciplined. The encampers in Chicago got several days of warnings before the cops took down the encampment (without a single person hurt) at 4:30 a.m. last May 7. Those shouting down speakers or occupying buildings should get, say, ten minutes of warnings before the hammer comes down. Finally, there should be no illegal encampments: not a single tent stake should be driven into prohibited college ground without University officials saying, “Sorry, you can’t do that.”
By all means have introductions to free speech and moderated discussions of first-year students to teach them how free speech works, and why we have it. But that’s not enough. I’m stymied by the failure of universities to realize a simple principle of human behavior: if you give people meaningful punishment for doing something that’s prohibited, they will stop doing it.
A regulation that’s no enforced is a regulation without teeth.
I saw a video where the sod/grass was getting torn up – killing plants.
Here’s some of prophet Marcuse from 1969 – note the “Form” – a target of transformative praxis :
“Very different from the revolution at previous stages of history, this opposition is directed against the totality of a well-functioning, prosperous society – a protest against its Form — the commodity form of men and things, against the imposition of false values and a false morality. This new consciousness and the instinctual rebellion isolate such opposition from the masses and from the majority of organized labor, the integrated majority, and make for the concentration of radical politics in active minorities, mainly among the young middle-class intelligentsia, and among the ghetto populations. Here, prior to all political strategy and organization, liberation becomes a vital, “biological” need.”
-Herbert Marcuse
Essay on Liberation
1969
Also beware of “critical” – WEIT readers undoubtedly value critical thinking – but to Marxists, “critical” means to criticize and denounce power structures.
Marxists share the vocabulary but not the dictionary.
Good quote and a good point about the different meanings of ‘critical.’
Corruption of a commonly understood language is one of the big guns in all these movements
Yes it is. A term in common usage is redefined along ideological lines and then the new definition is insisted on as the only permissible usage.
critical
racism
woman
violence
etc. etc.
As it is with all conspiracy theories.
It’s already started. Police clashed with anti-Israel protestors yesterday at The University of Michigan.
I agree and I’m not comforted by what I’m reading about how universities are preparing. The protest leaders have been preparing, too. Being universities, universities inevitably resort to teaching and workshops to remedy the problems they are anticipating—teaching is what universities do. But more teaching is not the solution here. Rigorous rules and relentless enforcement—including mandatory suspensions and expulsions—are more in line with what is needed.
In workplace disputes, an employee fired for cause may argue that the employer’s action was unjust because the employer “condoned” similar behaviour in other workers, or even in himself, without taking action. He arbitrarily lowered the boom on poor me for doing what everyone else does just because he doesn’t like my politics. The employer is already deathly afraid of having a firing overturned in Court because the fired employee successfully claims racism or sexism or Islamophobia or transphobia. “Condonement” is a lever that even the oppressor classes can use.
So perhaps the university is seeking to educate the incoming students not as an abstract civics lesson but to send the message: “You have been warned. If you violate these time place and manner rules, you will be disciplined and expelled. If you lose your foreign-student visa or your shot at a DC lobbying firm a result, that is your problem.” This will be their defence against accusations of condonement, which their actions last spring would otherwise give solid evidence for, as would any negotiations with future trespassers. Further, presidents will have to make it clear that even if faculty express solidarity with illegal student actions or exhort them, but stay out of strict trouble themselves, the miscreant students will still get whacked and faculty will not. “Pull the trigroes”, was how the National Lampoon satirized Joan Baez. (“We’re with you all the way…right across the Bay.” Now called a luxury belief.)
One can hope. You’re not all the University of Windsor down there I don’t think.
Policies, shmolicies. Only enforcement will make a difference. Nothing we’ve seen or read gives any confidence that university administrations are any closer to grasping the nettle of enforcement.
I’m certainly pro-Israel, but our friend who went to nearby Cheltenham High in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Bibi, is apparently willing to do anything, including starting a general war in the Middle East, to stay out of prison one day longer. In doing so he’s gotten much of world opinion to turn against Israel and encouraged anti-semitism to resurface from the foul depths where it’s been festering. It’s clear from the protests that most of the Israeli public oppose his current policies and want to be rid of him, but he’s been too adept so far at manipulating the vagaries of the law for them to succeed.
It’s not clear what Bibi Netanyahu’s highschooling has to do with how American universities should deal with anti-Western, anti-Enlightenment trespassers on their campuses.
But let’s assume you, with a pristine track record as a much-loved Israeli Prime Minister not worried about going to jail, got the call at sunrise on October 7. What would you have done that would have emasculated Hamas in a “pro-Israel” manner without re-igniting antisemitism and risking a general war in the Middle East (Israel being surrounded by enemies as always)? “Something different”, sure.
Being “pro-” any country means accepting that country’s right to smite her enemies who seek to do her harm. (That’s why countries have militaries.) The point is not so much vengeance (though it often is, people being human) as it is destroying the enemy’s ability and will to make war on her. Otherwise being “pro-Israel” just means, “I will shed genuine, heartfelt tears when Israel is destroyed by forces that I, as a luxuriously safe foreigner, will not permit her to resist effectively.”
Not to mention that anti-Israeli/anti-Jewish hate erupted already on October 7 (and even stronger on October 8) while Israelis were still being slaughtered and the army didn’t do anything to Gazans, too busy to try to save their own population.
Yes, that is an important point that I elided in the interests of space. I’m glad you made it explicit because it’s true.
+1. Elegantly rational and kindly stated.
Totally, Leslie.
The “Bibi just wants to stay out of jail” is an absurd cope. BEFORE 10/7 it was questionable, after that date… utter nonsense. I’ll bet nearly 100% of non-Arab Israelis (and many Arabs) want Hamas destroyed utterly. As I do.
D.A.
NYC
A similar claim is made about Zelensky – that he is continuing the war so that to postpone the elections and stay as president as long as possible.
The supposed flaws and misdeeds of Zelensky and Netanyahu are of zero importance. They are both attacked because they resist foreign entities that want to slaughter their people. Because, for mysterious reasons, these genocidal entities are justified by most of the international community.
I have a prediction (and y’all can disagree), which is that the protests to come on campuses will happen but they will be visibly fizzled out when compared to last semester. I think that a large contingent of protestors last semester were privileged white kids who got caught up in all the excitement and visibility that could be gained among their peers by donning a keffiyeh and pretending to defend the oppressed. Being seen as someone who is virtuous is always important among the young far left. But many of these former protesters have graduated, and the rest, returning from summer jobs while living at home, just won’t feel the fire because they never really had it.
I agree w/ you again Mark.
Last time it damaged their brands (and alumni funding) badly. It was a horrible car wreck of a scene.
They rightfully want no more of that.
D.A.
NYC
I’m curious about what kind of grades the serious protestors from last year got in their classes. I’d think most of them would be on academic probation at this point.
The interstateifada of last winter rather fizzled out, and then there was the tentifada on campuses, apparently about to start up again. My own group, the Student Liberation Front for Peace, Justice, Revolution, and Virtue, is about to introduce a new tactic in the revolutionary struggle: the pissoirifada. We will glue ourselves to the floor at the entrance to restrooms, denying all access except for those who sign a statement accepting our demands. And what are our demands? Simple: we demand that the authorities refrain from punishing us for staging this demonstration in support of our demand.