What have we learned about the student protests?

A followup to my post about collective behavior

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a post about the emerging student protests. I summarized what we had seen at Columbia and what was then a small number of institutions. I closed that piece like this:

Protests are happening on a minority of campuses, involving a minority of students, protesting for a variety of reasons, and often met with draconian institutional responses. Demagogues will attack them as representative of students today as part of villainizing higher education or declaring their fierce support for Israel at all costs. They forget that these are passionate18-22 year olds who aren’t skilled at broad collective action. Just like the critics were when they were that age.

I wrote about the collective behavior challenges of keeping a crowd in line and not letting extremists on the edges distort the goals of the protestors. I wrote about the danger of overreaction by institutions and law enforcement and how that would likely not be a deterrent but would instead prompt more sympathy protests. I raised concerns about those who want to use the protests as political bludgeons against higher education, democrats, and young people.¹

Matthew Boedy, a social media friend who teaches at North Georgia, has been tracking the protests across the country. What were 22 protests when I wrote on the 24th had become 74 by Saturday.

I selected this picture from a series of 31 photos Inside Higher Ed shared this morning. Notice that the signs are about the university bringing in the NYPD. Taken on May 1, this is shortly before a subset of students occupied Columbia’s Hamilton Hall. They were rousted and arrested by the NYPD in fairly short order.² They were charged with breaking and entering or trespass or assault on a police officer.³

We have seen similarly draconian responses in Austin, Los Angeles, Columbus, and Charlottesville. Police in riot gear arrive prepared for the worst, forcibly tear down encampments, and arrest students for trespassing.⁴

Institutions have engaged in their own draconian actions. With days or weeks left in the semester, they are suspending students and faculty, barring them from campus, or in some cases, expelling them entirely. Whether due process protections have been observed is unclear.

Not all institutions have gone down this path. Evergreen State College, perhaps the most liberal higher education institution in the country, has agreed to divest from defense industries that are providing the weapons that Israel is using in Gaza. Brown and Northwestern worked with students concerned about Gaza to be able to protest (without tents). Here in Denver, the local police department announced that they wouldn’t be clearing protest sites because someone might say something offensive. They will instead respond to actual action, not anticipated acts.

It is true that some commencement ceremonies have been disrupted by protestors. But these have been relatively minor. The Michigan ceremony was delayed for a few minutes by a handful of protesters at the front of the audience. They were quickly removed. A student in Georgia displayed a Palestinian flag.

Nevertheless, UCLA and Columbia have cancelled their main commencement ceremonies out of caution of what might happen. So the vast majority of graduates won’t have a ceremony due to a relatively small number of protesters who might show up.

These steps feed the general animus toward higher education as they punish the majority of students. It feeds the perception that universities 1) are hotbeds of liberal activism, 2) can’t control their campuses, and 3) are always led by liberal factions while conservatives suffer.

Scenes of riot police interacting with protesters serve the interests of these supposed “law and order” folks. Having scenes like UCLA where pro-Israel activists confronted pro-Palestinian protesters while law enforcement watched feeds the image of things being out of control. Of course, this weekend’s events at the University of Virgina drew sharp contrasts to the 2018 “Unite the Right” rally (fine people on both sides) where the marchers chanted “Jews Won’t Replace Us” while police watched.

Conservative politicians and pundits like Speaker Johnson and Elise Stefanik want presidents fired for being unable to control their campuses even though they have no legislative authority. Even the house passing the recent antisemitism bill is just so much window-dressing.⁵

These figures have been trying to turn all campus protests into weapons. A group of students at UNC tried to replace the American flag on the quad with a Palestinian flag. A group of fraternity guys surrounded and protected the US flag. There is now a GoFundMe account to raise funds for these guys — who don’t want it. This weekend at Old Miss, another group of men shouted down a protester (with one making monkey noises at a black student) and were celebrated by a congressman.

To repeat something I wrote before. There will be protesters who say anti-Israel and antisemitic things as part of their protest. Most students, however, appear to be concerned about the war policies of the Israeli government the unbelievable destruction of people and property in Gaza. It is true, as some critics argue, that they could be more forceful about denouncing Hamas. Their primary concern, beyond the pipe dream of BDS, is to argue for a ceasefire that can stop the suffering and bring the hostages home. Which, by the way, is a sentiment shared by thousands of Israeli citizens who protested in Tel Aviv over the weekend.

There are some indications today that Hamas has accepted a cease fire proposal brokered by Egypt and Qatar. No word yet from the Israelis but their preparation for a Rafah raid are not encouraging. Still, I hope something positive comes out of this proposal.

As we await a potential ceasefire, there are some important things to keep in mind. Institutions can work with concerned students to find ways of allowing safe protests with defined ground rules. Law enforcement can focus on actual illegal and threatening behavior instead of using riot gear.⁶ Institutions should not deprive students and faculty of their educational access, especially at the end of a semester. Media outlets must not get sucked into coverage of the extreme fringe at the expense of good reporting.⁷ If legislators want to pontificate about their attitudes toward university administrators, they should be required to speak to actual legislative solutions. Students must control their extremists or sacrifice the right to protest. Finally, those of us watching all of this must take care not to be mislead by whatever outrage someone has put on X or Threads.

1. Remember, the Columbia protests started in reaction to president Shafik acquiescing to the harsh questioning from Republicans on the House Education Committee, who were looking to paint the institution as antisemitic.

2. They nearly arrested Jelani Cobb, Dean of the Journalism school.

3. Recent reporting has shown how easy it is to get charged with assault by spitting, pushing, and throwing things as police officers. Pretty sure they won’t be considered “patriots” by conservatives.

4. Trespassing is a misdemeanor charge that serves to get students off the property. The vast majority of these won’t be prosecuted and those that are will likely plead and receive probation.

5. The bill adopts the official definition provided by the Holocaust Remembrance Alliance. Interestingly, one of the components identified says it is antisemitic if you are“Accusing Jewish citizens of being more loyal to Israel, or to the alleged priorities of Jews worldwide, than to the interests of their own nations”, which sounds a lot like something Trump says at his rallies.

6. I know they like to take the harsh presence role with their fancy gear, but it does not improve the situation for them or those they are trying to control.

7. As I wrote on the 24th, student journalists are doing a phenomenal job of maintaining the nuance that the major media does not.