Colleges and Anti-Israel Protests
Administrations are struggling to handle the biggest wave of student protests in generations.
LAT (“USC cancels ‘main stage’ commencement ceremony“):
USC announced Thursday that it is canceling its main May commencement ceremony, capping a dramatic series of moves that began last week after it informed valedictorian Asna Tabassum, who had been opposed by pro-Israel groups, that she would not be delivering the traditional speech.
In ending the university-wide May 10 graduation ceremony altogether, President Carol Folt aimed to quell the controversy that grew as the school chipped away at core parts of the ritual, drawing criticism from both pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel activists.
The cancellation took place amid unrest on university campuses across the nation stemming from the Israel-Hamas war. On Wednesday at a pro-Palestinian encampment at USC, 93 students and off-campus activists were arrested.
“With the new safety measures in place this year, the time needed to process the large number of guests coming to campus will increase substantially,” USC said in its announcement. “As a result, we will not be able to host the main stage ceremony that traditionally brings 65,000 students, families, and friends to our campus all at the same time and during a short window from 8:30 a.m. to 10 a.m.”
[…]
At least 23 satellite graduation ceremonies at USC’s schools and colleges will continue as scheduled, in addition to smaller departmental receptions.
“We understand that this is disappointing; however, we are adding many new activities and celebrations to make this commencement academically meaningful, memorable, and uniquely USC, including places to gather with family, friends, faculty, and staff, the celebratory releasing of the doves, and performances by the Trojan Marching Band,” USC said in a statement.
[…]
Since citing unspecified security threats as the reason for canceling Tabassum’s speech, USC has seen a series of on-campus protests, including this week’s pro-Palestinian encampment.
University officials had followed their cancellation of Tabassum’s speech by calling off a speech by film director Jon M. Chu and appearances on the main stage by honorary doctorate recipients, including tennis legend Billie Jean King, saying they wanted to “keep the focus on our graduates.”
WaPo (“Secret meetings, social chatter: How Columbia students sparked a nationwide revolt“):
When police raided a protester encampment at Columbia University last week, the students at Yale were ready, tracking every minute of the chaos that followed with their smartphones on social media.
If students at the New York City Ivy League school were going to risk arrest, they would, too. By the next morning, Yale demonstrators had pitched their own tents. On a Zoom call that day, more than 200 students from dozens of other colleges across the country were strategizing on how they could replicate Columbia’s protest.
“We talked about what it was like to recruit people and join, and what it meant to stand in solidarity together, and what it would look like if these camps started popping up everywhere,” said Soph Askanase, 21-year-old junior at Barnard College who was arrested at Columbia.
What followed was the start of what historians now call one of the most consequential student uprisings the nation has seen in recent times. Though officials hope the tensions calm when classes end next month, the protests have become a crisis for college administrators struggling to rein in demonstrations while juggling competing demands to combat antisemitic rhetoric and permit students’ right to free speech.
“I think the ivory tower stands on shaky ground,” said Steven Mintz, a professor of history at the University of Texas at Austin. “Its foundations are far more fragile and vulnerable than it might seem, and there are big cracks in the facade.”
Though the demonstrations have made headlines across the globe in recent days, they are the culmination of months of activism and earlier tensions on campus. Protests began on college campuses within days of the Hamas attack on Israel on Oct. 7. Students then started organizing around a particular demand: university divestment from weapons manufacturers. Their activism steadily escalated throughout the spring, as students employed increasingly aggressive tactics after saying they got little or no response from administrators.
The growing uprising has been supercharged by social media and smartphones, which allowed students to quickly communicate with one another and replicate tactics in ways unthinkable in earlier university movements.
Historians like David Cortright, a professor emeritus at the University of Notre Dame, say the demonstrations already compare to several other large protest movements over the last 60 years, including the campaign to end apartheid in South Africa and the 2011 Occupy Wall Street demonstrations over corporate greed.
But unlike the protests of decades past, college administrators have fewer tools at their disposal to assuage demonstrator demands. Experts say student requests for divestment are not only impractical but also are likely to yield little if any real benefit. More broadly, the students could face a challenge in trying to build alliances. Some would-be demonstrators have been deterred by tactics and chants some view as antisemitic.
WaPo (“Criticism, praise of Texas governor after dramatic use of troopers on protesters“):
As word got out that pro-Palestinian protesters were planning to occupy a lawn on the University of Texas campus, Gov. Greg Abbott made a dramatic move: calling in more than 100 state troopers with orders to clear them out.
With that decision, which led to dozens of arrests amid video of riot-clad troopers on campus, Abbott sought to reassure his party — and the rest of the country — that Texas would not countenance a replay of the extended protester camp at New York’s Columbia University.
It was the latest move by Abbott (R) to position himself as one of the most assertive red-state governors in America, eager for a fight with the political left under the national spotlight. But the aggressiveness of the response has alarmed students, faculty, Democrats and even some Republicans who have previously sided with Abbott in his crusades to protect free speech on college campuses.
[…]
On Thursday, however, Abbott found himself in a storm of broader scrutiny. Critics were quick to note, for example, that Abbott proudly signed a law in 2019 that aimed to protect free speech on college campuses by guaranteeing anyone can protest in common outdoor areas as long as they are not breaking the law or disrupting the regular functioning of the school. That is precisely what those arrested Wednesday were doing, they said.
Prosecutors also dropped charges against 46 of the 57 protesters arrested Wednesday, citing “deficiencies” their lawyers had challenged in the probable cause affidavits submitted as part of their arrests, according to Diana Melendez, a spokeswoman for Travis County Attorney’s Office.
“We will continue to individually review all cases presented to our office to determine whether prosecution is factually and legally appropriate,” Melendez said.
State Sen. Sarah Eckhardt (D), whose district includes the Austin campus, said the politics involved in the response “is not going to let this go, and that’s deeply, deeply troubling.”
“I’ve not yet heard any evidence of property damage or personal injury, and so the response — the police response — seems to have been in anticipation of something that didn’t happen, that ultimately didn’t happen,” Eckhardt said.
Abbott’s office did not respond to a request for comment on the rationale for his action nor criticism of it. But on social media, the governor responded approvingly to the law enforcement response, saying the protesters “belong in jail” and that any students taking part in “hate-filled, antisemitic protests” at public colleges should be expelled.
The latter reflected Abbott’s issuance last month of an executive order requiring public universities to revise their free speech policies to curb the “sharp rise in antisemitic speech and acts” on campuses.
On Thursday, protesters said the show of force ordered by Abbott was striking but not surprising.
“Gov. Abbott is taking a very political opportunity to enforce his agenda, a very right-wing agenda focused on control, not on governance,” said Chelsea Collier, a doctoral student at the school of information and a native Texan who spent her entire academic career at UT.
Were it happening in a vacuum, I would naturally be much more critical of Abbott, who comes across as a total neanderthal. Just in these three reports, though, we have an Ivy League institution, another top-tier private university, and an elite public flagship. And none of the leaders across the board have figured out how to balance speech rights and public safety.
My natural instincts are in direct opposition here. I’m both a near-absolutist in free expression—especially in the context of higher education and the principle of academic freedom—and yet also a pretty staunch law and order guy. Students and/or their parents are paying tuition to attend classes and enjoy the other aspects of the university experience and are being denied that by these protests. Additionally, at least in the Columbia case, there have been enough incidents of antisemitism to create a genuine public safety threat.
I tend to balance those two instincts in much the way the Supreme Court has: by creating time, place, and manner standards. Students and professors have a right to express their views on issues of public policy and there are few more important debates right now than over the war going on in Gaza. But, frankly, lectures, symposia, editorials, journal articles, and the like are much more useful and appropriate ways for members of an academic community to do that than are riots and campouts.
This type of crisis was inevitable. Universities and other institutions have moved away from respecting rights, enforcing a universal code of ethics, and respecting due process for all, and instead have been selectively enforcing them for and against various favored or disfavored groups. Could this person hold a sign that said “You People Are Violent Thugs Who Violate My People!”? Well, it totally depends on who “You” and “They” are. You have to know which group they are in before you can decide how to apply the standards. Once they reached that point they were always going to come to the this crossroads, wherein two of the favored groups face off against each other. The Administrations can’t fall back on the student ethical code or process and procedure, because they effectively abandoned all that years ago.
I agree with you that the campus demonstrations are inappropriate ways of trying to influence public discourse on this issue. No one cares what a bunch of sophomores in tents on the quadrangle think. No one cares until the cops show up and throw people to the ground and handcuff them. Then people start caring. A police response always uses force, and legitimizes those who protest. The protestors are obnoxious granted, but the state should not over-react. People should not be thrown in jail because Abbott wants to perform as a tough guy.
And the prejudices of influential private donors. Atrios points out USC dug themselves a hole. There’s a California law prohibiting a college from interfering with free speech. Once they cancelled the valedictory speaker for fear she might give a pro-Palestinian speech, they were forced to burrow into it’s all about security, not content.
A police response always uses force, and legitimizes those who protest.
No. YOU (as in each individual) legitimize them. Police using force against people violating the law, creating a public disturbance, and endangering or threatening others are what police are supposed to do, when necessary.
If people are breaking the law, they absolutely should be thrown in jail. It doesn’t matter what some politician does or says. Break the law, go to jail is how it is supposed to work.
As MarkedMan points out, one of the things that got us here is people in authority deciding that the law (or rules in general) only apply to SOME people in SOME circumstances. That’s an unstable and unsustainable approach.
Going to jail, or at least risking it, used to be the thing that made protest meaningful. It was a demonstration of how serious the issue was and how serious the protesters were. Now it’s just cosplay all the way around.
Martin Luther King Jr., Letter from a Birmingham Jail:
https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf
For years now we’ve had progressives shutting down, or trying to shut down, the voices of those they disagreed with. And now they’re free speech advocates. Swell. Free for me, not for thee. If you want to plead freedom of speech then you have to support freedom of speech, not just freedom of the speech you like.
This is much like the book banning issue, in that a few years ago it was the Left attacking books they didn’t like, and now the Left rages at the Right for doing it more effectively. Do ‘we’ believe in allowing a wide range of books into school libraries? Absolutely! How about Huckleberry Finn? ::Crickets.::
You’re not defending a principle if you’re only defending it for yourself. And if you say you are, then you’re a hypocrite.
I think the pro-Palestinian protesters are ninnies, who have not given five minutes of realistic thought to the end game they are advocating. The end result of their position is the destruction of Israel, the ethnic cleansing of Jews and Christians, and the birth of yet another oppressive thugocracy. The notion that the PA and Hamas would launch a multi-confessional democracy is ludicrous. A Palestinian state would be a Saudi and UAE charity case, and anyone who thinks those two will be pushing for democracy is clueless. But they have a right to take that position, and to demonstrate for it.
@gVOR10:
USC really did dig a hole that just did not exist for them before they picked up the shovel. I am pretty sure that the woman who made it all the way to being a college valedictorian (a woman who wears a Hijab, no less) has done a good job navigating the spaces she finds herself in to get to this point in her life/career, and I really do feel pretty darn confidant that because of this she would not have just gone up on stage to embarrass USC with her graduating speech.
It is also a rather dumb move by Abbott to “crackdown” on the protestors in TX, and even though his supporters will pat him on the back, and folks will say he does not care how this makes him look, especially how he looks through liberal individuals eyes, I really disagree and think he put a bit of mud in his own hand and threw it right back at his own face, as this was clearly a dog and pony show he put on for his supporters what with the vast majority of protestors having their charges dropped because they were doing nothing but following Abbott’s own script for protesting, something students can do but only if you are not doing something blatantly illegal, harmful, or disrupting the ability of folks in and around the university to go about their day.
Honestly, protests on college campuses should be something that folks on campus should be very used to and just thought of as a case of dealing with yucky traffic, but something you put up with regardless to complete your commute for the day. A mild to medium nuisance, but one that does not physically harm you or stop you from going about getting an education.
Maybe Abbott really does know something the rest of us do not, that while it seems like Trump is rather diminished as a political force at this moment, that maybe the Supremes will give him (and Biden, but that can become its own subject for a long post) the powers of a King, so Trump should still view folks like Abbott as bootlickers willing to do his bidding and wants Trump to see that he is being an “alpha” bootlicker (lol) by cracking down on non-violent protestors. Texans sure seem to be wimps these days if they are intimidated by a bunch of protesting students.
Also, I think folks are being way to dismissive in thinking that if the Supremes grant Trump the freedom to do anything he pleases that Biden will not take advantage of the new found powers granted to him by Samuel Alito and company.
Wait, even though that last bit above really belonged in say a post under the Open Thread for today on this great site, maybe what I wanted to say about the Supremes and their inclination to grant folks like Trump unlimited power is not the subject of a long post (just a medium size post if that), what they give to Trump they are giving to Biden. I am sure me and a few hundred million other folks around the world will try to point out to the GOP to be careful about getting what you wished for when arguing in front of the Supreme Court (everyone, including the blind, can see that the Dobbs decision has not worked out quite like the GOP thought it would).
And on that note, if anyone has not said to themselves TL:DR when looking at the above and are seeing this, have a Happy Friday and a great weekend!
@Michael Reynolds:
Much like the hypocritical non-progressives who claim to be horrified about ethnic cleansing and oppressive thugs, until oppressive thugs like Benjamin Netanyahu and convicted terrorist Itamar Ben-Gvir are engaging in ethnic cleansing against Palestinians, at which point these holier-than-thou principled people insist oh well it’s just “war” — when they themselves are not calling for Gaza to be wiped off the map.
Glass houses, stones, and all that.
Oh, really?
Somehow, “law and order” never seems to include respect for other people’s constitutional rights.
@TheRyGuy:
I keep seeing this asserted, yet nobody has provided specifics or examples. Who was treated less well than these protestors? To me it just sounds like boilerplate waaaa boo hoo ‘straight Caucasian men are the real victims’ grievance-mongering, based on a reductive caricature of higher education.
I can think of concrete examples of this double standard outside of academia. Like white conservatives getting to open carry assault weapons Because 2nd Amendment, while Philando Castile, a black man, was executed in his car by an officer who freaked out and panicked because Castile told him he had a firearm — and received no serious punishment. That sacrosanct “must not be infringed” crap didn’t apply to Castile, apparently.
Are there similarly specific examples of “disfavored” individuals who have pushed protest on campus but are not allowed to? Or who are are met with crackdown? Conservative student groups have not been prevented from inviting anti-black MAGA racists to events.
I don’t like the often heavy-handed way colleges have handled Title IX sexual assault allegations, but I fail to see any discrepancy with that and this. In both cases, colleges have been too quick with the handcuffs.
So, this week in law and order:
1) Students involved in political protests are being beaten and arrested by cops and soldiers for the crime of speaking while
2) the Supreme Court leans towards establishing the presidency as a monarchy in which the (Republican) president can never be held liable for committing any crime and
3) a rich white serial rapist has his conviction overturned because he can afford to pay expensive lawyers to find a loophole which they can squirm through while
4) the Supreme Court debates how many organs a woman can be made to lose before the government can force an emergency room to accept her
Perhaps if those protesting kids were smart enough to have rich, white daddies, they cops and soldiers and politicians would be treating them better. Instead, they’re pissing off the universities’ rich, white donors, and the administrations are proving that these donors are the only ones who matter.
Clearly, as Bob Dylan wrote, the ladder of law has no top or no bottom.
@DK:
Yep. Exactly like that. Once someone starts applying “standards” only to the people they don’t consider worthy then they cease to be standards, and those people cannot claim any moral authority. It becomes obvious it’s not about justice but rather just changing out groups in power.
Can you give an example of a recent college protest that you think is accurately described as a riot?
Well, many at the Columbia protest have declared themselves to be Hamas. Not “pro-Hamas, but “We are Hamas”. Hamas is a designated foreign terrorist organization. That they say they are Hamas is probable cause to detain and investigate such protestors. Might also want to put a watch on their rich parents’ financial transactions since sending money to Hamas is prohibited.
But that would require a FBI that tasked to protect America rather than the Biden re-election.
The USC students will get their magic parchment which is the only thing of value from going to college. Complete 99.9% of requirements, but don’t graduate, and you fare little better than a high school graduate in lifetime income.
But the parents, you know, who coughed up the cash all these years, are being deprived of their social event. That ought to be good for alumni fundraising.
I would favor letting them protest. No one is really harmed if they camp out on the college square. If they are violent arrest them. If they destroy property arrest them. Require proof of ID and boot outside activists, or arrest them. However, a bunch of kids standing on the lawn saying stuff you dont like should be left alone.
To be honest it mostly sounds like a massive over-reaction. The articles being written claim protests are cropping up everywhere, yet when the pictures are shown there are 10 or 12 people standing around. I was traveling yesterday so made it a point to detour past one of the schools cited and there were 2 tents on a lawn and maybe a dozen people sitting on the grass. At the larger events it looks like 50-100 people.
Steve
@MarkedMan: When you are talking about ethnic cleansing, it’s all about who is doing the cleansing and who is being cleansed.
i.e., Selma Envy
Chicago in August is going to be ravaged my “mostly peaceful protest” fires and vandalism, if not outright fighting in the streets.
I can’t imagine what it would be like to be in college, and like most students be half-supportive of these protests or their positions but doing your own thing and watch as adults withs tons of power behave like cops exposed to fentanyl thinking they’re about to OD.
These cops are coming out there with ammo and toy rifles to swarm one kid who was on a lawn. This kid was like 15 when some people here started raving about the left and progressives. What point do you think you are even getting at as you race through your list of failures and resentments?
Also, one thing Americans are good at is excusing power and declaring it innocence. We’re just really good at it. We don’t know how to stop structural racism but goddamn do we know how to make violence and power feel safe, loved, and innocent. You turn the perps into the real victims who bear no responsibility for what they are doing, and then turn the critics into a bunch of hypocrites out to get you and who deserve being arrested.
“Call the Philosophy Department” – Battlecry of Hamas protest at Emory University as Atlanta and GSP break up the encampment set up on campus. Didn’t help they were making common cause with the ‘Stop the Cop’ protestors who have been attacking an APD training center for months.
They reportedly used pepper balls and rubber bullets but the media isn’t interested in using that for their attacks on the protest responses
@JKB:
Wrong.
Surely there’s a ton of evidence to back this claim, based on the huge cohort of people who complete 99.9% of college requirements, look at the remaining 0.1%, and say “Nah.” Makes total sense.
Conservatives love spewing nonsense based on their fake fantasy world.
@JKB: sounds like you have a plan.
Contrast the reactions here to college kids shouting and the reactions to white supremacists marching anywhere or the Jan 6 rioters. Snipers on rooftops, cops in riot gear beating the shit out of people.
There’s a very clear bias in the way these protests are handled.
These kids are getting more of a police response than the Uvalde school shooter.
Incidents of antisemitism are not a public safety threat. Antisemitism can be a motivation for an incident that is a public safety threat, but have we even seen those directly related to the act of protesting?
Has there been anything to show that kids protesting on a lawn or camping out is a threat to anyone? Actual violent behavior at the protest itself, not “and then someone called in a death threat” which can be done from anywhere and probably works best without so much background noise.
I know Dr. Joyner likes order, but disorder and a little noise is not a threat in itself.
(Students shouting antisemitic things may be violating the university code of conduct, and that should be handled appropriately by the university, not the police riot thugs)
@SenyorDave:
Some ethnicities are already clean?
Somehow, “law and order” never seems to include respect for other people’s constitutional rights.
Or you know the legalities of supporting a country which has found to be committing genocide or at the very least war crimes. Basically, if the law is strict about noise, what does it say about torturing UNRWA staff for false confessions?
Kyle Rittenhouse brings speaking tour to Clemson, advocating for campus carry
Another example of liberal DEI college administrators forgetting to apply these free speech double standards we keep hearing about?
@Gustopher:
Of course they are; the Uvalde shooter was just a rando killing pre-teen children. These kids are dangerous and traitorous seditionists tearing at the very fabric of the Republic (which is NOT a democracy, BTW) and threatening the very existence of God’s Chosen People [TM]. Far more dangerous.
@Gustopher:
There’s a joke about whiteness somewhere, but “not gonna go there; wouldn’t be prudent.”
@TheRyGuy:
Which these weren’t…
Which these weren’t if your name isn’t “Karen”…
Which the handcuffed kid who was tased most certainly wasn’t…
…which is wasn’t. At all. Anyone who can defend this behavior as some form of “protect and serve” has gone all-in fascist.
Pop quiz: if this is how the police had treated the 1/6 insurrectionists, would you still be championing them? Yeah, I thought not — even though those were actual criminals committing actual crimes and actually endangering people while creating their public disturbance.
@Michael Reynolds:
I realize that you exist in an odd subculture, Michael, but the behavior you are complaining about was not “the Left”. It was a handful of people at the fringe. It was not, as others have frequently pointed out, behavior that got anywhere near to being the policy of the leftmost political party in our land. You get more than your fair share of flack from those people in the industry you work in, but don’t mistake that for broader reality.
Get back to us about the sins of “the Left” when elected Democratic officials are getting close to legislation to ban books, or to restrict freedom of speech in other ways.
@JKB:
This is the most baldfaced lie you have attempted in recent memory.
@DrDaveT:
Did it even arise to that level? I should not be surprised if, in this case, “The Left was trying to ban books” = “I was targeted after my abrasive online personality irritated some nobodies on Twitter.”
Neither the activist left nor mainstream liberals and Democrats have attempted to codify book bans into law. The boycotts of private citizens are themselves free speech.
It amazes that people who bothsides many things from book banning on down, suddenly go wobbly on fence-sitting vis a vis the eighty-year conflict between Israelis, Palestinians, and their various backers. If ever there was an issue warranting blame be spread among all major players, that’s the one.
Take down and arrest of professor at Emory.
https://twitter.com/RobertMackey/status/1783684235938894086
Found this at a right wing/libertarian site. The responses there were basically that she deserved to be taken to the ground harshly or that she should have known better than to interfere with police, by asking what they were doing, and should have expected the police to respond that way.
To be upfront i have also taught my kids to never interfere in any way with the police and if they tell you to do something, within limits, do it. Most police are decent but too many are basically armed thugs empowered to do whatever they want if you question them. That said, I worked in a mental health emergency room for many years. Been stabbed, shot at. I think I have a fair idea about who is actually a risk. That woman was not a risk to anyone. They took her down roughly just because they could. They did it not only knowing there would be no consequences but beyond that knowing many would cheer on their actions. If you dont kowtow properly you end up on the ground and then in jail.
Steve
I wonder what percentage of the Pro-Palestinian protesters are actually affiliated with the university they occupy. We know for sure that Putin is going all out to get Trump elected. If he wins, Putin wins. If Biden wins, Putin loses. For Vlad, it is an existential issue.
And here we have protests that seem to have popped up almost overnight. Curious.
@Cheryl Rofer:
This post is long dead, so I don’t know if you’ll see this. But, I thought of you when yesterday I came across this Middle East Eye interview with Antony Loewenstein titled “How Israel tested, packaged & exported its occupation.” It’s an hour in length, but moves quickly and is very interesting. I thought that perhaps it would make for a good discussion on LGM.