Campus Events & Enforcement

Emma Camp
Reason Magazine

Excerpt: The University of Maryland is now facing a lawsuit after unilaterally canceling all student expressive activities planned for October 7. The move came after the university received "numerous calls" expressing outrage over events organized by campus pro-Palestine groups to mark the anniversary of Hamas' massacre of more than 1,000 Israeli civilians last year.

Foundation for Individual Rights in Expression

Excerpt: After years of promising it would find a way to punish professor Amy Wax for her controversial views on race and gender, Penn delivered today — despite zero evidence Wax ever discriminated against her students.

Faculty nationwide may now pay a heavy price for Penn's willingness to undercut academic freedom for all to get at this one professor. After today, any university under pressure to censor a controversial faculty member need only follow Penn’s playbook.

Conor Friedersdorf
The Atlantic

Excerpt: This semester, student protesters opposed to Israel’s war in Gaza have already defaced a statue at Columbia, vandalized an administration building at Cornell, and blocked access to a convocation at Pomona College. Whether they will return to the tactic of erecting protest encampments, as happened on nearly 100 campuses last spring, is uncertain.

Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Last spring, many of the students protesting the war between Israel and Hamas demanded that their universities divest from weapons manufacturers and other companies profiting off the bloodshed in Gaza. Some called for total divestment from Israel, accusing college leaders of being complicit in a genocide as the death toll of Palestinian civilians continued to climb.

Multiple universities agreed to weigh the divestment demands—among other concessions—often in exchange for students dismantling encampments. So far, few have actually moved to divest; some boards are still weighing the option while others have voted against it. But a handful of institutions have vowed to disclose their holdings, and some, such as San Francisco State University, have agreed to re-evaluate their investment screening processes.

Josh Moody
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Roughly two dozen pro-Palestinian protesters, many wearing masks and keffiyehs, blocked access to a convocation ceremony at Pomona College Tuesday, The Claremont Courier reported. The local news outlet said that protesters refused to comply with requests from campus safety officers who asked them to move, remove their masks and show their student identification. The group Pomona Divest From Apartheid took credit for the protest.

“WE SHUT DOWN CONVOCATION,” the group posted on Instagram Tuesday.

Susan H. Greenberg
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Police arrested four pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Michigan Wednesday after demonstrators sought to disrupt a student activity fair, The Detroit Free Press reported.

None of the arrested were students, Colleen Mastony, assistant vice president for public affairs, told the Free Press; three were unaffiliated with the university and one was a temporary employee. About 50 protesters showed up during the campus's annual Festifall event and refused requests to leave.