Campus Protests and Free Expression

Ryan Ansloan
FIRE

Excerpt: Over the last academic year, the University of Pennsylvania has experienced fierce protests, congressional hearings, and outcry from students, faculty, and donors that resulted in the shortest tenure of a president in the history of the private, Ivy League university. Now, in the shadow of that turmoil, Penn seems prepared to abandon its storied commitment to free expression.

Alyssa Lukpat and Nicholas Hatcher
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: A new round of pro-Palestinian demonstrations swept the University of California, Los Angeles, where 25 protesters were arrested after setting up an encampment, the latest outburst of campus tensions over the Israel-Hamas war.

Alyssa Lukpat and Nicholas Hatcher
Wall Street Journal

Excerpt: A new round of pro-Palestinian demonstrations swept the University of California, Los Angeles, where 25 protesters were arrested after setting up an encampment, the latest outburst of campus tensions over the Israel-Hamas war.

The UCLA Police Department said about 100 people put up tents and barriers Monday afternoon and moved the encampment twice after being ordered to disperse. The protesters made enough noise to disrupt students taking final exams nearby, police said. The people in the demonstration were affiliated with a student group on campus, according to the police department.

Megan McArdle
Washington Post

Excerpt: After a decade of ever-escalating commitments to diversity, equity and inclusion, elite campuses are reversing course. It's amazing to watch such an abrupt volte-face. What’s even more amazing is how far things went beforehand and how long the correction took to arrive.

Such double-think regimes are vulnerable to what economist Timur Kuran calls a “preference cascade in reverse”: As people realize their neighbors share their skepticism, they start voicing their true opinions, an effect that dominoes until the whole regime collapses.

Jessie Appleby
FIRE

Excerpt: Despite the real benefits of virtual meetings, they are not a replacement for real life. At its best, they facilitate meetings and communication that otherwise could not have occurred. But a screen cannot replicate the experience of an in-person gathering. In short, virtual events and in-person events are not interchangeable.

Yet many universities have started treating them as such. In recent years, FIRE has seen schools increasingly rely on the availability of virtual meeting platforms to evade their constitutional and other free speech obligations to provide sufficient security for events to proceed without sustained disruption.

Terry Chea and Olga R. Rodriguez
Associated Press

Excerpt: Police arrested 13 people at Stanford University after pro-Palestinian demonstrators occupied the school president and provost’s offices early Wednesday, causing what officials described as “extensive” vandalism inside and outside the building.

Stanford students who participated in Wednesday’s protest would be immediately suspended, and any seniors would not be allowed to graduate, university President Richard Saller and Provost Jenny Martinez said in a joint statement.