Campus Protests and Free Expression

Ashraf Khalil
Associated Press

Excerpt: Police used pepper spray to clear a pro-Palestinian tent encampment at George Washington University and arrested dozens of demonstrators on Wednesday just as city officials were set to appear before hostile lawmakers in Congress to account for their handling of the 2-week-old protest.

The House Committee on Oversight and Accountability canceled the hearing after the crackdown, with its chairman and other Republicans welcoming the police action. House Speaker Mike Johnson said, “it should not require threatening to haul D.C.’s mayor before Congress to keep Jewish students at George Washington University safe.”

Paul Alivisatos
Was Street Journal

Excerpt: As president of the University of Chicago, I ended the encampment that occupied the University’s Main Quad for more than a week. The Tuesday morning action resulted in no arrests. Recent months have seen tremendous contention over protests on campuses, including pressure campaigns from every direction. That made this a decision of enormous import for the university.

Abigail Shrier
The Free Press

Excerpt: A police officer who pulls over speeding black motorists—and only black motorists—isn’t protecting “law and order.” He’s engaging in invidious discrimination. So too the university administrators who suddenly discover they are free speech absolutists only when student protesters call for the death of their Jewish classmates.

Jim Vertuno, Cedar Attanasio, Jake Offenhartz and Jonathan Mattise
Associated Press

Excerpt: Dozens of protesters took over a building at Columbia University in New York early Tuesday, barricading the entrances and unfurling a Palestinian flag out of a window in the latest escalation of demonstrations against the Israel-Hamas war that have spread to college campuses nationwide.

Video footage showed protesters on Columbia’s Manhattan campus locking arms in front of Hamilton Hall early Tuesday and carrying furniture and metal barricades to the building, one of several that was occupied during a 1968 civil rights and anti-Vietnam War protest on the campus. Posts on an Instagram page for protest organizers shortly after midnight urged people to protect the encampment and join them at Hamilton Hall. A “Free Palestine” banner hung from a window.

PEN America Press Release

Excerpt: We continue to be deeply alarmed by the decision of campus administrators across the country to deploy the police to detain, arrest, and remove peaceful student protesters. The use of excessive force against students and faculty on multiple occasions is shocking and unacceptable.
Engaging police to deal with peaceful protests represents an escalation that is inimical to the exercise of free expression and to a learning environment, and further raises the risk of use of excessive force; except in extreme cases, the use of outside police against student protesters is the wrong decision and only serves to ratchet up tensions.

Greg Lukianoff
The Eternally Radical Idea, Substack

Excerpt: 1. The situation on campus for free speech has been bad for a long time.

If you’re tired of hearing it, believe me, I’m tired of saying it — but it needs to be said, over and over, until people finally get it and start doing something to fix it.

I’ve been fighting for free speech on campus since I started at FIRE back in 2001. Indeed, FIRE was founded in response to a growing free speech crisis in higher education, and that was in 1999! The situation was worse than I thought back when I started, and it has reached crisis level over the past decade.