Campus Protests and Free Expression

George Will
Washington Post

Excerpt: Although the Supreme Court is frequently accused of improper “activism,” it is often guilty of passive dereliction of duty. It was last week, when it refused to correct the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit’s lackadaisical tolerance of the culture of enforced conformity on campuses.

Last week, the supposedly activist Supreme Court passively refused to hear Speech First’s appeal against the 4th Circuit’s passivity. Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr., vigorously dissented, saying that Virginia Tech’s regulating of speech “appears limitless in scope”: “From the moment a student enters the university until graduation, he is under the university’s surveillance.” On campus and off.

The Editorial Board
Cornell Daily Sun

Excerpt: College students are losing sight of why democracy matters. At Cornell, where censorship is becoming the norm, it’s no wonder why. When people get robbed of opportunities to participate peacefully in what the late civil rights leader John Lewis called “good trouble, necessary trouble,” that disillusionment quickly alchemizes into rage and disdain.

That’s what makes the University’s Interim Expressive Activity Policy so backward, depraved and ultimately dangerous — it fans those flames of resentment. On Jan. 24, the administration unilaterally implemented a set of draconian guidelines to redefine what acceptable protest on campus looks like.

Joanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: As protests raged on college campuses after the start of the Israel-Hamas war in October, Columbia University set out to codify clear-cut guidelines for on-campus demonstrations. But the announcement of the Student Group Event Policy and Procedure plan drew swift backlash for being overly restrictive; among other things, it required “special events”—including any gathering expected to draw “high attendance/capacity”—to be registered two weeks in advance.

Four months later, the university has released new guidelines, called the Interim University Policy for Safe Demonstrations. It was born in part out of concerns that the previous iteration had been established too “hastily,” said Dr. Jeanine D’Armiento, chair of Columbia’s University Senate executive committee and an associate professor of medicine in anesthesiology.

Johanna Alonso
Inside Higher Ed

Excerpt: Students attending a talk by an Israeli lawyer were forced to evacuate the University of California, Berkeley’s Zellerbach Playhouse Monday night after protesters descended on the venue, breaking two windows and a door.  

Several attendees have reported to campus police that they were physically assaulted and called antisemitic slurs by the protesters, according to Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof.

Randall L. Kennedy
The Harvard Crimson

Excerpt: The scenario is familiar: A university invites a speaker to campus that outrages some sector of the community. Perhaps the guest is Ann Coulter, Angela Davis, or Mohammed El-Kurd. Angered or disappointed, protestors demand that the invitation be withdrawn.

Many free speech advocates categorically denounce campaigns to disinvite speakers, pointing to such protests as evidence of moral and intellectual rot. They decry even more harshly authorities that rescind invitations, portraying them as shameful cowards. It’s important that universities host a diversity of perspectives. But, as a strong supporter of free speech myself, I have to say: The reflexive, absolutist scorn for these campaigns ought to be reconsidered.

Ryan Quinn
Inside Higher Ed.

Excerpt: An incident last week at San José State University laid bare just how contentious the Israel-Palestine conflict continues to be on American college campuses—and how elusive agreement can be over the meaning of concepts such as genocide, terrorism and free speech.

The drama at the California State University campus unfolded in two scenes at the same protest. In the first, a guest speech by Jeffrey Blutinger, the Jewish studies director at another CSU campus, on “how to achieve peace between Israel and Palestine,” was cut short after police evacuated him from a classroom and navigated him through an intense pro-Palestinian protest in the hallway. During the same protest, according to a video provided to Inside Higher Ed, an older man appeared to try to photograph or record protesters with his phone, and he briefly grabbed the hand of someone blocking the camera and pulled their arm down.