Elite Universities on Lockdown. Protestors Regroup.

[Updated 9-29-24]

Elite universities have changed their policies to significantly reduce free speech and free assembly. In response, college students and their faculty allies are having to regroup and rethink how they protest the US-Israel war against Palestine as it expands in the Middle East. On the establishment side, will universities further crack down on students and faculty, wherever peaceful protests might occur?  

Campus "Crime and Punishment"

Elite universities like UCLA have dramatically reduced the areas that students can speak and assemble freely, restricting protesters to free speech zones, a common tactic used by the US government during the War on Terror. Universities have also upped surveillance measures and punished students involved in protests, with limited due process. 

The visible resistance may now be limited on campuses where students have been detained, assaulted, arrested, expelled, and banned from campus. Foreign students wary of facing deportation may also be keeping quiet, publicly.     

In California, Governor Gavin Newsom has signed a bill to update public university codes of conduct "and train students on how to protest with civility, a response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations that erupted across the state last spring." The bill was opposed by pro-Paletestinian Groups and the ACLU.

Protests Off Campus

There have been a number of protests against the US-backed war that has expanded from Gaza, to the Occupied West Bank, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria, and Iran. Demonstrations have been held in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, DC and other college towns, including Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa.  Those protests will be closely observed and documented by law enforcement. 

With the help of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the fossil fuel lobby, states have already crafted anti-protest legislation to reduce public free speech and free assembly.  According to the UK Guardian, 45 states have considered new anti-protest legislation since 2017.  

Protests on Campus

Over the last week, there were small protests at Penn State University and the University of Arizona.  The Penn State demonstration, which had about 60 attendees, was supported by Penn State Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), the Student Committee for Defense and Solidarity (SCDS), the Muslim Students’ Association (MSA), the United Socialists at Penn State (USPSU) and the People's Defense Front - Northern Appalachia. The impromptu Arizona protest was set up by the Party for Socialism and Liberation. At Cornell University, about 100 students protested a career fair that included defense contractors Boeing and L3 Harris. It's not surprising that these demonstrations would be small, given recent crackdowns across the country. 

Collaboration Between Elite Schools and Law Enforcement

Will elite schools work with law enforcement at the local, state, federal, and international level to further restrict free speech and freedom of assembly?  And university administrators try to quell dissent, will students be more harshly disciplined for planning and engaging in peaceful protests, of any type, on and off campus? 

Related links:

 
What caused 70 US universities to arrest protesting students while many more did not?  

Campus Protests, Campus Safety, and the Student Imagination 

Democratic Protests on Campus: Modeling the Better World We Seek (Annelise Orleck)

Methods of Student Nonviolent Resistance

Wikipedia Community Documents Pro-Palestinian Protests on University and College Campuses

One Fascism or Two?: The Reemergence of "Fascism(s)" in US Higher Education

A People's History of Higher Education in the US

Petition: UVA and Charlottesville community demand UVA administration drop UJC charges against student protesters arrested on May 4th

Contact: 

Laura Goldblatt (lgoldblatt@gmail.com)

609-915-6132

Walt Heinecke (Waltheinecke@hotmail.com)
(434) 825-1896

September 8, 2024

Charlottesville, VA 

UVA students have launched a petition that has garnered over 500 signatures and counting demanding that the UVA administration drop University Judiciary Committee (UJC) charges against the five remaining protesters still facing such charges following local and state police’s violent break up of the UVA and community pro-Palestinian encampment on May 4th, 2024. 

The petition notes that in addition to retraumatizing students attacked by police in riot gear, some wielding semi- and automatic weapons, the charges are unjust and arbitrary. Given that local authorities, including the Albemarle County Prosecutor Jim Hingeley, has determined that there is not enough evidence to proceed with criminal charges and all no trespass orders have been dropped, the administration seeks to use the UJC charges to further antagonize students who have otherwise been fully exonerated through due process. 

The students protesting at the encampment and on May 4th sought to realize UVA’s mission of being both “good and great” by demanding this ethos apply to the University’s operations and that they divest from Israeli companies and those profiting from the genocide in Gaza. In making an example of these students, administrators aim to deny UVA faculty, staff, students, and Charlottesville community members of their first amendment rights and protections and instill a culture of fear around free speech and the right to protests at UVA.

The UJC charges also cause material harm to those students who cannot obtain diplomas and secure employment, effectively locking them out of the job market despite their successful completion of their degrees. Current students facing charges remain in limbo. As they start the academic year, they are unsure of what will happen in their cases and whether they will be able to finish the semester with their peers.

A local civil rights attorney representing one of the students facing UJC charges recently stated “It’s over the top. ‘Let’s prosecute them. Let’s put them in judicial proceedings. Let’s take away their right to get a diploma.’ What else do you want to do to them?”...All for a small, entirely peaceful demonstration for which the university can give no adequate, truthful answer to why it happened, how it happened and who, in fact, ordered it happening.” (Daily Progress, August 25, 2024)

In a recent Statement the American Association of University Professors (“AAUP Condenms Wave of Administrative Policies Intended to Crackdown on Peaceful Campus Protests”) stated: “College and university students are both citizens and members of the academic community. As Citizens, students should enjoy the same freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, and right of petition that other citizens enjoy and, as members of the academic community, they are subject to the obligations that accrue to them by virtue of this membership. Faculty members and administration officials should ensure that institutional powers are not employed to inhibit such intellectual and personal development of students as is often promoted by their exercise of the rights of citizenship both on and off campus....Administrators who claim that “expressive activity” policies protect academic freedom and student learning, even as they severely restrict its exercise, risk destroying the very freedoms of speech and expression they claim to protect.”

In dropping the UJC charges, UVA administrators could join with peer institutions like the University of Chicago, which have dropped all charges against student protesters. Such actions would serve as the first step towards transparency and healing, actions that they refused to take over the summer in the immediate wake of their egregious decisions on May 4.

Campus Protests, Campus Safety, and the Student Imagination

According to the LA Times, students at Cal Berkeley, San Jose State, San Francisco State, and the University of San Francisco plan to hold coordinated protests on their campuses tomorrow. These actions are a continuation of this year's earlier protests against Israel's atrocities against Palestinians in Gaza--which have been backed by the United States, through arms deals and federal funding.

With the US-backed genocide expanding to the West Bank and Southern Lebanon, there will certainly be student resistance despite administrative and police efforts to make campus occupations and other forms of protest (even free speech and freedom of assembly) difficult.

The greatest threat so far from these protests has been to the reputations of elite universities and their endowments, rather than to campus safety. And the greatest perceived threat to administrators is that students and their allies have the imagination to resist in novel ways--without violence.   

Students have already gained partial victories with a handful of universities which have offered to review investment strategies complicit with genocide. These progressive schools include Brown University and San Francisco State. At the University of Michigan, pro-Palestinian students organized as the Shut it Down Party have won student elections.       

Coordinated and Secret Crackdowns

The crackdown measures that schools have already made to reduce free speech and other freedoms, and to stoke fear, are too numerous to list. Some of these measures, like increased surveillance are not even known by students, faculty, staff, and community folks. Just understanding that secret mass surveillance is possible helps administrators who want to quell good trouble. 

What are the real threats to campus safety? 

We hope these protests (and any other actions) will be nonviolent and have published a list of nonviolent methods for resistance as a starting point for discussion. Violence is not a good excuse even in crackdowns of this type, and it's a losing strategy for all sides--other than the right wing--who want chaos and hope to bait others. It takes great planning, discipline, and strategy not to take the bait. At the same time, we hope campus administrators will take the problems of sexual assault, hate crimes and other forms of violence, as well as the threats of mass shootings, more seriously than they have.

Related links: 

Democratic Protests on Campus: Modeling the Better World We Seek (Annelise Orleck)

Methods of Student Nonviolent Resistance

Wikipedia Community Documents Pro-Palestinian Protests on University and College Campuses

Dangerous Spaces: Sexual Assault and Other Forms of Violence On and Off Campus

One Fascism or Two?: The Reemergence of "Fascism(s)" in US Higher Education

A People's History of Higher Education in the US?

Letter to an incoming freshman

Debtors’ Protest in DC May 22 calling President Biden to "Fund Education, Not Genocide" (Debt Collective)

 

Now, more than ever, we need to stand up for a reparative, debt-free education that liberates our collective possibilities – not pushes us further into a violent war machine. That’s why on May 22, we are going to Washington D.C. to call on the President to use his executive powers to fund education and liberate student debtors, not to accelerate war. We need the President to FUND EDUCATION, NOT GENOCIDE.

If you are planning to come to D.C., please sign up on the THIS LINK so we can keep you looped into the plans.

WHAT: A Debtors’ Assembly and March to Capitol Grounds to call on Pres. Biden to FUND EDUCATION, NOT GENOCIDE.

WHEN: Wednesday May 22, 2024 at 12pm EST. We will have lunch and brief in-person training.

WHERE: We will meet outside the Department of Education at the Eisenhower Memorial (540 Independence Ave SW, Washington, D.C. 20202) at NOON!

WHO: Debtors from across the country – including you! We will also be joined by

Rep. Rashida Tlaib (MI)
Rep. Cori Bush (MO)
Layla Elabed (Uncommitted)
Tariq Habash (former Department of Ed appointee who resigned in protest)

Lily Greenberg Call (Jewish-American political appointee to resign from the Biden-Harris administration over its policies in Gaza)
Maddy Clifford (Debt Collective)
Tiffany Loftin (Debt Collective)
Harriet’s Wildest Dreams
Students organizers from Georgetown and NYU
 

HOW: Get to D.C.! Are you joining us from NYC? Sign up here to get your *free spot on the bus! Details: We are meeting at 7am at Atlantic Barclays. There will be coffee and donuts. Masks encouraged. We will head back to NYC at 7:30pm. Email Victoria@debtcollective.org with any questions.
Are you joining from Philly or Boston? We’re sending folks by train. Reach out to nick@debtcollective.org to get support for getting train tickets.We have a bunch of folks from Philly and folks from Boston you can join with on the train ride down!

HOW: Get Trained for Action !

Those interested in engaging in civil disobedience or supporting folks during the action, please join our upcoming training on Monday May 20th at 7pm ET on zoom)


SEE YA ON THE STREETS!

The Debt Collective
https://debtcollective.org