Managing college protests
21 August 2024
College protests should be managed based on the behavior of the protestors, regardless of their cause or affiliation. Protestors cannot impinge on the rights of others; they cannot threaten or assault, cannot block campus buildings and cannot interrupt campus programming. Those who attempt to do so must be warned, stopped or removed, using the police if necessary. In addition, students must be subject to their campus codes of conduct and disciplined or expelled if appropriate. The rights of nonstudents are subject to the rules of the institution.
These excepts are from an essay by Bret Stephens:
The reason we intend to strictly enforce restrictions on campus protests has less to do with pressure from the outside and more to do with what we owe to ourselves as an institution dedicated to discovery, scholarship, teaching and learning. Our central concern is not with reputation — how others see us. It’s with integrity — how we remain faithful to our foundational purpose.
What is that purpose? The main clue comes from the word “university,” derived from the Latin “universitas”: the whole, everything, the universe.
We are a university not merely in the sense of being a type of corporation that brings together many programs and departments. We are also a university in that each of us is part of the same truth-seeking enterprise — an enterprise that believes in the universality and interconnectedness of knowledge itself. Here at this school, a historian can learn from a geologist, a neurologist can collaborate with a musicologist, and a freshman student can question and challenge the most senior member of the faculty. Here, students with different backgrounds and perspectives can, with a bit of effort, discuss and debate ideas without descending to name-calling, intimidation or ostracism.
This is what ought to make — what used to make, what could still make — universities wonderful places to be. We were not meant to be a collection of antagonistic interest groups presided over by a vast administration. Nor should we be a battleground for political conflicts imported from beyond the campus gate. Politics is something we study. If it drives what we do — as it has sadly done in some earlier times — we would forsake knowledge-seeking for advocacy and partisanship, and therefore cease to be who we are.
What we are meant to be, rather, is a community of learners guided by the spirit of inquiry. It’s that spirit that I want to talk about today.
. . .
In short, the way in which these protests unfolded was an insult to the spirit of inquiry that this university has an institutional responsibility to protect and champion. So does this mean we will brook no form of protest? Of course not. But we do expect that protests, so long as they happen on our campus, on our property, conform with the aims of education as we see them.
That means, at a minimum, that we will enforce clearly established “time, place and manner” restrictions, so that the rights of those who protest are never allowed to impinge on the rights of those who don’t. It also means we will invest in serious programming about the Mideast conflict, including by inviting Israeli and Palestinian scholars to campus and hosting moderated debates where you can cheer your own political side but must at least listen to the other. Our goal is never to make you think one way or the other. It’s to make you think, period.
The spirit of protest will always have a place here, as it must in every free society. Our job is to harness it to the task of inquiry so that knowledge may continue to grow, and human life may be enriched. (bolding added). Full article
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