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In response, other universities have taken Columbia’s lead and cracked down on these protests, which seek to end colleges’ investments in firms supporting Israel’s occupation and its ongoing assault on Gaza.
These divergent outcomes among schools that relied on police and those that didn’t offer an important lesson on how universities should manage campus activism, while ensuring students’ safety and protecting speech.
While harassment and intimidation can be reasons to involve law enforcement, the accusations against these protesters mostly focused on their chants and campaign slogans — and in many cases wrongly conflate anti-Israel rhetoric with antisemitism.
One of the other problems with how many universities and officials have responded to pro-Palestinian demonstrations is that they have changed their protest rules since October 7, in some instances specifically targeting Palestinian solidarity groups.
It can also ultimately be ineffective; after state troopers arrested students at the University of Texas, for example, the Travis County Attorney’s Office dismissed the criminal trespassing charges, saying they lacked probable cause.
As the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in an open letter to college and university presidents, schools can announce content-neutral rules and enforce them — that is, set up guidelines that don’t just target certain protests, such as the ongoing pro-Palestinian ones.
🤖 I’m a bot that provides automatic summaries for articles:
Click here to see the summary
In response, other universities have taken Columbia’s lead and cracked down on these protests, which seek to end colleges’ investments in firms supporting Israel’s occupation and its ongoing assault on Gaza.
These divergent outcomes among schools that relied on police and those that didn’t offer an important lesson on how universities should manage campus activism, while ensuring students’ safety and protecting speech.
While harassment and intimidation can be reasons to involve law enforcement, the accusations against these protesters mostly focused on their chants and campaign slogans — and in many cases wrongly conflate anti-Israel rhetoric with antisemitism.
One of the other problems with how many universities and officials have responded to pro-Palestinian demonstrations is that they have changed their protest rules since October 7, in some instances specifically targeting Palestinian solidarity groups.
It can also ultimately be ineffective; after state troopers arrested students at the University of Texas, for example, the Travis County Attorney’s Office dismissed the criminal trespassing charges, saying they lacked probable cause.
As the American Civil Liberties Union wrote in an open letter to college and university presidents, schools can announce content-neutral rules and enforce them — that is, set up guidelines that don’t just target certain protests, such as the ongoing pro-Palestinian ones.
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