Student Union
Should Only Some Speech Be Allowed on Campus?
Last month, a student group at Vermont’s Middlebury College invited Charles Murray, a political scientist and fellow at the prestigious conservative think tank American Enterprise Institute, to speak on campus.
Murray was greeted by hundreds of protesters who shouted over him when he tried to speak. As the crowd refused to let up, college administrators escorted Murray to another building where he conducted his talk, with Middlebury professor Allison Stanger, via livestream.
As Stanger and Murray left the building, they were “physically and violently confronted by a group of protesters,” college spokesman Bill Burger said in a statement.
Protesters “violently set upon [their] car, rocking it, pounding on it, jumping on and trying to prevent it from leaving campus,” Burger said.
Stanger was treated at a hospital emergency room and left wearing a neck brace following the violent confrontation with protesters, one of whom grabbed her by the hair and yanked her backward.
“I feared for my life,” Stanger later wrote in a post on Facebook.
Earlier this month, students at Claremont McKenna College in California targeted Heather Mac Donald, a Manhattan Institute scholar and prominent critic of the Black Lives Matter movement, with mob violence in response to her attempted speech.
MacDonald, who was also invited to speak on campus by a student group, saw protesters physically block the doors to the building where she was scheduled to speak. She was forced to deliver the speech via livestream, to a largely empty room, as the protesters refused to allow anyone to pass.
The protesters banged on windows and shouted from outside the building until “the cops decided that things were getting too chaotic and I should stop speaking," MacDonald later said of the incident.
Police officers then had to sneak MacDonald out the building’s back door so she could safely escape the protesters.
Following MacDonald’s doomed speech, more than two dozen students signed an open letter to one of the school’s president’s, David Oxtoby, assailing MacDonald as a “fascist” and a “white supremacist” and demanding Claremont “take action” against an independent student newspaper for its coverage of the protests and its “continual perpetuation of hate speech.”
“Why are you, and other persons in positions of power at these institutions, protecting a fascist and her hate speech and not students that are directly affected by her presence?” the students asked of Oxtoby.
Oxtoby had previously condemned the protests and defended MacDonald’s right to speak on campus, citing the college’s commitment to “the exercise of free speech and academic freedom.”
The students argued that MacDonald is a well-known figure, with her views well-documented, so refusing her a platform to speak didn’t violate her rights. Further, the students said, they consider MacDonald’s mere presence on campus “a form of violence.”
Incidents like the ones at Middlebury and Claremont have become increasingly common on American college campuses, according to Will Creeley, senior vice president of legal and public advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (FIRE), a group promoting free speech for college students.
“It’s deeply troubling,” he told VOA in an interview. “We have seen an unfortunate outbreak of violence in response to controversial speakers on campus.”
“Capitulating to threats of violence only goes to further embolden that illiberal response,” Creeley said. “Violence at these events will beget more violence and we are seriously concerned that someone is going to get hurt.”
In a 2015 YouGov survey, 43 percent of students said, “Making sure that students have an environment free from discrimination, even if that means placing some limits on what students can say” should be more of a priority for colleges than protecting the “absolute right to free speech.”
A similar 2016 survey conducted by Gallup shows that, by a 52 percent to 42 percent margin, students believe that their institution should forbid people from speaking on campus who have a history of engaging in “hate speech.”
But, as Creeley told VOA, “there is no hate speech exception to the First Amendment.
“There is an unfortunately prevalent problem of students being unaware of the extent of their rights and the rights of their peers,” he said.
This discussion over First Amendment rights came to a head this week when the University of California-Berkeley preemptively cancelled a scheduled speaking event by conservative provocateur Ann Coulter, citing concerns that the school couldn’t control a potentially violent reaction to Coulter’s presence.
The cancellation followed several violent incidents on the Berkeley campus this year, including a riot in February when far-right journalist Milo Yiannopoulos was invited to speak. That incident resulted in more than $100,000 of damage to buildings on campus.
The school’s decision to cancel Coulter touched off a firestorm of controversy, leading Berkeley to reverse its move and reschedule Coulter’s talk at a time when less people would be on campus. This didn’t sit well with the student group that invited Coulter to campus, so, on Monday, they filed a lawsuit against the school alleging discrimination against the speaker.
“This case arises from efforts by one of California’s leading public universities, UC Berkeley – once known as the “birthplace of the Free Speech Movement” – to restrict and stifle the speech of conservative students whose voices fall beyond the campus political orthodoxy,” the lawsuit, filed by Harmeet Dhillon on behalf of the Berkeley College Republicans, reads.
A spokeswoman for the school, Diane Klein, called the allegation that Coulter is being unfairly punished for her political point of view “untrue.”
“The university welcomes speakers of all political viewpoints and is committed to providing a forum to enable Ann Coulter to speak on the Berkeley campus,” she said in a statement.
The university offered to let Coulter speak May 2, but Dhillon said this time slot is unacceptable, because students will be studying for finals.
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Police arrest 33 at George Washington University protest encampment
Police in Washington cleared out a pro-Palestinian encampment protest at George Washington University early Wednesday, arresting 33 people, authorities said.
Arrests were made for assault on a police officer and unlawful entry, the District of Columbia's Metropolitan Police Department said.
Police started to shut down the tent encampment after dozens of protesters marched to GWU President Ellen Granberg's home Tuesday night. Demonstrators carried signs that read "Free Palestine" and "Hands off Rafah." Police were called, but no arrests were made then.
Rafah, Gaza’s southernmost city, is where much of the territory’s population has clustered. The area is also a corridor for bringing humanitarian aid into the Palestinian territory.
Israel seized the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing on Tuesday, while shutting off the nearby Kerem Shalom crossing, drawing criticism from humanitarian groups. Israel said Wednesday it had reopened Kerem Shalom.
GWU officials warned students that they could be suspended for engaging in protests at the school’s University Yard, an outdoor spot on the campus.
"While the university is committed to protecting students' rights to free expression, the encampment had evolved into an unlawful activity, with participants in direct violation of multiple university policies and city regulations," a GWU statement said.
Event organizers said police used pepper spray to contain the crowd of protesters on Wednesday.
Police said they dispersed demonstrators because "there has been a gradual escalation in the volatility of the protest."
A congressional committee canceled a hearing on the university encampment Wednesday. District of Columbia Mayor Muriel Bowser and Metropolitan Police Chief Pamela Smith had been scheduled to testify about the city’s handling of the protest before the House Committee on Oversight and Accountability.
More than 2,600 people have been arrested on 50 campuses in pro-Palestinian demonstrations, according to The Associated Press.
The nationwide campus protests started in response to Israel's offensive in Gaza that began after Hamas launched an attack on Israel on October 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking roughly 250 hostages.
More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel's offensive, according to the Health Ministry in Hamas-run Gaza. Israel warned it could "deepen" its operation in Rafah if cease-fire talks fail to secure the release of the hostages.
Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press.
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Pro-Palestinian protesters break through barricades to retake MIT encampment
Pro-Palestinian protesters who had been blocked by police from accessing an encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday broke through fencing, linked arms and encircled tents that remained there, as Columbia University canceled its university-wide commencement ceremony following weeks of pro-Palestinian protests.
Sam Ihns, a graduate student at MIT studying mechanical engineering and a member of MIT Jews for a Ceasefire, said the group has been at the encampment for the past two weeks and that they were calling for an end to the killing of thousands of people in Gaza.
"Specifically, our encampment is protesting MIT's direct research ties to the Israeli Ministry of Defense," he said.
Protesters also sat in the middle of Massachusetts Avenue, blocking the street during rush hour in the Boston area.
The demonstrations at Columbia have roiled its campus and officials said Monday that while it won't hold it's main ceremony, students will be able to celebrate at a series of smaller, school-based ceremonies this week and next.
The decision comes as universities around the country wrangle with how to handle commencements for students whose high school graduations were derailed by COVID-19 in 2020. Another campus shaken by protests, Emory University, announced Monday that it would move its commencement from its Atlanta campus to a suburban arena. Others, including the University of Michigan, Indiana University and Northeastern, have pulled off ceremonies with few disruptions.
Columbia's decision to cancel its main ceremonies scheduled for May 15 saves its president, Minouche Shafik, from having to deliver a commencement address in the same part of campus where police dismantled a protest encampment last week. The Ivy League school in upper Manhattan said it made the decision after discussions with students.
"Our students emphasized that these smaller-scale, school-based celebrations are most meaningful to them and their families," officials said.
Most of the ceremonies that had been scheduled for the south lawn of the main campus, where encampments were taken down last week, will take place about 8 kilometers (5 miles) north at Columbia's sports complex, officials said.
Speakers at some of Columbia's still-scheduled graduation ceremonies include Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright James Ijames and Dr. Monica Bertagnolli, director of the National Institutes of Health.
Columbia had already canceled in-person classes. More than 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia's green or occupied an academic building were arrested in recent weeks.
Similar encampments sprouted up elsewhere as universities struggled with where to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining safe and inclusive campuses.
The University of Southern California earlier canceled its main graduation ceremony. Students abandoned their camp at USC on Sunday after being surrounded by police and threatened with arrest.
Other universities have held graduation ceremonies with beefed-up security. The University of Michigan's ceremony was interrupted by chanting a few times Saturday. In Boston on Sunday, some students waved small Palestinian or Israeli flags at Northeastern University's commencement in Fenway Park.
Emory's ceremonies scheduled for May 13 will be held at the GasSouth Arena and Convocation Center in Duluth, almost 20 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of the university's Atlanta campus, President Gregory Fenves said in an open letter.
"Please know that this decision was not taken lightly," Fenves wrote. "It was made in close consultation with the Emory Police Department, security advisors and other agencies — each of which advised against holding commencement events on our campuses."
The 16,000-student university is one of many that has seen repeated protests stemming from the conflict that started Oct. 7 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 hostages. Student protesters are calling on their schools to divest from companies that do business with Israel or otherwise contribute to the war effort.
Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Israeli strikes have devastated the enclave and displaced most of its inhabitants.
Hamas on Monday announced its acceptance of an Egyptian-Qatari cease-fire proposal, but Israel said the deal did not meet its "core demands" and that it was pushing ahead with an assault on the southern Gaza town of Rafah.
"Cease-fires are temporary," said Selina Al-Shihabi, a Georgetown University sophomore who was taking part in a protest at George Washington. "There can be a cease-fire, but the U.S. government will continue to arm the Israeli military. We plan to be here until the university divests or until they drag us out of here."
At the University of California, San Diego, police cleared an encampment and arrested more than 64 people, including 40 students.
The University of California, Los Angeles, moved all classes online for the entire week due to ongoing disruptions following the dismantling of an encampment last week. The university police force reported 44 arrests but there were no specific details, UCLA spokesperson Eddie North-Hager said in an email to The Associated Press.
Schools are trying various tactics from appeasement to threats of disciplinary action to get protestors to take down encampments or move to campus areas where demonstrations would be less intrusive.
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago said in a Facebook post Sunday that it offered protesters "amnesty from academic sanction and trespassing charges" if they moved.
"Many protesters left the premises of their own accord after being notified by the police that they were trespassing and subject to arrest," the school said. "Those that remained were arrested after multiple warnings to leave, including some of whom we recognized as SAIC students."
A group of faculty and staff members at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill asked the administration for amnesty for any students who were arrested and suspended during recent protests. UNC Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine said in a media advisory that it would deliver a letter on behalf of more than 500 faculty who support the student activists.
Other universities took a different approach.
Harvard University's interim president, Alan Garber, warned students that those participating in a pro-Palestinian encampment in Harvard Yard could face "involuntary leave." That means they would not be allowed on campus, could lose their student housing and may not be able to take exams, Garber said.
Columbia University cancels main commencement after protests that roiled campus for weeks
Columbia University is canceling its large university-wide commencement ceremony amid ongoing pro-Palestinian protests but will hold smaller school-based ceremonies this week and next, the university announced Monday.
"Based on feedback from our students, we have decided to focus attention on our Class Days and school-level graduation ceremonies, where students are honored individually alongside their peers, and to forego the university-wide ceremony that is scheduled for May 15," Columbia officials said in a statement.
The protests stem from the conflict that started Oct. 7 when Hamas militants attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and taking roughly 250 hostages. Vowing to destroy Hamas, Israel launched an offensive in Gaza that has killed more than 34,500 Palestinians, about two-thirds of them women and children, according to the Health Ministry in the Hamas-ruled territory. Israeli strikes have devastated the enclave and displaced most of its inhabitants.
The University of Southern California earlier canceled its main graduation ceremony while allowing other commencement activities to continue.
