We are living through the most intense period of student protest since the 1960s, and college presidents seem intent on repeating the mistakes of their predecessors. Had they consulted any respectable scholar of politics and social movements, they would likely have heard one overriding piece of advice: Inviting law enforcement to put down student protests is a big mistake.
At the University of California at Berkeley in December 1964, police brutally arrested 796 students, dragging many down the stairs by their feet. Ronald Reagan stoked the flames of backlash by pledging to take on campus “beatniks, radicals and filthy speech advocates,” culminating with attacks on protestors occupying “People’s Park” in 1969 with tear gas and buckshot. The violent raid of Columbia’s campus in 1968 by New York City police poisoned campus life for years. A blue-ribbon investigation led by the former solicitor general Archibald Cox charged that Columbia’s president and trustees “too often conveyed an attitude of authoritarianism and invited mistrust.” And in the greatest tragedies of the era, law enforcement officials stormed Kent State and Jackson State in 1970, killing several students.
This semester’s protests have been boisterous, spirited, contentious, and occasionally crass, but mostly nonviolent. Protesters have trampled grass, blocked walkways, and sometimes drowned out their critics with a tedious chorus of chanting and drumming. They are far smaller in number than their 1960s counterparts. But they have generated a degree of panic and outrage at least as great. Nearly every university president has evoked the principle of “safety,” one that assumes that these Gaza solidarity encampments are inherently combustible and that militant language is tantamount to physical violence. Yet on nearly every campus, student journalists and faculty observers alike have highlighted the peacefulness of the protests, even as some protesters use inflammatory language.
We have not seen the tragedies of the late ’60s play out on campus yet, though many of the police interventions could have easily gone bad. Nearly all of the injuries at protests so far have resulted from police action, with the exception of the University of California at Los Angeles, where the university inexplicably stood by for hours while pro-Israel counterprotestors attacked the pro-Palestinian student encampment with fists, fireworks, and chemical sprays. At Dartmouth, the police knocked down and arrested Annelise Orleck, a 65-year old historian who once served as its head of Jewish studies, for nonviolently exercising her freedom of speech. At Washington University in St. Louis, a professor suffered serious injuries as he attempted to photograph a protester being arrested.
Whether or not you agree with the protesters, and even if you find their rhetoric insulting or wrongheaded (for the record, I disagree with some of the slogans I have heard on my own campus), the decision of university presidents to clamp down with force raises serious ethical concerns. Is the deployment of riot police against disruptive but largely nonviolent protests appropriate? It raises practical questions about university governance. Does harsh policing serve the interests of the university? And most importantly, it raises concerns about democracy. What are the medium and long-term effects of campus-based police interventions on our fragile polity? A few things to keep in mind.
First, the principle of proportionality. The arrest of nonviolent protesters is disproportionate to any harms they are alleged to have perpetrated. The blockades and encampments are what historians of the law and policing call status crimes, basically victimless, minus trivially inconvenienced pedestrians or students who have to listen to the sometimes annoying drums and chants. Campuses are often loud places and campus events are frequently disruptive: try to get work done on a football weekend, a music festival on a quad, or on a Saturday night anywhere near a fraternity row. Even if we are unsettled by chanting and singing and sloganeering, is calling in riot police and mass arresting students a proportionate response? It is hard not to conclude that the protesters are being shut down for their political viewpoints rather than any genuine threat to public safety.
Without more courageous leadership, students, faculty, and our public life are at grave risk.
Second, police raids do not serve a university’s own interests in maintaining peace and civility on campus. The 1960s made that crystal clear. Bringing law enforcement to campus invariably intensifies protests, fuels acrimony, and creates a climate of distrust. Police involvement doesn’t dampen protests; it accelerates them, often with devastating consequences. That was evident in Columbia’s response to its first encampment. The campus did not become safer after the police pulled down tents and arrested more than 100 students. The protesters were not deterred. Civility was not restored. The Hamilton Hall occupation and the police raid that followed were the almost inevitable consequence of the university’s first, highly punitive response. Since then, many more students have been affected by the shutdown and militarization of campus, the launch of remote classes, and the cancellation of graduation than by the harsh words of the protesters.
The third and greatest concern has to do with the long-term consequences on our democracy. The sum of case-by-case decisions to invite the police to campus could have devastating consequences for our fragile democracy. University presidents risk normalizing heavy-handed responses to all sorts of dissenting speech and protest. The very fact that ostensibly liberal campus leaders called in the police sends a dangerous signal to bad actors off campus who are eager to silence those with whom they disagree.
There are already ominous signs that the campus raids are fueling authoritarian sentiment. In the last week, New York Police Department leaders have used social media to denounce protestors as would-be terrorists. The chief of patrol went so far as to release a celebratory video of the NYPD raid on Columbia using footage gathered by police themselves after they barred student journalists from campus — an arguably unconstitutional action. Former President Donald Trump called the NYPD’s response to the Columbia protests “beautiful.”
Campus raids are not events to celebrate. They are dangerous and exact a high price, even when no one is seriously injured. Those with authoritarian tendencies are proud of the crackdown on campus protest. If they continue to gain power, they will have all the more reason to justify the use of force to silence those who speak out against injustice in our society. University presidents risk fueling increasingly punitive policing practices and quashing future expressions of dissent.
College leaders are fearful, caving to conservative politicians who want to undermine higher education and trustees and donors who have been swept up in a moral panic. Few have the courage to stand up for free speech. But without more courageous leadership, students, faculty, and our public life are at grave risk.
