Michigan’s New Protest Policy Is a Scandal

There is a devastating Kafka text, “Up in the Gallery,” just two sentences long. The first sentence is, formally, a hypothetical: “If some frail, consumptive circus rider were to be driven around the arena on a faltering horse in front of an untiring audience by a whip-swinging boss for months, without interruption … ” The sentence goes on. She throws kisses, the orchestra roars without end and the ventilators blow, incessantly, “into the gray future.” The applause swells and subsides, swells and subsides; the hands clapping are steam hammers. Under these appalling circumstances, the sentence concludes, “perhaps a young visitor to the gallery would rush down the long staircase, past all the tiers of seats, would hurl himself into the arena and would call ‘Stop!’,” as the orchestra, “always adapting itself,” breaks into fanfare. (Translations are my own.)

The second sentence goes to great or rather excessive lengths to persuade us that the first sentence gets it all wrong. The rider is beautiful, the circus director reveres, cherishes, and protects her like a most beloved granddaughter, he can barely fathom the depth of her skill, he angrily exhorts the grooms to the greatest caution, he does not consider any level of applause sufficient to honor her performance. At the end of her act, she stands on tiptoe, head thrown back, arms wide open, ready to share her happiness with the entire circus. And therefore, Kafka concludes, “the visitor to the gallery rests his face on the railing and as if sinking into a heavy dream during the final march, he weeps, without knowing it.”

My students at the University of Michigan, not being literary scholars, know that this is a text not about art (she is a “Kunstreiterin,” after all, an “art rider”), not about a mechanized modernity, or about existential despair, or (merely) about the function of ideology telling you that all is fine; they know this is a text about Gaza, and some of them have rushed down into the arena, past all the tiers, to scream “Stop!” They have screamed “Stop!” in our neoclassical, Kahn-designed administration building, Ruthven Hall, to the sound not of a circus orchestra but the sirens of dozens of police cars from nine jurisdictions. They have screamed “Stop!” at the honors convocation, forcing a visibly frustrated President Santa J. Ono to sit down without finishing his encomium in praise of students whose university has not been laid to waste, whose president has not been killed by bombs, whose parents have not pulled their children’s body parts from the rubble of their homes. Those parents were understandably upset, as were many of the students, the regents, and the honored guests. You do not go to the circus to be screamed at about genocide.

If our administration has its way, it is the screaming itself that is about to stop. Or at least, it will be orderly screaming, screamed in the right place at the right time at the right people. All of us here at UM have received a “Disruptive Activity Policy” draft, with a request for feedback. While the draft does not find it necessary to define “disruption,” it seeks to ban, in manic detail, almost any activity we usually associate with protest. You must not impede “the free flow of persons,” be they on foot, on a bicycle, or in a car. Indoors or outdoors. You may not interrupt any “University Operations” (yes, those are capitalized in the draft). Such operations include “the communications or activities of speakers or performers on University Facilities, or of any class, laboratory, seminar, examination, performance, formal proceeding, activity in a reserved space, field trip, or other educational, research, artistic, athletic, medical, operational, or service activity occurring on UM Facilities.” And you may not do so by “obstructing lines of sight, making loud or amplified noises, projecting light or images, or otherwise creating substantive distractions” (note the sly replacement of “disruption” with “distraction” here). It applies to “students, employees, contractors, volunteers, and visitors.”

The policy reads like a Protest Ban Mad Libs, a game of repressive Clue. It was the contractor, with the obstruction, at the ballet. It was the visitor, with the amplified noise, at the football game. It was the professor, with the projector, at the service activity. It was the volunteer, impeding the bicycle, at the field trip.

The policy is inadvertently funny. It is also an abomination. Here on campus, the horse is healthy, the administration tells us. The rider is happy, the director is a gentleman, the orchestra plays beautifully, and there is therefore no need to rush down the stairs yelling about dead children, weapons manufacturers and our endowment’s investment in their wares, a massacre inexorably proceeding. In fact, it is forbidden. If you do scream about it and fail to show the requisite contrition, you will meet “the hearing officer,” a single person of unspecified expertise to be appointed by who knows whom, who will “make a finding of responsibility” that may ruin your future. You can call witnesses. You may bring “a silent advisor.”

It is Kafka as Standard Practice Guide.

The policy, of course, is content neutral on its face, and it would also ban, in theory, “disruptive” protest on behalf of victims of the horrendous slaughter on October 7 or on behalf of the many hostages still held by Hamas. But everybody knows it is — for now — meant to curb protests against Israel’s war in Gaza only. And everybody knows it is about protecting an even more important brand-management extravaganza, i.e. commencement, scheduled for May 4 at our very own very large circus arena, the football stadium known as The Big House. After the scene at the honors convocation, right-wing journalists posted video of Santa Ono’s speech being interrupted by protesters and then him sitting down without finishing his speech. He was widely mocked in the replies: “Proof that these university heads … have no courage, no moral compass.” “These ‘Higher Educated’ administrators are getting exactly what they created.” “What a pathetic coward.” “Weak and feckless ‘leadership.’” And so on. He was, in short, guilty of not “doing something.”

The pressure to take action, or the pressure to be seen taking action, is rapidly emerging as the single most toxic force in higher education — whether in response to complaints by irate donors, reactionary politicians, or undergrads complaining about having to look at Robert Crumb drawings.

Since nobody in university administration wants to be the next Claudine Gay, “dosomethingism” has taken over, the something being a ban on most forms of active protest or perhaps all of them — who is to say what’s not a “significant distraction” in an era of rampant distractibility? I am hard pressed to think of any celebrated civil rights protest that did not impede a bicycle, block a view, make a loud noise, or distract someone significantly. Significant distractions are the point of protest. Protest is disruption.

You would expect a university president to grasp this, but instead, Ono sent out an email containing this bien-pensant bêtise: “We all must understand that, while protest is valued and protected, disruptions are not.” This is, of course, nonsense. If you value protest, you value disruption, though you are not, of course, required to value all protest or welcome all disruption (I myself am not a big fan of the heckler’s veto, for instance). But the sentence is nonetheless instructive, because in asserting a right not to be disrupted at all, it lays bare the desire to sink into a collective heavy dream as the final march plays.

Our existing policy on “Freedom of Speech and Artistic Expression” — which incidentally would have applied to the honors convocation protest — acknowledges that conflict can arise between the need to honor dissent and the need to ensure that speech can proceed. Written, it appears, by the kind of thoughtful people who used to run universities before their operations were governed via malicious Twitter dimwits, it says: “Protesters have rights, just as do speakers and artists. The standard of ‘undue interference’ must not be invoked lightly, merely to avoid brief interruptions, or to remove distractions or embarrassment. The University has an obligation to provide members of the community, and invited speakers and artists, with personal security and with reasonable platforms for expression; moreover, it has an obligation to insure audience access to public events. The University does not, however, have the obligation to insure audience passivity.”

Kafka’s young man, his passivity ensured by the lie of the circus, weeps, because his body knows something he does not. Many of my friends believe that Santa Ono is the circus director. I do not. I think he is yet another performer taking us into an ever grayer future. Or perhaps he and our regents find themselves weeping sometimes, without knowing why.