The Campus-Protest Conundrum

Last spring, protesters took over the library at Portland State University.

What had started out as a pro-Palestinian encampment calling for divestment from Israel — much like the ones at over 100 institutions across the country — escalated into an occupation by local residents and students. Portland State administrators said they weren’t able to negotiate a peaceful resolution. Three days after the occupation began, local law enforcement cleared the building.

The university said the protesters caused $1.2 million in damages, including graffiti on windows and nearly every floor of the library, damaged technology systems and elevator keys, and broken glass and furniture. Many activists decried the police sweep, saying it was an attack on pro-Palestinian speech.

This term, Portland State’s campus has looked different. There have been fewer protests. Administrators have taken a tougher stance on enforcing rules: In January, few students attended a “die-in” inside a classroom building, and the group that organized it faced discipline.

Some of the drop-off in activism is organic as movements naturally ebb and flow. The 2024 surge in pro-Palestinian demonstrations “was probably the largest protest we’ve seen on college campuses in the last decade or so,” said Zach Greenberg, a First Amendment attorney at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE). “And so in comparison to that, everything else will look pretty small.”

But much of the quieting is intentional, free-speech experts say — best attributed to tightened campus procedures and directives from the Trump administration.

President Trump’s scrutiny of higher education is closely tied to last year’s Gaza activism. His administration has sought to deport international students who protested and pull federal funding from institutions that allegedly failed to punish demonstrators and protect Jewish students. Portland State is facing a federal investigation from Trump’s Education Department, which said it’s reviewing reports of “widespread antisemitic harassment” and cited “illegal encampments” as an example.

College leaders say that they remain committed to protecting free expression, and that they’re focused on commonsense enforcement to prevent disruptions to the academic experience. Amid a rise in activism in recent weeks, several institutions have called police to campus to break up demonstrations that administrators say violated all sorts of rules. Some students and staff fear those efforts are chilling speech.

One year after pro-Palestinian encampments upended higher education for weeks, many institutions are still wrestling with what protests are allowed to look like — especially in a politically charged environment.

Portland State, in the heart of the city’s downtown, has played a role in activism for decades, including in the 100-plus days of protests after George Floyd’s murder in 2020. Those demonstrations often featured violent clashes between protesters and police officers.

“I certainly had the clear impression that the city is very committed to not letting that happen again,” Ann Cudd, Portland State’s president, said at a news conference a year ago after the library was cleared by police. “They didn’t want to see PSU be the start of something bigger in that way.”

The repaired library reopened just in time for the fall term.

In a September campus message, Cudd touted a new free-speech website, including a detailed FAQ page describing what protesters could and couldn’t do, and emphasized a “viewpoint-neutral approach” to rule enforcement.

Khadija Almayahi, a senior at Portland State, said she’s gotten a firsthand view of what she describes as policies “weaponized” to silence student activism.

This fall, Almayahi inherited a student organization on probation. She is the president of Students United for Palestinian Equal Rights, or SUPER, at Portland State. (In January 2024, before Almayahi was involved in leadership, some group members interrupted a Board of Trustees meeting to criticize the university’s relationship with Boeing — a frequent target of pro-Palestinian protesters because the company does business with Israel’s military.)

This academic year, before every event or planned demonstration, Almayahi said SUPER received emails from administrators reminding the organization of campus rules. Other groups have gotten similar messages, she said, but because of SUPER’s pro-Palestinian views, she feels like “we absolutely have a target on our back.”

“Activism, and especially the nature of our politicized organization doesn’t always fit into the tight boxes of bureaucracy at Portland State or even just any higher academic institutions,” Almayahi added.

Portland State administrators have described efforts to try to find common ground with campus activists. When protesters first pitched an encampment last April, President Cudd agreed to pause the university’s financial relationship with Boeing and created a committee on socially responsible investment and partnerships. The administration also announced that Portland State would host a Palestinian scholar and establish a scholarship fund for students directly affected by the war in Gaza.

Campus activists didn’t think those steps went far enough. They kept protesting.

In January, after organizing the lightly attended “die-in,” Almayahi said SUPER faced disciplinary proceedings. The university recently dropped the case.

Mitch Green, a member of the Portland City Council, spoke at a rally in April where he threatened to withhold funding for the university’s performing-arts center until the university threw out the conduct charges. (The university denies that the decision was related to Green’s comments or other political statements.)

“I’m going to be watching to make sure that they don’t pursue a policy of repression and codify that inside the bylaws of the university,” Green told The Chronicle. “I’ll say that it is a scary time with this administration,” he added, referring to President Trump, “but I expect that we don’t voluntarily comply in advance of fascism.”

One former Portland State staff member believes that they recently fell victim to a university crackdown on speech. In April, Nic Francisco-Kaho’onei, director of the Women’s Resource Center, was sent a 30-day notice of termination and placed on paid administrative leave. Francisco-Kaho’onei said they think their pro-Palestinian advocacy and role in supporting students undergoing conduct proceedings was a factor. “This action is not disciplinary, but based on the needs of the university,” the termination letter reads.

Francisco-Kaho’onei said they had several meetings with their supervisor and the university’s general counsel about what could be displayed in the Women’s Resource Center. Things came to a head when the university asked them to remove coloring books with the phrase “from the river to the sea” in them.

“I suspect that I am not going to be the last person that is quietly terminated,” Francisco-Kaho’onei said.

A university spokesperson told The Chronicle that it cannot comment directly on personnel actions, but that Portland State supports the Women’s Resource Center.

Cudd, for her part, has continued to push ahead on changes to campus partnerships and investments. Portland State’s financial relationship with Boeing is still paused. In April, Cudd also endorsed recommendations from the committee she created to investigate those issues.

In public statements, Portland State’s administration seems to be looking for balance in a world of extremes: condemn the war in Gaza and negotiate over protesters’ demands, and simultaneously combat antisemitism and enforce policies to prevent another building occupation. Walking that line has proven difficult.

Portland State was one of five universities put under investigation in February by the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights for, as the Trump administration put it, having “overwhelmingly failed” to protect Jewish students. The government has alleged violations of Title VI, the civil-rights law barring discrimination based on race, color, and national origin, including shared Jewish ancestry.

Portland State officials believe that the review is “not based on a specific complaint from an individual, but instead is prompted by the new administration,” according to a statement from a spokesperson.

The University of Minnesota-Twin Cities was also singled out for investigation. And in March, both Portland State and Minnesota also received letters warning them about potential enforcement actions should they not comply with the Trump administration’s demands to combat antisemitism.

This academic year, Minnesota officials have seemed to draw a hard line on protests, some faculty said.

“The scale of police response has gotten very, very big,” said Michael Gallope, a professor of cultural studies and comparative literature, and vice chair of the College of Liberal Arts Assembly, the school’s governance body. “We’re talking about hundreds of officers, in some instances, multiple squad cars, a SWAT team, really, really out of proportion, and expensive police responses for protests that could involve a couple of dozen students.”

Last year, Minnesota’s then-interim president negotiated with protesters to resolve an encampment. The university agreed to consider demands for divestment from Israel, improve financial transparency, and grant amnesty for nine students who had been arrested at an earlier encampment, which was broken up by police.

Over the summer, a new university president, Rebecca Cunningham, took office.

In August, the Board of Regents voted to reject calls for divestment and adopted a “position of neutrality” on the university’s endowment. Janie Mayeron, chair of the board, said that after reviewing how the endowment fund operates and considering feedback, “it is clear our community is divided on the topic.”

“After careful consideration of all this input, we believe today’s action honors our fiduciary duty and the long-term needs of the university,” Mayeron said in a news release.

Meanwhile, Minnesota officials began enforcing a protest policy that’s been in place for over a decade but hadn’t been strictly followed. The policy states that gatherings of more than 100 people require a permit obtained at least two weeks in advance.

As the administration put its foot down, a small group of students decided to escalate calls for divestment. Rowan Lange, a second-year student at Minnesota and a member of Students for a Democratic Society, was one of 11 students arrested for participating in the occupation of an administrative building in October.

For Lange, the administration’s shift made such an escalation necessary. “The occupation was basically like, you agreed to negotiate with us, you fell back on it. You didn’t keep your promises,” Lange said.

The protesters covered the lens of security cameras with spray paint, broke some interior windows, and barricaded entrances and exits. (The university did not confirm the total cost of damages.) The 11 students arrested were taken into custody hours after first entering the building.

“What happened in Morrill Hall was not a form of legitimate protest. Threatening behavior and destruction of property have absolutely no place within our community,” Cunningham wrote in a message to the campus following the arrests.

Protesters’ initial disciplinary outcomes resulted in a $5,600 fine for property damage, a three-term suspension, community service, and a reflection paper. After a lengthy appeal process in Lange’s case, the student said the university dropped suspension and restitution charges.

Minnesota’s administration has also imposed new rules on faculty speech.

In March, Minnesota’s Board of Regents passed a resolution banning colleges, centers, and institutes from making statements on “matters of public concern.” In response, the university took down at least 11 statements from departmental websites about Israel and Palestine, as well as on conflicts in Ukraine and Russia, according to The Minnesota Daily, the student newspaper.

“The resolution clarifies that such statements will focus exclusively on the mission and operations of the university,” a university spokesperson wrote to The Chronicle, adding that the document “defends the rights of individuals to research, publish, teach, speak, or write on matters of public concern or public interest.”

The resolution has caused confusion among faculty about what they can and cannot say on departmental websites.

“A lot of faculty are outraged,” said Eric Van Wyk, chair of the Faculty Senate’s academic freedom and tenure committee. “They find it ridiculous that they cannot use the insight and research from their scholarship to address issues of matters of public concern. This is a big part of the mission of the university.”

In a March statement, Cunningham, Minnesota’s president, said the university would continue to support “your rights to peaceful protest and the free expression of diverse viewpoints,” linking to a website that spells out demonstration rules. At the same time, “the university will take decisive action to end any and all forms of harassment, intimidation, and bias,” Cunningham added. Another recent statement from Cunningham focused on the university’s response to antisemitism.

Ideally, when colleges embrace neutrality, it’s supposed to open the door for more faculty and student speech, said Kristen Shahverdian, program director of campus free speech at PEN America. The fact that the institution isn’t making political statements, she said, “means faculty who might have expertise on different issues, for instance, are free to speak out.”

In practice, Shahverdian said, many colleges’ policies on neutrality are contributing to a chilling of speech — a trend, she added, that’s being intensified by the Trump administration.

This month, as a handful of pro-Palestinian demonstrations have broken out on campuses, the Trump administration has applauded colleges that called police and quickly shut the protests down.

On May 7, Columbia University — which is facing intense federal scrutiny over alleged antisemitism and is trying to restore millions in canceled and frozen grants — authorized the New York Police Department to arrest over 75 individuals after 100 protesters occupied the main library’s reading room, in protest of the university’s ties to Israel and handling of student discipline. President Trump’s antisemitism task force praised the decision-making of Columbia’s acting president, Claire Shipman.

That same week, the University of Washington suspended 21 students after they were arrested for occupying an engineering building in protest of the university’s financial ties to Boeing. Trump’s task force then issued a statement commending the decision to involve law enforcement, but still announced a federal review of Washington, saying that “the university must do more to deter future violence and guarantee that Jewish students have a safe and productive learning environment.”

Swarthmore College, in Pennsylvania, called in police to arrest nine individuals on May 3 for their involvement in a four-day-long Students for Justice in Palestine encampment. The college said the group’s social-media posts drew attention from the FBI.

Colleges should have “a pretty high bar” for involving police in protests, said Greenberg, the First Amendment attorney at FIRE. Students should be able to protest and express themselves “even in ways that may offend others,” Greenberg added.

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“Arresting students and forcibly moving them is a pretty drastic action, and we encourage universities to try less-drastic actions before resorting to that. Such as, administrators warn students, talk to them, give them an opportunity to rectify their conduct before calling in police officers,” Greenberg said. “It’s really a matter of last resort to make arrests and pursue criminal charges for that matter.”

Some faculty at Emory University, in Atlanta, believe that a sweeping police crackdown on an attempted encampment last spring has done lasting harm.

Shortly after a small group of protesters tried to set up tents on campus, the Emory Police Department, Atlanta Police Department, and Georgia State Patrol cleared the scene and arrested 28 individuals, including 20 people affiliated with Emory.

Videos of protesters being thrown to the ground by police officers were widely shared on social media. One showed the arrest of Noelle McAfee, chair of the philosophy department, who said she was just observing the scene. She was charged with disorderly conduct; that charge was dropped in April.

Since then, Emory’s University Senate, an elected body representing faculty and staff, has crafted a new open-expression policy in collaboration with the administration. In a March statement, university officials said the rules now clearly articulate the rights of protesters and provide examples of speech that isn’t protected.

Several Emory professors who spoke to The Chronicle said they remain concerned about the state of speech on their campus. The university has seen demonstrations throughout the year and in the week leading up to the anniversary of its encampment, but attendance is small. “The university succeeded in frightening people, really frightening,” McAfee said in an interview.

Even amid stricter rules and mounting political pressures, some student protesters say their activism isn’t going anywhere.

“It will persist,” said Almayahi, at Portland State, “so long as there are folks that care less about stepping outside of that box that contains the status quo.”