Students at Emerson, Harvard, Northeastern and MIT have already held new protests this fall supporting Palestine—none involving encampments like they did last year. Nor have students resumed big tent-city type demonstrations related to the Israel/Hamas war at many of the nearly six thousand colleges and universities around the country. At least, not yet.
As of this writing, Columbia, University of Michigan and Cornell are reported to have become demonstration sites nationally. More will probably come on line as the academic year progresses, some with positive changes in operations in addition to having mobile protests instead of encampments. Many are already facing proposed new protest restrictions from their college administrations.
The American Association of University Professors issued a statement this fall condemning any “overly restrictive policies” about the set-ups of protests that could discourage expressions of opinions and ideas.
The fortunate pause in demonstrations since spring has given the public and those with knowledge and authority an opportunity to evaluate the handling of college protests and major tensions among students themselves last academic year.
It seems that the protests resulted in more distracting domestic controversies than attention to ending the Israel-Hamas war and addressing Palestinians’ humanitarian plight in Gaza.
Fortunately, appropriate government agencies involved with education and civil rights have stepped in since spring to offer advice about handling campus demonstrations.
Well-managed, focused protests voicing objections to United States’ support of a nearly year-long war that began with an attack by Hamas of Israel and on Oct. 7, 2023 are appropriate. Hamas killed 1,200 civilians in Israel and took more than 100 people hostage.
Israel has killed more than 40,000 Palestinian civilians, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry; displaced millions more; and bombed most of Gaza using political, monetary and weapons support from the U.S. Israel recently set off explosives in pagers belonging to members of Hezbollah in Lebanon, and Hezbollah and Israel are exchanging air strikes as of this writing.
Remaining Israeli hostages, alive or dead—held by Hamas in Gaza—also need to be released through negotiations—unsuccessful now for months—as some were released during a cease-fire in November, 2023.
Confusion that degenerated into frequent chaos pretty much reigned by the end of the protests last academic year. Much of the U.S. and Boston on-campus trouble seemed—after reading and talking to people—to have come from systemic problems with higher education institutions’ individual operations. Various laws with various interpretations at various levels of government regarding various types of colleges, and the failure of authorities to guide and monitor action in real time added to the confusion for everyone.
Students attending area colleges and not living on campus or with their families numbered 2,047 in Jamaica Plain and 4,481 in Mission Hill in 2023, according to the City of Boston’s annual tally based on college reports.
A Harvard College student who lives in JP and said he attended some classes at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) was interviewed by WBUR at the MIT encampment protest last May as police were breaking it up.
Just to refresh our memories: Groups of students (and others sometimes; see below) put up tents on college campuses at various times after the Oct. 7 attack on Israel. They had banners. They chanted.
Some students complained they were confronted with anti-Jewish and anti-Israel remarks, discriminatory behavior specifically called “antisemitic.”
“Anti-Palestine, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim remarks were reported as well,” the U.S. Department of Education and some colleges have stated. Those remarks are discriminatory as well.
Mainstream news media went wild after Oct. 7 in its coverage of allegations of discrimination and the campus protests—so much conflict and noise to tape, photograph and describe! So many negative emotions! All with great quotations and colorful photo/video ops. Accusations of all sorts—often lacking complete information or reports of follow-ups and resolutions later—flew.
Much media attention was given locally and nationally to the uproars, especially when local police were called in by colleges to break up demonstrations at Emerson College, Northeastern University and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Some police wore and held—and even used—frightening riot gear.
Harvard’s protesters negotiated a shut-down of their encampment in May without police involvement. Still, up to 60 protesters were threatened with various severe repercussions off and on until July when only a few remained in trouble, according to reports.
MIT issued dozens of suspensions in May to students who took part in that protest encampment. Fewer than ten protesters were arrested by Cambridge police, WBUR said MIT stated.
NBC News reported in August that nationwide 3,200 campus protesters were arrested last spring. Many protesting students had privileges taken away, were suspended, expelled or otherwise disciplined by their colleges with little information given publicly about what specifically they got in trouble for besides participating.
At the same time, news coverage that treated the desire for peace and health in the Middle East did not appear to increase. Conservative media outlets, like the New York Post, the Boston Herald and Fox News referred to the protests as being “anti-Israel.” Most of the rest of media called the same demonstrations “pro-Palestine,” as most protesters did.
Those protests did not help bring about peace and health for the Palestinians in Gaza or people in Israel whose friends or relatives were taken hostage or killed or the American people—though slightly different protest styles might have helped. The demonstrations unfortunately turned out to be pretty negative experiences for a lot of participants, and colleges—and the wider community, too.
It didn’t have to be that way if the protests—a test of this country and state’s civil rights laws and knowledge in real time and space—were handled much differently by the colleges and, to a lesser extent, by the campus demonstrators, too. They both desperately need objective, informed, thorough guidance about protesting and civil rights laws that apply on campus during this tense time. So do news media and the general public for that matter.
Protests will continue to backfire on well-intentioned protesters and colleges if calls for peace, understanding and lawful behavior in the Middle East continue to exacerbate divisions, misunderstandings and animosity among people and groups on campuses here. Whether students can voice their opinions reasonably and not end up making enemies of people who should be friends may be one of the biggest tests everyone is facing.
Effective demonstrations
News outlets and others are reporting this fall that many colleges across the country are establishing new “rules” about demonstrations in the wake of chaos on campuses last year.
Some colleges have said, thank goodness, that they will certainly welcome demonstrations on campus, even indoors if registered ahead of time. Emerson, which doesn’t have much outdoor space is offering to provide forms to fill out requesting the City of Boston’s permission to demonstrate on City property across the street.
This is actually helpful to protestors, I think. Demonstrations that are mobile and take place at specific times and places, as they are this fall, get better attention. Most protests in Boston after the police murder of George Floyd in 2020 and during anti-war protests in the 1960s were effective.
Civil rights marches and focused activities preceded and influenced the civil rights laws we have now. Those issues seemed to garner more attention from the public, than relatively placid encampments with unclear activities and distracting goals last school year, especially when accusations of antisemitism and other bigotry there seemed to the public to go unaddressed or unresolved.
The tent enclaves also require “housekeeping” of sorts, which is distracting and time consuming. Students should be able to attend classes, do classwork and demonstrate at specific times and various places during the same time period.
Some colleges are stating that people not affiliated with the college, even friends of students, will not be allowed to participate in campus protests. Some protestors practiced that policy on their own last academic year, demanding new people who wanted to participate had to show them that college ID, it was reported. Although at first that might sound discouraging to participations, it’s actually got some good aspects.
All kinds of trouble-makers and just lonely hangers-on get tempted to join campus tent protests, and they can and do sometimes behave in ways that actually hamper the demonstrators’ credibility and effectiveness more than if the protest is mobile.
Anti-war protests during the 1960s were heavily infiltrated by government agents, news media, including the Columbus [Ohio] Dispatch, reported years later. No anti-war activists seemed to check anything like I.D.s back in those days.
Boston Police—called by the administration to disband the demonstration at Northeastern on April 27—took everyone in the encampment to the local station. Of 98 people arrested, 29 were Northeastern students and 6 were Northeastern faculty and staff, the college said.
According to Northeastern’s independent student newspaper, The Huntington News, “Many arrested individuals appear to have attended other Boston area universities, including Mass College of Art and Design, Boston University and Emerson.”
AP reported that other colleges obviously had non-students staying at their encampments, including the University of New Mexico where encampments were “inhabited by a mix of activists, some students and homeless people” for about three weeks.
Quite a few of the colleges’ proposed protest rules this year seem to be asking for negotiation, like those that say: Some or all participants and or protests themselves have to “register”; where on campus demonstrations can be; what time they have to end (Some have said 5 p.m. Ridiculous!); what type of sound systems and signage can be used, masks that hide much of a protester’s face are forbidden, etc.
Clearly, as students and staff return to campus, the college’s own rules need to be negotiated with the campus community. And college protest rules should not be such as to effectively squelch expressing ideas and opinions publicly.
Students demonstrating on their own campus and not disrupting regular activities or damaging or occupying college property needed for other purposes for a limited length of time and not breaking laws should not be said to be “trespassing.”
Even if demonstrators break a college’s agreed upon rules, including by attempting to set up encampments, ideally, college administrators would not call local police to evict them.
The colleges should rely on their own trained personnel, including campus police, if necessary, to enforce agreed upon and widely, previously publicized college-set rules about demonstrations. Encampments should be prevented, not torn down by force later.
Divestment?
Will Collette, a successful community organizing consultant who worked with neighborhoods suffering from pollution and hazardous waste in the 1980s to get attention and help, always told folks, “The group must have goals.” And he said actions and statements needed to be directly relevant to the goals, which should be determined after research is done.
Unfortunately, last academic year, many Hamas-Israel war protest groups’ stated goal was for the college where they were demonstrating to “divest” from Israel. More research would have shown that demand would likely fail for practical reasons.
Most college investments are irrevocably bundled together in large bunches and made up of endowments with their donors’ strings attached by legal contract. In addition, some college investments in Israel go to education and other basically “good” uses.
More information about the complex practical financial issues behind demanding colleges divest from Israel is the subject of a six-minute YouTube video report in English from Al Jazeera dated May 26 this year called “Divestment & the Murky Billions” (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=beb05psUs9).
Student protest groups at Harvard, Williams and University of New Mexico, according to AP, persuaded their college administrations to agree to try to invest more conscientiously or “transparently” or just discuss the topic in the future—in exchange for protesters ending their protest encampments.
Demonstrators should also match their stated goals more to their real ones stated on banners and in chants: “Free Palestine,” “Peace, Not War, in the Middle East,” “Washington, stop funding Israel’s military,” etc. Then call on U.S. government officials to state their positions, listen to them and change policies. They could take other actions as well, such as getting the public to sign petitions, holding teach-ins about the war, making sure to use social media as well as mainstream. Protestors might not succeed at achieving goals right away, either, but they would get more attention to their views for sure—and probably more support.
Protests would also work more successfully if and when protestors and colleges treat one another like the cooperative, free, non-bigoted speech proponents both should be—not opponents of one another. The same is true of students. No matter religion or nation origin, protesters should be reminded of shared civil rights and show mutual respect for one another as humans in their protests. We don’t want protests that mimic the conflict being protested.
Handling accusations
Three prestigious college presidents, all women, who testified before Congress in early December, 2023, were roundly criticized by people of all political persuasions for what they said.
In response to Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik’s questions about what they do to address complaints of antisemitic speech on campus, the presidents of MIT and the University of Pennsylvania (U Penn) pretty much said the same thing as Harvard President Claudine Gay: “When speech crosses into conduct, we take action.” That policy is and was completely different from what Harvard spelled out in detail in its updated antidiscrimination civil rights policies posted on its website since September 1, 2023. Harvard’s Gay and UPenn President Liz Magill have since resigned, all (or in part in Gay’s case) because of their testimony and the negative reactions it brought. Sally Kornbluth remains as MIT president. Harvard, as well as Northeastern and Emerson, MIT and University of Pennsylvania—whose websites I reviewed because they are nearby and/or their president testified before Congress regarding their protests—spell out processes of reporting such accusations. All five higher education institutions—and, my guess is, many of the thousands of such institutions in the U.S.— follow similar though somewhat convoluted processes, each featuring different nomenclature, commentary, specific rules and procedures, including about confidentiality, personnel involved, types of possible outcomes, timing, personnel involved and lots of different details.
Anyone heading to or in college should be sure to read the civil rights part of the college website, as well as search for “protests” there. It could take quite some time and maybe asking questions to decipher and absorb each college’s thinking and process. Sandra Storey is publisher emerita of the Jamaica Plain Gazette. She coauthored, with JP resident Georgia Mattison, Women in Citizen Advocacy: Stories of 28 Shapers of Public Policy published by McFarland in 1992.