College protests have rocked campuses. Here's what administrators can learn for this fall
Tumultuous. Momentous. Revealing. Tense.
That's how some higher education and free speech experts summed up the feeling on college campuses nationwide over the last eight months as war broke out in the Middle East.
Thousands of students organized countless protests on dozens of campuses, stemming from outrage over civilian deaths during the Israeli-Hamas war in Gaza that began Oct. 7. About 1,200 people in southern Israel were killed and more than 200 taken hostage in a Hamas-led attack, according to USA TODAY. Israel's retaliatory assault has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Ministry, and destroyed much of its infrastructure.
Peaceful demonstrations at the end of fall semesters led to a sustained wave of protests throughout the winter and spring, culminating in a number of campuses pitching tent encampments, a visible symbol of a student movement that spread nationwide.
Many of those protests have also became embroiled in violence as police officers tried to disperse participating students from their campuses. Police in riot gear swept onto the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles, and New York City police retook control of an administrative building at Columbia University. More than 40 individuals were arrested during largely peaceful demonstrations at Ohio State University in late April.
Campus free speech: Ohio State students, faculty speak out for Gaza and against university reaction to protest
As many of the tent encampments have come down and commencement ceremonies wrapped up, college campuses will likely see a reprieve from protests during summer break. But experts say that doesn't mean university leaders should relax.
"If you are at a school where there have been protests, I hope you take a moment of acknowledgement seeing young people using their First Amendment rights," said Kristen Shahverdian, program director of campus free speech at PEN America, a nonprofit free speech and literary organization.
"It will be interesting to look back, and I hope some campuses do some introspection," Shahverdian said.
Between a continued war in the Middle East, the anniversary of the Oct. 7 attacks and the upcoming presidential election, experts say campus protests will likely continue with just as much fervor this fall.
What can university leaders do to reflect during these summer months to prepare for their students' return come August?
Understanding the moment
Student activism has been a mainstay of campus life for decades. Many observers have pointed back to protests against the Vietnam War and South African apartheid as foundational examples of these more recent demonstrations.
"These are protests we haven't seen in years, not since the murder of George Floyd have we seen such a movement," said Zach Greenberg, senior program officer for student organizations and campus rights advocacy at the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a free-speech advocacy nonprofit better known as FIRE.
But this moment is distinct from previous generations of protestors, said Demetri L. Morgan, an associate professor of higher education at Loyola University Chicago whose research focuses on student activism.
Morgan said these protests are much more intersectional than, for instance, students rallying against one specific issue or speaker coming to campus.
"What is defining about this moment is how students who don't identify as Muslim, Jewish, Palestinian or Israeli are taking up sides," Morgan said. "It's making it a truly campuswide spectacle and begs the question, 'What side of this issue are you on?'"
Those intersections also mean "there are more students who are perhaps at odds with each other," Shahverdian said.
Morgan said this generation of students have also been more inclined toward activism than previous classes, between witnessing school shootings and the 2020 George Floyd protests and experiencing disruptions from COVID-19. There is "a certain streak of activism" in these students, he said, as they have felt disenfranchised.
"This is not their first activism rodeo," Morgan said.
Listen to and work with your students
Morgan said that students are more sophisticated than some give them credit for, which can lead to uncomfortable interactions.
While protestors have called for ceasefires in Gaza, many students are also calling for their universities to take specific actions, like divesting from companies that support Israel and financial transparency. Minimizing or ignoring critiques from students highlights "the complexity of the issue," he said.
"The students have specific goals," Morgan said. "Do you know what the students are actually asking for?"
Only seeing student protests as a critique of geopolitics and not as a critique of the institution itself, Morgan said, "looks hypocritical, tone deaf and misses the moment."
While it is not always possible to begin those conversations when tensions are high, Shahverdian said one-sided communication toward students, not with students, is not productive.
Shahverdian said university administrators need to start identifying people now — like faculty, student affairs employees and student organizers — who they could start dialogues with.
Morgan said that means treating students with respect, not being patronizing and actually sitting down to talk about serious topics like divestment to learn more from each other.
"We need a radically different approach that takes students more seriously," he said.
Learn from examples of positive negotiation
Some campuses had a harder time than others this spring, Shahverdian said, but escalating otherwise peaceful protests often led to negative results.
"Columbia bringing in the police is what triggered all of the other protests in solidarity across the country," she said.
But campuses who started dialogues with students before protests ended in police escalation and arrests have become positive examples to glean from, Shahverdian said.
Brown University, for instance, negotiated with student protest leaders, allowing five students to present a divestment proposal to administrators in exchange for clearing encampments and refraining from protests through the end of the semester.
Northwestern University told students they could join the school's investment committee if protestors removed tents. Administrators also gave students permission to continue "peaceful demonstrations" and keep one tent on campus.
Review policies and programming now
Morgan said the way many university leaders have interacted with their students during protests shows that "they do not understand this generation."
"The administrator playbook is archaic," he said.
Complex issues with no easy answers require having hard conversations — internally, with stakeholders and with students — Morgan said.
"We could be teaching through this moment in so many meaningful ways that we just aren't," he said.
Shahverdian said there is no one-size-fits-all approach, but there are a number of ways universities can begin planning now for this fall, like listening sessions, speaker events and courses for students. What matters, she said, is less about one-off workshops and more about ongoing programming that keeps the conversation going.
Shahverdian and Morgan also said they would both be thinking about what messaging universities put out during new-student orientations this summer.
Campuses also need to review their free speech policies now, Greenberg said. Public universities are government entities bound by the Constitution, so students on public campuses have free speech rights protected by the First Amendment. But campuses are allowed to enforce neutral time, manner and place restrictions.
"Depending on where, when, and how you protest, public universities can set some reasonable, narrowly-tailored limits on your protest, but they cannot limit the views you express," FIRE's campus protest guidelines read.
While universities can punish students for violating those neutral policies, Greenberg said not all have done the best in uniformly enforcing them.
"Universities haven't done a great job of making clear where the line is," Greenberg said.
"If the policies are bad," he added, "they're going to be violating their students' rights to free speech."
Sheridan Hendrix is a higher education reporter for The Columbus Dispatch. Sign up for Extra Credit, her education newsletter, here.
@sheridan120
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: College leaders can learn a lot from this year's campus protests
