As students return, universities brace for resurgence of protests

Universities are beginning the 2024-2025 academic year with a host of protest guardrails designed to head off the anti-Israel mayhem that enveloped campuses last year, and it won’t be long before they learn whether their policies pass the test.

Multiple schools nationwide, including the University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California system, have banned outdoor camping. This is a response to the pro-Palestinian encampments that peppered college campuses in the spring.

UVa. and other schools have barred face-concealing masks. Harvard University prohibits protests in classrooms, libraries and dining halls. Indiana University forbids light projections on buildings and protests within 25 feet of building entrances.

Such time, place and manner restrictions on “expressive activities” are expected to be put to the test as students return to campus with an anticipated resurgence of the pro-Palestinian activism that roiled U.S. universities in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and others.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer, president of the Orthodox Union, said universities deserve credit for strengthening their policies, but whether they avoid last year’s chaos depends on several factors, including their adaptability.

“The universities did their homework over the summer. That’s the good news. The bad news is the protest movement did a lot of homework over the summer as well,” Rabbi Hauer told The Washington Times. “It’s kind of difficult when you’re fighting yesterday’s war. They used tactics last year that the universities are now addressing, and now they’re going to have a new bag of tricks.”

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Anti-Israel student activists wasted no time picking up where they left off with demonstrations timed to the start of classes at several campuses, including Columbia University, George Washington University, Cornell University, and the University of California, Berkeley.

Nowhere were tensions higher than at Columbia, where two people were arrested Tuesday at a noisy protest outside the campus gates. Inside the grounds, the “Alma Mater” statue in front of Memorial Library was vandalized with red paint.

Rabbi Hauer warned that the protesters “are not letting up,” a message that Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine echoed this week.

“Instead of listening to the student body, Columbia University is doubling down,” the group said on X. It was banned Tuesday on Instagram. “We will not stop & we will not rest until @Columbia divests from apartheid and genocide. This is just the beginning.”

Columbia responded by implementing its newly developed campus status system. The school declared Wednesday an “orange” day, the second-highest level, at the main Morningside campus, meaning that only those with campus ID cards and preregistered guests could enter.

Columbia interim President Katrina Armstrong, who took over after Minouche Shafik’s resignation, vowed to “make the changes necessary” after the antisemitism task force’s report, released last month, found “serious and pervasive” problems. Doubts about the university’s readiness remain.

“We are hoping for the best, but we are all wagering how long before we go into total lockdown again,” Columbia history professor Rebecca Kobrin, who served on the task force, told The Associated Press. “There haven’t been any monumental changes, so I don’t know why the experience in the fall would look much different than what it did in the spring.”

Repression breeds resistance pic.twitter.com/2bcqY6GGeO

— National Students for Justice in Palestine (@NationalSJP) September 3, 2024

Those watching to see how universities deal with anti-Israel activism include Rep. Virginia Foxx, North Carolina Republican and chair of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, who has launched antisemitism investigations into a half-dozen colleges.

“Expectations for this semester aren’t high,” she told The Washington Times. “Most universities have failed to enforce their rules and give those responsible for last spring’s chaos any reason to change their behavior.”

She noted that a protest mob recently vandalized Cornell’s Day Hall by breaking a window and spray-painting in red messages such as “Blood is on your hands” and “Israel bombs, Cornell pays.”

“On the first day of classes, protesters vandalized Cornell University with antisemitic graffiti and police were forced to face off with aggressive, pro-Hamas mobs at Columbia University,” said Ms. Foxx. “Jewish students deserve a safe environment, and that’s why the Committee is going to remain laser-focused on this. We will hold those who are complicit accountable.”

One question hanging over the academic year is whether universities will penalize students who violate the rules. Last semester’s protests resulted in hundreds of arrests and suspensions, but the number of students expelled was minuscule.

At Columbia, which arguably had the most virulent of the protests, 22 students were arrested in the April takeover of Hamilton Hall, but not a single student was expelled, according to a House Education and the Workforce Committee report.

It was a different story at Vanderbilt, where three students were expelled, one was suspended and 22 received disciplinary probation for their involvement in a March sit-in at Kirkland Hall, according to The Vanderbilt Hustler, the student newspaper.

Adam Kissel, visiting fellow at The Heritage Foundation Center for Education Policy, applauded the example of the University of Florida, headed by former Sen. Ben Sasse, which issued a list of prohibited protest activities and gave three-year suspensions to students who broke the rules.

“They actually got people suspended for three years because students did things that were on the list,” Mr. Kissel said. “They had clear warning. That’s the gold standard. You have clear standards, and you enforce them. You don’t make it up during the crisis.”

On the other end, he said, was Columbia, “which couldn’t figure out how to punish people who took over a building and roughed up a security officer.”

No matter how consistently their rules are enforced, schools could be dealt a wild card this year regarding the conflict in the Middle East, where changes on the ground could inflame protesters.

“It’s very hard to predict the amount of antagonism toward Israel or Jewish students that we’re going to see because it’s unclear what Iran will do, unclear what Israel will do,” said Mr. Kissel, an Education Department official in the Trump administration. “Will there be a regional war which America might have to be part of? Will other countries feel like they have to get in?”

He added: “We have just humongous question marks. And who the next president is, if it’s the spring term, that might also matter.”

The encampment bans may slow down activists, but Rabbi Hauer urged university officials to be nimble in their reactions to protest tactics.

“The question is if they’ll have the dexterity to figure out how to respond to the next move and the next move,” he said. “Will they just have learned tricks to fight to the last battle, or will they have learned that we have to be on our toes? That’s what’s going to separate them.”