Protests and police on campus

[Langue_doc]

Police storm Yale University's campus with riot gear, arrest students as hundreds stage anti-Israel protest

LIVE: Over 40 pro-divestment protesters arrested on Beinecke Plaza
More than 300 protesters are now gathered in a circle blocking the intersection of College and Grove. Follow live.

[Ruralguy]

Looking over decades of protests, the ones that are ongoing like this almost always end with police breaking them up. Eventually life has to get back to normal at these campuses.

[Langue_doc]

Life does have to get back to normal on campuses. The Columbia protests have been in our local news with non-protesting students reporting that they haven't been able to get into campus or their dorms. It's exam time, so students are even more stressed out.

[marshwiggle]

The sad part is there are probably a lot of hypocritical faculty who expressed public support for the protests, but are secretly glad for the police coming in and dealing with them. Their actions make everyone else's life more difficult.

[apl68]

Hope the protestors don't burn some poor professor's research notes (or delete the prof's files) and then deny doing it, like happened to Orest Ranum in '68.

[Parasaurolophus]

Don't forget Columbia, where police in riot gear dragged students away from a sit-in, and the President has been suspending faculty for their speech.

[Hibush]

Having clear rules for protest is critical. There has to be a good outlet for public engagement on campus, but with guardrails that prevent violence. The rules need to be unambiguous so that students (both protestors and protest-avoiders), administration and police (both campus and city) know what to expect and where the lines are.

We have to expect a certain amount of protest on campuses, so the various scenarios should have been worked out in regular table-top exercises with representatives of all those groups present. I think the latitude should be wide so that a lot of ideas can be expressed. 

Having groups shouting at each other does not accomplish any communication or sharing of ideas, so that activity should be ended. But treating it as violence is inappropriate. Those situations must be treated differently.

Some of the students seem to be engaging in the time-honored protest ritual of staying put and chanting while getting arrested for trespassing (charges that will be dropped). That exercise has not been productive  in the past, so I don't expect it to be at Yale or Columbia.

[marshwiggle]

Having clear rules for protest is critical. There has to be a good outlet for public engagement on campus, but with guardrails that prevent violence. The rules need to be unambiguous so that students (both protestors and protest-avoiders), administration and police (both campus and city) know what to expect and where the lines are.

We have to expect a certain amount of protest on campuses, so the various scenarios should have been worked out in regular table-top exercises with representatives of all those groups present. I think the latitude should be wide so that a lot of ideas can be expressed. 

Having groups shouting at each other does not accomplish any communication or sharing of ideas, so that activity should be ended. But treating it as violence is inappropriate. Those situations must be treated differently.

Some of the students seem to be engaging in the time-honored protest ritual of staying put and chanting while getting arrested for trespassing (charges that will be dropped). That exercise has not been productive  in the past, so I don't expect it to be at Yale or Columbia.

Any action that prevents normal, necessary activity from continuing until the protesters leave is extortion, and needs to be treated as such.

[Langue_doc]

Columbia University to Hold Classes Remotely After Weekend Protests
The campus has been shaken by pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have left some Jewish students fearing for their safety.

Faculty Group at Columbia Says It Has 'Lost Confidence' in the President
The campus chapter of a faculty organization said it would "fight to reclaim our university." Students were undeterred by the crackdown on their protest.

[Parasaurolophus]

Any action that prevents normal, necessary activity from continuing until the protesters leave is extortion, and needs to be treated as such.

This basically amounts to not supporting protest (or strike) at all. If the only acceptable protest (or strike) is an invisible one that causes no disruption whatsoever, then it's not much of a protest (or strike) at all.

That's okay--it's a position that's available in ideological space. But we shouldn't pretend that that's not what it is, or that it's somehow a 'moderate' position. It involves significant curtailment of the rights to free speech and assembly, and in ways clearly unsupported by the judicial record in most democracies.

[dismalist]

Columbia University to Hold Classes Remotely After Weekend Protests
The campus has been shaken by pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have left some Jewish students fearing for their safety.

Faculty Group at Columbia Says It Has 'Lost Confidence' in the President
The campus chapter of a faculty organization said it would "fight to reclaim our university." Students were undeterred by the crackdown on their protest.

Just like old times at Columbia in '68.

[spork]

Didn't hear anything about police arresting the Ivy League students who were protesting against the Tigray war in 2020-2022, which killed a half million. Or the students who have been protesting against the civil war in Sudan, which has killed ~ 20,000 and displaced ~ 8 million. Or the students who have been protesting Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which has killed about a half million so far, and has involved the rape and torture of civilians, as well as the deportation of Ukrainian children to Russian hinterlands.

Why are the students protesting against the war in Gaza so special?

[apl68]

Well, closing the campus down and trying to go remote as during the pandemic is one way of trying to de-escalate things, I guess.

Regarding Marsh's position on disruptive protests--protests have to create some level of disruption to get attention, and so that's protected speech up to a point.  But the more disruptive things get, the more the protestors themselves come to infringe upon others' liberties.  If they go very far with it, or persist for very long, what they're doing can become very counterproductive.  To name one recent example, many thousands of people got detained for hours while trying to go about their day-to-day business when protests shut down the Golden Gate bridge just last week.  Now there's talk of protestors being charged with "unlawful detention."

[apl68]

Why are the students protesting against the war in Gaza so special?

Because the Israelis are "settler colonialists," evidently. 

[spork]

I was being, as my immigrant Arab Muslim wife would put it, facetious.

There haven't been protests against wars in Ethiopia, Sudan, or Ukraine. Gaza is a cause célèbre.