If you have opened the New York Times app in the last month, or turned on the news, chances are you’ve seen something about the pro-Palestine protests taking over campuses across the country. What started as a sit-in on a green of Columbia’s campus spread quickly across the country, with some protests and encampments even beginning to occur overseas, as far away as Sydney, Australia. Recently, many of these encampments have begun to disappear. Some have chosen to take down their tents, some have been threatened and forcibly removed by police. Although the protests are waning, the issues of protest and free speech are no less crucial to address.
Historically, college campuses have been centers of political action and activism, often anti-war activism. In 1968, Columbia University was rocked by similar protests for two reasons: when students opposed plans for a new gymnasium that they believed promoted segregation, and when they became frustrated with the direction the Vietnam war was taking. They staged sit-ins, and eventually began to occupy buildings on campus, first Hamilton Hall, the same building occupied by protesters this year, then other buildings nearby. But there are many crucial differences between the protests of 1968 and those today. Students in 1968 occupied Hamilton Hall for a week before they were removed. This past month, protesters were forcibly removed by police the same day they took the building over. Protests all over the country have been met with huge amounts of resistance, by school administrations, and by external forces like local police . Overall, protests today have been peaceful, contrast to those protesting the Vietnam war in the late 1960s. But the responses student protesters face have been much more violent. At Dartmouth, an Ivy League college in New Hampshire, students occupied the main green for barely two hours before they were removed by police. Dartmouth’s president, Sian Leah Beilock, called in police to clear out the students because she believed them to be creating an unsafe environment for Jewish students. The emotional and physical safety of all students on a campus should always be the priority in any decision made by a school’s administration, but that does not justify the swift and punishing removal of peaceful protesters, especially not in the manner Dartmouth handled it. Police made sweeping arrests of the people present on the green that night, including a man taking a walk who had no affiliation to the university or the protests, and two student journalists who were not participating in the protests, but were only there to report on them. The university only agreed to drop charges on these reporters after massive backlash. According to the New York Times, over 2,800 students have been arrested across the country since these protests began. Certainly, some of these arrests have been justified, perhaps most notably those of activists arrested on college campuses in Manhattan who were not affiliated with those respective institutions and were, arguably, trespassing. But arresting students for trespassing and other dubious offenses sets a dangerous precedent on college campuses that some argue suppresses free speech and prevents students from being comfortable enough to deviate from the norm. However, many groups on campuses argue that it is actually the pro-Palestine protests that prevent students from feeling safe, and comfortable on campus, not the reactions those protests receive. If a college campus is not a safe space for students, and for activism, then what is?