Above photo: Protest encampment at George Washington University.
Defending Rights & Dissent condemns the crackdown taking place across campuses in the United States. Across the country, we have seen protests calling for a ceasefire and end to Israel’s brutal war in Gaza. Increasingly, many of these protests have taken place on America’s campuses. Since the Columbia University occupation began on April 17, protests, including encampments, have spread across college campuses as students link their opposition to Israel’s war with demands for university divestment. In spite of false claims to the contrary, the protests have been overwhelmingly peaceful and nonviolent.
The nonviolent nature of the protests has been no protection against police violence. Police have arrested and assaulted both students and professors engaged in peaceful protests. They’ve even arrested journalists covering the protests. Police have shown up to peaceful protests in riot gear or on horseback. They have used tear gas, projectiles, tasers, and batons against the protesters. The situation continues to develop rapidly, but at the time of publication, arrests had taken place on nearly thirty separate college campuses.
These violent attacks on protesters have been accompanied by the spread of false information designed to demonize the protesters and facilitate the crackdown against them. Northwestern University allowed the police to break up students protests and arrest 102 students. The university justified its decision by stating one of the pro-Palestine protesters yelled “kill the Jews.” In fact, according to journalists on the ground, a pro-Israel counter protester engaged in what they described as a “provocative joke.” Multiple media outlets repeated a story that a protester stabbed a Yale student in the eye because the student was Jewish. This story turned out to be false. A reporter shared a picture on social media purportedly of a Columbia student protester holding a despicably anti-Semitic sign. Later, it was revealed that not only was the man not a student protester, the picture was not even taken on Columbia’s campus. The individual, who has no connection to advocacy for Palestinian rights, frequently holds anti-Semitic displays across New York City. False stories have been repeated by politicians advocating for a crackdown on student protests.
As a free speech organization, we must be clear. There is only one cause for the violence taking place. It is law enforcement and the officials who have chosen to resort to state violence when faced with peaceful protests. There is no justification for police violence against peaceful protests. And there is no excuse for the college administrators who willfully chose to call the police on their own students in order to suppress their expressive conduct.
It is true that the Supreme Court has not extended the First Amendment’s protections to overnight encampments. But as free speech advocates, we know the federal judiciary’s interpretation of the First Amendment sets the floor for free expression rights, not the ceiling. State courts have interpreted state constitutional protections for free expression as exceeding those mandated by the Supreme Court. As a free expression organization, we routinely advocate for legislators, police departments, and others to adopt policies to protect free expression and assembly that are more protective of free speech than those mandated by the Supreme Court.
Calling in the police to forcefully disperse a peaceful, nonviolent encampment is a political choice. And as a free expression organization, it is a choice we condemn. While prohibitions on structures and encampments can fall within the scope of content neutral, time, place, and manner restrictions, the decision to attack these encampments is anything but neutral. Riot police are not the typical response to tents on an open lawn. College administrators are not calling in police because they live in fear of tents on the campus quad. Politicians are not advocating the forcible dispersal of the encampments, in some cases calling for the National Guard to be mobilized against private colleges, due to an aversion to public camping. The forcible dispersals are precisely because the encampments are in favor of Palestinian rights.
Building occupations have been used by student movements for decades, including by student anti-Vietnam War, anti-South African apartheid, and labor rights protesters. At times, college administrators have chosen to resort to police violence to end these protests. At other times, colleges have not made that choice. Much like with encampments, the resort to police by administrators is a choice we condemn.
Police violence has by no means been exclusively limited to occupations or tents. When students at the University of Texas, Austin held a protest that was clearly protected by the First Amendment, police were called. Police illegally arrested students, protesters, and a photojournalist. The false charges brought by the arresting officers were dropped the next day due to a lack of probable cause. This should make it all the more clear what the crackdown is about–suppressing speech of anti-war and pro-Palestine protesters.
Defending Rights & Dissent is committed to an absolutist view of the First Amendment’s protections. We recognize that the First Amendment is viewpoint neutral and protects all speech, including speech that we might disagree with. But a commitment to the First Amendment’s viewpoint neutral protection of speech broadly does not require free expression defenders to distort the record of what is happening by engaging in false equivalencies. There is obviously no equivalent between a Palestine solidarity protester setting up a tent on a campus quad and a police officer firing teargas at them.
Supporters of Palestine and Israel are equally entitled to the same First Amendment protections. However, it is supporters of Palestine who are facing widespread, systematic attempts to suppress their speech. This is not new. Serious free speech advocates have long decried the “Palestine exception” to free speech protections that is part of the McCarthyite atmosphere faced by supporters of Palestinian rights. While the attacks are not new, they have dramatically escalated. Since the beginning of Israel’s most recent war on Gaza, the United States has experienced what is possibly the worst civil liberties crisis since the early years of the War on Terror.
As free speech defenders, we know that speech does not need majority support to deserve protection. As civil liberties advocates, we frequently hold minority positions. But it is impossible, when assessing the current crisis, not to note that while a majority of Americans support a ceasefire, a majority of elected officials in both parties remain firmly committed to sustaining Israel’s war. The disconnect between the people and the government helps to explain the degree of national panic about these peaceful student protests that is fueling a nation wide spree of police violence.