With Israeli Defense Forces having captured the Palestinian side of the Rafah crossing and another humanitarian horrorshow impending, I don’t want to make this post about American media’s obsession with student protestors ruining commencement ceremonies or about what Peggy Noonan saw after her third morning martini, not when student journalists continue their superlative work covering their campuses; but as we approach the end of the semester at many institutions of higher learning (not us; we started our summer semester yesterday!) I can tell that presidents hope protestors go to the beach in late May. Prying this phenomenon apart from the ongoing war will reveal the degree to which the increased bureaucratization of higher ed brews an innate conservatism.
Thomas J. Sugrue of the Chronicle notes:
Bringing law enforcement to campus invariably intensifies protests, fuels acrimony, and creates a climate of distrust. Police involvement doesn’t dampen protests; it accelerates them, often with devastating consequences. That was evident in Columbia’s response to its first encampment. The campus did not become safer after the police pulled down tents and arrested more than 100 students. The protesters were not deterred. Civility was not restored. The Hamilton Hall occupation and the police raid that followed were the almost inevitable consequence of the university’s first, highly punitive response. Since then, many more students have been affected by the shutdown and militarization of campus, the launch of remote classes, and the cancellation of graduation than by the harsh words of the protesters.
It doesn’t surprise me that in 2024 university administrators don’t observe the liberalism their curricula and support systems profess. Self-proclaimed liberal commenters at a few sites I visit, terrified that the protests will help Joe Biden lose or tut-tut about tactics. “University presidents risk normalizing heavy-handed responses to all sorts of dissenting speech and protest,” Sugrue writes later in the column. “The very fact that ostensibly liberal campus leaders called in the police sends a dangerous signal to bad actors off campus who are eager to silence those with whom they disagree.”
Humanizing The Vacuum 