How Not to Deal with the Student Mob The line between free speech and violence is clear University leaders & public officials must uphold it; too few are trying Charles Lipson
https://thespectator.com/topic/deal-student-mob-campus-protest/
Last week’s violent anti-Semitic protest at Stanford is yet another sign of a pernicious climate on many campuses. The immediate targets are Jews and Israel. The larger targets are many of the values we prize in the West.
At Stanford, students broke into the university president’s office using hammers and crowbars. They proceeded to barricade themselves inside, destroy the furnishings, and scrawl noxious graffiti there and on the building outside. Some estimates say they caused $700,000 in damages.
Twelve students were arrested by local police. The Santa Clara District attorney announced that the break-in had been carefully organized in advance, caused enormous damage and warranted criminal charges. But, he said, it did not warrant severe punishment. “I don’t think this is a prison case,” he said.
The violent protests are Stanford are hardly the only ones on campus, and the spring protest season is just getting started. At Case Western University in Ohio, students caused over $400,000 in damage by smearing buildings with red paint. Expect more to come at universities where the violence goes unpunished and prosecutors are as weak-kneed as the one in Santa Clara.
Campus violence, destruction, harassment and intimidation are more than criminal. They are also direct attacks on the basic purpose of our educational institutions. They undermine our nation’s core value of free, non-violent speech and assembly, encoded in the First Amendment.
If university leaders and local law enforcement are unwilling to protect those rights, if they are unwilling to sanction those who violate them, then they are opening the door for others who will act to protect those values and those endangered students.
When are protests perfectly legitimate and when do they cross the line? They deserve protection when they are non-violent, respect others’ rights and property, do not defame or intimidate others or target them for their race, nationality, sex or religion, categories that are protected by law. They must not disrupt the study or activities of students, faculty or administrators. If they are on campus, they must comply with campus rules, as long as the rules themselves are constitutionally permissible. (For example, public universities can no longer restrict free speech to small, designated areas, as they once did.)
The protests become illegitimate – and illegal – when they turn violent, terrorize other students, prevent students from attending class or reading quietly in the library, or cause significant property damage, as those at Stanford did.
Columbia led the way with protests like that and others have followed. At Princeton last week, for instance, protesters disrupted a talk by a former Israel official, yelled anti-Semitic slurs, and pulled the fire alarm. The university responded forcefully… by pledging not to cave in to President Trump.
What can we say about these developments on college campuses, especially elite ones in the Northeast, and the cities near them?
First, they grow out of deep ideological bias in high school and even middle school, amplified by university departments in the humanities and social sciences.
Second, most students are not involved in these protests. They are limited to a small group of left-wing activists, supported and funded by like-minded outsiders. Other students typically keep their heads down, lest they become individual targets.
Third, not all protests are violent. Some involve perfectly legitimate free speech. You may not agree with the views expressed; they may even be repulsive; but they are protected under the First Amendment, at least at public universities. Other protests, however, are impermissible because they are violent, destructive and intimidating to other students, who have protected rights. It is crucial to distinguish between these legitimate and illegitimate protests because only non-violent free speech deserves protection. Violent protests deserve punishment, either by law enforcement or the university or both.
Alas, many protests have moved well beyond non-violent actions, well beyond respect for the rights of other students, faculty, and staff, and well beyond the laudable goal of protecting innocent civilians in the Middle East, the purported aim of many protests.
In fact, the protests were never about protecting all innocents. They always excluded Jews and especially those in “the Zionist entity.” That was apparent to anyone who cared to look closely at the protests which began on the streets of Manhattan and the campuses of Columbia and NYU within hours of the October 7 attacks.
The crucial point is that those protests began before the Israeli Defense Forces responded. The demonstrations were openly pro-Hamas and openly anti-Israel, often advocating its complete destruction. That is the implicit meaning of “from the river to the sea.” As it happens, Israel’s borders run from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. The slogan effectively calls for its elimination. Often, the protesters are even more explicit.
Campus protesters and those on city streets either ignored the innocent Jewish victims or simply shouted their support for Hamas and jihad. Few protesters were dumb enough to shout that they approved Hamas’s kidnapping, rapes, beheadings and torture of Jews. But they effectively did so by offering unalloyed support for Hamas.
That they began those marches before Israel struck back makes clear what the protesters had in mind. They were not protesting prospective retaliation by the Jewish State. That had not happened yet. They were simply giving their full-throated support to jihad against the Jews.
Violent protests continued because, until recently, nothing was done to deter them. That has changed with Trump in the White House, Pam Bondi at the Department of Justice and Kash Patel at the FBI. But their efforts are just getting started. Their initial focus is on foreign students, who entered the US at the government’s discretion. They can be removed with the same discretion, subject to due-process.
The universities themselves have done almost nothing. Did Columbia or other campuses expel scores of students who erected tents in the middle of campus and stayed there for weeks, all in open violation of university rules? No. Did they attempt to remove the students who occupied and destroyed campus buildings and barricaded themselves inside? No. When the New York police finally removed them, were they prosecuted vigorously by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg? No chance. He gave almost all of them Monopoly cards reading “Get out of jail free.” What about the UCLA students and their fellow travelers who declared a portion of this public campus “Jew free” and refused to let Jewish students pass through it? Did local authorities prosecute? No. Truly disgusting.
The failure of university leaders to expel students or at least suspend them and the failure of public prosecutors to charge serious crimes and seek jail time has predictable results. It encourages more violence, intimidation, and disruption instead of deterring them. Want evidence, beyond Alvin Bragg? Look again at the Stanford protesters. As we noted earlier, the local DA thinks jail time would be too harsh for these fine young students. Not exactly a profile in courage, and certainly no deterrent to future troubles.
A second feature of the Stanford protests has been overlooked. All the protesters arrested by the sheriff were US citizens. No international students at all, even though they had been major factors in previous protests. What changed? Trump replaced Biden. Students who came here on visas or green cards knew the Trump administration would act swiftly to deport them, unless the courts prevented it. These foreign students faced a genuine risk. The “hate Israel” protesters adapted by using only American citizens to occupy and deface buildings.
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