The Cover
When students speak up
From Israel’s war in Gaza to the climate change crisis, students around the world are taking a stand on issues that matter to them. How should universities respond?
By Nicole Chang
“Sending the riot police in to deal with a student protest is never a good look, even if the university is within their legal rights to go down such a route.”
“It absolutely created a surge of anger in the university community… even people who weren't necessarily on our side were on our side after that.”
The very last night of the Oxford Action for Palestine encampment culminated, as with previous nights, in a vigil. Students occupying the lawn of the University of Oxford’s iconic Radcliffe Camera library gathered together to honour the space they had set up camp in – and to remember the victims of the Israel-Hamas war.
“We had an olive tree on our site that we had planted, and so we gathered around the olive tree and held a vigil at 1am. And it was really, really beautiful,” says doctoral candidate Amytess Girgis, who helped to organise the encampment.
Speaking to QS Insights Magazine, Girgis describes that final day as one which brought “such an interesting mix of feelings”, as students packed up the last of their two pro-Palestine encampments set up earlier this year. “On the one hand, we [were] just in a frenzy trying to figure out where to put all the sleeping bags. And on the other hand, I was just reflecting on the movement that we have built – and also all of the death and destruction that has happened even just in the 63 days since we started the encampment.”
Since the conflict began late last year, college campuses across the world, from Mexico to Australia, have seen a surge of encampments, sit-ins and demonstrations. Citing the deaths of more than 34,000 people in Gaza, university students – and many faculty – are demanding their universities cut ties with firms linked to Israel and its military, as well as greater transparency over investment decisions.
Universities have responded in various ways across institutions and geographies. Many opted to call in the police, and striking scenes of students facing off against cops in riot gear, most notably on US campuses such as Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles, made headlines globally. Some went down the legal route, seeking court orders to evict student encampments, as Oxford said it would if the Radcliffe Camera encampment was not disbanded. Others managed to come to an agreement with protesters, leading to the voluntary dismantling of encampments and administrators acceding to (at least some) protestor demands.
Around the world, students are speaking up on a range of issues, from conflicts to the climate change crisis, from racial inequality to wealth redistribution. And institutions are finding themselves having to balance facilitating free speech on campus, while ensuring safety and security.
So how should universities respond?
It’s difficult to make generalisations when it comes to how universities should respond to campus activism. Each institution comes with its own set of circumstances and considerations, as Dan Mogulof, Assistant Vice Chancellor in the University of California (UC), Berkeley’s Office of Communications and Public Affairs, points out.
UC Berkeley is well known for the Free Speech Movement of 1964, when student protests eventually led to the university overturning policies that would restrict the content of speech and advocacy. It’s a history that has informed the college’s approach to non-violent political protest that doesn’t disrupt university operations or interfere with people's ability to access buildings, says Mogulof – an approach he characterises as one based on negotiation and discussion.
“In those situations, we always seek to avoid if at all possible the use of police force, of law enforcement,” he says. “The use of law enforcement often can have unintended consequences, or negative consequences for the university community as a whole.”
Dr Suzanne Whitten, a lecturer in Political Theory and Philosophy at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland, has the same sentiments, saying: “Sending the riot police in to deal with a student protest is never a good look, even if the university is within their legal rights to go down such a route.”
Universities are places where difficult debates should be allowed to be aired and complex ideas explored, says Dr Whitten, whose research includes topics such as freedom of speech and academic freedom. But this reality can often look messy, uncivil and even offensive, she adds, stressing that the bar for intervention should be “as high as possible”, and the bar for violent intervention even higher.
“This is not to say that universities need to automatically meet the demands of or indefinitely accommodate protesters, nor must they tolerate damage to life and property, or ignore complaints from students and staff who feel threatened by the actions of some of the protesters,” points out Dr Whitten. “But it does mean that they need to think about the kind of free speech culture they are fostering [or not] at their institution.” In the context of the recent pro-Palestine protests, this also requires taking seriously the concerns raised by some Jewish and Israeli students on campus, and figuring out ways of fostering dialogue between all parties in a constructive manner, she adds.
Protecting free speech is a key consideration for administrators. As Dr Whitten explains, many universities are obliged to respect the freedom of speech of protesters under the First Amendment of the Constitution for public universities in the United States, for example, or Articles 10 and 11 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which protect freedom of expression and association.
“These freedoms are not absolute, however,” she says. Protestors in the US can be limited by “time, place and manner” restrictions, which allow institutions to place restrictions on where and when a protest can take place, while laws against criminal damage, the use of violence and anti-harassment legislation all come into play. In Europe, legislation regarding hate speech also applies.
Set against this is the equally important responsibility universities have to ensure safety, since encampments take place on university-owned property. “Some might be concerned, for example, that a student will suffer an injury while living on the encampment,” says Dr Whitten. “They might also have worries about the risk of violence and sexual assault, which are things that universities must already take seriously when thinking about institutional policy.”
Therefore, while universities recognise the free speech rights of students, administrators also will need to consider whether they have the resources and personnel required to ensure those duties to protect safety are upheld, she says.
Students weigh in
For their part, some students say it comes down to transparency and on-the-ground engagement – or as Rudi Neusbloem, a student at Ghent University in Belgium, puts it: “Universities should just man up, go there, talk with students and hear them out.”
A member of End Fossil Gent, self-described as a youth-led coalition of activists, Neusbloem helped organise the group’s encampment of a university building, among other protest actions. The encampment, which lasted for around 40 days, was carried out jointly with Gent Students For Palestine and demanded the university cut ties with Israeli institutions and call for a ceasefire, as well as commit to time-bound green transition goals.
Students eventually vacated the encampment, after Belgium’s court of appeal issued a deadline by which they had to leave, or face penalty payments. Prior to that, the university had made some concessions to protestors’ demands, saying that it would cut ties with all Israeli universities and research institutions as this no longer aligned with its human rights policy.
Neusbloem credits the Rector of the university for coming down to the encampment twice and hearing students out; although in her opinion this was “kind of just a show” and that students “could get him to talk with us, but it wasn't a real dialogue”. Nevertheless, she says that in many other universities in Belgium, protestors “aren’t heard at all”.
“I would say minimally, just go to the occupation, go talk with the students,” she says. “It’s very sad because people were like, ‘oh, you're too radical’. But we didn't do anything more actually than just demanding the university implement its own policies.”
In many instances, clamping down only serves to galvanise more support for protestors. As an example, Girgis points to an incident in May this year, when Oxford called in the police in response to a sit-in at university offices and 17 people were arrested . “It absolutely created a surge of anger in the university community… even people who weren't necessarily on our side were on our side after that, because they saw how desperately the administration was trying to stifle what we were doing,” she says.
Swifter clampdowns this time around?
While student activism has been around for practically as long as universities have existed, this latest wave of demonstrations does seem unique in recent history. “We can point, for instance, to cases of collective student action in the medieval universities of Europe and student-led challenges to Catholic-controlled institutions during the Reformation, right up to the civil rights, anti-war and anti-apartheid student protests of the late-20th century as examples,” says Dr Whitten.
But as Robert Cohen, a Professor of History and Education at New York University, notes, this may be the largest mass campus movement of the 21st century so far. Granted, the Occupy and Black Lives Matter movements are also among the many recent demonstrations which had substantial student support, but, crucially, weren’t really campus-based in the way that the pro-Palestine encampments are.
A key difference with past student movements, says Professor Cohen, who has studied student activism, is in the swiftness and intensity with which many universities are responding. Many US colleges have clamped down more quickly and “with much less provocation” than their historical predecessors, he says.
All of this has implications not just in relation to free speech, but also in relation to the way universities are governed. Describing universities as run by “autocracy”, Professor Cohen says the encampments are an indictment of the lack of student input in university governance.
“There shouldn't need to be encampments to begin with, they should allow students to have input into divestment and divestment policies,” he says. “I don't even agree with a lot of the demands of the protesters,” he adds. “But to me that's not even the point. The point is, what kind of governance do you have when students feel like they have to sleep outside to try to get some input into the universities' investment policies?”
Connected across borders and issues
In many ways, the current wave of pro-Palestine activism seems like a milestone in the history of campus protest. Many students credit seeing what was happening on other campuses as inspiration, and the global nature of these student protests, as well as the speed with which ideas are shared online, feels particularly distinctive.
“In our case, a lot of people who weren't [previously] very active learnt how to organise themselves,” says Neusbloem, estimating that around 80 percent of those involved in the Ghent University encampment were taking part in such action for the very first time.
For their part, End Fossil Gent had already carried out a climate change-focused encampment last year. When they joined forces with Gent Students for Palestine this time around, they quickly found themselves in the position to share knowledge, including with students at other Belgian universities, many of whom reached out for information and guidance.
Girgis agrees on the importance of movements working together across geographies, and how this interconnected aspect, fuelled by social media, will be an important part of how student activism evolves in future. The Oxford encampments were put up “because we were inspired by what happened in the US”, she says, and stresses that students “need to work together to target these companies, to encourage boycotts against these companies – and that's exactly what's happening”.
“In particular, I think what is really powerful about this is that people are understanding that Palestine is just a lens through which to see many other struggles,” adds Girgis. “I think Gaza is allowing us to see quite a bit about how the world works, coming off of the back of movements like Black Lives Matter and a lot of the radical organising that has happened around the wealth inequality that has skyrocketed over the last decade.
“Everyone that I know in these organising spaces is making the connections between all of these movements.”
“Do the right thing”
What is it about university campuses that inspire political activism? For one thing, students can dedicate time, energy and collaborate in a way that older full-time working populations might not necessarily be able to do. For Professor Cohen, universities are also places where you're supposed to question things. He says there’s an argument to be made for colleges being places where we can step back and question the societies we are part of, to “question reigning orthodoxies – whether it's in science, or social science, or humanities – and see if we can't do better”.
But although the campus protests themselves have made headlines, students are ultimately keen to situate their actions within the wider global movement and spotlight the issues they’re protesting about.
“At the end of the day, I don't care about the student movement, I care about the global movement, and we just happen to be part of that,” says Girgis. “What I would encourage for universities across the world is to do the right thing now, and to realise that the tide has already turned.”