As students prepare to return to campus this fall, higher education officials have developed strategies to balance the rights of protesting students with other students' safety and their ability to attend class.
As students prepare to return to campus this fall, higher education officials have developed strategies to balance the rights of protesting students with other students' safety and their ability to attend class.
The summer break provided a respite from the protests against the Israel-Hamas war that swept colleges nationwide. As students prepare to return to campus this fall, higher education officials have developed strategies in an attempt to balance the rights of protesting students with other students' safety and their ability to get to the classes they paid for.
Universities Struggle to Balance Free Speech and Campus Safety Amidst Anti-Israel Protests
"Schools need to reach a balance between the right of students to an education and the rights of other students to protest," William Jacobson, Cornell Law professor and founder of equalprotect.org, told Fox News Digital.
The stakes of such interventions are high. Last week, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik resigned amid accusations that she allowed anti-Israel agitators to run amok at the school without intervention or discipline.
Universities Struggle to Balance Free Speech and Campus Safety Amidst Anti-Israel Protests
Some of the new rules imposed by campuses include banning encampments, allowing protests only in designated spaces, restricting access to campus for those without proper university identification, requiring protesters to register in advance, setting limitations on amplified sound usage during class hours, requiring that signs be removed within two weeks of a protest, and limiting the duration of demonstrations.
In a statement issued last week, the American Association of University Professors condemned "overly restrictive policies" put in place, saying that they would discourage free expression.
Universities Struggle to Balance Free Speech and Campus Safety Amidst Anti-Israel Protests
"Our colleges and universities should encourage, not suppress, open and vigorous dialogue and debate even on the most deeply held beliefs," the statement read, adding that many policies were imposed without faculty input.
Risa Liberwitz, a professor of labor and employment at Cornell, told NBC that "we are seeing a resurgence of repression on campuses that we haven’t seen since the late 1960s."
Universities Struggle to Balance Free Speech and Campus Safety Amidst Anti-Israel Protests
But Jacobson said that in most places "the additional measures are things that are already in place."
"A lot of these things that people are complaining about were already implicit in the rules already but [had not been stated] explicitly," he said.
Universities Struggle to Balance Free Speech and Campus Safety Amidst Anti-Israel Protests
For example, he said Cornell already had a policy against camping on campus grounds; although encampments have now been banned, they technically were already against the university's rules.
The University of Pennsylvania has outlined new "temporary guidelines" for student protests, which include a ban on encampments, overnight demonstrations, and bullhorn and speaker usage after 5 p.m. on class days. The university said it remains committed to lawful assembly and freedom of speech.
Universities Struggle to Balance Free Speech and Campus Safety Amidst Anti-Israel Protests
Indiana University has banned overnight protests, protests after 11 p.m., under its "expressive activities policy" that took effect on Aug. 1. Any "camping" is prohibited on campus, and signs displayed on university property need prior approval. At the University of South Florida, canopies, banners, signs and amplifiers need approval, and no protest "activity" is allowed after 5 p.m. or at all during finals in the last two weeks of the semester.
"A lot of these things are trying to deal with the abuses that took place," Jacobson told Fox News Digital.
"A lot of what is going on is not actually free expression, it’s intimidation. When you use a bullhorn inside a building, you’re not doing it to express yourself, you’re doing it to intimidate other people," he said. "People who are complaining about these rules, for the most part, are people who want to intimidate others."
Jacobson conceded that universities banning protests after 5 p.m. did seem "a bit harsh."
"But just because the concept of these rules is reasonable doesn't mean each and every one of them are reasonable," he said.
Jacobson said he had "no doubt" that some of these new policies would be challenged, particularly those imposed by public universities.
However, he said that he "would think as long as there are reasonable time, place and manner restrictions, that is consistent with the Constitution, [for example], you can’t have bullhorns in a building, you can’t have encampments that disrupt student flow."
Jacobson characterized criticisms of the new rules as "cry-bullying."
"One pattern we see is that there is often a lot of what I would term ‘cry-bullying’. [Anti-Israel protesters] intimidate people, they bully people, they create hostile environments. [But] the second that anyone says, ‘You can’t do that,’ they cry like their rights are being infringed upon," Jacobson said.
"They want an exception to rules that everyone else has to follow. I think that’s what’s driving this: cry-bullies that think they don’t have to live by the rules that other people have to live by," he said.
