Campus Protests: Failing the Leadership Test
If you find yourself summoning the police to beat and tear gas your own students you've lost the plot.
Across the US this week, university campuses are experiencing a wave of protests in response to the ongoing war on Gaza. Due to my employment situation, I have limited my commentary about the conflict. But I think my choice of “war on Gaza” vs “war in Gaza” says plenty.
The protest movement and the repression they face from law enforcement are a distillation of much of what ails the US. As I write this, American police—agents of the state—are beating and assaulting students on campuses for non-violently protesting the war. Snipers in combat gear have reportedly been deployed in some locations.
These attacks on students are at the behest of school administration who are collecting tens of thousands of dollars from the students they’re having beaten. Moreover, these assaults by law enforcement are being encouraged to escalate by members of Congress, members from a political coalition that has spent the last decade whipping up a moral panic about “cancel culture” and a “campus free speech crisis.”
This situation highlights a series of realities about American politics.
Our political institutions have little regard for public opinion. According to Gallup, roughly 36% of Americans support the current campaign being waged on Gaza, while 50% disapprove. Despite a 50/36 negative split in public opinion, both US parties are in lock step in their support for the war. The recent Congressional vote for additional military aid passed the House with wide bipartisan support: 366-58.
We see the same phenomenon in developing more renewable energy, raising taxes on the wealthy, and reproductive rights—wide majorities in favor of a policy—inaction or the opposite action from our institutions.
The “Free speech” crowd are absolute frauds. There’s a decade-long campaign in the US to raise alarms about free speech on campus. This unfortunate New York Magazine piece from 2015 is an archetype of the genre. The author, Jonathan Chait (meh), accused anti-racist student activists of “illiberalism” and compared them to the gulags and struggle sessions of twentieth century The USSR and China:
It’s the expression of a political culture with consistent norms, and philosophical premises that happen to be incompatible with liberalism. The reason every Marxist government in the history of the world turned massively repressive is not because they all had the misfortune of being hijacked by murderous thugs. It’s that the ideology itself prioritizes class justice over individual rights and makes no allowance for legitimate disagreement.
This selective outrage is consistently targeted at young, leftist activists.
In the piece, Chait repeatedly compared students to the communist perpetrators of mass murder in the last century. Students on their own campus shouting down a speaker espousing racist views is “illiberal” but students being assaulted and gassed by police is consistently greeted with silence. It's unconscionable to me but those who claim to champion “free speech” and decry “cancel culture” are consistently complicit in the violent suppression of speech they don’t like.
Members of law enforcement suppress leftist protests while collaborating with right-wing movements. It’s worth interrogating the violent show of force on US campuses with the responses to recent right-wing protests in the US.
We all saw the jokes online on January 6 and the deferential way many in law enforcement treated the rioters: officers calmly escorting J6’ers down the stairs of the Capitol at the conclusion of their rampage. The images left most Black Americans I know gobsmacked.
Closer to home, for the better part of two years in the PNW, groups like the Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer engaged in intentional provocations in the city of Portland and in SW Washington. These often turned violent and featured the brandishing and the occasional use of firearms. But law enforcement rarely confronted the right-wing groups. Instead, Guardian journalist, Jason Wilson, reported on how members of law enforcement coordinated with the leaders of the protests, tipping them off to the movements of counter-protestors.
Here’s a text between an officer, Niiya, and the organizer of the protests, Joey Gibson:
On 23 December 2017, Niiya texted to Gibson: “Heads up just told 4-5 black Bloch [antifascists] heading your way. One carrying a flag. We will have officers nearby but you may want to think about moving soon if more come.”
In another text, the officer advises Gibson on how to help one of his members, a man with an outstanding warrant, evade arrest:
On 8 December 2017, discussing Toese’s presence at a rally at a time when he was the subject of an outstanding warrant, Niiya wrote: “Just make sure he doesn’t do anything which may draw our attention. If he still has the warrant in the system (I don’t run you guys so I don’t personally know) the officers could arrest him. I don’t see a need to arrest on the warrant unless there is a reason.”
I repeat, the officer advised Gibson how to keep someone with a known warrant from being arrested.
Law enforcement departments in the US are increasingly bastions of reactionary, conspiratorial right-wing outrage. If you don’t believe me, believe the FBI, the Intercept, and Reuters. It is manifested in whom they police and how.
These calamities are not unavoidable. They are the direct result of choices made by the leaders of these universities and the local governments that I, for the life of me, can’t fathom making.
Let's close with a little roleplay. You play the president of a major university, and I will give you a scenario:
A group of students engage in a protest about your institution’s investments and contracting practices. They want the school to divest from an institution they find problematic. Which of the following responses is the best?
A. Engage them in dialogue and listen to their demands
B. Ignore them, assuming they’ll run out of steam sooner than later
C. Meet with them and say patronizing things to them about how “they don’t understand”
D. Summon law enforcement and have them assaulted, gassed, beaten, shot with “less than lethal rounds,” and arrested
In a democracy, this shouldn’t be a hard test but across the country leaders are failing it.
I want to close by shouting out the mayor and police in Washington DC. When leaders at George Washington University reached out to the city of DC, seeking to have police sweep the protests on their campus, the Mayor and the leaders of the PD told the university to pound sand, saying “they worried about the optics of moving against a small number of peaceful protesters.”
More police departments and universities should worry about violating the fundamental liberty of student protestors.
I can’t believe I even have to say that.
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