(I started drafting this on the evening of May 6--the "encampment" was disbanded in the early hours of May 7, a topic I will address, below)
For a week (since Monday, April 29), there has been an "encampment" at the University of Chicago protesting a variety of things (more on that, below), but primarily, the University's "involvement" with Israel given the atrocities it is committing in Gaza. The encampment violates what are known as "time, place, and manner" regulations regarding speech and protest: e.g., there is a bar on "encampments" on university grounds (for fairly obvious reasons, or they would proliferate, and not only by students!) that is general, and applies to all political points of view. Despite that, the University President Paul Alivisatos (a very eminent chemist, who was previously Provost at Berkeley) took the view last Monday that, "Given the importance of the expressive rights of our students, we may allow an encampment to remain for a short time despite the obvious violations of policy," the policy being the aforementioned content-neutral prohibition on encampments. I think that was the right decision, since the expression at issue involves speech on matters of great political importance right now, so unless the encampment posed serious problems it should be allowed to remain.
By Friday of last week, the President asserted that the time had come for the encampment to end because,
The encampment has created systematic disruption of campus. Protesters are monopolizing areas of the Main Quad at the expense of other members of our community. Clear violations of policies have only increased. Our students have issued a torrent of reports of disrupted classroom learning. Other disruptions include repeated destruction of an approved installation of Israeli flags, shouting down speakers they disagree with, vandalism and graffiti on historic buildings, incorporating walkways into the encampment, and co-opting the University flagpole to fly the Palestinian flag.
The most serious consideration here concerns "disrupted classroom learning," and I'll return to that in a moment. Those responsible for removing Israeli flags or vandalism should be subjected to university disciplinary proceedings as individuals; such incidents do not justify ending the protest and encampment, except under an indefensible principle of collective punishment. (That is one reason I did not sign this letter calling for the University to end the encampment; drafted, I am told, by Dorian Abbot [whose earlier maltreatment by a "woke" mob we discussed], the signatories are mostly part of UChicago Free, a group started by Professor Abbot and which I quit when it became clear many (vocal) members had no principled commitment to free speech or academic freedom, but were instead utilizing the group and its listserve as a grievance and self-pity forum for conservatives--the exceptions to the latter characterization among the signatories [including some friends I respect] are those moved, I suspect, by their loyalty to Israel.)
Back to the President's case for removing the encampment: the only meaningful objection to the protest would be that the collective activities of the encampment are interfering with classes. I cannot comment on whether this was occurring, since the encampment is remote from the law school, where I spend most of my time. But the encampment was in a location that is quite proximate to many buildings where classes do take place. A letter from faculty associated with the UChicago chapter of the AAUP disputed this: "The suggestion that the encampment is substantially disrupting the normal life of the University across the campus is demonstrably untrue. Classes go on, debates continue, and, to date, there has been no violence by or on behalf of students participating in the encampment." The "suggestion," however, was that it was disrupting some classes, not that "the normal life of the University across campus" was impeded. I can attest the law school was utterly unaffected, for example, but that's not the issue. And, as noted above, I do not know how the encampment and protest was affecting the many classes that are in proxmate buildings. (I did not sign the AAUP chapter letter, in part because I was ignorant of the factual claims, but mainly because its first proposition--"Disbanding the encampment means violating the principle of free expression on campus"--is false, and absurdly so: a ban on encampments is not a ban on pro-Palestinian speech. I nonetheless believe that police intervention with respect to the encampment is a terrible idea: I say this not because I want to participate in the demonization of the police--who are members of the working class whose conduct is predictable given the circumstances they are asked to labor under--but because police methods, by necessity, involve force, in a way that a university should desperately try to avoid.)
If, in fact, teaching was being disrupted (again, I do not know), then the University could take several steps, short of police involvement: for example, advising encampment participants to confine noisy collective activities to hours outside prime class time; or simply removing the tents and overnight encampments, while permitting protest and expression. As of Tuesday, May 7, it seems the University has taken the latter course, without arresting anyone. (On the other hand, there are threats of draconian university disciplinary responses, including immediate eviction from university housing. The latter is surely not necessary.)
One problem, of course, is that many of those involved in the encampment are in the grips of a religious fervor that, like most religious fervors, discounts the relevance of any other aspect of life, and is often detached from relevant facts. To be clear, that is also a virtue of the encampment: those with religious fervor, those without regard for prudential considerations, often thrust into public view issues the official mediators of public opinion would prefer to ignore. The US-funded bloodbath in Gaza is an atrocity (quite apart from whether it is a "genocide"--even the experts do not know, and it doesn't matter), and the disruptions on campuses across the country, now tracked carefully by the New York Times, create pressure on Biden--the congenial empty vessel--to perhaps do something. That's how politics works, so kudos to the students for raising the temperature for a complacent Democratic Party (the same complacent party that sold out the working class and gave us Trump).
The preceding does not preclude the sentient and sapient from commenting on some of the stupidities of the "protesters"; one can be on the side of the angels, as the protesters mostly are, and still be foolish, as some of the protesters also are. (One rather feeble-minded philosophy professor elsewhere was indignant on Twitter that I commented on the pathetic display of a student, participating in the takeover of a building at Columbia, then demanding "humanitarian aid" from the university, i.e., to be fed while illegally occupying a building.) The typically incompetent NYT story about the UChicago encampment drives the latter point home, but first a word about how the article starts:
[T]he University of Chicago’s image as the citadel of free speech is being tested again — this time over an encampment on the central quad, which protesters of Israel’s war in Gaza have refused to leave for more than a week.
The university has allowed dozens of tents to stay up, even though they violate a policy against erecting structures in public spaces. The school had wanted to show “the greatest leeway possible for free expression,” said Paul Alivisatos, the university president.
Now, citing the disruption to student life and a degradation of civility on campus, the university wants the encampment gone.
It is not a test of a commitment to free speech for an institution to prohibit violation of content-neutral, "time, place and manner" rules governing expression. As the University President said this morning: "The University remains a place where dissenting voices have many avenues to express themselves." Journalists may be the dumbest professionals on the face of earth (apart from politicians, of course, but I'm not sure the latter are professionals), but this is an unbelievably misleading framing even by the low standards applicatble to Karl Kraus's favorite profession ("No ideas and the ability to express them--that's a journalist").
That stupidity aside, the article does tell us this about the protesters:
Students insisted that they would stay on the quad until their demands were met, which spanned a range of issues that were both related to and tangential to the Palestinian cause. These included pulling out of investments that fund military operations in Israel; stating that a genocide and “scholasticide,” the destruction of Palestinian universities, are taking place in Gaza; disbanding the campus police; and ending construction of new buildings in the surrounding neighborhood as a way to stop gentrification.
The last two, of course, have nothing to do with the atrocities in Gaza, and it is a shame this important protest was co-opted for other issues, some without merit (disbanding the campus police, which would be a catastrophe, is the pet cause of "Care Not Cops," the most naive and ignorant student group on campus, at least outside some of the fraternities). Divestment in stocks has no effect on the Israeli war machine, given the way stock markets work, so it is merely a symbolic statement of "disapproval," which the University's Kalven principles prohibit: individual faculty and students may condemn Israel, but the University cannot. The same applies to the University rendering a legal verdict like "genocide" to describe what is happening in Gaza: how is it, exactly, that the chemist who leads the University is qualified to pass on this question? He isn't. ("Scholasticide" is just juvenile make-believe and misses the real point about what's happening: what Israel is doing is destroying the infrastructure of civil society to render Gaza uninhabitable; the universities are but one casualty.)
The NYT paraphrased one student complaining that "the university has also been inconsistent [in its adherence to the Kalen principles]...pointing to its statement of support for those affected by the invasion of Ukraine." The evidence of supposed "inconsistency" is a letter from the Dean of Students advising students about support resources for those affected by the Russian invasion; the Dean of Students issued the same kind of statement after the Hamas atrocities on October 7. The Kalven principles do not preclude the Dean of Students from acknowledging horrible events in the outside world that no doubt affect our students, and informing them of available support. What the University President and Provost have not done is issued a statement condemning Russia, affirming the University's support for the Ukrainian war effort, condemning the Hamas murder-and-pillage raid of October 7, or affirming or condemning the Israeli response. With the exception of a former Provost a few years ago, the University has adhered to the Kalven Principles quite well during my fifteen years here (and even the former Provost, once criticized by myself and other faculty, stopped issuing statements in violation of Kalven).
Some people outside the University ask, "Why are students protesting the University, which has nothing to do with the atrocities in Gaza?" The UChicago chapter of "Faculty for Justice in Palestine" argues that the University is "complicit" in Israeli crimes, but this is a stretch, since none of the activities singled out actually make a discernible causal contribution to those crimes. (By this "logic," the University is also "complicit" in the Chinese persecution of the Uyghurs, the U.S. war of aggression against Iraq, and so on.) The reason for students to protest the University is a lot simpler: it is where the students are, it is an important societal institution, and protests here draw attention to the horrors in Gaza. Since the latter is the real point, every choice of strategy should reflect that goal. That hasn't been the case here (e.g., "disband the campus police," "end gentrification"), but overall the encampment and protest do serve to make clear that what's happening in Gaza is utterly unacceptable to a visible segment of the population, and that raises the odds that those with the real power to turn off the spigot of arms and money may do so. Or so one may hope.
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