As a new semester looms, students and colleges brace for more protests

To many pro-Palestinian campus activists, it was a crushing coincidence of the calendar. Just as nationwide protests over the Israel-Hamas war were coming to a crescendo, the spring semester ended and the students cleared out. The sounds of bullhorns and chanting suddenly went silent.

“It was definitely very jarring,” says junior Marie Adele Grosso, a student organizer at Barnard College and Columbia University. “I wanted so badly to still be in New York. I wanted to be there organizing,” she says, “just trying not to lose that momentum.”

Hundreds were arrested at the encampments, including Gross, who was taken in twice. Like many students, her criminal charges have since been dropped. And her school suspension was downgraded to probation. Now she’s among scores of students around the nation using the summer to strategize and plan for what their activism might look like in the fall.

“We're not going to just be copying encampment, encampment, encampment,” Grosso says. “We will be doing whatever actions we choose, escalations if that's necessary. We will do what is necessary.”

Speaking from her home in Michigan, Grosso says she now spends her days in remote meetings with students from Barnard and Columbia, as well as engaging with local student and community activists in Michigan. It’s how many other students across the U.S. are keeping busy, as well.

Students joining up and learning from community activists

In Cambridge, Mass., for example, students who are home for the summer or living on now-quiet campuses nearby have been joining weekly demonstrations run by BDS Boston, a group promoting boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israel — and companies doing business with Israel. A few dozen people protest outside the local offices of Elbit Systems, a defense technology company supplying products to the Israeli military. They circle a busy intersection chanting, “Free Palestine” and “Elbit out of Cambridge now!” One of the organizers takes to the bullhorn, imploring the group to “Continue disrupting, that is our fight!” as Cambridge police detour traffic and respond to frustrated motorists.

Students here say they’re learning from their “elders” — many of whom are veterans of Vietnam-era protests, and eager to share lessons on tactics and how and when to escalate them. Lesley University junior Soledad Dolorico takes a turn with the bullhorn to give a shout out to fellow students who she says “are playing a huge role in the intifada.”

“Resistance is always justified when people are occupied — by any and all means necessary,” she shouts to cheers from the others. She wants to see students keep up the pressure this fall, even if that means more of the most volatile scenes from last spring, such as the occupation of buildings at UCLA and Columbia.

“I could not care less about students busting up some windows when they’re getting degrees revoked for protesting the killing of human beings!” Dolorico hollers.

Schools bracing for a turbulent fall

Many schools see it as a dangerously heady mix: students rested, ready and riled up, an intensifying conflict in the Middle East, and a turbulent U.S. election season. Many students are planning to join tens of thousands of pro-Palestinian demonstrators expected to protest outside next week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

“It's just getting amped up, and unfortunately I think that translates into the potential for more, frankly, violent sort of activity on campuses,” says crisis communications consultant Jeff Hunt who’s working with dozens of schools this summer. He points to escalating rhetoric, for example, in Washington, D.C., where some protestors recently were supporting not just the Palestinian people in Gaza, but also Hamas and Hezbollah.

“That’s pretty goddamn scary,” Hunt says. “So there's a lot of administrators at these institutions quite worried and doing their best to prepare.”

For many schools, that means tightening their rules on protests and also reviewing or clarifying disciplinary processes. Case Western Reserve University, for example, has rolled out new rules limiting demonstrations to two hours’ duration, during the daytime, in only one designated space, and requiring written preapproval from the school at least seven days in advance. The school has also banned the use of light projections on buildings and microphones or bullhorns, though students can file for an exception. A draft policy by Harvard would ban messages from being written with chalk on school property, and Columbia is considering giving their security officers the power to make arrests.

More than a dozen colleges declined to comment on their plans, as they are still scrambling to finalize changes.

“We have schools [saying] how can I make this so we’re not seeing the crazy protests next semester?’ And we’re [saying] ‘You don’t!’” says Alex Morey, vice president of campus advocacy with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) who has been tracking schools’ policy changes. Some, she says, are reasonable restrictions, like not blocking access, not sleeping outside and not being too loud. But many other changes, she says, are over-corrections.

“We don’t want students to have to be checking the campus map to figure out where the free speech zone is, in the free speech hours, and have [they] given enough free speech notice,” Morey says. “That’s way too strict for a campus that promises free expression.”

Pressure is mounting on schools — from Congress, the Department of Education and lawsuits to strike the right balance between free speech and a campus that is safe and welcoming to all. On that, colleges are taking hits from all sides.

Just last week, pro-Palestinian vandals spewed red paint, broke a window and dumped insects inside the vestibule of a Columbia administrator’s apartment building. They left a sign saying, “You signed off on police brutality. Now you want to expel us?”

At the same time, some Jewish and pro-Israel students and their supporters say Columbia has not been tough enough. Junior Elisha Baker says administrators have been far too lax on enforcement as well as discipline. Their failure to take violations seriously is exacerbating what many Jewish and pro-Israel students feel is a hostile environment, Baker says, and portends a tumultuous fall.

“We’re definitely preparing for the worst, because what we know from the last 10 months is that the university doesn’t hold people accountable when they break rules,” Baker says. “So they've learned basically that those actions don't have consequences, which means that they can act again with impunity.”

Columbia declined to comment on those complaints.

Student activists opting to dial it down in places

There are a number of pro-Palestinian protesters who’ve experienced crackdowns at their campuses who say they’re planning on taking a more low-key approach this fall.

“I'm scared of getting arrested again, so maybe I'll just hang out in the shadows this time,” says Anne-Marie Jardine, who just graduated from the University of Texas at Austin and is headed to grad school at New York University. She says she’s spent this summer healing from injuries she suffered when police arrested her and scores of others.

“I don't want to go through that again,” Jardine says. “That's kind of a guilt I have. The cause is so important, but like, they brutalized me.”

For others, the fear is more financial than physical. Cornell University junior Nick Wilson says he’s already out tens of thousands of dollars in tuition, after he was suspended last spring and lost credit for the semester.

Now he says he needs to be careful. But for most other student activists, Wilson believes the university’s hardball tactics will largely backfire.

“As universities have begun arresting students and suspending them and acting like occupying armies on their own campus, that’s woken a lot of students up,” he says. “People were outraged and became only more involved in political advocacy, if anything.”

There’s another camp of students also choosing a less confrontational tack — but not out of fear; rather, they believe the strategy might be more successful.

“I get it. People are revved up," says Mahmoud Muheisen, who just graduated from Wayne State University in Detroit. School ended in the spring with students accusing police of using excessive force to break up their encampment and demanding a meeting with the administration to discuss university divestment from companies with ties to Israel.

Now, Muheisen is continuing to work with other student leaders, urging them to dial down the temperature. “Like, all right everybody, let’s calm down. Let's take a diplomatic approach and let’s see what happens,” he says. He and other student organizers have been testing various strategies through role-playing, a method they started in the spring.

In one instance, Muheisen plays an administration official making students an offer.

“Here’s the deal,” he says. “The university is willing to offer a meeting if you take down the encampment. What do you say?”

Another student — playing herself — rejects the offer outright.

Staying in character as an administrator, Muheisen immediately pretends to call the media, showing fellow students how playing hardball might backfire if the university portrays them as unreasonable.

“This is Channel 7 News!” Muheisen exclaims, pointing to another student who's playing a reporter with a water bottle as a microphone. “We offered to meet,” Muheisen tells the pretend reporter. “We gave in on two grounds. And they said ‘No!’ ”

“Now we’re on the back foot,” Muheisen explains to the students.

As he sees it, instead of 100 people at another protest, it might be more effective to get 100 signatures on a petition, for example, for a no-confidence vote in the university president.

“We wanna talk to the university in the language they might understand,” he says. “If they don’t, we have no issue taking it to the streets again. But we don’t wanna be doing this when we could’ve done something a lot quieter.”

It's definitely been a quieter summer for students at Brown University, one of about a dozen U.S. campuses where students ended their encampments voluntarily in exchange for a meeting to discuss divestment with university officials.

As one Brown student put it, they’re now doing “the unglamorous side of organizing” – like revising a report they hope will help boost their case for divestment.

Pro-Israel students also promising more activism

Meanwhile, pro-Israel students are gearing up to boost their narrative, after many say they laid low last year for fear of harassment.

“I would say to buckle in, because unfortunately it will be very difficult,” says Harvard graduate Shabbos Kestenbaum. He says a growing number of students are now planning to increase their volume and visibility, and that several events are already planned for the fall to counter what he calls slander against Israel.

“Um, no, the Jewish state is not a settler colonial entity. No, it's not practicing apartheid, nor is it committing genocide,” he says. “It is a vibrant democracy that has been thrust into a war not of its own choice, and they are defending themselves as best as they can. And if we have to be loud about it and if I have to lose friends over it, which I have, so be it.”

To that point, schools have been trying to come up with ways to tamp down the acrimony among students and encourage dialog across the divide. Harvard just added a question to its admissions application asking students how they have managed to communicate with someone who they strongly disagree with. And a growing number of schools are scrambling to institute new programs promoting civil discourse and education — less heat and more light, as some have put it.

Carnegie Mellon University is among those that see it as a kind of inoculation against the vitriol and violence that broke out on so many campuses last spring. Humanities Dean Richard Scheines says he saw tensions at CMU subside almost immediately after launching a program last semester that began with a Palestinian and Israeli woman sitting side by side, telling their personal stories.

“That to me was the magical moment,” he says. “Everyone understood this is way beyond slogans. We have to dig in here. It’s complicated.”

There were bumps, including when one student didn’t like what he heard and tried to start a boycott of the program. But he eventually came around, engaging respectfully and productively.

Ultimately, Scheines says, “education is what we do.”

“It takes a lot of guts and a lot of work,” he says, “but if universities can’t pull this off, who can?”

Copyright 2024, NPR

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