Tents are not free speech! (And that’s why protesters keep putting them up)

I am so tired of those on the left reacting so negatively to universities removing tent encampments as an awful violation of college students’ free speech.  A foundational principle of free speech policy is that government and organizations can make “time, place, and manner” restrictions that they apply neutrally, without regard of the content of speech.  A university cannot choose to run-off a pro-Palestinian protest but allow a pro-Israel protest.  They can’t say, “sorry, no protesting.  But, what they absolutely can do is say, “you cannot take over the main quad with tents.”  And, if you don’t take your tents down after repeated requests, the police remove will remove them.  And, this shouldn’t have to be said, if you resist the police actions, you will be arrested.  

The protests are all about media coverage. And, honestly, far too much about virtue signaling and trying to win more clout with fellow leftists than actually doing the hard work of winning over hearts and minds to the cause.  You know what doesn’t get a ton of media coverage?  A bunch of students standing in the quad, not harassing fellow students, not setting up tents, just genuinely peaceful protests.  And, I say, good for them! 

But, like I said, not a ton of media coverage.  So they intentionally set up tent encampments because they are against university policy to provoke a conflict.  And it works.  And they get media coverage.  And that’s, okay, but own it.  Admit that this is not free speech, but civil disobedience.  Admit that police actually have the right to come in and remove the tents and arrest people who don’t comply and that, of course, police should not use excessive force in so doing so.  Alas, all I seem to see is completely unfounded allegations of police acting as “fascists” and universities not respecting “free speech.”  But, this is not the case at all and it’s not hard. 

At UNC some faculty and graduate students are refusing to turn in grades for all their students (collective punishment, anyone) unless the administration grants amnesty to those arrested.  But they were not arrested for their speech!  They were arrested because they refused to follow a completely lawful order to clear a tent encampment and it was made very clear to them this would be the consequence.  As for those professors, a professor friend said to me, “part of me wants to see them do it and get fired. Is that wrong”?  No.  The idea of collectively punishing your students to make a point on your political views is just unconscionable as a professor.  

And, lastly, because we’re here.  I want to say that I think Israel has acted too harshly, too disproportionately, and shown far too little concern for Palestinian lives.  I completely get why so many students are out there protesting and convinced of the moral rightness of their cause.  I get that they want to end the violence.  But, alas, the leaders of these protests don’t want an end to violence.  Great Jill Filipovic piece on this in the Atlantic (gift link), “Say Plainly What the Protesters Want”

According to some news outlets, the protests are best characterized as “anti-war.” And that’s true insofar as the groups leading the protests do oppose Israel’s war in Gaza, and no doubt many of the demonstrators show up because they’ve watched horror after horror unfold, sympathize with a long-oppressed population that is now being killed by the thousands, and want to voice their desire for the violence to cease. But the protests—both on college campuses and those led by broader, noncampus groups—have articulated demands and ideologies. News outlets have a responsibility to report what those are, and are largely failing.

Many of the protest groups agree with that critique of the coverage. National Students for Justice in Palestine posted on Instagram, “Do not cover our protests if you will not cover what we are fighting for.” On-campus demands vary from college to college, but generally include that the university divest from companies doing business with Israel, cut ties with Israeli universities and academics, offer amnesty to all student and faculty protesters who have broken laws or campus rules, and implement total transparency for all university investments and holdings.

But those demands are not the sum total of the protest groups’ aims. Two of the student groups coordinating the encampments at Columbia, for example, published a guide answering the question “What principles must one align with in order to sign onto our coalition?” and clarifying “the cause we are fighting for.” The core principles include the Thawabit, originally published in 1977 and characterized as nonnegotiable Palestinian “red lines” (albeit ones from which many advocates for peace and statehood who actually live in Palestine have since deviated). Those include a right to Palestinian statehood, making Jerusalem the capital of Palestine, the right of return, and the right to resistance, even armed resistance, or “struggle by all available means.”

These groups have also routinely refused to condemn the Hamas attacks of October 7 that led to the Israeli incursion, even while they have found time to condemn far less egregious acts…

Similar ideologies and goals have taken center stage at off-campus protests as well, with banners pledging to secure Palestinian freedom by any means necessary and chants cheering on Hamas and rejecting a two-state solution in favor of the end of Israel (“We want all of ’48”). Protesters should be free to gather and make their demands, of course, but these particular demands are not, by any reasonable definition, “anti-war.” Protesters who endorse these ideas are against Israel’s war in Gaza, but do not seem to be opposed to bloodshed if it’s in the service of extinguishing the world’s only Jewish state.

Okay, that’s a lot I had to get off my chest about the protests.  Back to just re-tweeting other people’s takes for a while.