Repression or Compromise? A tale of two US campus protests

Police arrived in force early Saturday, ordered to clear “invaders” from the Gaza war protest camp at Northeastern University in Boston.

Within an hour, more than 100 people, students and non-students, were arrested, and many of their tents were razed or removed.

A large counter-protest then formed as state police officers in plainclothes escorted their suspects away. The scene was one of confrontation and mayhem.

Administrators at the northeast campus said they were forced to call the police as the intrusion by outsiders “led to a clear escalation of tensions” and that an anti-Semitic slur was heard – something protesters deny.

As campus protests stretch into a second week across the US, Northeastern is among several colleges that have now made the decision to crack down and refused calls to divest from companies involved in Israel's military.

Columbia in New York canceled the first camp on April 18, citing “a harassing and intimidating environment for many of our students.” They have since rescinded the protesters' demands and announced suspensions for some students.

The student response has been escalating, and on Tuesday dozens occupied and destroyed a university building, leading to officials threatening expulsion. On Tuesday night, police moved into the campus in force at the university's request to end the occupation.

Other colleges, however, have shown that confrontation, chaos and escalation can be avoided.

The story at Northwestern University, just outside of Chicago, is quite different from that of Northeastern.

His protest camp appeared on Thursday morning. University administrators responded by banning the tents and calling the campus police.

They stopped without calling state police and no arrests were made, and campus officers eventually left.

On Monday, administrators announced a deal: Protesters would be allowed to remain until the end of classes on June 1 if they removed the tents and limited those who would participate to students and others affiliated with the university.

They stopped short of agreeing to freeze investments in Israeli companies and arms manufacturers, but agreed to re-launch an investment committee and increase transparency over the roughly $13.7bn (£11bn).

Northwestern also pledged to fund positions for two Palestinian professors and five Palestinian students.

There seems to be a truce – at least for now.

Northwestern and Northeasten are both private colleges, both in left-leaning, liberal states. So why were their responses to essentially the same situation and demands so different?

Lauren Lassabe Shepherd, a historian at the University of New Orleans, said pro-Palestine protests have not reached the fever pitch or level of violence seen during anti-war protests in the 1960s and 70s – where some students called for the overthrow of the US government.

He said that in some cases, however, calling in outside police forces had dramatically raised the stakes.

“Almost all American universities have campus police officers who are full-time, uniformed and can make arrests,” he said.

“Calling in municipal police or National Guard troops is a high-risk strategy.”

Scenes of police clashes with protesters have surfaced on social media, while outsiders and observers can also be caught up in the camp's outages.

At Emory University in Atlanta, professors were among those arrested by city and state police last week, including Noelle McAfee, chair of the university's philosophy department.

Ms McAfee told the BBC she was observing what she described as a peaceful protest when police began to move in and protesters began to move.

He began videotaping police beating a protester, he said, and noticed chemical irritants in the air.

“It was really annoying. I started yelling 'stop' and I was trying to take a video. One of the officers got up and told me to move away…I froze in my seat.” He was then arrested.

Hundreds of other arrests have been reported at universities across the country, although other disputes have been resolved without law enforcement.

On Tuesday, protesters and administrators reached an agreement at Brown University, similar to that at Northwestern, which promised to hold a vote on divestment by gunmakers in the fall.

And a camp at the University of California, Berkeley — the epicenter of the 1960s protest movement — was both largely peaceful and left alone.

Ken Paulson, director of the Free Speech Center at Middle Tennessee State University, said political pressure, including from high-ranking members of Congress, forced some administrators into potentially risky moves that in some cases failed.

“Increasingly, college presidents are trying to show Congress and the world that they're tough enough to be college presidents,” he said. “And this is so reminiscent of the late '60s, with lawmakers threatening college presidents and insisting they can't cover anti-war student protesters.”

The pressure may be more intense on private university leaders, he said, because publicly funded universities are required to provide students with First Amendment protections.

“In private schools, they don't necessarily have to offer free speech rights,” Mr. Paulson said. “So they can't tell lawmakers that their hands are tied and they can't do anything. They have to follow these protests strictly with their own policies.”

Time may be on the side of campus administrators.

Mr. Paulson said most students are not participating in the protests and are just trying to get through the year, although graduation ceremonies could be another protest target. Some universities have already canceled commencement ceremonies or are considering doing so.

If history is any guide, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd said, “we're going to have an intense next week or two until the spring semester ends.”