Policing the Protests
Terry H. Schwadron
May 2, 2024
Depending on who’s telling the story, the police actions to clear encampments of anti-war protesters on campus were overdue or foretell more clashes, overly restrained or holding back, effective, or not so much.
At Columbia University, the NYPD cleared a building in under two hours with 30 police officers climbing a ladder to enter a second-floor window and start removing upwards of 300 non-resisting protestors, student or not, one by one. At UCLA, the LAPD said it was responding at the university’s request “due to multiple acts of violence” that apparently started with involved counter-protestors throwing a piece of fencing. At the University of Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered state troopers to wade into protest groups right from the first sight of an encampment tent, without violence at all.
What started over strong feelings about U.S. policy on the Middle East — making some students uncomfortable, in turn making university officials and donors uncomfortable — has been exploited for public bashing of slogans shouted by people who may or may not even know why they can be hurtful.
In any event, it has given way to a generational push against authority altogether and a generic anti-war outlook. None of it will resolve issues in the Middle East or even win converts to a different way of seeking humanity and dignity in war. With rebellion spreading, it is beyond simple belief that this is a spontaneous series of localized protests pro-Palestinian causes. It is much easier to understand a social media-connected effort spreading general frustration with authority.
But, despite the slogans, it turns out that critical thinking itself is now the target.
The university officials at Columbia insisted that they were left with no choice but to call in the NYPD, asking police to maintain a presence on campus through very public graduation ceremonies later this month.
Just consider that Brown and Northwestern, university officials agreed to discuss divestiture of investments in companies seen as supporting Israel’s war in Gaza to dissolve campus protests, effectively ending campus stalemates, and setting up a deeper discussion. At Dartmouth, the university set up discussion groups to head off what seem to be distasteful protests.
The Storytelling
On the Fox News website, the headlines referred to police responding to violent mobs, much as anything to do with, say, protests involving Black Lives Matter. Other more conservative-leaning news outlets discussed the efforts as overdue. Talk shows were filled with condemnations in all directions. “Mainstream” outlets tried to describe without seeming to take sides, which only annoyed those that want a side taken.
Some news sites tried speaking to student protestors to learn that “pro-Palestinian” rebellions reflected a diffuse number of student complaints — including any decisions to call police onto campuses. Indeed, the labeling itself likely has contributed to a sense of inevitability about the need for police response to quell disorder.
We’re dealing with hyperbole.
As with so much else in our society, there were the events, and then there were the stories about the events. Sometimes they match, and sometimes they don’t, reflecting more of a judgment than warranted by straight news reporting.
Few dispute that a takeover of a building requires a response from authorities. But the nature of the response — as the very issues at the heart of complaints about legitimate Israeli military response to Hamas terror attacks — has taken over the story, sidelining most of the important issues involved at the start.
The NYPD got kudos from all parties for its preparation, for its care in how to keep a clearing operation as humane as possible. Other law enforcement groups were seen as rougher in how they were treating what many would have seen as free speech before protestors took over a university building.
Final decisions were pending, but charges involved trespassing and mischief, not more serious felonies.
On Monday, police cleared protest encampments at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Yale, and the University of Connecticut but they continue at more than 40 colleges nationwide. Calling in the police is a virtual guarantee in the social-media-equipped protest movement that there will be more, not fewer.
The Outside ‘Agitators’
One area not clear is the involvement of outsiders in search of smoldering protest looking for a chance to enflame conflicts with authorities if for no other reason than to spread institutional chaos. Champions of order always look to unnamed “agitators” — from off-campus in this case — who see benefit in such clashes.
It’s a strange dichotomy though, that we do not hear the same being said about the likes of Steve Bannon and other MAGA loyalists who call for widespread attempts to ignore laws or practices governing elections, diversity efforts, access to books and other “woke” principles.
Of course, none of this is helped by the entry of our politicians.
Donald Trump, legally embattled himself, used the news to praise police, call for law and order (except for himself), and to call for punishments that equal what has been handed out to Jan. 6, 2021, rioters. It was a curious matching, since Trump denies that anything untoward happened on Jan. 6, and he vows to pardon most who have been convicted of much more serious crimes.
Republicans were joined by Democrats who say publicly that they want to come to the protection of Jewish students made to listen to anti-Israel sloganeering — even if it from other Jewish students who do not feel a kinship to what they perceive to be an Israeli government whose right-wing politics continues to act as occupier of Palestinian lands. But the vocal Republicans are the same ones lobbying for re-creation of the U.S. as a white, Christian nation and hosting white supremacists.
Let’s roll the clock back: Hamas terror was insane, and they should release the hostages. Israeli government policy aimed at destruction affecting civilians rather than military targets and starvation for 2.2 million Palestinians are over the top responses, and policies for land-grabs in the West Bank just put the Zionist cause that does not even consider a two-state solution in a bad — and permanent — death spiral. A U.S. policy that condemns Russian attacks on Ukrainian civilians but not Israeli bombs in Rafah, where Palestinians forced from homes now cower, sounds hypocritical — which is why it is being called out. Globally, the headlines are seen as supporting more anti-Israel alignment. Campus protests should take care that they avoid labeling individuals or making groups feel intimidated.
Is it too much to ask that each side treat others as it would be treated?
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