The New Yorker:

For years, universities have been less inclined to protect speech and quicker to sanction it. After this spring’s protests, it will be difficult to turn back.

By Jeannie Suk Gersen

The academic year, which had scarcely begun on October 7th, culminated this spring in controversy, disruption, and accusations of hate and repression at universities across the country. April brought a wave of pro-Palestinian encampments to the grounds of more than a hundred and thirty seats of higher education, which resulted in thousands of arrests. As Harvard’s commencement approached, a twenty-day encampment, in which students demanded that the university divest from Israel, ended peacefully, without arrests or forcible removal, when the university promised organizers that it would hold meetings with them to discuss its investments, and also “academic matters related to long-standing conflicts in the Middle East.” But disagreement over a key part of the deal rendered any relief short-lived.

The new dispute concerned whether student protesters would be disciplined. The participants had been warned repeatedly that erecting tents in Harvard Yard was against university policy, which forbids “interference with members of the University in performance of their normal duties and activities,” and the school had issued disciplinary charges to dozens of students. When the encampment was dismantled, Harvard’s interim president, Alan Garber, promised to recommend that those disciplinary cases be addressed “expeditiously,” including for “students eligible thereafter to graduate so that they may do so.” Protesters optimistically took that to mean that seniors with pending cases would be able to graduate days later. Instead, Harvard College’s disciplinary body quickly meted out probations and suspensions; more than a dozen seniors will not be able to graduate until a future semester.

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