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WHY I’M NOT CALLING THE POLICE ON MY STUDENTS’ ENCAMPMENT  
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Michael S. Roth
May 7, 2024
The New Republic
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_ The president of Wesleyan University explains why he’s allowing
pro-Palestinian protesters to pitch tents on campus. _

The pro-Palestinian encampment at Wesleyan University, VIDEO
SCREENGRAB/YOUTUBE/WTNH NEWS8

 

The encampment at Wesleyan University went up on the night of Sunday,
April 28, during a planned rally in support of Palestinians. At the
time, I was in an open meeting called by the student government to
answer questions about how the university invests its endowment but
also about many other topics—from labor issues at a construction
site to whether there could be a nonbinary entrance to the swimming
pool. But the energy in the room was about the war in Gaza and what
Wesleyan could do in reaction to it.

The students were well aware that I’d already gone on
record—several times in print—with respect to Gaza since the
heinous terrorist attacks of October 7. On that day I wrote about
Hamas’s “sickening violence” against Israel, and since then I
have written [[link removed]] about the dangers of
antisemitism and Islamophobia at home and about the loss of innocent
life in Gaza. So I can’t argue that university leaders should keep
quiet or say something evasive about “principled neutrality
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Indeed, the students reminded me of a phrase I’d used: “Neutrality
is complicity.” Although I am one of the only American university
presidents to call for a cease-fire
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Gaza, the students in the meeting did not find that nearly enough.
Mere words, they told me, are just another form of neutrality. They
accused me of trying to hide behind them. And outside the chants grew
louder: “Roth, Roth, you can’t hide / you can’t hide from
genocide.” When I walked home, an angry crowd of maybe 75 followed
close behind.

By Monday morning there were a couple dozen tents set up. Students
were careful not to block exits and entrances to campus buildings, and
they made sure that the pathways through their encampment were clear.
They were claiming territory for their protest, but they were not
attempting to close it off. This was important for everyone. For the
protesters, it was a sign that they wanted to spread their message to
others, and also that they were open to discussing their objectives
with anyone who wanted to talk. For me and my administrative
colleagues, it was important because one of the reasons encampments
are not normally permitted is that they mark off public areas for
exclusive use, thereby denying others the opportunity to use that part
of campus. Sure, the area was now dominated by signs bearing very
specific and sometimes aggressive messages—among them, slogans about
genocide and freeing Palestine that were off-putting to many on
campus, including myself. (There were no signs demanding the return of
the hostages kidnapped from kibbutz.) But this is a protest directed
at the administration, and I don’t get to choose the protesters’
messages. I do want to pay attention to them.

We could have immediately closed down the encampment because the
protesters hadn’t gotten advance permission for tents, and because
they were writing messages on the adjacent buildings in chalk. Over
the last week I’ve gotten many notes from alumni, parents, and
strangers chastising me for not making the protesters “pay a
price” for breaking the rules. In my initial message to the broad
university community, I wrote
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“The students [in the encampment] know that they are in violation
of university rules
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seem willing to accept the consequences.” So why haven’t I made
them feel those consequences? Cops don’t always give people tickets
for going a few miles over the speed limit. Context matters, whatever
Republican Congresswoman Elise Stefanik says. In this case, I knew the
students were part of a broad protest movement, and protest movements
often put a strain on an institution’s rules. They are meant to do
that. The encampment was “non-violent and has not disrupted normal
campus operations,” I wrote, and “as long as it continues in this
way, the University will not attempt to clear the encampment.” I
added that we would “not tolerate intimidation or harassment of
students, staff, or faculty,” and that the protesters, as far as I
could tell, were not moving in that direction.

The encampment is just beneath my office window, and many times during
the last several days I’ve looked over to see what was happening:
mostly students and the occasional faculty member engaged in casual
conversation, and occasionally animated debate. I’ve written
that being a student in the West has come to mean “practicing
freedom
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and I was reminded of that as I looked at these young people
expressing their political concerns. There were drawings and flags,
and a sense of a community. Between classes and during mealtimes,
there have been many people just passing through. Some stop to talk,
others just amble along. I myself have walked through every day I’m
on campus, and notwithstanding hostility from more than a few
protesters (“Why are you unwilling to support divestment?!”), I
stop to talk to students I know from my classes or say hello to those
I don’t know. One day I bumped into the campus rabbi there, and we
talked for a while until the leader of a Black music collective on
campus happened by and told me about his senior recital.

The encampment, now grown to roughly 50 tents, may be fostering a
sense of community among protesters, but it hasn’t been kumbaya for
everyone. Several Jewish students were outraged by the messages about
genocide and freeing Palestine. Did this mean freeing the region from
Jews? The expressions “Globalize the Intifada,” “Glory to the
Martyrs,” and “Terror is justified as long as Palestine is
occupied”_ _indicated toleration if not support of Hamas, an
organization that justifies raping women and killing babies as long as
you call them Jewish settlers. A few students showed up with an
Israeli flag and were shamed on social media. Their counterprotest
didn’t result in productive conversation, alas. But it didn’t
spill into violence either, and my team did its best to make sure that
was the case.

I’ve checked in with many Jewish students individually and sat down
with a group to talk about their fears—and their complaints about
faculty bias. Amazingly to them and to me, a few professors took votes
in their classes to decide whether they should hold class in the
encampment. Minority rights? Not something these faculty seemed
concerned with, at least not until the provost reminded them that they
could not force any student to support a cause with which the
professor happened to agree. Of course, faculty are free to support
any cause they like, but whatever political acumen they believe
themselves to possess, they are not free to impose this on their
students. The Jewish students opposed to the protesters seemed glad to
be able to talk openly about their concerns. I emphasized to them that
I could not protect them from opposing views but that I could protect
their safety and capacity to pursue their education.

There was some graffiti vandalism after the encampment settled in, and
we let people know that if that continued, the university would have
to step in. Fortunately, that didn’t continue, and so far, almost
all the protesters seem eager to find a constructive path: to make
their arguments about divestment and about boycotts. They know that I
have long been on record
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these arguments, but I will try to listen to them with an open mind.
Ultimately, it is the Board of Trustees that will decide about
investment policy. Myself, I am eager to find ways of supporting Gazan
relief efforts, and of doing whatever we can to promote a sustainable
peace in the region that would acknowledge the rights of all parties.
I’d like to think students know that.

I have watched with sadness the police actions on some campuses, as
well as the lack of police action in Los Angeles when an encampment
was attacked by counterprotesters. I can well imagine that for most
university presidents, calling in the police is the last resort. I too
have depended on the law enforcement in the past, most heartbreakingly
when a student was murdered on campus many years ago. I will certainly
ask for police help if I need it to protect people, property, or
university operations from criminal behavior.

It’s almost the end of the school year, and more than once I’ve
been asked, “Don’t I wish we had just made it through a couple of
more weeks without incident?” Mostly … no. How can I not respect
students for paying attention to things that matter so much? I respect
that they’re concerned about Gaza; I admire that they’re not
entirely taken up with grades or lining up their credentials. Will
their protest help? My fear is that such protests (especially when
they turn violent) in the end will help the reactionary forces
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populist authoritarianism. I also think student protesters are wrong
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focus on university investments
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I would prefer they use their energies to pressure the
U.S. government to do more to get the hostages released, to stop
supporting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s war tactics,
and to bring more direct aid to people in Gaza on the brink of
starvation. My team expects to discuss all of this with students in
the coming days. Right now, I’m most concerned with protecting their
right to protest in nonviolent ways that don’t undermine our
educational program. For me, the modest violations of the rules are
preferable to the narrow-minded vocationalism that others seem
suddenly to pine for.

I share this view of the moment with some trepidation. It only takes a
few jerks to turn a peaceful protest into a violent confrontation. But
I also share this with hope that we will all learn something from this
experience—whether or not we are sleeping in a tent.

_Michael S. Roth is the president of Wesleyan University in
Middletown, Connecticut. His most recent books are The Student: A
Short History
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Enough Spaces: A Pragmatist’s Approach to Inclusion, Free Speech,
and Political Correctness on College Campuses
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_Founded in 1914, The New Republic is a media organization dedicated
to addressing today's most critical issues. Sign up for a TNR
newsletter. [[link removed]]_

* Gaza
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* Student protests
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* Wesleyan University
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