Gaza protests roil universities from California to New York; tensions grow at Humboldt, Berkeley

As new protests erupted on Sproul Plaza this week, UC Berkeley Asst. Vice Chancellor Dan Mogulof said that Berkeley would prioritize students’ academic interests in the last few weeks of the spring semester.

“We will take the steps necessary to ensure the protest does not disrupt the university’s operations,” Mogulof said in a statement. “There are no plans to change the university’s investment policies and practices.”

According to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, students do not have a First Amendment right to camp out on campus grounds.

“Peaceful protest is generally protected, and colleges and universities must ensure students can engage in peaceful protest on campus,” FIRE said in a statement. “But we remind students that engaging in civil disobedience may result in punishment, including arrest... Students occupying campus spaces in violation of reasonable, content-neutral rules risk punishment.”

Jameel Jaffer, executive director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University, raised concerns Monday about bringing in NYPD to dismantle a student encampment and arrest students who were peacefully protesting.

In a letter to university president Minouche Shafik, Jaffer wrote that he was “deeply troubled” by the university’s “severe and seemingly viewpoint-discriminatory enforcement of rules relating to student demonstrations.”

“The University has a legitimate interest in enforcing reasonable restrictions on the time, place, and manner of protests,” Jaffer wrote. “The University’s rules also make clear, however, that external authorities should be engaged to end a protest only as a last resort—only when there is “a clear and present danger to persons, property, or the substantial functioning of any division of the University.”