Carnegie Mellon's "expressive activity" policy forbids groups of more than 25 people from protesting on campus. This group of students, faculty, and alumni holding signs labeled "1" through "29" technically violates that policy. Jonathan Aldrich.

Last school year’s historic protests over the war in Gaza roiled campuses and dominated headlines, with more than 3,100 students arrested nationwide. Over the summer, the protests cooled off and students returned home. But college administrators spent the summer crafting new free speech policies designed to discourage students from continuing what they started last spring. Between May and August, at least 20 colleges and university systems—representing more than 50 campuses—tightened the rules governing protest on their property.

The protest encampments that appeared on more than 130 campuses last spring served as a visual reminder of the 2 million displaced people in Gaza. Students held teach-ins, slept in tents, created art together, ate, and prayed in these makeshift societies—some for hours or days, others for entire weeks or months. The free speech organization FIRE estimated last week that 1 in 10 students has personally participated in a protest regarding Israel’s war in Gaza. The protesters demanded that their schools disclose any investments in (variously) the Israeli military, the state of Israel, or the military-industrial complex in general—and disentangle their endowments from war-makers.

Some student groups won meetings with administrators, disclosure of the terms of their college’s endowment, or representation for Palestine studies in their school’s curriculum. A few schools agreed to work towards divestment or implement new investment screening procedures. Students elsewhere, though, saw no concessions on their goals from college administrators—and were left, instead, to spend months doing court-ordered community service or working through a lengthy school-ordered disciplinary process.

Prior to last year’s protests, “time, space, and manner” restrictions on campus protest were considered standard practice, said Risa Lieberwitz, a Cornell University professor of labor and employment law who serves as general counsel for the American Association of University Professors. Many universities had pre-existing policies prohibiting, for example, obstructing a walkway or occupying an administrative office. Those policies were usually enforced via threats of suspension or expulsion. This year’s restrictions are different, said Lieberwitz, who previously described the new rules as “a resurgence of repression on campuses that we haven’t seen since the late 1960s.”

Lieberwitz is particularly concerned with policies requiring protest organizers to register their protest, under their own names, with the university they are protesting. “There’s a real contradiction between registering to protest and being able to actually go out and protest just operationally,” she said. “Then there’s also the issue of the chilling effect that comes from that, which comes from knowing that this is a mechanism that allows for surveillance.” Students who are required to register themselves as protest organizers may prefer to avoid expressing themselves at all.

MIT has lots of rules about ethical funding, about the duty to do no harm with one’s research. And yet, they........

© Mother Jones