I don’t think I agree with this, but I appreciate that it does answer my question of what the proposed alternative is - basically ignore them unless it rises to a higher level of violence/harassment. Or maybe I agree with it in principle, and the hard part is the case-by-case determination of the violence/harassment threshold, where mine might be lower than yours.
I’m pretty glad not to be in administration.
I mean, not to be too obvious here, but maybe the administration could listen to student demands and negotiate on a couple of them?
Don’t university already have formalized process for this sort of thing though via student government? Like I can understand if there an urgent need to protest like if the university was inviting Putin to give commencement speech and it needed to be stopped now but if a university says they going come up with a plan to sell Israeli and Boeing stock from their endowment today or next year it’s not going to impact what going on in Gaza now either way.
Emory sent another e-mail late last week, more of the same. A new one came this morning (from the university president):
Dear Emory Community,
Over the past week, Emory has experienced unprecedented protests and disruptions. We are not alone. Nationwide, universities are grappling with events that have deeply shaken our respective communities. I have heard from many of you, and I want you to know that I am listening. I understand your concerns, your fears, your frustrations, and your outrage. As we enter the final week of the academic year, I am focused on protecting our campuses, supporting peaceful expression for all members of our community, and finding ways to foster healing and rebuild trust.
I would like to use this message to update you on last Thursday’s events.
Based on the information we had early Thursday morning, we determined that the individuals who constructed the encampment on our Quad were not members of our community. It is clear to us now that this information was not fully accurate, and I apologize for that mischaracterization. My goal was to remove a growing encampment, as allowing such an encampment would have been highly disruptive, affecting everything from classes and exams to our ability to hold Commencement. I remain firm that such encampments cannot be permitted at Emory.
Let me be clear: I am devastated that members of our community were caught up in law enforcement activity enforcing the removal of the encampment. The videos of these interactions are deeply distressing. I take Thursday’s events very seriously and we are launching a thorough review of them so that we can develop recommendations to improve how we keep our community safe. This review will include how Emory engages external law enforcement agencies.
I am committed to supporting our students and faculty who wish to express their views peacefully. We will not tolerate conduct that undermines these efforts. I know that many members of our community are focused on their classes, research, exams, and upcoming graduation. We are working hard to keep our campus as free from disruption as possible so that these important core functions of the university can carry forward at the highest level.
Related, I’m taking my daughter on a campus tour in three weeks. Be interesting to see if things are still going on, since I believe school will be out at that point.
Weird idea let them do what they want unless there’s riots, and they’ll go home by mid may, which is when this thread will be dead.
The question was what can schools do to stop the encampments. Not to help end the war on Gaza. I have naive tendencies and I am certainly not a natural administrator, but I would start by having some coffee with some of the students and hearing them out. What’s the worst that could happen?
Sure. I guess I assumed this was already going on in the background. OSU says this:
It is very disappointing that the April 9 filing with the Office of Civil Rights mischaracterizes what is occurring on our campus and dismisses the university’s strong, student-focused response, including outreach and meetings with student groups, additional safety measures, compliance investigations, assisting law enforcement investigations and student conduct referrals.
Within President Ted Carter’s first two weeks on campus, he met personally with students of Jewish faith and with Palestinian students to hear their concerns. Many of these students are personally affected by the terrorist attacks in October and the ongoing war in Gaza, and the president told students the university would do everything it can to protect and support them. The April 9 filing falsely claims that Ohio State has failed to respond to concerns from students, enforce our policies and respond to a January letter from StandWithUs. These claims are simply not true. Ohio State has responded quickly and decisively to allegations of discrimination and harassment; we have continued to meet with students, and we responded to StandWithUs in February.
It sounds like they have been willing to meet with and respond to students, but pretty clear they have done nothing and most likely made it clear they won’t do anything.
“We have responded quickly and decisively to student demands by reaffirming our stance of continued support of a murderous genocidal regime”, like, hm, ok? Maybe someone should protest that, doesn’t sound too bad.
Alright, I clearly need to read more because I don’t know what OSU has actually done to support the Israeli government. The one thing I’ve seen in the demands is this:
- Acknowledge the Israeli genocide of Palestinians.
which seems appropriate in a world where the university chose to publicly condemn the original Hamas attacks on Israel. But beyond that, I don’t know what the “continued support” refers to, unless it’s referring to “continued silence” about it.
If none of that is happening then I agree with you it’s administrative malpractice but I would be shocked to hear none of that going on particularly given the length of this war
At my University the cops were called on the encampments 12 hours after they were set up. The University president was in Washington DC that day genuflecting in front of congress.
I’m making a lot of assumptions but I would think the folks who would go through the effort of setting up encampments have been substantially involved in the months long dialogue places. I agree that if the administration knew nothing of the requests of the protesting students that 12hrs doesn’t seem long enough to gain that understanding
Apropos of nothing here, but I just now rewatched this scene for the first time in years and Beatty’s hand gestures are like Trump in full bore Adderall mode. It really is such an amazing and prescient movie.
When I was a kid people built encampment shanty towns (and I helped a bit) on campus to divest from South Africa, which the University of California ultimately did…supposedly…I never saw the books. Shanties were cleared out a few times in big violent police riots.
This time so far UC has been smart about not having police riots.
This seems like a reasonable form of counter-protest.
https://twitter.com/persianjewess/status/1784980389704216605?t=0sgppdXtMJceovX3qmF1pQ&s=19
Pro-Hamas encampments 
It seems fine aside from constant noise, which the opposing side is not doing, and also I hope the people who put that up aren’t talking about how George Soros paid for some tents, but it is far less intelligent and substantive. The other side, which is right behind where that is being filmed is not just showing a lot of pictures of dead Gazans - which they could be doing - but they aren’t.
Note Hend says you have to watch this. I’d say you don’t have to. The person can’t get people to talk to her so she starts crying saying it’s intimidating that people are directing her to talk to the media liaisons. Pretty funny actually.
I think you find this challenging because a couple of premises that i would disagree with.
There’s a genocide going on. False neutrality is complicity. These folks are smart enough to find a way to say that Hamas violence is bad and we definitely should not be massacring kids and putting doctors into mass graves.
Leave the encampments there. Connect them to power and provide porta potties and water. Organise open air lectures in the quads with your network of intelligent people to discuss facts and solutions and different viewpoints.
This is a moment in history where they’ve not only chose the wrong side, they’ve lied, actively encouraged violence, and gaslighted these kids from day 1.