College campuses are reopening after the summer break. Will officials do a better job of responding to radical student protests than they did back in the spring?
In today’s Martin Center article, Graham Hillard offers his thoughts on that question.
For one thing, we can’t count on the faculty to act responsibly. Hillard writes:
As Campus Watch’s A.J. Caschetta wrote for the Martin Center in November, many of today’s tenured faculty members are yesterday’s campus radicals. Consequently, few object when their colleagues vote to boycott Israel or host brazenly antisemitic events. In an ideal world, professors would help students explore the moral and geopolitical questions raised by the ongoing war—or at least get kids back in the classroom by threatening unexcused absences and “F’s.” That such a move feels laughably unrealistic tells us much about the current state of the professoriate. Today’s instructors seem as likely to be arrested alongside their charges as they are to correct students’ ignorance and misapprehensions.
Also, administrators should have figured out that they can do the right thing, which is to act strongly against the radicals. Hillard continues:
Already, as I write these words, universities are signaling that they will not tolerate a reprise of last spring’s lawlessness. As the Wall Street Journal reported earlier this month, “The University of Denver is banning protest tents [and] Indiana University wants people to stop writing on the walls or holding late-night rallies.” Elsewhere, Harvard is requiring students to seek advance approval to use bullhorns, and the University of California System has forbidden student encampments and masks that veil protesters’ identities.
Perhaps we can get back to the status quo ante on college campuses, bad as that was.