WILLIAM BRANGHAM: As the school year nears its end, there are still many protests about Gaza on campuses nationwide.
While many are peaceful, tensions on campuses remain.
Columbia University today canceled its main graduation ceremony, saying it'll hold individual ones instead for each school.
This week, we will continue to hear a range of opinions on these protests, on free speech, and on concerns over student safety.
Today, Lisa Desjardins looks at how schools have viewed protests in the past and how they're approaching them now.
LISA DESJARDINS: William, some universities have explicitly promoted their own history with nonviolent protests in recent years.
But as colleges are grappling with the balance of free speech, civil disobedience and concerns over student safety, there's been a wave of arrest and crackdown on many campuses.
We have heard some college officials argue these measures are necessary and overdue, while protesters and some faculty say it's been too harsh in some cases.
Tyler Austin Harper wrote about this for "The Atlantic."
He's an assistant professor of environmental studies at Bates College, and joins me now.
Tyler, you are looking squarely at universities and saying, arguing that their own rhetoric is part of this.
And you wrote that -- quote -- "The same colleges that appeal to students by promoting opportunities for engagement and activism are now suspending them and they're calling the cops."
What do you mean by hypocrisy here?
TYLER AUSTIN HARPER, Bates College: Yes.
So a lot of the universities that we have seen have especially draconian measures, student protesters, either suspending them or, in some cases, calling the police, are often the same universities that like to champion their history of past protests.
So, Cornell, Columbia, Emory, for example, all like to brag about their history of radical student activism in the Vietnam War era.
Cornell actively celebrates an armed takeover of a campus building in 1969.
They did a year's worth of programming for it on the 50th anniversary.
Likewise, Columbia celebrates its student protests from 1968, which involved the takeover of a campus building that was recently taken over by protesters again.
And yet now they -- after bragging about this history, they want to crack down on contemporary protesters at this very moment, which seems to me deeply hypocritical.
LISA DESJARDINS: Another example I know you highlighted this weekend was at the University of Virginia.
Even as police were moving in on protesters, the university was holding a symposium on sort of its own massive resistance in the past.
How do you know you're not cherry-picking these specific examples from universities?
When you talk to students and faculties there, did they say that this was part of their motivation for going to campus?
TYLER AUSTIN HARPER: Yes, absolutely.
I talked to a number of current faculty, students, incoming students, and really across the board, from incoming, to current undergrads, to graduate students, at places like Cornell and Columbia.
They said, this was part of the brand.
This is part of why I came here.
One person I talked to, a faculty member, in the wake of the NYPD arrests at Columbia, actually asked his students, is this something that attracted you to this campus?
And he told me that, overwhelmingly, his students in class said, they think protest is part of Columbia's brand and they actively market it to them.
I would also point out that, at a series of recent admitted student day events, the university has been communicating with students by saying, you might see protests on campus, but you should understand this is part of our proud legacy of student activism.
So, even after the NYPD is called, Columbia is still boasting about its legacy of protest to incoming students.
So yes, this is a sentiment that I really heard across the board and that you can also see in how the university communicates.
LISA DESJARDINS: You're talking about a hypocrisy you see here, but, at the same time, we know, on some campuses, there has been evidence of real antisemitism.
On others, universities are saying they're nervous that there could be some, even if there isn't evidence.
How do you draw the line?
When should universities draw a line and actually kind of step up against protests?
TYLER AUSTIN HARPER: Yes, I think it's a complicated question that relates in part to the First Amendment.
There's definitely language being used that I find inappropriate, and then there's definitely some language being used that is plainly antisemitic.
I think it's relatively part of the fringe of these protests, rather than the center of it.
But the unfortunate reality or -- whatever your perspective is, the reality is that the First Amendment protects hateful speech.
The relevant question is to whether or not these students are -- by encamping on university grounds, if they have moved themselves out of the territory of protected speech by breaking the law.
That's a complicated question.
One thing that First Amendment experts I spoke to reiterated time and again is that where the university seem to be running afoul is, rather than targeting specific protesters who might be engaging in kinds of speech that is not protected and just removing those students, they're doing broad crackdowns on these protests.
So they're infringing on the rights of some students who are engaged in lawful speech that is protected by the First Amendment.
And these universities are curtailing their speech rights on the grounds that a smaller subset of students might be breaking the rules in some way.
LISA DESJARDINS: You seem to be saying here, universities have told students and actually have benefited from this idea that we advocate for protests, we advocate for activism, yet here they are, as you see it, repressing that kind of activism.
Conservatives for a long time have said universities have lost their way into sort of a land of liberal nonsense that's misguided.
Is this an area where someone like you on the left might agree with conservatives that universities are losing their mooring?
TYLER AUSTIN HARPER: Yes, I agree with part of what conservatives are saying.
Conservatives are saying that universities have become too political and administrations have become too political.
I think that's correct.
I think universities like the University of Chicago, which have stricter regulations around political speech from university administrators, they have handled recent events a bit better and weathered the storm better.
Where I think conservatives get things wrong is by arguing that universities are hotbeds of far left indoctrination.
And if you look at many of the universities like Princeton, Penn, Columbia, et cetera, that are at the center of these events, those are universities that overwhelmingly are sending people to big tech jobs, to finance, to consulting, et cetera.
So if these are places that are trying to indoctrinate far left Marxists, they're doing a very bad job.
But I do think conservatives are onto something with the question about the politicization at universities.
I think they're right in that limited sense.
LISA DESJARDINS: Tyler Austin Harper, it is a complicated conversation, and we thank you for joining us for it.
TYLER AUSTIN HARPER: Absolutely.
Thank you so much for having me.
