John Hood: Campus peace for everyone
RALEIGH — Now that fall term has begun for most colleges and universities, we’re about to witness one of the most predictable phenomena in modern American politics: for every raucous or violent campus protest that gets significant media attention, Democratic candidates will lose voters.
That’s not because the public is in full agreement on the Israel-Palestine issue, or economic inequality, or climate change, or other common subjects of campus activism. It’s because most voters are appalled when protestors trash public property, assault public employees, or disrupt public activities in public spaces.
They should be. While I am a conservative with my own rooting interest in elections, I hope activists heed this lesson and follow the rules. In the long run, maintaining peace on campuses is better for everyone.
On the campuses of the University of North Carolina and state community colleges, institutional safeguards for free speech have never been stronger. Not only can students express whatever views they wish, via media or events, but also the systems’ recent commitment to institutional neutrality signals to students that there is no “official” view on contemporary political issues to which one must either conform or face adverse consequences.
The freedom to speak on campus does not, of course, either guarantee you an audience or confer upon you the right to “occupy” any part of campus for any extended period of time. Erecting tent cities isn’t speech. Neither is damaging signs, or defacing buildings, or commandeering a university flagpole to replace the Stars and Stripes with the emblem of a foreign power.
At UNC-Chapel Hill, for example, students can certainly make use of public spaces such as Polk Place or The Pit. But those wishing to use them for expressive conduct — be it political or merely artistic — have no more rights than students wishing to use them for other purposes.
That’s why the authorities use a reservation process and other means of accommodating competing uses of a space. One can obtain a permit to hold a rally or protest for a specified time. Then one must vacate it so others can use the space.
Sounds pretty basic, doesn’t it? That’s why last spring’s unruly anti-Israel protests did so much damage to the Palestinian cause — and to the misguided professors and politicos who tried to defend them. Lee Roberts, then serving as interim chancellor and now fully installed in the job, handled the protestors’ assault on the rule of law with calm assurance. He passed the test. His critics flunked it.
The contrast with how prior leaders managed illegal protests couldn’t be clearer. Remember when a mob of activists tore down the Silent Sam statue in 2018? As I wrote at the time, there was a good argument for removing the statue to some other location, on campus or elsewhere. But having a good argument isn’t the same thing as having a right to act. The North Carolina General Assembly had enacted a law prohibiting the removal of such monuments.
Rather than follow the rules and seek to change the law, the mob took the law into their own hands — and suffered no serious penalties for doing so. The former chancellor refused to reinstall it. This craven behavior planted the seeds of future illegality.
Will vandalism and violence return to campuses this fall? There are reasons for concern. On the first day of classes at Cornell University, protestors smashed the doors of its administration building and scrawled “Israel bombs, Cornell pays” on the walls. At Rutgers, pro-Hamas demonstrators disrupted student orientation. At George Washington University, protestors defaced a statue of the former president and attempted to bully their way back onto the university yard where they’d erected an “encampment” last semester. Here’s hoping their counterparts in North Carolina do nothing of the sort — and that if angry protestors break the law, university leaders respond with swift, firm punishment.
In other words: Think what you want, say what you want, but keep your hands to yourselves.
John Hood is a John Locke Foundation board member. His latest books, Mountain Folk and Forest Folk, combine epic fantasy with early American history (FolkloreCycle.com).
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