With few exceptions, college and university presidents were slow and ineffective in responding to the protests and encampments on their campuses this spring. Their passivity calls to mind the character Gottlieb Biedermann in Max Frisch’s play The Fire Raisers, who, hearing about a series of local arsons, refuses to believe that the men who manipulated their way into occupying his attic could be the perpetrators. Deceived by feelings of guilt, Biedermann is unwilling to throw the men out or believe that they are dangerous—even when they tell him exactly what they are doing. Remaining in denial to the end, he hands them the very matches they use to incinerate his home.
Too often, when faced with the fervent demands and outlandish behavior of student demonstrators, university officials allowed them to violate institutional policies, disrupt academic life, and harass Jews. When presidents finally acted, many negotiated with the protesters and capitulated to their demands. Even those who rightly called the police often failed to impose serious consequences on the disrupters. In the end, few protesters face meaningful sanctions for their extended violations of campus policies and, in many cases, the law.
Yet, the protesters and their allies complained about “authoritarian” crackdowns, betrayals of democratic values, and free-speech violations as their camps got cleared away. Their complaints can be attributed partly to ignorance; a student speaker at Harvard University’s commencement, for example, proclaimed to a cheering crowd that the university had violated students’ “right to civil disobedience,” a right she genuinely seemed to believe that they had. One poll showed that more than half of those who said they supported chanting “From the river to the sea” were unable to name the river and the sea to which the chant referred. When a young woman at New York University was asked what she wanted the university to do, she turned the question to her friend: “Why are we protesting?”
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Author: Ruth King
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