Alex Hanna, Ph.D.’s Post

https://lnkd.in/e_Zywt6e "I think it’s crucial to remember that protest movements, including student-led protests, are never a monolith. Some media coverage has portrayed these protests as threatening campus communities or amplifying antisemitism, sometimes even isolating sickening statements from individuals and using broad strokes to paint all protesters in the same light. Yet the students participating in these protests offer a different picture: Students in many encampments have agreed to abide by community guidelines — including upholding shared values of love and justice by honoring the privacy, diversity, safety, and boundaries of fellow protestors — and have denounced individuals making inflammatory remarks. Within these encampments, some protesters have shared communion and celebrated Passover. Here in Princeton, the encampment has featured faculty teach-ins on topics such as the history of Palestine, Israel, and the Arab-Israeli conflict; Palestinian scholasticide; the ecological impacts of the assault on Gaza; and racial surveillance technologies. A liberation library offers books on topics like racial justice and Middle East politics, while students — including Muslims, Jews, Christians, and those of other faith traditions — lead interfaith prayer and spiritual practices. I also think it’s important to recognize that student protests, including demands for financial transparency and divestment, are not new — and have often been successful at sparking change. Starting in the late ’60s, student activists played a key role in getting their universities to divest from companies benefitting South African apartheid; more recently, student activists have been instrumental in getting about 250 U.S. educational institutions to divest from fossil fuels, with similar divestment movements urging universities to divest from the prison industrial complex and the gun industry..."   

The strategy of giving ultimatums to organized protest movements typically leads to unintentional consequences that impact the reputation of the university and the safety of the protestors. During the nine day Occupy Eugene encampment at the University of Oregon, I strongly advocated for a strategy that embraced the unique culture of the university. That culture included a historical recognition of civil disobedience as a means of expressing differing perspectives. We collectively engaged the movement by affording them a safe haven to peacefully conduct their civil discourse. This strategy included offering the encampment resources such as lighting, sanitation, security and water while allowing community support to occur. Through these actions, we successfully negotiated a relocation of the large encampment to an offsite location effectively ending the event. During the campus occupation we experienced cooperation from the movement, minimal criminal activity and nominal pushback from the greater community. These are incredibly difficult events to manage for university administrators. Being creative, strategic and thoughtful will lead to more productive outcomes that reinforce the value of the educational experience. I am hopeful during these tense times, cooler heads will prevail.

With the recent surge in student protests on campuses nationwide, universities are struggling to separate First Amendment-protected speech from illegal conduct. To clarify which forms of speech and conduct are protected and which are not, universities must adopt and consistently enforce policies grounded in free speech principles. Here’s where they can start:

This is wrong! Students have previously engaged in vigorous protests on Princeton's campus that did not conform to convenient time and place policies and were directly instrumental to change on campus for justice. These peaceful protesters calling attention to genocide were intimidated before they even started their encampment. These encampments are a move to maintain solidarity in tactics. It looks like administrators are likewise maintaining solidarity in their disproportionately aggressive tactics that do not protect students and campus communities. How ridiculous to say that they could block movement when there are so many ways to move around campus. How ridiculous to say they could intimidate when there have been much more intimidating activities, speakers, and postures at the University. How ridiculous to suggest non-community participation at a school in a small town where almost every student lives (in all sense of the word, not just resides) on campus. The most intrusive, consistent outside presence on campus when I was a student was always the never-ending caravans of tourists (that didn't even include prospective students). More ridiculous is using police-state tactics to leverage disproportionate punishment on peaceful protesters while protecting all sorts of students actually doing harm (sexual assault among other things). This institution allows abusers to graduate without tainting their academic or legal records but is willing to put in danger the futures of justice-oriented students. For the nth time, protesting genocide, calling for divestment from war machines, and pointing out an apartheid colonial project is not antisemitism. How dare people taint the principled and moral stance that Jewish students have been taking around the country and globe (including at Princeton when I was an undergrad) to support Palestinians. When I was an undergrad, I spent time eating and attending events at the Center for Jewish Life. I attended seder dinners and shared space with a diversity of people there who wanted to share their cultural richness through inclusivity. I urge everyone, especially Jewish people who have been taught to conflate their beautiful traditions and freedom dreams with the state of Israel, to really search their hearts. The movement for Palestine is multiracial, multiethinic, cross-class, multi-religious background, multilingual, multi-gender and sexual orientation. Why? because what is happening in Palestine tugs at the heartstrings of our humanity and reminds us of the multiple oppressions we face globally for the greed, power, selfishness, and insecurity of the few. What separates Princeton from our contemporaries is that we more likely know each other. Will you speak out? To faculty and admin here who know me/ are my contacts, who do you serve? What will you do? https://lnkd.in/e9p9__FQ

According to this (and many other articles of late), colleges and universities are preparing for continued student protests in fall 2024 by evaluating, revising, or creating safety infrastructure, protest policies, and opportunities for civic education and dialogue. This makes a lot of sense. What I haven't seen in the higher education press is information about preparing for educational continuity in the event that an institution is forced to close and shift to remote teaching and learning for a brief period of time. The Keep on Teaching Toolkit (coming soon) from SchehrStrategies LLC is aimed to help colleges/universities establish a common understanding in their learning communities of the expectations for educational continuity during such disruptions and equip faculty with the guidance and knowledge they need to adapt quickly.

File this under: Where we were is always relevant to where we are — and where we’re going. Especially with the recent campus protests. When I launched The Elective in 2020, I included in the initial batch of stories a few pieces pulled from the old College Board Review magazine. Discovering that publication in the archives is one of the top experiences of my time there. The mag informed so much of my thinking about what The Elective could be and who it was for. Anyway, one of the Review pieces I republished was from the Summer 1966 issues, "What’s Really Behind Our Students’ Unrest?" At the time, there were all sorts of protests roiling the culture. As I wrote in the intro, "Climate strikes. Women’s marches. Black Lives Matter rallies. Campus protests against white nationalism. We’re in the midst of one of the most active moments of youth activism in generations." Little did I know… What I loved about the piece was not only how it contextualized what was essentially the beginning of the youth movement that climaxed in 1968, but how its author, Irwin A. Berg, Louisiana State University dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, took the students and their concerns seriously. Back then that was a rarity. It’s a rarity still. It’s odd to say that an article adapted from a seminar and published nearly 60 years ago has value for making sense of the macro currents of the current student movement. But history is funny like that. We ignore it at our peril. I’ve been thinking a lot about how I would handle the recent campus protests if I were still running The Elective. It’s a bummer of an exercise, to be honest. But if I can’t create anything new, at least I can point people to something good I did, almost by accident, that offers something valuable to the discourse.

In a new essay, Archon Fung examines the wave of protests sweeping American colleges and universities and ponders how administrators should respond to acts of civil disobedience on campus. Fung, a scholar of deliberative democracy, examines how universities “process these deep substantive disagreements on campuses — how we should handle this “difficult conversation.’” Specifically, Fung proposes a framework for examining the impact of campus protest, and examines the question of when the police should become involved. “Dialogue, learning, and debate in the pursuit of truth and wisdom especially in the face of deep and painful disagreement are among the core values of a university. Flash-bang grenades and riot shields are the antithesis of those values.” Check out more of his thoughts here ⤵️ https://lnkd.in/eQ6Q-HWW

As the University of Michigan regents consider scaling back DEI efforts despite vocal protests, this article highlights the growing tension between institutional priorities and public pressures. How can universities navigate these debates while staying true to their mission of fostering inclusion and equity? How can universities demonstrate courage in the face of political targeting? Our commitment to what's equitable must be unwavering, despite political attacks, so here are two quick broad suggestions to consider: 1. Integrate DEI principals into core goals: Universities can align DEI efforts with broader institutional objectives like academic excellence, innovation, and workforce readiness, making inclusion a shared priority rather than a standalone initiative. This only works if leadership is attuned to best practices and interested in having real conversations. It doesn't if leaders are in agreement with the anti-DEI political narrative. 2. Build generative systems: Focus on creating adaptable and inclusive structures that engage all stakeholders—students, faculty, and the community—outside of traditional methods, ensuring DEI benefits everyone and remains resilient to external pressures. Michigan has made such an attempt with its expansion of need-based aid programs, as articulated in the article. Again, inclusive and culturally proficient leadership is necessary for such principal integration and generative systems to have equitable impact. It starts at the top...and funding certainly helps. #DEI #HigherEducation #InclusiveLeadership

This is wrong! Students have previously engaged in vigorous protests on Princeton's campus that did not conform to convenient time and place policies and were directly instrumental to change on campus for justice. These peaceful protesters calling attention to genocide were intimidated before they even started their encampment. These encampments are a move to maintain solidarity in tactics. It looks like administrators are likewise maintaining solidarity in their disproportionately aggressive tactics that do not protect students and campus communities. How ridiculous to say that they could block movement when there are so many ways to move around campus. How ridiculous to say they could intimidate when there have been much more intimidating activities, speakers, and postures at the University. How ridiculous to suggest non-community participation at a school in a small town where almost every student lives (in all sense of the word, not just resides) on campus. The most intrusive, consistent outside presence on campus when I was a student was always the never-ending caravans of tourists (that didn't even include prospective students). More ridiculous is using police-state tactics to leverage disproportionate punishment on peaceful protesters while protecting all sorts of students actually doing harm (sexual assault among other things). This institution allows abusers to graduate without tainting their academic or legal records but is willing to put in danger the futures of justice-oriented students. For the nth time, protesting genocide, calling for divestment from war machines, and pointing out an apartheid colonial project is not antisemitism. How dare people taint the principled and moral stance that Jewish students have been taking around the country and globe (including at Princeton when I was an undergrad) to support Palestinians. When I was an undergrad, I spent time eating and attending events at the Center for Jewish Life. I attended seder dinners and shared space with a diversity of people there who wanted to share their cultural richness through inclusivity. I urge everyone, especially Jewish people who have been taught to conflate their beautiful traditions and freedom dreams with the state of Israel, to really search their hearts. The movement for Palestine is multiracial, multiethinic, cross-class, multi-religious background, multilingual, multi-gender and sexual orientation. Why? because what is happening in Palestine tugs at the heartstrings of our humanity and reminds us of the multiple oppressions we face globally for the greed, power, selfishness, and insecurity of the few. What separates Princeton from our contemporaries is that we more likely know each other. Will you speak out? To faculty and admin here who know me/ are my contacts, who do you serve? What will you do? #princeton https://lnkd.in/e9p9__FQ