Every once in awhile you find a university president who shows some fortitude, who speaks about the values that our universities used to promote. He doesn't pussy-foot around:
Northwestern firmly supports vigorous debate and the free expression of ideas — abiding principles that are fundamental for our University. We encourage members of our community to find meaningful ways to get involved and advocate for causes they believe in — and to do so safely and peacefully. The University protects the right to protest, but we do not condone breaking the law.
What started as peaceful protests have recently grown into expressions that have been anything but peaceful or productive. Crowds blocked the streets of downtown Evanston and nearby residential areas, disrupting businesses and local families, defacing property and violating laws and University standards. Some of the instigators appear not to be Northwestern students at all, but rather outside activists.
While the protesters claim that they are just trying to get our attention, that is simply not true. Several administrators — including our Provost, Deans, Interim Chief Diversity Officer and Vice Presidents for Research and Student Affairs — have held numerous discussions with concerned students, faculty and staff, and I am participating in a community dialogue tomorrow evening that was scheduled weeks ago.
Events in recent days seem to indicate an intent by organizers to escalate matters, and to provoke NUPD into retaliation.
I condemn, in the strongest possible terms, the overstepping of the protesters. They have no right to menace members of our academic and surrounding communities. When students and other participants are vandalizing property, lighting fires and spray-painting phrases such as “kill the pigs,” we have moved well past legitimate forms of free speech.
I've long disagreed with the "emanations and penumbras" that equate actions to "symbolic" speech. Vandalism isn't speech, and good on Morton Shapiro for saying as much.
During the 60s campus demonstrations, sit-ins and other disruptions, I seem to remember hearing about an interview with a college president - can’t remember the college - who said that those involved in the sit-in were not students but former students. Their IDs had been confiscated, they were expelled and told to vacate campus immediately. Maybe the story was apocryphal but I remember thinking - and still think - that his solution of the problem was terrific. Arrests for “protests” were, and probably still are, unlikely to affect kids’ intended career prospects but being expelled is a real-world break, with actual consequences. At the very least, kids would have to go through the college-application process again and their academic records and behaviors might be less than appealing to other colleges.
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