Fear and free speech collide on America's campuses as Israel-Hamas war rages
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war, schools across America have been grappling with two great, related challenges: how to keep students safe and prevent identity-based intimidation and violence, and how to maintain the tradition of open scholarship and activism on campus.
Each of these issues is complicated in its own right, and they have become fiendishly difficult when balanced against each other. Tempers are rising and schools seem overwhelmed, as US campuses are consumed with protest melees, death threats, doxxing, officials banning protest groups, and calls to remove professors for their writings.
Incidents have taken place across the country.
Late last month, a short clip went viral on social media, showing a group of Jewish students in yarmulkes and tzitzit appearing to be locked inside the library of Cooper Union college in New York, as demonstrators chanted, “Free Palestine!” and banged on the doors.
“Are we locked in?” one of the students asks in the video. Some reportedly began to cry in fear.
“I felt hated for my Jewish identity,” student Taylor Roslyn Lent said of the experience. “There’s definitely a big difference between a pro-Palestine-anti-Israel rally, and an anti-Jewish rally. And the more the day went on, the more it felt like an anti-Jewish rally.”
The encounter began earlier that day as pro-Israel students joined a counter-protest against the planned pro-Palestine demonstration, then broke off and headed for the library. Some of the pro-Palestine demonstrators continued chanting and eventually headed in the same direction. School officials decided to close the library doors. Cooper Union told The Independent the doors were not locked, and that security footage shows “people entering and exiting the library during the 20 minutes that the doors were closed.”
Police officers were on campus for the demonstration at the request of school officials, and were present in the library with students. The NYPD said it did not
