How smart campuses are preparing for another wave of Gaza protests

As a new school year approaches, colleges need to avoid their past mistakes, such as maintaining vague and selectively enforced campus speech rules, or meeting disorderly protests with a response that is either insufficient or heavy-handed.

Public universities can and should follow the constitutional framework the Supreme Court has set down: They may not police content, unless it is threatening or harassing, but they may regulate protests’ time, place and manner to preserve public order. Over the decades, this framework has proved capable of balancing the right to free speech and the imperative of public order, and private universities, though not bound by it, are well advised to embrace it.

Fortunately, this appears to be the spirit in which many university officials are now acting.

Some, such as the University of California and the California State University systems, the University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt University, and the University of Denver, are explicitly prohibiting tent encampments such as those that protesters erected across the country in the spring. Indiana University and the University of South Florida are requiring prior approval of temporary structures. Vanderbilt is also prohibiting demonstrations that would require participants to gather or sleep overnight. Encampments pose safety, health and sanitation issues, and they prevent other students from using campus grounds for extended periods.

Indiana University is banning any protests within 25 feet of building entrances and prohibiting demonstrators from blocking access to facilities such as driveways.

Some are adopting time limitations: Vanderbilt says temporary displays and structures will only be allowed between 8 a.m. and 7 p.m. or sundown, whichever is earlier, and only for three consecutive days. The University of South Florida is banning all protests after 5 p.m. and during the final two weeks of each semester.

Others are requiring demonstrators to seek advance approval for the use of bullhorns or other sound equipment and limiting the hours during which they can be used.

Universities should prohibit uninvited or unauthorized outsiders from joining campus protests. The University of California’s new rule prohibiting demonstrators from wearing masks and disguises, and requiring all protest participants to reveal their identities when asked by school authorities, will help keep out people who aren’t part of the university community.

A few of the new restrictions, such as requiring preapproval of signs and banners, risk impeding free expression. Colleges should not prohibit expression that is merely offensive, rather than authentically threatening or harassing.

Whatever the rules, universities must apply them evenhandedly. Codes of conduct that proscribe overtly racist or sexist harassment should be just as strictly enforced for antisemitism and Islamophobia. The Education Department found in June that the University of Michigan and City University of New York did not fulfill their Title VI commitments to adequately address complaints of antisemitic and anti-Palestinian harassment. Michigan agreed to implement new training policies and to be monitored by the department’s Office of Civil Rights through the end of the 2026 academic year.

In some incidents this spring, police were called to break up pro-Palestinian protests — sometimes too forcibly — and more than 3,000 students (and other non-students) were arrested. In most cases, charges were dropped. That’s a reasonable call by prosecutors. But violence or property destruction, such as that which attended the takeover of Hamilton Hall at Columbia, deserve criminal sanction; suspension or expulsion is appropriate for serious violations of university rules.

Columbia is considering adding new officers to its campus security force, with the authority to make physical contact with students and arrest people when needed. Giving more power to campus police forces accustomed to dealing with students would give administrators an alternative to calling in municipal or state police.

Protest organizers and demonstrators also need to police their own ranks. Those who advocated killing or banishing “Zionists,” or who praised the Hamas terrorist attacks, might have represented only a small minority. But protesters need to tell them that they and their hateful views are unwelcome. The purpose of demonstrations should be to draw attention to a cause and persuade others. Hate and violent rhetoric repel people, no matter how worthy the cause — in this case, ending Palestinian suffering and instituting a cease-fire.

Yet political passions can override reason, especially among young people. So university administrators must provide clear, carefully designed structure encouraging vibrant debate — and discouraging dangerous disruption.