The Price of Silence: Navigating Free Speech in Academia

 "The Price of Silence: Navigating Free Speech in Modern Academia

 [00:00:00] We're here with the message for undergraduates from Dean Lewis and graduate students from Dean Cooley. If you leave tonight by 11 30 taking your tent and your belongings with you, Yale College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences will not discipline you for your actions yesterday and today.

You need to leave by 11 30 taking your things with you. If you stay past 11 30 you may be subject to discipline. You're welcome to come back in the morning without your tent to resume your protest, but you need to be gone by 11 30 p. m. Tonight

If you don't want to be an American idiot as Green Day sings in their popular song of the same name, then go to college! 30, 000 a year. That's what it costs me roughly. I know it's much more expensive now, but it cost me roughly that per year to attend the great big old [00:01:00] football loving liberal arts university in South Bend, Indiana, known as the University of Notre Dame.

 At Notre Dame, I learned a great deal of things, including, uh, world history, humanity, American history, sociology, foreign languages, politics, theology, philosophy, international relations.

I learned about Sub Saharan Africa. I even learned Arabic. I learned a lot in college. I learned a lot in law school.

And one of the things I learned is that the brain, the mind, is powerful. And that if you don't use it, you will lose it. But I'm wondering now, a lot more of our youth are using their brains for good. And what they're doing is creating an atmosphere where political dissent is popular on college campuses.

But universities are clamping down, and I'm wondering is the era of political dissent on college [00:02:00] campuses dying? I've got some explaining to do. Let's get into it.

 Hey, everybody. Welcome back. Hey, for another episode of Ayanna Explains It All, the podcast that bridges the gap between current events and human behavior. I am your host, Ayanna Fakir, the black Muslim lady lawyer living in the suburbs of Northeast Ohio. And once again, tending to my garden. It's spring It's growing season.

Everything is greening up and I'm loving it. I chopped down some trees today. [00:03:00] Had a fantastic time. I've never used a pole saw and there I was in my backyard, mostly because the city said, if I don't chop down these trees, they're going to find me. But, uh, Ayana, Ayana Explains It All is the podcast that's available on multiple streaming platforms, including.

Spotify, which is the flagship Apple podcast, I heart radio and a host of others, including YouTube. If you go to the show's website, which I encourage you to do, it's www. ayanaexplainsitall. com. That's A Y A N A explains it all. com. You will find links to all of the streaming sites as well as full episodes, all of the episodes, in fact, including transcripts of the episodes.

And descriptions and show notes and everything. I even put all of the, um, the references that I use in each episode. I always say who I'm quoting or what source I'm citing in the episode, but I [00:04:00] also list that in the, in the episode description. So you can find that and reference that if you ever want to go look up something that I talked about, or if you want to verify that I'm telling the truth.

But also I want you to share this podcast with a friend or family member or someone who you think could benefit from listening to my beautiful voice. Give it to them straight. That's what I do here. I give it to you straight. Hey man, I don't hold back. I even cuss a little, which if that's not your thing, I understand, but please still keep the podcast on so I can get my listenership up.

I love everyone who listens to my podcast. I really appreciate it. I get good feedback from listeners and I would love to have more feedback. I would love to have more ratings and reviews. You can go to the website and do that or do that also at your favorite streaming site. What else? Oh, [00:05:00] Ramadan is over.

The Eid has happened. It's come and gone. I put on a pretty dress and some converse and I did, you know, the thing, the holiday thing. And now I'm back, back, back, back, with no excuses for why I can't do this every week, except that I'm tired. Not only that. Listen, I get the writer's block. Okay. I have to write.

I write and produce and edit every single one of these episodes by myself. And sometimes I get that writer's block. I get, I get plugged up and I need some really good inspiration. Like this week's topic really got me going. And so I was just writing, writing, writing, writing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, typing, and I came up with a good episode today that I Think you all are going to love that.

I hope you all are going to love that. I hope you're really going to get into and respond well to. I am recording this on Sunday, April 21st, 2024. Let's get into it. I talked about in [00:06:00] the intro. I paid 30, 000 a year to go to college to become a freaking liberal, liberal leaning, political, liberal, political.

Feminist, Muslim, radical. No, I'm not a radical. I'm definitely not a radical, but I tell you what, I have some strong opinions about a lot of things and people are often surprised by what I have to say, but this is diversity. People are diverse. Everyone is different. And in fact, I encourage people to be different.

Be different, think for yourself, figure things out for yourself, figure, figure out where you fit in to the world, figure out what you, uh, what you want the world to look like. A lot of people will say, well, based on my religious beliefs, listen, not everyone believes with you, what you believe. I'm Muslim and I, I, I, know this very well that not everyone is Muslim and not everyone believes as I believe.

And so [00:07:00] not everyone is going to want to live by the rules that I live by. And I certainly wouldn't want them to be who you are, do who you do, what you are, you know, do whatever, live your life, have a good time in the meantime. In the meantime, before you get out into the world, I'm speaking to you, college kids, you're going to encounter a lot of different opinions at school.

And the one thing I know about college is that you're going to enter as one person and leave as a completely different person. But my experience is that I could be, after I graduated, I could be whomever or do whatever I wanted. And college opened my eyes to many things as it did for my roommates and friends.

And I often saw people enter college with small minds and narrow views, including myself. And leave with opened eyes and broadened horizons, [00:08:00] brighter energy and a lust for the unknown. We grew. We did not shrink. We grew. Our chests and our brains expanded and our eyes brightened. And as we are often told, go forth and be great.

And that is what we did. We are not given all of this knowledge and understanding in college with the expectation that we will hide it from the world. Completely the opposite. We are in fact encouraged to traverse the many avenues of earth and apply what we've learned to interactions with others, to supporting communities and contributing to the intellectual growth of a society.

What I paid for, what my scholarships, loans, and grants help pay for the lodging, the boarding, the activities, the education. I have been rewarded with a deeper understanding of humanity, , I, I never expected to be disappointed in what's happening now in college campuses [00:09:00] across the United States.

You know, when the Vietnam War and conscription came to the U. S., that's the draft, protests erupted all over the country. All over the country. Nobody wanted to be forced to go to war. People burned their draft cards. They fled the country or even reluctantly shipped out and fought, lived or died and came home different.

But what happened was something that had started in the 1950s and 60s with protests against racism and for civil rights in the U S. A lot of young people joined in these protests because again, the, the draft was 18 years old and older. So these were people who were just graduating high school, probably still in high school and they had been drafted.

And, but for the civil rights fights, there were students. All over the country, young, like little kids [00:10:00] participating in the marches, helping to register people to vote, knocking on doors, going, you know, going to the sit ins, and going to the protests, and there were so many young people that, you know, the older ones, the older people were concerned about the safety of children, but the kids are the ones who were leading these things for the most part, and it was amazing to see.

Children, students, young people, teenagers, young adults, they have been the movement. They've been the movement against fascism, against tyranny, against ruthless bloodshed, against political violence, against wars and forced service, against denying the right to live as we please, vote as we please, love as we please, marry as we please, live where and how we please, for enforcing laws, for diver for divesting from problematic institutions, tearing down barriers and ending [00:11:00] apartheid.

 Remember that it was pressure from the world, but also protests, many led by young people to finally pressure the white majority to end apartheid in South Africa.

A lot of these movements that you saw, the end of, uh, when the Berlin Wall was torn down, that was young people out there doing that, calling for the end of things.

That was young people fighting and raising their voices to say, no more, no more East Berlin and West Berlin. No more. They are the reason why, they're the reason why the United States finally, finally passed a Civil Rights Act, a meaningful Civil Rights Act that guaranteed Blacks the right to vote, that finally guaranteed Blacks in America the right to vote.

 Student protests are [00:12:00] often where we see young people analyzing what's going on in the world. They hardly see that these incidents are isolated and that they won't happen in the future when they have been ongoing for decades, or when they continue to gather, as they say, when the stone gathers moss as it continues to roll downhill, they see that this is going to continue to happen if something is not done about it immediately.

And protests are how you put pressure on officials. to do something immediately. But because these are student voices and not government officials, people are apt to not listening to them. We need to listen to the young people. They're smart. They know what they're doing. They're looking at this information, they're analyzing it, and they're coming up with solutions, solutions that perhaps others of us have not thought of, [00:13:00] solutions to problems

that have been plaguing the world for decades, for hundreds of years. These young minds are coming up with answers, and we need to listen to them. You cannot expect the news of genocide and war and the killing of babies and children and men and women and seeing the pictures of rubble and bombed hospitals to come across the eyes of people and not expect that they would be affected when their minds have been opened by attending colleges.

Their minds are ripe and they're open and they're seeing this information and they're going, whoa, whoa. What is happening? We need to do something about this now. And this is what we're seeing in several notable universities in the U. S., Columbia, Yale, UNC, Purdue, Although [00:14:00] these protests are not violent, they have been disruptive to the status quo. The notion of tidy and polite interactions that don't offend any sensibilities is being undone.

The sweater is coming undone. What's that song from Weezer? So you want to destroy my sweater. Pull this thread as I walk away. That's what's happening. The thread is being pulled and the sweater is falling apart. But the presence of those opposed to for what's happening. In Gaza, people are protesting against the genocide in Gaza and they're raising their voices all over the United States. It's not just happening on college campuses, although that has been the focus lately. It's what's happening on college campuses. It's been. in the streets. It's been on bridges. It's been, like, I saw a story about a protest that, um, blocked part [00:15:00] of a highway so that people were having, they were struggling to get to the airport to catch their flights.

People are upset that their lives are being disrupted by protest when they need to be upset that their tax dollars are going to fund genocide. That's upsetting.

But these students who have spent semesters learning as I did, how ugliness began, how wars began, how genocide began and then learning how to undo it, how to prevent it, how to fight it, why you should fight it. They're using their knowledge to fight what they were told is wrong. Apartheid, genocide, violent occupation, ethnocentric violence.

I learned all about the war in Yugoslavia in college. Like I wrote a whole paper on it and I didn't just write the paper. I [00:16:00] had to look. I looked at photographs of bodies that had been obliterated by bombs. It was violent. It was so violent. It's beyond comprehension.

And that's what's happening in Gaza. And I learned about that in college.

 But these kids, they are fighting with their voices. They are using their voices. Now these protests on these campuses in the U S from what I have seen, all of the media coverage I have seen and I've watched a lot, they have not been violent, not even a little violent at all.

They have been peaceful, but because they have been in places where the university doesn't think they should be and they didn't get pre approval. They're considered disruptive, but these kids, these young adults, they are fighting with their voices and excuse me if I call them kids because I'm, I'm 45. I have a son in college, [00:17:00] but he's, you know, young adults, they're young adults, but they're fighting with their voices and their voices do not quiver.

Their hearts do not waver and the more dots they connect from the beginning of the problem to the current players, the louder their voices get. You see, and it's the tone and the decibel that is not appreciated on these college campuses. But we teach young people about history, humanity, events that shaped the world, how to prevent the ugliness and troubles that plagued us in the past and why they were wrong.

And we teach them how to be better humans. And then after they've developed those sensibilities, they want to go out and save the world. They do. I know I did. I did. whether through technology or teaching or medicine or science or legislation, they want to go and save the world. So telling them to stop telling them, no, telling them, it's not the right time, [00:18:00] not the right place, not the right time, not the right place, not the right time.

Have you guys seen this story about, Asna Tabassum from USC. She was selected as their valedictorian for this graduating class in 2024. And, you know, she's written her speech. She's all ready to go. She says, you know, she said later that she was filled with pride.

To be able to represent her university, but as a Muslim woman, to be a Muslim woman, valedictorian and standing up there and delivering this important speech. Ah, she was filled with so much esteem and pride and the university canceled her speech. They canceled it and they cited security. I'm doing air quotes security concerns, but they never told her what those concerns were.

They were never specific. They just said security concerns, online threats, [00:19:00] whatever the case may be. But it's probably pressure from alumni and donors to not have this Muslim woman give a speech because she is someone who has been vocal against the genocide in Gaza. That's it. She's someone who. is a human being showing her humanity for other people who are suffering and that bothers.

That bothers the majority, because y y you know, if you're anti genocide in Gaza, you're anti semitic. Apparently. Apparently. Which is a bunch of bullshit. It's bullshit. But that's how it's seen by many. And so because she has been anti genocide, and by the way, she took a class at USC about preventing genocide, dealing with genocide.

So it [00:20:00] would make sense that she would be anti genocide. But of course, people are saying, well, this is not a genocide. It's just, it's a conflict. It's a war. Israel has the right to defend itself. And I've gone on and on about this in, in earlier episodes of the show, go back and check them out about why people can go to fucking hell, go to hell, go to hell, go to hell, straight to hell with gasoline draws on honestly.

I'm not playing these mind games. I don't play mind games. I can see with my eyes and I can read and I've heard stories, dozens and dozens and dozens, but I've been looking at this shit for decades. This has been going on since before the 1940s when Israel was fine, was recognized by the United States as a state.

It was going on long before that, the persecution of Palestinians. And it [00:21:00] continued and it just got uglier and uglier and uglier and uglier. And read, read a book about this because a lot of people are saying, Oh, it's just so hard to understand. And it's the conflict and it's, it's bigger than me and it's been going on for so long.

And I just don't understand. Read a book, read the hundred years war in Palestine, read that book, listen to it, read it. It explains in great detail how this came to be, how this happened. In fact, it goes through, um, 2017. So it doesn't touch on what's happening now, obviously, but it gives you all of the history, all of the players, all of the history, and it doesn't let anyone off the hook.

The 100 years war in Palestine, it doesn't let anyone off the hook, which I love because a lot of people have made mistakes and a lot of people have [00:22:00] made missteps and a lot of people have done some greedy, stupid shit on both sides. But, but one side wants to live in peace and be alive. And one side is saying, no, Because we want what you have.

We want you to leave. I have seen these videos. I have seen these videos where Israelis have flat out said, we want the Arabs gone. We want the Arabs gone. We want them dead. We want them gone. We want them out of Gaza. We want to graze these lands. We want to build houses, beachfront property on these lands.

So don't tell me that I'm making things up. Don't tell me that I'm being delusional. I am not. I have heard it from their mouths. But I have heard troubling things on both sides. And if I get, I don't even want to talk about what I heard on this, um, tick tock live last night. It's so disgusting, but. People are suffering, [00:23:00] and sometimes that suffering, uh, takes over and makes you prone to ideas, extreme ideas.

And I'm seeing extremism on the side of people who are anti genocide. And I don't like it. I don't like it. But I can't tell people who are hurt, who are in pain, who are suffering. They're seeing their people suffering every day. How to feel. Anyway, we raise children with compassion and mercy for others, for themselves.

And when they raise their voices to help others using that same compassion, mercy and empathy through protests, boycotts, and then we ridicule them for doing it. We punish them. We persecute them for it. What good is this education that we've given them? What good is this rearing that we've given them?

 What students are protesting on campuses [00:24:00] across the U. S. and what people are protesting against in cities across the U. S. is an end to the genocide. Not just a ceasefire, but an end to the genocide and a divesting. A divesting from Israel, a divesting of corporations, divesting entities, divesting colleges, divesting universities, divest the U S government and politicians divest from Israel.

Withdraw your support. Withdraw your money. Stop sending our tax dollars to fund these weapons that are only being used to kill people. They're being used to kill. They're not being stored somewhere. No, they're being used to kill people and people are fed up. They're fed up. And Angela Davis, the U.

1. poet, author, and activist said in her book, Freedom is a Constant Struggle, a book that I love, absolutely love, [00:25:00] and I recommend to everyone, she said, I think it is entirely appropriate for people in the Arab world to demand that those of us in the West prevent our governments from bolstering repressive regimes, and especially Israel.

The so called war on terror has done it. Inestimable, inestimable damage to the world, including the intensification of anti Muslim racism in the United States, Europe, and Australia. As progressives in the global north, we certainly have not acknowledged our major responsibilities in the continuation of military and ideological attacks on people in the Arab world.

And I, I personally feel now that we are beginning to see this. We're beginning to see the acknowledgement from many people whose eyes were [00:26:00] closed before. the responsibility of the United States in attacks on people in the Arab world. We're seeing it. People are opening their eyes. People are opening their eyes to this travesty, to this inhumanity.

People are seeing how the United States has played a large role in sustaining the Israeli government and the Israeli military and providing weapons to the for countries to destroy Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, Palestine. We're seeing how the, how the role that the United States plays in this. And we are angry.

We are angry. There are a lot of people who are angry, especially young people. But as Angela Davis says in her book, freedom is a constant [00:27:00] struggle. Freedom is a constant struggle. But here at home, where we live in a constitutional democracy, we are finding that freedom is a constant struggle because it's inherently dynamic and subject to various forces that seek to limit or control it, which makes the irony of it incredible.

We are in a constitutional, we're in a constitutional democracy, but we're seeing forces. try to limit or control our freedom. Throughout history, in fact, we've seen different groups vying for power and control that leads to conflicts over freedom, whether it's between governments and citizens, employers and workers, or majority and minority groups.

The struggle for freedom often involves challenging existing power structures, which is what these young adults are doing on their campus. College campuses, they are [00:28:00] challenging existing power structures, but societies evolve over time, right? So it's going to take time, but what constitutes freedom over time can change with the societies with these societal changes and new social movements emerge to challenge outdated norms and advocate for expanded rights and liberties.

And so people will say, well, they weren't doing this 20 years ago. Yeah, because. 20 years ago, you didn't have the social media outlets that could show you. You didn't have the YouTube and the tick tock and all of that to show you daily, hourly, minute by minute.

What is happening in these countries when these wars and bombings happen?

 Seeing the suffering sometimes is what really pushes people to get involved and to help and to put pressure on the appropriate authorities to do something about it, to end it.

[00:29:00] So, as I said, new social movements emerge to challenge outdated norms and advocate for expanded rights and liberties. And this ongoing process of societal change means that the definition and scope of freedom are always in flux. In various threats such as authoritarianism, censorship, as we're seeing, discrimination, and economic inequality.

Inequality continually arise and must be confronted to safeguard freedoms such as freedom of speech. These threats can come from within a society or from external sources requiring vigilance and active resistance to protect freedoms. Freedom often exists in tension with other societal values such as security, equality, and order.

So finding the right balance between individual liberties and collective well being is a perpetual challenge that requires [00:30:00] negotiation, compromise, and ongoing dialogue. And this is something that what we're seeing with these protests is that a lot of people unflappable. They're not compromising.

They're not negotiating. They want an end to the genocide. They want a divesting from Israel, period, period. At minimum, at minimum, nothing less than that will be accepted. But there has to be dialogue. There has to be, but we're having one side who's talking and then one side not listening because the one side that's not listening, doesn't, he doesn't want to hear what the other side is saying because they have already labeled it as anti Semitism.

It's anti Israel is anti Semitism is anti Jew. So we don't care what you have to say. We just want you to be quiet. But in diverse societies, different. Individuals and groups [00:31:00] naturally have competing interests and priorities leading to conflicts over whose freedoms should take precedent in certain situations.

Resolving these conflicts requires navigating complex ethical, legal, and political considerations. And so what we're seeing with the pro Palestine protests. Is people saying an end to genocide and apartheid and an end to occupation and oppression and the U S government and its allies and officials and, uh, university officials saying, well, Israel has a right to defend itself and the Jewish students on campus feel unsafe.

We're seeing the police, local police being weaponized to move students, but also students are being threatened with suspension. And not an expulsion in some cases, having their housing pulled and their scholarships revoked for protesting on [00:32:00] school grounds and refusing to disband to move at Columbia.

Camps were set up. They set up tents on parts of the university grounds and the university has an authorized zone for protests, but they also require a two day notice, advanced notice for protests before you can be allowed to protest. And so because none of that took place, because of the, this is happening outside of the zone.

of free speech, I guess, and because they're using tense on areas that are not designated. And because they didn't notify the university, the university said, you guys have to leave. And if you don't leave, we're going to call the police. And they called the police and the students were arrested. They had students arrested and the president of the university who is Egyptian American said, well, it wasn't my, I didn't become the president of Columbia [00:33:00] University to have students arrested, but they forced my hand. It's like, no, you don't have to, you didn't have to have them arrested. You could have had them removed. You had them arrested and charged with trespassing and other offenses. You did not have to do that.

Okay. You did not have to do that. You could have had them removed period, period. But instead you chose to have them arrested, charged. And because they were arrested and charged, they have been suspended. Their scholarships have been pulled. They've been kicked out of their residence halls. They're not allowed on campus.

It was your choice to have these students arrested. Yes, it was your choice to have them arrested, because they wouldn't leave. And why did you want them to leave? Because they're saying something that you don't want to hear. Because you, madame, [00:34:00] were called to Congress to testify before the Education and Workforce Committee about what you're doing about anti Semitism on campus.

So they've already said to you, hey, this is going on. We know what's going on. And what are you doing about it? And so you needed to look tough. You needed to look like you were taking action. And so this is what you did. You jeopardized the, the, the future careers, jobs of people, people have lost money all because you wanted to make a show of your authority before your donors and the alumni look, look, look what I've done.

I've done this because has you not done that? You probably would be out of a job. So you had students arrested. You didn't have to have them arrested. You chose to do that. No one is buying your excuses, president Minosh Shafiq.

[00:35:00] Why I say dissenting political dissent is dying on college campuses because college campuses have been the place where protests against war, against racism, against economic oppression have happened.

Universities that were once the sites of very moving protests for civil rights and against war and conscription kent State University was the site of a murder, in fact, of four people and wounding of nine students by the Ohio National Guard in 1970 during a protest against the expanding of the Vietnam War.

into Cambodia by the U. S. military forces. It was then that many people realized that protest can affect prompt change because as soon as, as soon as [00:36:00] that happened shortly after, The 26th amendment was passed that lowered the voting age to 18. That incident and what happened in the aftermath reminds us of the importance of respecting diversity and diverse points of view and allowing, allowing these voices to be raised and not be silenced.

They are needed. We need to know what is affecting people. We need to see and listen and hear the people's voices, what they're upset about. Now, some people may go, well, what about January 6th? And I can't believe that you would actually go, what about January 6th? Because you can clearly see that what's happening on these college campuses is much different, much different.

They're not storming a government building. Where congressmen and senators [00:37:00] are, and rioting and looting, and trespassing in offices, and fighting police. There's, there's a difference between a protest and rioting and looting. One is protected, one is not. One is protected, one is not. And that is because there are limits to free speech, right?

The First Amendment doesn't protect all speech. For instance, threats and intimidation. The First Amendment does not protect threats and intimidation. It also does not protect incitement to violence or imminent lawless action. Again, January 6th with threats was true threats and intimidation, incitement to violence and imminent lawless action. It does not protect that. People can cry all day about censorship and what their first amendment rights to [00:38:00] protest and freedom of speech, but you don't understand That there are limits to everything even in a constitutional democracy There are limits to everything You have to understand what is allowed and what is not allowed and you are still going to do whatever you want to do anyway, but there is certain speech that is simply not protected, that you can't go to a court of law that and go, well, your honor, I was just exercising my first amendment, right? When I went into Nancy Pelosi's office and I scattered all of the papers off of her desk and put my feet on her desk. Again, the first amendment does not protect true threats and intimidation, incitement to violence or imminent lawless action, harassment, unlawful conduct, such as vandalism, destruction of property and disruption. And this is the basis of universities firing back at students and using local [00:39:00] police to round them up and arrest them and give them criminal and give criminal penalties to student protesters. They're saying that this is disrupting student life, that this is disrupting the campus and it needs to end and we want them to go.

And this is unlawful conduct because it's not authorized by the university. They have the ability. to apply time, place, and manner restrictions. And these restrictions obviously apply narrow limits to what, when, and how a speaker can present a message. For instance, something you could shout at 1 p. m. In the afternoon, it's not something you could shout at 1 a. m. When there's an expectation that people are asleep and they don't want to be disturbed.

But these restrictions have to be reasonable to be valid. And they cannot result in targeting actual content of the speech, right? So President Shafiq of [00:40:00] Columbia University has said that this is an extraordinary circumstances and that is why she took the step of getting law enforcement involved. You see, last fall, Columbia University, in fact, instituted new policies for demonstrations. And so these encampments on university property, the protests violated these new policies.

But the first amendments history on us college campuses is complex and evolving still. Really? It's rooted in principles of free speech, expression, assembly, and religion. Legal cases like Tinker versus Des Moines from 1969 and Healy versus James of 1972. Shaped the understanding of free speech on campuses Over time, interpretations of the First Amendment on campuses have been influenced by, again, cultural shifts, [00:41:00] but also court rulings, but also court rulings and evolving societal norms today.

Debates continue over issues like hate speech, campus demonstrations, and academic freedom, reflecting ongoing tensions between protecting free expression and ensuring inclusivity and safety. And while protests are generally allowed on college campuses, again, with those time, place, and manner restrictions as a form of free expression protected by the first amendment, the extent to which protests are permitted Can vary depending on specific campus policies, local regulations, and the nature of the protest.

While peaceful protests are typically protected, actions that disrupt the functioning of the campus or post safety concerns may be subject to regulation or discipline. They have to be reasonable to be valid. And some will argue, and I argue too, that [00:42:00] the restrictions on the pro Palestinian protest are not reasonable.

In the 1980s, many college campuses in the United States saw protests calling for divestment from companies doing business in apartheid era South Africa. These demonstrations played a role in increasing international pressure on the South African government to dismantle apartheid. That is what students And others are fighting for on college campuses currently calling for divestment from companies and entities doing business with and accepting money from apartheid era Israel

Universities have accused outside agitators of working students into a frenzy that leads to protest on campuses, while students accuse politicians and donors of applying pressure to universities to clamp down on student protests, particularly against the war, against the genocide in Gaza. [00:43:00] The donors and the alumni are pressuring colleges to support a certain viewpoint, it would seem, which reflects greatly in how student protest policies are shaped.

Suddenly, universities are updating policies that haven't been touched in years and running scared from accusations that they permit anti Semitic speech on campus by protecting speakers. And not punishing them or, or issuing proclamations, denouncing the behavior. That is arguably what is happening, but I strongly suggest that that is what is happening. They are pressuring colleges to support a certain viewpoint, which reflects greatly in how student protest policies are shaped. As one writer put it, the university's response to campus anti Semitism is under investigation, not only by the House Committee, but also by the U. S. Department of Education's [00:44:00] Office for Civil Rights, which is also investigating numerous cases Other institutions, and while some of the most vocal outside critics of Columbia University and other institutions are focused on addressing campus anti Semitism, students on both sides of the conflict are living in fear.

More than half of Jewish and Muslim students and a fifth of all college students report feeling unsafe on campuses because of their stance on the Israeli Palestinian conflict, as the writer puts it. According to a recent report from the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats, everyone should feel safe here. You should feel safe here because there's no anti Semitism.

There's no Islamophobia, so even though the current protests echo what we've seen in the past with the civil rights protests and the Vietnam war protest, what we're seeing is [00:45:00] policies changing to restrict activity because the activity mostly is disagreed with. It is anti genocide, pro Palestine protests, that the policies about protesting on university campuses are changing. They're, they're being made more restrictive. And you could argue all day long about, no, it's because things are changing. The landscape is changing.

We're we're seeing strong opinions from this side or that side, and we want everyone to feel safe, including our Palestinian and Muslim students. And so we're doing this so everyone feels safe. But when Muslims were describing how unsafe they felt, nobody was coming to their aid. No one was coming to their rescue.

No one was holding congressional meetings after 9 11 because Arabs and Muslims felt unsafe. [00:46:00] I could tell you stories from law school. I could tell you stories. My second year of law school, was at the same time as the events of September 11, 2001. And it was not a fun, not a fun time at all. Not at all. Not at all.

It was awful. It was terrible. There were no congressional hearings. There was no, oh, but the Muslim students say they feel unsafe. We need to do something about it. No, because they had to fight a war. So their concern wasn't for anything but this war that they had to fight, that they had to make up in their minds that they had to fight to look for weapons of mass destruction.

In any event, I digress.

As one expert put it, and this is coming from, uh, Inside Higher Ed, which is an online news site about, uh, different happenings in higher education. One expert said, uh, about this [00:47:00] particular topic of campus protests, he said, Politicians, having gotten two Ivy League university presidents fired, including Claudine Gay of Harvard last year, see great merit in keeping this issue alive and are using the moment to turn other long standing goals, one of which is attacking diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracies.

The issue now as well beyond Israel and Palestine, it has to do with whether universities can actually govern themselves in ways that accomplish their mission, or if they will be continually subjected to restrictions from the government along with other pressures they face from society. So what are we to make of this?

That universities are caught in a spider web. They can't [00:48:00] move. They're either going to, uh, upset students or they're going to upset Congress, but Congress should not have anything to do with higher education. Why is Congress in the higher education business? Because universities accept government money to run.

To give to students to attend the universities. Anytime you accept anything from anybody, you're going to be beholden to that body. So universities are beholden to the U S department of education. They are beholden to the U S house of representative representatives. They are beholden to the U S house of representatives and their various committees.

These are the balances and checks, but are they beholden to the students? Are they? It seems like they're more on the side of the people who give them money, the people who could pressure them into making real [00:49:00] changes immediately. Like Congress, Congress comes down on you. You're making some changes.

Students? Eh. Presidents, there are presidents of universities who won't even meet with students who are protesting, who are upset. Especially, especially during the Black Lives Matter protests.

They weren't even bothering. They were just like, okay, here's the diversity, equity, and inclusion, uh, office. Everything should be okay now because we're going to do, we're going to have these people be in charge of, of, of letting, um, disabled and black and, and trans and, and, and more women in the university and making sure everybody is safe.

Is that, is that good enough? Now those things are being taken away because now there's the movement against diversity, equity and inclusion, which is interesting, right? It's interesting that you would be concerned with the safety and needs of Jewish students while at the same time saying that diversity, equity and [00:50:00] inclusion programs must end.

Hmm. That doesn't sound suspicious.

But overall, what we're seeing is diversity is dying and dissent is slowly going with it. And if the cost of a liberal arts education is our audaciously dangerous mind, then what good is it? What good is it to a human being? What good is it to a community, to a society?

 With affirmative action gone and now states passing laws saying that diversity, equity, and inclusion offices will be shuttered in state government and public universities. Diversity is dead. And dissent is slowly going with it with the changes in campus policies that affect protest and student voices.

What good is a liberal arts education if the result is [00:51:00] a small mind, a narrow mind, a narrow view of the world? What good is all of these classes about political theory and how to combat genocide and international relations and economics and science and math?

What good is any of this If, when you go to apply what you've learned to society, you're told you're wrong. To stop it. To quit it. To shut up. Your voice is important. Your voice is powerful. Do not allow yourselves to be silenced.

If they don't respect your political power, If universities don't respect your right to political dissent, if they don't respect your right to protest, then unsubscribe from that alumni email list that's asking for donations every week. Okay. And this has been Ayanna Explains It All brought to you by Facts, Figures, and Enlightenment. Take [00:52:00] care.