Protests Are Upending Cherished Rituals at $100,000 Elite Colleges
(Bloomberg) -- Pomp and circumstance are giving way to rage and riot shields.
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From the Ivy League to the University of California, administrators are reevaluating plans for spring commencements in the wake of unyielding protests over the Israel-Hamas war. Months of turmoil have already toppled campus presidents, bitterly divided students, upset powerful alumni, prompted investigations by Congress and stoked accusations of antisemitism and concern about suppression of free speech for pro-Palestinian voices.
Clashes continued over the weekend, with small groups of protesters and counter-protesters coming to blows at UCLA. At Columbia University in New York, administrators who said they needed to prepare for graduation ceremonies gave students in an encampment until 2 p.m. Monday to leave or face immediate suspension, according to the New York Times.
At the University of Southern California, where undergraduates pay almost $100,000 a year, two commencement speakers withdrew and urged others to boycott departmental events after the school scrapped its main ceremony scheduled for May 10. USC officials cited the unmanageable security situation after police arrested more than 90 protesters on April 24.
At Morehouse College in Atlanta, students and faculty upset over US support for Israel criticized the historically Black university’s president for inviting President Joe Biden to deliver the commencement address.
California Governor Gavin Newsom summoned leaders of the University of California system last week to discuss graduation security at its 10 campuses, including UC Berkeley and UCLA, where protests are growing. “I want to maintain people’s right to protest peacefully without any hate,” Newsom later told reporters. “I just want to avoid a lot of what we are seeing in other parts of the country.”
From elite private schools like USC and Columbia to giant public universities in California, Texas, Ohio and Michigan, campus leaders accustomed to unfurling bunting and balloons and dusting off their academic regalia at this time of year are instead formulating security plans in a moment of deepening crisis for American higher education.
Read more: Why Israel-Hamas War Tests Campus Tolerance of Free Speech
“We’ve seen a lot of schools that are preparing for commencement with 20, 30 or 40 celebrations, and they aren’t used to planning for protests at what are normally joyous occasions,” said Simon Barker, managing partner of Blue Moon Consulting Group, a crisis communications firm that advises colleges and universities.
Newsom directed California’s Office of Emergency Services, which handles earthquakes and wildfires, to stay in touch with campus police departments around the state and coordinate backup officers from nearby cities and the California Highway Patrol, if needed. He was concerned after Berkeley officials warned that the campus police force is severely understaffed, according to people with knowledge of the matter. Officials are stressing de-escalation.
“Berkeley graduation ceremonies have been venues for all sorts of protests for many years,” university spokesman Dan Mogulof said in a statement. “Our efforts will focus on ensuring the ceremony can be successfully held and on supporting the right of graduating students, their friends, and families to safely enjoy an incredibly meaningful day in their lives.”
Barker says there has been a surge in schools seeking advice on how to handle protests while upholding free speech and maintaining order at a time when social media seems to be fueling ever bolder tactics among those seeking to disrupt campus life.
UC Berkeley law school Dean Erwin Chemerinsky, a renowned free speech expert, was taken aback when a student began protesting at a dinner that he and his wife hosted for graduating law students at their home earlier this month. Video of Chemerinsky’s wife attempting to take the microphone from the student as both demanded that protesters leave their home went viral.
Read more: Berkeley Professor Rattled by Antisemitism, Protest at His Home
In the weeks since the incident, Chemerinsky has been approached by deans at other schools asking for and offering advice on how to handle disruptions at commencement ceremonies. Without tipping his hand, he says “we are doing everything we can to prepare” for more protests at the law school graduation, where he has invited US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar to give the keynote address.
“The vocabulary of the moment is, ‘I feel unsafe,’” Chemerinsky said in an interview. “And so instead of saying, ‘I’m upset,’ or ‘I’m offended,’ I constantly hear from students ‘it makes me feel unsafe.’ And of course, what that says to the campus is, ‘It’s your responsibility to make me feel safe.’”
That dynamic can lead to overreactions, Barker says. The stakes for institutions are enormous: If chaos overtakes cherished rituals, colleges run the risk of alienating students and their families, offending donors, and attracting unwanted attention from elected officials who control public funding.
“Leaders feel torn between irreconcilable and competing values,” Barker said in an interview. “It is a classic no-win situation.”
That conundrum was on display at USC, an exclusive private institution with 47,000 students in south central Los Angeles where the cost of attendance is $95,225 for the 2024-25 academic year. Officials announced on April 16 that the Class of 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, would not be allowed to deliver the traditional student speech at graduation. They cited security concerns caused by unfavorable publicity over her pro-Palestinian social media posts, but Tabassum, who is Muslim, accused the university of “caving to hate” after a pro-Israel group circulated an open letter on campus saying her posts amounted to antisemitism.
As students and faculty rallied to Tabassum’s cause, demanding that the university reinstate her speaking role, administrators tried first to tamp down tensions last week by canceling appearances by the celebrity speakers booked for the ceremony, saying it was important “that our full attention be on our remarkable graduates.”
After protests continued to grow and police were called in to make arrests, administrators dropped all pretense of business as usual, and canceled the main ceremony, where 65,000 people were expected.
The loss of tradition is dispiriting to some students. Like many of her classmates, USC student government president Divya Jakatdar collected her high school diploma through the car window in 2020 during the pandemic. This year, her grandparents are flying in from India to watch her graduate from USC.
“It feels like a joyous moment has been ripped away from our families,” she said. “We’re probably not going to have it the hardest in the context of everything going on, but it stings.”
(Updates to add Columbia deadline in third paragraph.)
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