As Students Return, So Do Pro-Palestinian Protests

The end of the spring semester offered a welcome reprieve from campus protests at colleges across the nation. Now, as the new semester commences, keffiyeh-clad students are picking up right where they left off. 

Some professors are preparing for disruption. Stanford student Julia Steinberg posted on X that a syllabus for the upcoming semester included a disclaimer: “In order to accommodate anticipated protests and potential disruptions this fall, professors have been asked to make the structure of our class meetings and assignments more flexible.”

“This is insane,” Steinberg posted, sarcastically adding, “‘Ah yes, I care enough to protest but my professors must accommodate my protest schedule because I don’t want my protesting to impact my grade.” 

Students Protest as Classes Resume

In the first days of the semester, protests at Columbia University, Cornell University, Georgetown University, George Washington University, and the University of Michigan have percolated, promising another disruptive semester.

Incoming and returning Columbia students were greeted by picketing pro-Palestinian protestors who congregated by the school’s gates. PBS reported: 

The university’s tall iron gates, long open to the public, are now guarded, requiring students to present identification to enter campus. Inside, private security guards stand on the edge of the grassy lawns that students had seized for their encampment.

While increased security will prevent outsiders from joining any on-campus protests, their presence isn’t enough to keep students from stirring up trouble. On the first day of classes, someone threw red paint on the school’s historic “Alma Mater” statue. 

At Cornell, 150 students staged a protest in a campus dining hall on the first day of classes, hanging a banner that declared “People’s School Coming Soon” in the colors of the Palestinian flag. A pro-Palestinian student “die-in” was held at the University of Michigan. 

In Washington, D.C., student protesters have taken to the streets eagerly. Students at George Washington University have marched through campus and demonstrated in front of university President Ellen Granberg’s home. On Sept. 4, several hundred protesters gathered at Georgetown University, where they called for “one solution, intifada revolution.” 

“We’re going to show them that there will be no business as usual,” one of the protest’s leaders shouted into a bullhorn.

New Rules, Same Problems

University leaders weren’t so naive as to expect business as usual this semester. Over the summer, a number of schools updated their rules about protests, use and occupation of common spaces, and discriminatory speech and behavior. 

George Washington University explicitly prohibits “occupying university premises after being directed by university officials to disperse.” 

Harvard University will require students to seek advance approval before using bullhorns or sidewalk chalk. Protest tents — like those used to create the encampments that occupied central quads at many schools — were banned by the University of Denver. Students in the University of California system will be subject to new rules banning encampments and “masking to conceal identity.” Other schools, like Columbia, have increased security via a monitored campus perimeter. 

But will these new rules be enough? Not by a long shot. 

Student protesters aren’t interested in complying with university rules, as they proved in the spring, and conflict with university leadership or local police only legitimizes their victimhood complex. If anything, protesters are preparing for an even more disruptive semester. 

Pro-Palestinian Students Prepare to Escalate

“Anything is on the table … And they should know that the community is prepared and willing to take action,” George Washington University student Lance Lokas told the Washington Post. “We will continue to escalate until our demands are met.”

Protestors at Georgetown indicated that their “movement is back and ‘stronger than ever.’” Georgetown student Miriam Siegel told the Daily Signal that “Georgetown needs to know that where there is oppression, there will be escalation. It could happen anywhere.” 

At Columbia University, student organizers have “promis[ed] to ramp up their actions — including possible encampments.”

Protest efforts at various colleges could intensify as soon as next week. The National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) — the organization that has spearheaded protests and encampments at schools across the country — has announced a “day of action” on Sept. 12. 

Rebecca Korbin, professor of history at Columbia, served on the university’s antisemitism task force after the spring’s protests. She isn’t optimistic about the upcoming semester: 

We are hoping for the best, but we are all wagering how long before we go into total lockdown again… There haven’t been any monumental changes, so I don’t know why the experience in the fall would look much different than what it did in the spring.

Summer vacation provided a short-lived intermission for protest theater on campuses. But between the early signs of continued protests and heightened tensions due to the upcoming election, politics — not education — is the focus of university life. When it comes to higher education, the inmates are running the asylum. 

Mary Frances Myler is a contributing editor at The American Spectator. She graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 2022. 

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