After several days of protests, pro-Palestinian encampments on the campuses of Ivy League schools Columbia and Brown came down last week.
But while the apparent end of Columbia’s pro-Palestinian encampments was marred by a takeover of a building, a mass arrest, and a widespread condemnation of the heavy police presence, encampments came down voluntarily at Brown and other institutions like Northwestern University.
And other public universities, like Rutgers University and the University of Minnesota, also peacefully reached agreements with protesters.
Notably, none of the schools agreed to fully divest from companies doing business in Israel, a demand student protesters have commonly rallied for across the country. While there were people on both sides who criticized the agreements at Brown and Northwestern, the deals nevertheless diffused a tense standoff that has boiled over at other colleges and universities across the country.
A delicate balance
College officials face a delicate balance between encouraging dialogue and allowing free expression while keeping their campus safe and running, free speech experts told CNN. Some schools achieved it, at least temporarily, and prevented a situation in which a police presence to break up encampments led to violence and fear.
The schools where an administration “was willing to lay a little lower and treat the speech going on in their public spaces as not a catastrophe but something that might be dealt with through dialogue have done better,” said Sophia Rosenfeld, a professor of history who teaches a class on free speech at the University of Pennsylvania.
Rosenfeld said Brown provided a conversation — not a concession — and that was enough to dissipate the encampments.