Pro-Palestinian demonstrations swept through campuses across the country in the spring of 2024, leading to the arrests of more than 3,100 people. But in the more than a year and a half since, the protests have dissipated, even as the war in Gaza intensified.
Why the shift?
A major factor is the strict crackdown that universities waged on student protesters who built encampments on college campuses, beginning with Columbia and spreading across the country.
Universities that cracked down on students were facing sometimes extreme pressure from lawmakers in the Republican-controlled House Committee on Education and the Workforce. They argued the protests, including some of the slogans demonstrators used, were tinged with antisemitism, an accusation that protesters, some of whom were Jewish, strongly rejected.
Though many of the protests were peaceful, some turned destructive. Demonstrators broke into and occupied buildings on some campuses.
Protest groups said they were taking action because of the scale of death and destruction in Gaza, but some of the demonstrations frightened Jewish students. Other students complained that they disrupted classes.
The congressional committee held a series of high-profile hearings where university presidents were grilled on their responses to antisemitism on their campuses. The first hearing led, at least in part, to the resignations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania.
Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, also came under pressure for not responding forcefully enough to campus protests, and she eventually resigned.
Other universities appeared to take lessons from those experiences. Protesters were detained in 2024 at more than 70 schools in at least 30 states, according to data collected by The New York Times.
Protesting students and sometimes faculty members were arrested and charged with trespassing or disturbing the peace. Some were charged with resisting arrest. Some were barred from campus and had their diplomas withheld.
Historians say the United States had not seen so many people arrested in campus protests in 50 years, since the Vietnam War.
The campus disciplinary process can be protracted, lasting for a year or more and interrupting the course of students’ lives. Tori Porell, senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal, a group that has provided legal support to protesters, said she had clients who have had their diplomas withheld over protest activity.
“I have a number of clients at a number of schools who are in a really intolerable state of limbo, often can’t get jobs, have to delay grad school, have lost scholarships or fellowships,” Ms. Porell said, adding, “and psychologically it’s really troubling.”
But the impact of the protests should not be underestimated, said Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Muslim civil rights group. They had played a big role in awakening the public to the “atrocities” of the war in Gaza, he said.
If the protests have quieted, it has been because they have been effective, but also because they have been systematically suppressed, he said. The council has compiled a list of 28 universities that it says have “suppressed students advocating against apartheid, genocide and U.S.-backed military occupation.”
Though many charges against students and faculty were dropped, college administrators have continued to enforce rules, including many new restrictions on where and when students can protest.
Students turned out earlier in the fall for a week of action in support of Palestinians. And on the eve of the anniversary of the Hamas attack on Israel, a few dozen students at the University of California, Los Angeles, gathered at Royce Quad, a traditional protest place, to hold a vigil for Palestinians killed in Gaza. They were met by campus police and a warning sign.
“Individuals participating in an event or a public expression activity in this area are subject to discipline and/or arrest,” the sign said.
“That characterizes the vibe on campus,” said Graeme Blair, a professor of political science who was arrested during the 2024 encampment. “Students know about those disciplinary processes and are wondering what conduct is going to lead to severe consequences.”
Anemona Hartocollis is a national reporter for The Times, covering higher education.
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