Institutional Design Archives - Columbia Law Review

Introduction The modern world is highly divided. Activists and protesters in the present moment agitate for improving working conditions and public infrastructure as well as against fossil fuel industries and environmental destruction.[footnote]See Rachel Kleinfield, Carnegie Endowment for Int’l Peace, Polarization, Democracy, and Political Violence in the United States: What the Research Says 10–11 (2023), https://carnegie-production-assets.s3.amazonaws.com/static/files/Kleinfeld_Polarization_final_3.pdf [https://perma.cc/6QYD-GVP6] (describing how social movements in the United States offer the opportunity to improve living conditions for working-class people).[/footnote] Advocates have been insisting on police reform, even the abolition of the police, since the murder of Trayvon Martin in 2012, but their outcry grew even more urgent after Darren Wilson shot and killed Michael Brown, and then again after police killed George Floyd in 2020.[footnote]See How Student Activists Are Working to Defund, Disarm, and Abolish the Campus Police: An Interview With Jael Kerandi, in Cops on Campus: Rethinking Safety and Confronting Police Violence 203, 203–08 (Yalile Suriel, Grace Watkins, Jude Paul Matias Dizon & John J. Sloan III eds., 2024) [hereinafter Cops on Campus] (discussing reform efforts at the University of Minnesota in May 2020).[/footnote] The call for shrinking the stronghold of policing in everyday life has reached many quarters, including K–12 schools, health institutions, and colleges and universities.[footnote]See Police Exec. Rsch. F., Municipal and Campus Police: Strategies for Working Together During Turbulent Times 24–25 (2021), https://www.policeforum.org/assets/MunicipalCampusPolice.pdf [https://perma.cc/6HLT-JE3U] [hereinafter PERF Report] (summarizing examples of universities reducing campus police, ties to municipal police, and additional calls to reduce policing on college campuses).[/footnote] The Cops Off Campus movement led to academic inquiry and student and labor mobilization.[footnote]See Yalile Suriel, Grace Watkins, Jude Paul Matias Dizon & John J. Sloan III, Introduction: A Fresh Perspective on Campus Policing in America, in Cops On Campus, supra note 2, at ix, xxi (noting the “tidal wave of organizing within the national Cops Off Campus Movement since 2020” and the authors’ attempt to “preserve the reflections and observations of activists for the future”); see also Rema Bhat, Police Free Penn: Toward an Abolitionist Future, 34th St. Mag. (Dec. 6, 2021), https://www.34st.com/article/2021/12/police-free-penn-over-policing-maureen-rush-abolition-upenn-penn-police-brutality [https://perma.cc/5KGT-BKV7]; Emily Rich, The Movement to De-Cop the Campus, In These Times (Sept. 6, 2021), https://inthesetimes.com/article/cops-off-campus-uc-police-abolition [https://perma.cc/9MVS-LBSE] (describing the movement within the University of California system).[/footnote] It also forced policy reform in colleges and universities.[footnote]See, e.g., Univ. of Md., Task Force on Public Safety and Community Policing Report 21–24 (2021), https://umd-president.files.svdcdn.com/production/files/Public_Safety_Community_Policing_Report_March172022_v2.pdf?dm=1648132334 [https:// perma.cc/9D5Y-MTAS] (setting forth recommendations for the University of Maryland Police Department’s training, contracts, equipment, and policies); Chancellor Carol Christ on Reimagining Public Safety, UC Berkeley News (June 18, 2020), https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/06/18/chancellor-carol-christ-on-reimagining-public-safety/ [https://perma.cc/FGR2-WL4K] (“We acknowledge the harm that can be done by a militarized police force. In response to calls for demilitarization, we will review our tools and equipment to ensure that they are sufficient, but not excessive, for ensuring community safety.”); Peter Salovey, The Yale Police Department in a Time of Historic Change, Yale Univ. (June 22, 2020), https://salovey.yale.edu/writings-and-speeches/statements/yale-police-department-time-historic-change [https://perma.cc/F3DT-BQAL] (outlining steps the Yale Police Department would take as part of “the reimagination of how we protect and serve our campus”).[/footnote] Such reforms acknowledged the harm police inflict on students of color, particularly Black students, and the role policing plays within larger forces of deeply rooted structural racism in higher education.[footnote]See supra note 5. Still, administrators and university communities generally believe that, compared to municipal police, campus police operate as kinder, friendlier forces that are potentially aligned with the educational mission. See Andrea Allen, Are Campus Police ‘Real’ Police? Students’ Perceptions of Campus Versus Municipal Police, 94 Police J. 102, 115 (2021) (describing how students tend to view campus police as less likely to severely sanction suspects due to their better understanding of college life, familiarity with students, and investment in student success).[/footnote] Universities and colleges also examined diversity and inclusion anew as a way of creating a more welcoming environment for Black students.[footnote]Many universities created task forces or underwent studies or reviews to determine how they can best address the overall demand to reconsider the role and purpose of policing. See, e.g., Riley Safer Holmes & Cancila LLP & Security Risk Mgmt. Consultants, LLC, External Review of the Northwestern University Department of Safety and Security: Findings and Recommendations 4 (2021), https://web.archive.org/web/20211001181354/https://www.northwestern.edu/social-justice-commitments/docs/nupd-external-reviewer-report.pdf [https://perma.cc/FP3S-UEA8] (stating that Northwestern University retained two consultants in June 2020 to conduct a review of its Department of Safety and Security, including its use of force policy); Univ. of Cal., UC Community Safety Plan 2 (2021),https://www.ucop.edu/uc-operations/systemwide-community-safety/policies-and-guidance/community-safety-plan/uc-community-safety-plan.pdf [https://perma.cc/699G-7BUW] (documenting the University of California’s “systemwide effort to reimagine [its] approach to campus safety and security” at this “pivotal moment in history”).[/footnote]

These ideals espoused by college administrators following the rebellious summer of 2020 were quickly tested. Ethnic studies is under attack, academic freedom is at risk, and even weak diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives are being scaled back.[footnote]See Hani Morgan, Ethnic Studies Programs in America: Exploring the Past to Understand Today’s Debates , 22 Pol’y Futures Educ., 1469, 1469 (2024) (explaining how activists on the right across the United States have recently sought to ban the teaching of critical race theory and ethnic studies courses); Erin Gretzinger, Maggie Hicks, Christa Dutton & Jasper Smith, Tracking Higher Ed’s Dismantling of DEI, Chron. Higher Educ., https://www.chronicle.com/article/tracking-higher-eds-dismantling-of-dei (on file with the Columbia Law Review ) (last updated May 16, 2025) (collecting changes to universities’ DEI-related activities resulting from state bills, executive orders, and other state-level actions since January 2023); see also Robin D.G. Kelley, Over the Rainbow: Third World Studies Against the Neoliberal Turn, in Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements: History’s Schools 205, 205–19 (Aziz Choudry & Salim Valley eds., 2017) (discussing the fight for ethnic studies during the 1980s and 1990s).[/footnote] Moreover, in April and May 2024, university[footnote]Throughout this Piece, the terms “university,” “college,” and “school” are used interchangeably to refer to institutions of higher education.[/footnote] campuses across the world witnessed university administrators meet the wave of student encampments protesting higher education’s investments in Israel’s military industries with repressive and violent police sweeps.[footnote]See, e.g., Sanya Mansoor, Koh Ewe & Mallory Moench, Pro-Palestinian Encamp-ments Take Over American College Campuses, Time (Apr. 22, 2024), https://time.com/6969875/pro-palestinian-encampments-take-over-college-campuses-across-america/ [https://perma.cc/T949-MTV5] (last updated Apr. 27, 2024) (reporting reactions to pro-Palestine protests at Columbia, Yale, Vanderbilt, and other institutions); Nick Perry, Dave Collins & Michelle L. Price, Pro-Palestinian Protests Sweep US College Campuses Following Mass Arrests at Columbia, AP News, https://apnews.com/article/columbia-yale-israel-palestinians-protests-56c3d9d0a278c15ed8e4132a75ea9599 [https://perma.cc/3V4Y-TJSG] (last updated Apr. 23, 2024) (describing mass arrests and campus closures in response to pro-Palestine protests). But see infra Part IV.[/footnote] The photographs flashing across news feeds and social media were vivid: campus and local police in black riot gear, marching in formation on campuses across the country to flatten tents and eject students.[footnote]See, e.g., Olivia Bensimon & Lola Fadulu, Police Enter Fordham’s Manhattan Cam-pus and Arrest Protesters, N.Y. Times (May 1, 2024), https://nytimes.com/2024/05/01/nyregion/fordham-university-protest-police.html (on file with the Columbia Law Review ); Elea Castiglione, Emily Scolnick, Ethan Young, Diamy Wang, Katie Bartlett, Ella Sohn & Jasmine Ni, Police in Riot Gear Arrest 33 Protestors, Including Penn Students, at Gaza Solidarity Encampment, Daily Pennsylvanian (May 10, 2024), https:// www.thedp.com/article/2024/05/penn-palestine-gaza-protests-arrests [https://perma.cc/6WT7-TP7Q].[/footnote] Police made over 3,500 arrests.[footnote]Stephen Semler, Cops Arrested Over 3,500 Pro-Gaza Campus Protesters, New Data Shows, Forever Wars (July 24, 2024), https://www.forever-wars.com/cops-arrested-over-3-500-pro-gaza-campus-protesters-new-data-shows/ [https://perma.cc/M6FM-YPJ8].[/footnote] They brutally broke up encampments, removed students from occupied buildings, managed crowd dispersals, arrested and transported protesters, locked students out of dorms, and processed them for criminal offenses.[footnote]See id.[/footnote] The world witnessed police behave precisely as university administrators knew (or should have known) they would. In general, police acted as police, enforcing the laws, policies, and norms of institutions. No longer could we hold the image of university police as benevolent security forces with friendly relationships with students, controlled by academic administrators and trained to work within a college environment.[footnote]See e.g., Bonnie S. Fisher, Michelle E. Protas, Logan J. Lanson & John J. Sloan III, The Evolution of College and University Campus Security in the United States: Congressional Legislation, Administrative Directives, and Policing, in The Handbook of Security 399, 419 (Martin Gill ed., 3d ed. 2022) (“[A]dministrators believed that campus police would become part of the fabric of the community and thus achieve more legitimacy than would outside law enforcement agencies brought to campus to address crime, order maintenance, and physical plant protection.”); John J. Sloan III, The End of In Loco Parentis and Institutionalization of Campus Policing, in Cops on Campus, supra note 2, at 3, 7 [hereinafter Sloan, The End of In Loco Parentis] (describing the evolution of administrators relying on “ outsiders —local and state police, members of state National Guard units”—and the growing use of campus police that “could be assimilated into and become part of the campus community”).[/footnote]

The protest events of the 2023 to 2024 academic year also reminded some observers and commentators of student protests in the mid-1960s to early 1970s and the divestment campaigns against South Africa’s apartheid government.[footnote]See Michael Wines, In Campus Protests Over Gaza, Echoes of Outcry Over Vietnam , N.Y. Times (Dec. 24, 2023), https://www.nytimes.com/2023/12/24/us/gaza-vietnam-student-protest.html (on file with the Columbia Law Review ) (describing parallels between anti-Vietnam war protests and student organizing against the genocide in Palestine, observed by people who lived through the Vietnam era). Several experts on protest movements have noted the unusual use of suspensions and expulsions in the pro-Palestine context when compared to other contemporary student protests, such as those against schools’ investments in the fossil fuel or private prison industries. See Laura Meckler & Hannah Natanson, Massive Pro-Palestinian College Protests Bring Rare Surge in Discipline , Wash. Post (May 6, 2024), https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/05/06/college-protests-suspensions-expulsion-arrests/ (on file with the Columbia Law Review ). They note the level of suspensions or threats of suspension is more similar to the levels seen many decades ago during anti–Vietnam War and anti-apartheid protests. See id. That is to say, others have noted that the protests of the 2000s and early 2020s didn’t lead to as many sanctions across the board as these two bookend moments. See id.[/footnote] While some seek to distinguish the past from present—claiming the past eras were less repressive and the causes more just, or more sympathetic to university officials[footnote]See, e.g., Wines, supra note 15 (interviewing a former elected official who had protested the Vietnam War in the 1960s, who said that the current war in Gaza “has a lot more moral and philosophical nuance” than the United States’ involvement in Vietnam, which was a “show of superpower hubris” (internal quotation marks omitted) (quoting Miles Rapoport, former Conn. Sec’y of State)). For a broader discussion on how activist movements recover and use forgotten or marginalized histories to inform contemporary struggles, see generally Aziz Choudry & Salim Vally, History’s Schools: Past Struggles and Present Realities, in Reflections on Knowledge, Learning and Social Movements: History’s Schools 1 (Aziz Choudry & Salim Valley eds., 2017).[/footnote]—this Piece instead aims to excavate the connections between past and present responses to student protests. It specifically focuses on the student protest movements of the mid-1960s to early 1970s: demands to end the Vietnam War and war industry research, create Black and Ethnic Studies departments, and prevent the enactment of urban renewal plans that displaced Black working-class communities. This Piece focuses on this period for a few reasons. By some measures, the scale of pro-Palestine student protest is likely greater than any of the movements between then and now,[footnote]Of course, comparisons will be difficult to quantify or measure, and metrics such as numbers of arrests related to campus protests or disciplinary charges are faulty. This Piece argues that arrests and disciplinary actions are expected to be more common today because the infrastructure for these steps was created in response to past protests. However, some sources note that more schools saw pro-Palestine encampments than shantytowns protesting South African apartheid. For example, scholars have estimated that there were 46 shantytown events on college campuses between 1985 and 1990 during the anti-apartheid movement, as compared to 138 encampments between October 7, 2023, and June 7, 2024. See Erica Chenoweth, Soha Hammam, Jeremy Pressman & Jay Ulfelder, Protests in the United States on Palestine and Israel, 2023–2024, Soc. Movement Stud., Oct. 18, 2024, at 1, 5; Sarah A. Soule, The Student Divestment Movement in the United States and Tactical Diffusion: The Shantytown Protest, 75 Soc. Forces 855, 864 (1997).[/footnote] and campus police agencies as they exist today formed in response to the widespread activism in that period. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, universities across the United States tasked local and state police officers with controlling college campuses and disrupting public dissent, sometimes unnecessarily and violently.[footnote]See Jerome H. Skolnick, Task Force on Demonstrations, Protests, & Grp. Violence, The Politics of Protest: Violent Aspects of Protest & Confrontation 185–86 (1969) (referencing the Kerner Commission’s finding that, during the 1967 riots, “police violence was out of control” and the Cox and Sparling Commissions’ findings that police used unnecessary force, often vindictively, against both peaceful and “provocative” protesters (internal quotation marks omitted)).[/footnote]

As this Piece explains, during the student protest movements of the 1960s and 1970s, administrators and university presidents faced intense economic and political pressure to quash the escalating mobilizations. Heads of universities faced strong criticism and threats of (or actual) reprisal for inaction or delayed action.[footnote]See infra section II.B.1.[/footnote] States and administrators rushed to create in-house campus police forces that answered to the heads of universities, in part to avoid the type of police violence that led to incidents such as the Kent State massacre.[footnote]See Vanessa Miller & Katheryn Russell-Brown, Policing the College Campus: History, Race, and Law, 29 Wash. & Lee J. C.R. & Soc. Just. 59, 76–78 (2023) (explaining how “student sit-ins, demonstrations, and public dissent led institutional leaders to accelerate the role of campus police departments” in the 1960s and 1970s); infra notes 215–218 and accompanying text (describing the Kent State Massacre in 1970); see also Seymour Gelber, DOJ, The Role of Campus Security in the College Setting 35–38 (1972) (providing the first account of campus police and finding that between 1967 and 1972, twenty-three states passed laws on campus police authority); Max L. Bromley, Policing Our Campuses: A National Review of Statutes, 15 Am. J. Police 1, 2 (1996) (“Since the mid-1970s the courts, state legislatures and Congress have become active in responding to campus crime issues.”); Vanessa Miller, A National Survey and Critical Analysis of University Police Statutes, 72 Buff. L. Rev. 751, 756–58 (2024) (building on the Gelber and Bromley studies to provide an updated empirical study of the statutory authority of today’s campus police).[/footnote] With campus police came codes of conduct, disciplinary processes, and criminal laws all aimed at diminishing and deterring student and faculty protest.[footnote]See infra section I.B.[/footnote]

Colleges and universities are today using and expanding upon the structures built in that past protest era. Numerous universities have wielded the threat of their full disciplinary and carceral influence—disciplinary hearings, suspension, campus bans, policing, social media monitoring, high tech surveillance, and criminal prosecution—in their responses to pro-Palestine activity.[footnote]See infra section III.C.[/footnote] Students and employees are now subject to police threats and violence along with school disciplinary actions. Police—usually campus police—provide the evidence and factual basis for codes of conduct hearings, and students and employees have little due process or appeal rights.[footnote]See infra section III.C.[/footnote] From late spring to early fall 2024, schools across the country issued new restrictive time, place, and manner (TPM) policies with provisions, for instance, requiring longer periods of notice for a broader range of activities.[footnote]See infra notes 530–533 and accompanying text.[/footnote] These policies—aimed at quelling pro-Palestine student protests and speech—combined with threats of police violence on the one hand and lack of protection from counter-protesters on the other to coerce many in the campus community into silence and inaction.[footnote]See Halley Sutton, Campus Protests Sharply Decreased From Spring to Fall 2024, Campus Sec. Rep., Apr. 2025, at 9, 9 (2025) (noting that the decline of protests in 2024 may be attributable to university TPM restrictions discouraging students from protesting); infra note 530 and accompanying text. Although this Piece does not address questions of under-protection, it provides a foundation for analyzing such questions. Future work will take up these issues.[/footnote]

Today, forty-seven states and the District of Columbia have enacted one or more statutes authorizing campus police.[footnote]Miller, supra note 20, at 788–89.[/footnote] Colleges and universities host more than 1,700 police agencies,[footnote]Elizabeth J. Davis, DOJ, Campus Law Enforcement Agencies Serving 4-Year Institutions, 2021–2022—Statistical Tables 28 (2024), https://bjs.ojp.gov/document/cleas4i2122st.pdf [https://perma.cc/K9AG-VT5P] (reporting that 1,783 campus law enforcement agencies were eligible to participate in the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ 2021 Survey of Campus Law Enforcement Agencies).[/footnote] and 95% of four-year institutions with 2,500 or more students operate their own campus police forces.[footnote]Brian A. Reaves, DOJ, Campus Law Enforcement, 2011–12, at 2 (2015), https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/cle1112.pdf [https://perma.cc/K4LG-3M7N].[/footnote] Campus police are largely modeled after municipal police with paramilitary rank structure, specialization, top-down communication, distinctive badges and uniforms, and weapons like firearms and batons.[footnote]Fisher et al., supra note 14, at 419.[/footnote] Data from 2021 to 2022 for schools serving more than one thousand students show a total budget of around $2.7 billion for campus police forces,[footnote]Davis, supra note 27, at 13, 15 tbl.6.[/footnote] which will likely grow given the munition and police personnel increase in the last year.[footnote]See infra note 41.[/footnote] Ninety-five percent of law enforcement agencies serving four-year schools authorize their full-time sworn officers to carry handguns.[footnote]Davis, supra note 27, at 21 & tbl.11 (noting that, in the 2021 to 2022 school year, a higher percentage of agencies within public institutions (98%) than private (89%) were authorized to use handguns). Older figures from 2011 to 2012 report that 68% of campus police departments have arrest power. Reaves, supra note 28, at 1.[/footnote] These full-fledged police agencies are integrated into school operations through crisis management, Title IX investigations, threat assessments,[footnote]For an interesting analysis of behavioral threat assessments on college campuses and elsewhere, see Mark Follman, Trigger Points: Inside the Mission to Stop Mass Shootings in America 4–5 (2022) (discussing the University of Virginia as one of the first institutions to embrace threat assessments with its campus police).[/footnote] housing security and evictions, and code of conduct charges brought by deans of students’ offices.[footnote]See Sunita Patel, Transinstitutional Policing, 137 Harv. L. Rev. 808, 873 (2024) [hereinafter Patel, Transinstitutional Policing] (explaining that police have wide-ranging responsibilities at their institutions, including enforcing evictions, monitoring suicidal patients in hospitals, and enforcing transit fare payment); see also Jude Paul Matias Dizon & Charles H.F. Davis III, Campus Policing: Eight Steps Toward Abolition, J. Diversity Higher Educ., Feb. 15, 2024, at 1, 2 (describing how campus police officers “regularly collaborate with student affairs departments and human resources to address workplace issues, mental health crises, and threat management”); Anne Walther, The Dual Role of the Campus Police Officer at Public Institutions of Higher Education, BYU Educ. & L.J., 57, 58, 60 (2023) (stating that campus police hold a dual role as law enforcement officers and school officials and may serve on threat assessment teams and internal disciplinary councils, access student records and dorms, and fulfill other roles to support the educational goals of the institution).[/footnote]

Heads of the nation’s institutions of higher education are now confronting political pressure and threats of funding cuts from all sides, echoing the challenges faced by their predecessors in the mid-1960s to early 1970s. Administrative leaders must also address the potential for security concerns from protesters, who may destroy property or prevent full access to university grounds or classrooms,[footnote]See, e.g., Expectations and Responsibilities of Our University Community, Univ. of Wash. (Sept. 16, 2024), https://www.washington.edu/president/2024/09/16/community-expectations-and-responsibilities [https://perma.cc/XE3K-4ZPZ] (reminding the cam-pus community that “if and when protest activities . . . are accompanied by the destruction of public resources, we will first and foremost take action to protect people’s physical safety”); Carol L. Folt, Andrew Guzman & Steven Shapiro, Off. of the President, Welcome to a New Year at USC, Univ. of S. Cal. (Aug. 20, 2024), https://www.president.usc.edu/2024/08/30/welcome-to-a-new-year-at-usc [https://perma.cc/PXY4-CQ95] (reminding the campus community of “long-standing rules” against “damaging property” and “blocking access to campus and classrooms”).[/footnote] and navigate liberal constituents from within and outside the university.[footnote]See, e.g., Eden Stranahan, Over 1,000 Barnard Alums Pledge to Withhold Donations, Issue Letter to Rosenbury Demanding Suspended Students Be Reinstated, Colum. Spectator (Apr. 24, 2024), https://www.columbiaspectator.com/news/2024/04/24/over-1000-barnard-alums-pledge-to-withhold-donations-issue-letter-to-rosenbury-demanding-suspended-students-be-reinstated [https://perma.cc/V9P4-FCJR]; Rachel Treisman, How Some Faculty Members Are Defending Student Protesters, in Actions and in Words, NPR (May 1, 2024), https://www.npr.org/2024/05/01/1248099600/campus-protests-faculty-arrests-letters-no-confidence-votes [https://perma.cc/K8LK-T97Q] (reporting on faculty at multiple campuses sending letters to administrators and conducting no confidence votes against university presidents).[/footnote] In the face of funding cuts and attacks from the Right,[footnote]See infra Part II.[/footnote] even public universities in liberal states find themselves relying on tuition, donors, endowed positions, and private investments, all of which threaten to erode an ideal vision of institutions of higher education as spaces of equity, academic freedom, and debate, free from outside interests and corporate capture.[footnote]Athena Mutua, Jonathan Feingold, Angela Harris, and their co-authors argue that the privatization and corporatization of academic institutions, coupled with targeted, antidemocratic attacks and interference by private profit-seeking interests into university governance “hinder[s] every college and university’s truth-seeking function [and] cripples universities’ ability to serve as a check on authoritarian impulses.” Athena Mutua, Jonathan Feingold, Angela Harris, Emily Houh, Matthew Patrick Shaw & Frank Valdes, The War on Higher Education, 72 UCLA L. Rev. Discourse 2, 29–36 (2024), https://www.uclalawreview.org/the-war-on-higher-education/ [https://perma.cc/C7PC-55P7]. This Piece does not address private donors or government grants as important sources of economic pressure pushing universities to take action against student protests; however, it discusses financial restrictions that legislatures enact to steer universities into harsh and punitive responses to protest by the Left, including lawful First Amendment activity. See infra section I.B, Part II.[/footnote] Both past and contemporary protest movements have seen few political elites standing up for student protesters, especially once their tactics escalate to disruptive conduct and meaningful property damage.[footnote]See John R. Thelin, Going to College in the Sixties 79–80 (2018) (describing how politicians’ and state governments’ support for public higher education began to fade during the 1960s as a result of student protests and a belief that administrators lacked control over students and were unable to maintain order and decorum on campuses); Nicole Narea, How Today’s Antiwar Protests Stack Up Against Major Student Movements in History, Vox, https://www.vox.com/politics/24141636/campus-protest-columbia-israel-kent-state-history [https://perma.cc/XVL6-4G2S] (last updated May 1, 2024) (describing how in the 1960s, like today, politicians sought to capitalize on campus unrest to advance their own careers, encouraging repressive policies at universities and demanding that universities call the police on protesters).[/footnote] This Piece, however, reveals examples of administrators working with students to avoid arrests—for some leaders know such scenes can radicalize students, embolden police to take even more repressive actions, and alienate large swaths of students (future alumni donors).[footnote]See infra Part IV. With a focus on a past era spanning years and multiple universities, fully recounting the negotiations and protests is beyond the scope of this Piece. A deeper account of the trade-offs, individuals involved in negotiations, and factors that led to more or less willingness to resolve the pro-Palestine student movement’s demands is worthy of its own study.[/footnote]

School administrators and lawmakers are poised to use the current wave of pro-Palestine student mobilization to boost funding and police personnel while expanding their surveillance apparatuses, increasing criminal consequences for protest activity, creating more stringent protest rules, and enlarging protest-related codes of conduct and disciplinary consequences.[footnote]The UC system held a public meeting showcasing the munitions it planned to purchase in anticipation of protests in the 2024 school year. See Memorandum from Off. of the President of Univ. of Cal. to Members of the Compliance & Audit Comm. 4–5 (Sept. 19, 2024), https://regents.universityofcalifornia.edu/regmeet/sept24/c1.pdf [https://perma.cc/G7HH-AWM3] (reporting UC schools’ requests for new equipment, including drones, explosive breaching tools, and kinetic energy weapons and munitions); Mikhail Zinshteyn, UC Approves New Less-Lethal Arms for its Police Force Amid Protest, CalMatters (Sept. 19, 2024), https://calmatters.org/education/higher-education/2024/09/uc-protests-less-lethal-weapons-regents/ [https://perma.cc/4U6C-74QK] (last upda-ted Sept. 20, 2024) (reporting that, after a brief disruption by student protesters at the UC Regents’ committee meeting, the committee “swiftly approved the purchase of drones and ammunition such as pepper bullets and sponge rounds”). In another example, the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill Board of Trustees recommended that $2.3 million be reallocated from diversity, equity, and inclusion programs to campus police. Brianna Atkinson, UNC-Chapel Hill BOT Votes to Divert DEI Funding, Redirecting it to Campus Public Safety, WUNC (May 13, 2024), https://www.wunc.org/education/2024-05-13/dei-unc-chapel-hill-trustees-vote-redirect-funding-police [https://perma.cc/J7UZ-NDQW]; Ryan Quinn, UNC Chapel Hill Shifts $2.3M From DEI to Police, Public Safety, Inside Higher Ed (May 14, 2024), https://www.insidehighered.com/news/quick-takes/2024/05/14/chapel-hill-shifts-23m-dei-police-public-safety (on file with the Columbia Law Review ). Other universities have similarly expanded their campus police departments. See, e.g., U.S.C., 2024 Annual Security and Fire Safety Report 3, https://dps.usc.edu/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/USC-ASR-2024-reduced-size-tagged-v.3.pdf [https://perma.cc/5AS5-G6MH] (last visited Mar. 26, 2025) (describing how USC hired additional security personnel after October 2023); Amy Morona, Case Western Reserve Beefed Up Its Police Force During Height of Last May’s Pro-Palestinian Campus Protests , Signal Cleveland (Jan. 16, 2025), https://signalcleveland.org/case-western-reserve-beefed-up-its-police-force-during-height-of-last-mays-pro-palestinian-campus-protests/ [https://perma.cc/D3WH-9GLZ]; New Initiatives Continue to Enhance Campus Security at UGA, UGA Today (Jan. 30, 2025), https://news.uga.edu/new-initiatives-continue-to-enhance-campus-security-at-uga/ [https://perma.cc/AS3P-Y7SH] (reporting a 21% increase in police personnel, along with additional license plate readers and thousands of feet of new perimeter fencing, in 2024); Off. of Mktg. & Commc’ns, Key Issues: Campus and Off-Campus Safety, Ohio St. Univ., https://omc.osu.edu/key-issues [https://perma.cc/3WC7-DTLQ] (last updated Sept. 30, 2024) (describing how administrators implemented additional measures since the fall of 2023, including authorizing the campus police department to hire more police, purchasing more surveillance cameras, and supporting the continued use of license plate readers).[/footnote] This Piece shows the historic complexity behind decisions to wield state power through campus police, and both the internal and external demands on universities to restrict the time, place, and manner of student protests.[footnote]See infra notes 487–490 and accompanying text.[/footnote] The connections between local police and police embedded within institutions—like colleges and universities—are negotiated through Memoranda of Understanding (MOUs) and Mutual Aid Agreements.[footnote]See infra notes 463–464 and accompanying text.[/footnote] But deciding when and how to utilize police and whether to call on local police instead of or alongside campus police involves a mix of politics, capacity, and stakeholder influence. For example, university presidents faced considerable pressure from, among other sources, federal lawmakers and state legislatures to eliminate the spring 2024 encampments and quash protected pro-Palestine speech.[footnote]Other sources of pressure not addressed in this Piece but worth acknowledging are major donors and private influence. See Alan Blinder, For Columbia and a Powerful Donor, Months of Talks and Millions at Risk, N.Y. Times (May 10, 2024), https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/10/us/columbia-university-donor-angelica-berrie.html (on file with the Columbia Law Review ) (reporting on the suspension of donations to Columbia University by a private foundation); Nathaniel Meyersohn, Harvard and UPenn Donors Are Furious. It May Have a Financial Domino Effect, CNN, https://www.cnn.com/2023/10/19/business/harvard-upenn-donors-israel [https://perma.cc/7MXB-Q27Y] (last updated Oct. 19, 2023) (reporting on donor withdrawal).[/footnote] A better understanding of the coercive influence of political and economic concerns is critical for balancing interests and determining what role police should play on campuses, and whether they belong there at all.[footnote]See Suriel et al., supra note 4, at xvi–xviii (surveying interdisciplinary scholarship on campus policing and claiming campus police departments are under-studied, “especially in light of their significant impact not only in shaping university life for students, faculty, and staff but also in gentrifying surrounding neighborhoods”). More broadly, university police have been under-studied in policing scholarship, yet they increasingly police local communities and maintain racialized borders between colleges and the surrounding areas. See Patel, Transinstitutional Policing, supra note 34, at 848. Some scholars suggest university police serve as a public good, acting as adjuncts to local police forces by adding capacity and resources to historically underserved, race–class subjugated communities. See id. at 870 n.385 (collecting sources).[/footnote]

This Piece proceeds in four parts. Part I is a reminder that the conflicts and struggles faced by today’s administrators echo those of their predecessors. By focusing on another period of large-scale student activism—the mid-1960s to early 1970s—this Piece shows how campus police grew in authority and numbers in response to protests during this time and how codes of conduct were expanded to more explicitly address unrest and free speech activity.[footnote]Of course, campuses have seen periods of student mobilization beyond the ones addressed in this Piece. Here are a few others: The 1990s anti-apartheid student shantytowns were met with police hostility at schools such as Yale and UCLA, but were sometimes permitted to continue without much disruption. See Matthew Kiviat & Anushka Shorewala, From ‘Shantytown’ to the ‘Liberated Zone’: Cornell’s History of Encampments, Cornell Daily Sun (May 6, 2024), https://cornellsun.com/2024/05/07/from-shantytown-to-the-liberated-zone-cornells-history-of-encampments/ [https:// perma.cc/J9D2-ZFE7] (last upd-ated May 7, 2024); Narea, supra note 39. Unlike the antiwar student protests of the 1960s, however, students faced less pushback due to an embarrassment among American leaders regarding the nation’s complicity with South Africa’s white government. See Narea, supra note 39. And during Occupy Wall Street student protests, the excessive police response was met with apologies and police reform studies to prevent such violence in the future. See Josh Keller, Public Colleges Struggle to Respond to Occupy Protests, Chron. Higher Educ. (Nov. 16, 2011), https:// www.chronicle.com/article/public-colleges-struggle-to-respond-to-occupy-protests/ (on file with the Columbia Law Review ); see also, e.g., Christopher F. Edley, Jr. & Charles F. Robinson, Response to Protests on UC Campuses 17–20 (2012), https://campusprotestreport.universityofcalifornia.edu/documents/protest-report-091312.pdf [https://perma.cc/69VH-Y77B] (reviewing the University of California’s policies regarding the administration’s response to student demonstrations and civil disobedience). It is worth noting here that this Part does not address criminal prosecutions against protesters, an important topic that others in this Symposium and elsewhere are focused on. See, e.g., Amber Baylor, Unexceptional Protest, 70 UCLA L. Rev. 716, 760–61 (2023) (outlining how antiprotest laws have been deployed to suppress “not only expressions of dissent, but also gatherings and effervescence of joy, sharing, and expression”); Rachel Moran, Overbroad Protest Laws, 125 Colum. L. Rev. 1197, 1199–204 (2025) (clarifying the limits of criminalizing protest by analyzing overbreadth doctrine through Supreme Court case law, evaluating current protest-related statutes, and offering guidelines to reform or eliminate laws that are overly broad). For example, a group of ten students was convicted of disrupting a public meeting after protesting a speech by Israel’s ambassador to the United States at UC-Irvine. Lauren Williams, Nicole Santa Cruz & Mike Anton, Students Guilty of Disrupting Speech in ‘Irvine 11’ Case, L.A. Times (Sept. 24, 2011), https:// www.latimes.com/local/la-xpm-2011-sep-24-la-me-irvine-eleven-20110924-story.html (on file with the Columbia Law Review ).[/footnote] Part I also illustrates how the pressure applied today to silence and stop student mobilization at universities—legislative threats and funding cuts—was also present during this earlier time period.

Part II analyzes ninety-six state and federal antiprotest legislative proposals and enactments since October 7, 2023, using an antiprotest legislation database maintained by the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law. It showcases the political and economic pressures weighing on the heads of universities as they determine whether to permit or limit certain types of protest and speech. Although much of this fervor has emerged as a response to pro-Palestine activity, the same legislation will no doubt apply and expand in response to agitation around other progressive and left-leaning causes in the future.

Part III demonstrates how protest policing functions through embedded campus police and their connections to local police. It maps how police and administrative leaders network and share information to enhance surveillance and how campus police are an integral part of university code of conduct and discipline processes. Some have criticized universities for using disciplinary processes in the context of protests; even an administrative sanction can deter legitimate First Amendment speech activity.[footnote]See infra note 545 and accompanying text.[/footnote]

Part IV excavates some examples of past and present university administrators choosing not to use police when faced with large-scale campus protest. This shows that even in moments of heightened political and economic pressure, some leaders make different decisions.

Stepping back, this project sits within the larger context of university policing in the lives of students, workers, and community members. This Piece focuses on the levers that grow policing on campuses. Student protest movements can balloon the authority and resources for campus police, but any surge in campus police as regulators of protest demands will carry ripple effects for other uses of police. For example, university administrators use campus police to quash labor actions and disrupt picket lines when university workers decide to strike.[footnote]See, e.g., Sarah Michelson, Student Workers on Strike at UCLA, Knock LA (Dec. 1, 2022), https://knock-la.com/ucla-student-workers-strike/ [https://perma.cc/FT9C-72T8].[/footnote] Race and education scholars have long criticized campus police departments’ actions, such as targeting investigative resources toward Black and Latinx people on campus, as contributing to unbelonging for those students and employees.[footnote]See Patel, Transinstitutional Policing, supra note 34, at 854 (“Studies have shown that university policing disproportionately targets Black and Latinx students, furthering a sense of alienation from their peers and carrying negative educational consequences.” (footnote omitted)). When university administrators use police for problem-solving functions (e.g., crisis response), it likely leads to the alienation and distrust of race–class subjugated students from the institution. Police blur the boundaries between policing and other institutional operations. This author has argued elsewhere that information sharing between police and administrators serves a gatekeeping function, altering the quality and type of educational services students may receive. See id. at 811–12, 864–65. Race and education scholars have made the empirical and theoretical case for this proposition. See id. at 862–65.[/footnote] Campus police also extend their reach to areas surrounding the formal campus boundaries, purportedly to uphold legal obligations to provide and maintain campus safety, but also to retain university land holdings and keep low-income or unhoused neighbors out.[footnote]See id. at 837 (noting that campus police are integrated into “threat assessment teams as part of the university administration’s efforts to uphold its legal obligations to secure and maintain campus safety”); infra note 79 and accompanying text (describing how universities expanded into surrounding communities as part of urban renewal efforts).[/footnote]

In addition, while this Piece focuses on certain time periods, it is important to acknowledge the rich tradition of student protests on the left before and after the mid-1960s to early 1970s. Students fought U.S. involvement in Central America, university investments in South Africa’s apartheid government,[footnote]See, e.g., Larry Rohter, Activism at Schools Seems to Be Stirring as Protests Continue , N.Y. Times (Apr. 25, 1985), https://www.nytimes.com/1985/04/25/us/activism-at-schools-seems-to-be-stirring-as-protests-continue.html (on file with the Columbia Law Review ) (describing protests on college campuses during the 1980s opposing investments in South Africa’s apartheid government, the United States’ involvement in Central America, the CIA’s on-campus recruitment activities, as well as protests in support of staff strikes); see also Héctor Perla Jr., Heirs of Sandino: The Nicaraguan Revolution and the U.S.-Nicaragua Solidarity Movement , 36 Latin Am. Persps. 80, 82 (2009) (stating that the Nicaraguan solidarity movement in the United States consisted of many advocacy groups across the nation, including student activists).[/footnote] the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,[footnote]See, e.g., Dana Mulhauser, Students Protest and Show Support for U.S. Military Strikes in Afghanistan , Chron. Higher Educ. (Oct. 9, 2001), https://www.chronicle.com/article/students-protest-and-show-support-for-u-s-military-strikes-in-afghanistan/ (on file with the Columbia Law Review ); Joe Plomin, US Students March Against War, The Guardian (Oct. 8, 2001), https://www.theguardian.com/education/2001/oct/08/internationaleducationnews.highereducation [https://perma.cc/XE7P-RAX2] (describing how thousands, including large numbers of student activists, quickly mobilized to condemn the bombing of Afghanistan); Lloyd Vries, Students Cut Class to Protest War , CBS News (Mar. 10, 2003), https://www.cbsnews.com/news/students-cut-class-to-protest-war/ [https://perma.cc/98RD-PGHM] (reporting that high school and college students across the country walked out of classes and held rallies opposing the invasion of and potential war with Iraq).[/footnote] wealth hoarding during Occupy Wall Street,[footnote]See, e.g., Malia Wollan & Elizabeth A. Harris, Occupy Wall Street Protesters Shifting to College Campuses , N.Y. Times (Nov. 13, 2011), https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/14/us/occupy-wall-street-protests-shifting-to-college-campuses.html (on file with the Columbia Law Review ) (describing, for example, how thousands of students gathered at Berkeley in protest of tuition raises and how in places like Denver, St. Louis, and Salt Lake City protests were met with policing and arrests).[/footnote] and sexual violence on college campuses.[footnote]See, e.g., John Hanna & Summer Ballentine, Sexual Assault Cases Spur Protests on Campuses Across US, AP News (Sept. 24, 2021), https://apnews.com/article/education-alabama-michigan-massachusetts-nebraska-3c7f948afabe2c5c4a8353e6f862a5eb (on file with the Columbia Law Review ) (describing widespread protests on university campuses across the country following the COVID-19 pandemic and how activists have accused schools of doing too little to protect students from sexual violence).[/footnote] They sought nuclear disarmament,[footnote]See Rohter, supra note 51.[/footnote] ethnic studies departments,[footnote]See, e.g., Kelley, supra note 8, at 205–19 (analyzing the long trajectory of student organizing to create and preserve ethnic studies and Black studies departments); Six Fasting to Press for a Chicano Studies Department at U.C.L.A. , N.Y. Times (June 2, 1993), https://www.nytimes.com/1993/06/02/news/six-fasting-to-press-for-a-chicano-studies-department-at-ucla.html (on file with the Columbia Law Review ).[/footnote] divestment from fossil fuel industries[footnote]See, e.g., Ilana Cohen, How Students Pressured Harvard to Divest From Fossil Fuels—And Won, The Nation (Sept. 14, 2021), https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/harvard-fossil-fuel-divestment-won/ [https://perma.cc/KQ5V-3C25] (referencing direct action protests, petitions, and the filing of legal complaints as tactics used by fossil fuel divestment organizers on college campuses); Dharna Noor, How Divestment Became a ‘Clarion Call’ in Anti-Fossil Fuel and Pro-Ceasefire Protests, The Guardian (Apr. 24, 2024), https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/apr/24/university-fossil-fuel-divestment-student-protests-israel-gaza [https://perma.cc/4NTU-W83B] (describing how student-led campaigns for divestment from fossil fuels nationwide prompted roughly 250 educational institutions to divest from major polluters).[/footnote] and sweatshops,[footnote]See, e.g., Are Protestors Wrong About Sweatshops?, ABC News (Oct. 10, 2003), https://abcnews.go.com/2020/GiveMeABreak/story?id=124264 [https://perma.cc/WQ7U-HLSM] (describing how student protesters and labor unions objected to sweatshops and the exploitation of low-income people in developing countries, where factories pay workers just a fraction of the American minimum wage).[/footnote] solidarity with the Black Lives Matter[footnote]See, e.g., Christopher Rim, How Student Activism Shaped the Black Lives Matter Movement , Forbes (June 4, 2020), https://www.forbes.com/sites/christopherrim/2020/06/04/how-student-activism-shaped-the-black-lives-matter-movement/ [https://perma.cc/724T-ZFFD] (describing the student-led Black Lives Matter protests which began following the acquittal of Trayvon Martin’s murderer and grew even more prominent after the murder of George Floyd).[/footnote] and #MeToo movements,[footnote]See, e.g., Anemona Hartocollis & Giulia Heyward, After Rape Accusations, Fraternities Face Protests and Growing Anger, N.Y. Times (Oct. 1, 2021), https://www.nytimes.com/2021/10/01/education/fraternities-rape-sexual-assault.html (on file with the Columbia Law Review ) (last updated Oct. 12, 2021); Emma Pettit, The Next Wave of #MeToo, Chron. Higher Educ. (Feb. 16, 2020), https://www.chronicle.com/article/the-next-wave-of-metoo/ (on file with the Columbia Law Review ) (describing protests by students at New York University advocating for reforms to the Title IX reporting process, an annual report with all relevant statistics on Title IX complaints, and a restorative justice–focused option for addressing sexual violence).[/footnote] Cops Off College Campuses,[footnote]See, e.g., Mary Retta, The Cops Off Campus Coalition’s Abolition May Is Underway, Teen Vogue (May 11, 2021), https://www.teenvogue.com/story/cops-off-campus-abolition-may [https://perma.cc/MU4G-ZR3W].[/footnote] and, even before October 2023, divestment from the Israeli military.[footnote]See infra Part III.[/footnote] This Piece connects the past era of protest to recent years of student activism, framing the movements of the late 1960s, not as a comparison, but as a springboard for what is unfolding today.

Finally, the focus on the Left and progressive causes is not to suggest the Right or conservative movements are not active on college campuses. Although worthy of its own study, the Right seems to use different tactics than traditional protest and demonstration, such as inviting controversial speakers to college campuses. In such instances, under prevailing views of the First Amendment, universities must take reasonable steps to accommodate speakers, which often means engaging police and private security at considerable costs to protect provocative speakers from disruptors.[footnote]See, e.g., Teresa Watanabe, UC System Will Chip in at Least $300,000 to Help Berkeley Pay Security Costs for Controversial Speakers, L.A. Times (Sept. 20, 2017), https: // www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-uc-berkeley-security-20170920-story.html (on file with the Columbia Law Review ) (reporting security costs totaling millions for speakers such as Milo Yiannopoulos and Ben Shapiro); see also Jocelyn Gecker, UC Berkeley Spent $4 Million for Free Speech Event Security, Wash. Times (Feb. 5, 2018), https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/5/uc-berkeley-spent-4-million-for-free-speech-event- (on file with the Columbia Law Review ) (reporting law enforcement and security expenses during August and September 2017 for three scheduled events).[/footnote] These practices were shored up during Donald Trump’s first administration, when a wave of antiprotest legislation—often taken from model legislation drafted by the Goldwater Institute—focused on protecting conservative speakers from public disruption, specifically on college campuses.[footnote]See, e.g., US Protest Law Tracker, Int’l Ctr. for Not-for-Profit L., https://www.icnl.org/usprotestlawtracker/?location=&status=&issue=2&date=custom&date_from=2017-01-20&date_to=2021-01-20&type= [https://perma.cc/DQ5J-99UW] (last visited Apr. 9, 2025) (collecting nineteen campus protest bills introduced during the first Trump Administration); see also Stanley Kurtz, James Manley & Jonathan Butcher, Goldwater Inst., Campus Free Speech: A Legislative Proposal 2, 20–21 (2019), https://www.goldwaterinstitute.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Campus-Free-Speech-A-Legislative-Proposal_Web.pdf [https://perma.cc/YS6L-KC3Q] (suggesting a model “Campus Free Speech Act” and recommending discipline for students who interfere with others’ free speech rights, as well as requiring “security fees for invited speakers to be reasonable, and not based on the content of speech”).[/footnote] Moreover, while growing systems of protest policing at universities may also increase police surveillance of student groups on the right, the asymmetry in tactics and disruption leads to different consequences. Some groups operate under the threat of violence and intrusion for their protest tactics, while others seem to receive protection from colleges.

Institutional Design

POLICING CAMPUS PROTEST

REGULATORY MONITORS: POLICING FIRMS IN THE COMPLIANCE ERA