As the school year nears its end, there are still many protests about Gaza on campuses

nationwide. While many are peaceful, tensions on campuses remain. Columbia University

today canceled its main graduation ceremony

saying it'll hold individual ones instead for each school. This week we will

continue to hear a range of opinions on these protests, on free speech, and on concerns over

student safety. Today, Lisa Desjardin looks at how schools have viewed protests in the past

and how they're approaching them now.

William, some universities have explicitly promoted their own history with nonviolent

protests in recent years, but as colleges are grappling with the balance of free speech,

civil disobedience, and concerns over student safety, there's been a wave of

arrest and crackdown on many campuses. We've heard some college officials argue these measures are necessary and overdue

while protesters and some faculty say it's been too harsh in some cases.

Tyler Austin Harper wrote about this for the Atlantic. He's an assistant professor of

environmental studies at Bates College and joins me now. Tyler you are

looking squarely at universities and saying, arguing that their own rhetoric is part of this and you wrote that

quote the same colleges that appeal to students by promoting opportunities

for engagement and activism are now suspending them and they're calling the cops. What do you mean by hypocrisy here?

Yeah, so a lot of the universities that we have seen have especially draconian measures with student protesters either

suspending them or in some cases calling the police are often the

same universities that like to champion their history of past protests so So Cornell, Columbia, Emory, for example,

all like to brag about their history of radical student

activism in the Vietnam War era.

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