Justin Morrison/Inside Higher Ed
The American Civil Liberties Union and Amnesty International U.S. (AIUS) this week released a damning report on First Amendment rights on college campuses in the two years since the 2024 pro-Palestine student protests. The report catalogues, among other things, the violence inflicted on student and faculty protesters at over 20 campuses and underscores how the events pushed the boundaries of campus free-speech protections. Now two years on, the encampments may be gone, but higher ed remains a free-speech battleground.
The ACLU/AIUS report recounts harrowing stories of students and faculty who sustained serious injuries from law enforcement called to disperse protests. A Columbia University student told Reuters, “While [sitting] on the ground, I was kicked in the head, unsure if it was purposeful or not. I watched another student be kicked in the head, intentionally.”
A UCLA Police Department officer shot a student in the chest with a rubber bullet, knocking them down and causing a contusion to their heart and a bruised lung. A student at Tulane suffered a concussion after law enforcement pushed them to the ground. A 65-year-old Southern Illinois Uni...