Campus protesters ramp up plans for fall

The sudden resignation of Columbia University’s president is quickly resurfacing tensions over the Israel-Hamas war that roiled college campuses this spring — a movement primed to escalate as students return to class.

Continued unrest in the Middle East and uncertainty over the new Democratic ticket’s stance on the war, an issue that already splits the party, has the potential to further accelerate campus protests.

Organizers at a string of campuses have started planning demonstrations. And some schools are responding with changes to free speech rules that concern academic freedom advocates. The friction sets up a fraught return to school in a matter of days.

"Students are planning on hitting the ground running," Layla Saliba, a Columbia University student involved in the protests, said in an interview. "Students are going to be more intentional. And I also think now we have greater opposition."

It's unclear whether protests will rival the size of massive demonstrations that shocked the country earlier this year. But student organizers say they have no plans to slow down.

“We are committed to continuing our activism because we understand that it is not just one individual but the entire institution that is complicit in the ongoing genocide,” said Cam Jones, a lead organizer of the protests at Columbia, in a statement to POLITICO. “We will not rest until Columbia divests and Palestine is free.”

Jones said he didn't consider Vice President Kamala Harris' sudden candidacy a win for the student protest movement. "We see Harris' ascension to the ticket as not much of a change as she is from the same administration that has been supporting the genocide of the Palestinian people," he said.

University of Louisville students are planning to protest on their first day back to class. “We continue to pressure the university administration on their shameful response to the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” the Louisville Students for Justice in Palestine leaders wrote on the social media platform X . “We are still here, and we will not rest until UofL divests!”

Rice University Students for Justice in Palestine, in Houston, already started hosting protests over the summer , one of which took place in August when Harris was in town. “We need to show her & all genocidal politicians that they were not welcome,” the group wrote on X.

Protests in May and June wreaked havoc on campuses. Stanford University students walked out of their commencement ceremony in protest — and barricaded themselves in the president’s office . At the University of Michigan, activists placed fake corpses wrapped in bloodied sheets on one regent’s lawn. Princeton University students hijacked the college’s reunion weekend that drew 25,000 alumni and guests, with protesters holding up red-dyed hands during President Christopher Ludwig Eisgruber's address.

While far from the top issue for most Americans, the war in Gaza has stoked outrage that could influence swing states like Michigan with a sizeable Arab population — more than 100,000 people voted “uncommitted” in the Democratic primary — and dampen turnout among young voters that are a crucial part of the party’s base.

Katrina Armstrong, Columbia’s interim president who replaced Minouche Shafik, acknowledged the continued tension .

“The familiar excitement and promise of a new academic year are informed this year by the presence of change and continuing concerns, but also by the immense opportunity to look forward, to join together for the laudable mission we are here to serve, and to become our best selves individually and institutionally,” Armstrong said in a statement.

Schools are adjusting how they will regulate protests, prompting some concerns from First Amendment and academic freedom groups.

That includes Indiana University, which instituted a new campus demonstration policy this month after clashes between protesters and police on the university’s flagship Bloomington campus last semester prompted lawsuits and a 77-page outside investigation . Restrictions on the use of light projections, signs, amplified sound and sidewalk chalk are now in place — and protests are only allowed to occur between 6:00 a.m. and 11:00 p.m.

“In order for free speech for all to flourish, we needed to clarify our policies so people clearly understand the allowable time, manner and place for free expression,” W. Quinn Buckner, chair of the university’s board of trustees, said in a statement last month. “We can’t let one person or group’s expression infringe on the rights of others, disrupt learning experiences for our students or interrupt regular university business.”

The American Association of University Professors this week condemned what it described as “overly restrictive policies dealing with the rights to assemble and protest on campus .”

Shafik’s departure is also prompting renewed interest in the coming school year from congressional Republicans who have grilled college leaders in adversarial hearings about antisemitism on college campuses.

“The Columbia president clearly mishandled the protests and the threats to Jewish students,” Republican Sen. Bill Cassidy (R-La.), the ranking member of the Senate’s education committee, said in a statement. “Jewish students coming back to campus this fall need assurance that their schools and the Department of Education will protect them from attacks and discrimination.”

Yale University students held Zoom meetings and kept in touch on group chats as they planned their campus activism this fall.

“The mood at both Yale and Columbia and colleges around the country is that what happened at the end of last semester isn’t really over,” said Craig Morton, an organizer with Yalies4Palestine who is facing three charges, including two misdemeanors for trespassing and a charge of disorderly conduct.

“People are aware of the threat,” he said in an interview. “But people are still pretty intent on getting out there in the fall and continuing to protest."

Irie Sentner and Madina Touré contributed to this report.