This week the University of California system has decided to ban encampments and face masks “ensure a safe, inclusive campus climate that fosters a free exchange of ideas”. As long as those ideas don't upset the political establishment. This is just the latest example. All over the country college campuses have decided to become safe from free speech.

The university president, Minouche Shafik, resigned this week in the wake of criticism for her handling of the protests, but not before overseeing the installation of fencing around the lawns of the school’s quad – the heart of campus life and the site of large protest encampments...
In an email sent to students last month, the administration also announced a “color-coded campus status” system, with varying levels of access restrictions “based upon the potential disruption to our academic mission and/or campus operations”.

University administrators are also considering bringing in “peace officers” with the authority to arrest students – something Columbia’s current 290 security personnel cannot do, according to the Wall Street Journal...
Over the summer, the University of Pennsylvania introduced a new prohibition on camping and banned any speech that “advocates violence”. Critics note that such speech is constitutionally protected – as long as it doesn’t entail a clear threat. As a private school, UPenn is not bound by the US constitution’s first amendment protections, but like many private universities it claims to uphold free speech values .
The University of Louisville, in Kentucky, proposed bans on chalking and yard signs and a requirement that other signage “align with the university mission”...The University of Michigan introduced a new “disruptive activity policy” that speech advocates criticized as overly broad and punitive.

To sacrifice such a essentially liberty it must be a worthy cause and the danger must be imminent, amirite?

An analysis of 553 US campus demonstrations nationwide between 18 April and 3 May found that fewer than 20 resulted in any serious interpersonal violence or property damage, according to statistics from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (Acled).

Over the same period, Acled documented at least 70 instances of forceful police intervention against US campus protests, which includes the arrest of demonstrators and the use of physical dispersal tactics, including the deployment of chemical agents, batons and other kinds of physical force.

Nearly half of the campus protests that Acled categorized as violent involved protesters fighting with law enforcement during police interventions, according to the group’s data.

Of those 553 campus protests, exactly two involved significant property damage. Of the less than 20 that involved physical violence, this includes two nights at UCLA where counter-protestors attacked a Gaza solidarity encampment while police looked the other way.

Other violent incidents at campus protests included a 1 May “skirmish” between protesters and pro-Israel counter-protesters at UC Berkeley over someone grabbing an Israeli flag, which resulted in minor injuries, and two early May incidents, one in Portland and one in St Louis, that involved violent confrontations between motorists and demonstrators.

I think we can all agree that the universities should ban free speech if there is even a 1% chance of violence, or if it makes life uncomfortable for the MIC, especially if it involves genocide.