Will the University of California Turn Back Before It’s Too Late?
For nearly two years now the University of California has been criminalizing peaceful student protest. University officials have arrested activists as they slept quietly in a campus building, resting after a day of hosting workshops and seminars during a pre-finals study period. Campus police have used batons and tasers and pepper spray on protesters who meant them no harm and posed no physical threat. The university has distorted and abused its student conduct policies, deploying judicial sanction to suppress lawful dissent.
And all the while the dismantling of public higher education in California has rolled on. The state’s governor and legislature have at times responded to the activists’ passionate defense of their institution, but the institution itself has not.
The administration of the University of California has hollowed out the space at the heart of the university where productive dialogue and robust disputation should reside. They have thwarted students’ efforts to devise a creative, productive response to the current crisis, to build common cause in the shaping of the educational
