The Weaponization Of Safety As A Way To Criminalize Students

 Slate  |  What do you mean by the “weaponization of safety”?

The language is about wanting to make Jewish students feel safe. But there isn’t that other side of the conversation, which is: Are Palestinian students feeling safe? Some students are afraid of doxing, and there aren’t conversations about that.

OK, so the school policies have changed. Are there any other ways things have changed in recent years for student activists?

I do think that one of the things that has changed is that there are ways universities are, for example, deactivating access cards, taking students out of dorms, and rapidly creating material consequences—consequences relating to housing, tuition, fees, expulsion, etc.
Those move much faster, in large part because of technology. You can, by a click of a button, deactivate students’ cards. It’s increased the speed at which universities can respond.

And then, for example, with things like Twitter or TikTok now, there’s the difference between a university president making a statement that’s posted online, versus in the past, when that might have just been an email or in a student newspaper.

What does that conversation occurring publicly mean for this whole dynamic?

It allows for more scrutiny. So when colleges and universities, for example, created statements in 2015 and 2016 about anti-Blackness and police brutality, a lot of those statements were about standing against hate, etc. And then in 2020, as colleges and universities were once again creating the statements, there were student groups that brought up the 2015, 2016 statements being like, What have you done since then? Students are able to say, “You posted about this, and we’re trying to hold you accountable to that.”

What do you think drove schools like Columbia to take such a dramatic disciplinary step in these cases? Do you think this situation was specific to the Israel-Palestine conflict, or standard for any kind of protest?

I think colleges and universities feel like this is very complicated. There’s less of a desire to make a stance, and colleges and universities are wary of making statements; often, statements are 500 words or less, and there needs to be, like, a book. So, I think that that’s part of what makes universities nervous.

Looking at Columbia, as an example, this is a PR nightmare for them. To arrest students now, when there’s so much scrutiny, and then to do it in such a cruel way—students have been talking about only having 15 minutes to collect their belongings, that their belongings were thrown in the trash immediately. And to do that on a scale of 100 students, and then to double down on that, and then say that they’re doing it for safety, doesn’t make a lot of sense. So what that tells you is that Columbia is likely facing a lot of pressure from people who do not want students to be protesting. To the point where they’re making what seems like a very irrational decision.