‘Dear Parents’: How colleges are trying to spin the protests for the people paying the bills
A person is detained by police as pro-Palestinian students protest on the campus of the University of Texas at Austin April 24. Photo by Suzanne Cordeiro/AFP via Getty Images
By Lauren Markoe April 30, 2024
Colleges and universities struggling to quell pro-Palestinian protests are also trying to figure out how to explain the tumult to the people paying tuition.
Parents across the nation are receiving emails, sometimes several a week, updating them on the often-raucous demonstrations at their students’ schools.
Many already know what’s happening, of course. News sites and social media feeds have been blaring updates and live video of encampments, arrests, canceled graduations and building occupations for the past two weeks. And students are generally supplying copious details and commentary via texts home.
But many campus administrators are also reaching out directly via email to explain what’s transpiring and reassure their customers that, against all appearances, they have the situation under control. More than 1,000 student protesters demanding divestment from companies that work with Israel have been arrested at about 30 colleges since Columbia University broke up its first Gaza Solidarity Encampment on April 18.
Many Jewish parents, concerned about the fervent anti-Zionism they see on campuses and the antisemitism that has tinged some of the protests, are reading these emails especially carefully. Some find them comforting; others say they only make them feel more anxious.
I reviewed more than a dozen emails sent recently to parents of enrolled or admitted students, and found they hit on similar themes:
The college is under control:
“I am writing to you with an update about the actions we took this morning to safeguard campus safety and sustain university operations.” — Yale University, April 22
… and committed to free speech:
“Freedom of expression and enlightened debate are among our institution’s guiding principles and priorities.” — Northwestern University, April 25
With some limitations …
“We will also insist that protesters meet their responsibility to university policies that prohibit the disruption of the normal academic activities of our community – the vast majority of whom are not protesting.” — The George Washington University, April 25
Many of the emails, some also sent to alumni, emphasize how the college has tried to work with protesters:
“This encampment is in violation of university policy and those present in it have been notified multiple times and have been asked to dismantle the encampment.” — University of Massachusetts, April 29
… but has had no choice other than to crack down:
“No one wants to have people arrested on their campus. Ever. But, when longstanding safety policies are flagrantly violated, buildings vandalized, directives repeatedly ignored, threatening language shouted, people assaulted, and access to critical academic buildings blocked, we must act immediately to protect our community.” — University of Southern California, April 26
Some contrast themselves not-so-subtly with others that have taken a different tack:
“We made no move to clear the plaza because high among the university’s aims was to avoid any escalation or violence.” — New York University, April 24
And some veer into the academic:
“I believe the protesters should also consider that an encampment, with all the etymological connections of the word to military origins, is a way of using force of a kind rather than reason to persuade others.” — University of Chicago, April 29
On the receiving end
Patricia Levy-Zuckerman laughed when she read that linguistic aside in the email that the University of Chicago’s president, Paul Alivisatos, sent to parents. “So Chicago,” she said.
Two of her triplets are at the university, and though she worries about antisemitism on campus, she said she has, overall, appreciated hearing from the administration about the protests.
Alivisatos made it clear that the encampment at Chicago violates university rules, she said, but also that he isn’t going to rush to knock it down, hoping to find a gentler way to resolve the impasse.
Levy-Zuckerman, who lives in Washington, D.C., said she knows of another mother who read the same letter and thought it hypocritical. “She said, ‘Why are you saying this crosses a line, but you’re letting it happen?’ Whereas I read the letter and was reassured.”
Danielle Dobin, of Westport, Connecticut, was also glad to get an email last week from Northwestern University, where her son is in his first year. “There was a great first letter,” she said, that emphasized that an encampment was not permitted and that amplified sound was allowed only at certain hours. A second email reiterated the encampment’s illegality.
But when it became clear to her that the university was not going to take the tents down, she was disappointed. “It’s challenging to describe the feeling of receiving these communications, knowing that there will be no enforcement,” she told me.
Northwestern reached an agreement with protesters on Monday in which the students said they would dismantle their tents and sound systems in exchange for, among other concessions, full scholarships for five Palestinian students. Brown University also brokered a truce of sorts on Tuesday after several hours of negotiations, agreeing to let the protesting students present their case for divestment to the next meeting of the school’s governing board.
In the dark
Meanwhile, some Jewish parents told me they were hungry for reassurance from their children’s schools.
“There has been absolutely no official communication,” said Leslie Kaufman of Chicago, whose son is a senior at Indiana University Bloomington, where state and campus police arrested 56 protesters in the past week. The university did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Kaufman also does pro bono public relations for a Facebook group called Mothers Against Campus Antisemitism, which formed last year as protests on campus proliferated in response to the Israel-Hamas war. Parents in the group share incidents in which pro-Israel and Jewish college students have been targeted, and often criticize university leaders, who they say do little to intervene.
The reassurances from college and university leaders come as Brandeis and Yeshiva University reopened their transfer processes to offer Jewish students safe havens from campuses they might see as hostile.
At Columbia, the epicenter of this wave of protests, the dean also reached out to accepted high school students and their parents on Monday — hours before the violent takeover of a university building — to say that the school would not “tolerate hate or harassment of any kind.”
His email tried to put the protests — which have prompted Columbia to lock down the campus and call in police — in a positive light.
“To live in this city is also to be immersed in one of the greatest laboratories for grappling, in real time, with the most complex challenges our world has faced — past, present and future,” wrote the dean, Josef Sorett.
“While the current protest activity on campus — seen in person or through media coverage — may be, at times, unsettling,” he added, “I assure you that the safety of our students is of primary importance to everyone at Columbia charged with their care and education.”
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