Student Protesters Feel Unsafe; Campus Boomers to the Rescue!

Gen Zers are just doing what they've been taught to do

At Columbia University, some faculty members donned orange safety vests and joined student protestors on the front lines.

Bruce Robbins and his colleagues were on site, the English professor said, because “students asked the faculty members to protect them.”

Annelise Orleck also wanted to protect her students. That’s one reason why the Dartmouth history professor stood side-by-side with student protestors, even to the point of getting arrested herself.

At UCLA, some faculty members jumped on an emergency call with Pro-Palestinian student protestors. 

“We just got a really clear message from them: ‘We feel unsafe, and we’d like your help in fixing this,’” noted Graeme Blair, an associate professor of political science.

In Westwood, several dozen faculty activists swooped in to assist their young comrades. They participated in around-the-clock shifts at encampments, and even locked arms with students as police began their crack downs. 

Never fear, student activists, your senior citizen protectors are here! 

Some Baby Boomer professors, often in their 60s and 70s, have found a way to relive their protest glory days. Take fledgling undergrads by the hand and guide them through the bumpy world of agitation. 

Call them helicopter grandparents.

Until about age 18, it’s the helicopter parents’ job to fight battles for their kiddos. Then the overprotective parents hand them over to campus boomers who continue the coddling when the junior rabble-rousers “feel unsafe” at protests. 

Will the bubble wrap ever come off?

Then again, maybe the coddling of budding revolutionaries is warranted. 

The headline of The New York Times piece that describes the Columbia and UCLA incidents reads: “Taking Cues From Students, U.C.L.A. Faculty Members Join the Protests.”

But that phrasing gets it backwards. The headline should read: “Taking Cues from Faculty Members, U.C.L.A. Students Join the Protests.”

For decades, professors and their administrative colleagues have worked hard to create the “free speech for me, but not for thee” environment that spawned today’s campus protests. 

Why expect them to stop meddling now?

Wishing for More Stangers

Perhaps you remember Allison Stanger.

The Middlebury College political science professor should be given a medal. In fact, someone (FIRE?) should create an award in her name. Although she disagreed with what he would say, when Charles Murray came to campus, Stanger defended his right to say it. 

She even agreed to interact with the author after his prepared remarks, but that proved to be difficult when protesters began shouting down Murray’s speech, pounding on walls, and pulling fire alarms. 

When Stanger and Murray tried to flee by car, protesters followed them outside and surrounded them. One protester shoved Stanger; another yanked her by the hair. When Stanger and Murray finally made it inside the car, protestors jumped on the hood, pounded on the car, and rocked it back and forth. 

The assault left Stanger with whiplash and a concussion, injuries that required six months of physical therapy. 

Selectively Free Speech

When the subject turns to the Israel-Hamas War, boomer profs are quick to cite the importance of protecting students’ right to protest. I agree with them, and I’d like to think they’re principled civil libertarians like Stanger. But it’s hard to shake the feeling that they’ve emerged from their offices simply because they agree with the point of view of their pro-Palestinian students. 

The exceptions deserve heaps of praise, but faculty members’ actions suggest they’re usually more devoted to politics than free speech. 

They could have supported intellectual diversity, but they voted for echo chambers instead. Departments that exhibited fairly decent levels of dissent up until the mid-90s, have now been steamrolled by uniformity.

If there’s a group that’s more gripped by groupthink than professors, it’s administrators. In recent decades, their ranks have swelled, and they moved to codify groupthink by, for instance, pushing DEI statements and organizing highly politicized student activities, with names like “Stay Healthy, Stay Woke,” and “Understanding White Privilege.”

Imagine if they had thrown their influence behind a different cause, like ensuring universities lived up to their purpose of pursuing truth. When it comes to student protests, they could have created clear rules and enforced them on a consistent and viewpoint-neutral basis. 

Under a clear and predictable system, students would know the consequences of setting up encampments, shouting down speakers, physically intimidating other students, and so on. That would help universities distinguish between student protestors and outside agitators (who don’t care about being suspended). Such a system would decrease mob rule, bolster free expression, and perhaps even obviate the need for police intervention at protests. 

So Many Blown Chances

Universities had countless opportunities to take a principled stand for free speech, but most chose not to. (Even the ones not kowtowing to student protesters often blow it in the opposite direction.)

So many professors chose not to foster a culture of free speech, even within the confines of their own classrooms. Like Alan Charles Kors’ socialist professor from long ago, they could have demanded a clash of ideas. They could have supported constructive disagreement. They could have shown students a complicated world, but so often they chose not to.

Instead students witness an ongoing morality play, a redacted view of reality—one that highlights oppression only when it squares with campus boomers’ view of who gets to play the role of angel and devil.

That kind of environment fosters myopia and ignorance. From which river to which sea? According to one poll, 68% of students don’t know. We shouldn't be surprised because universities often shield students from high-level speech. 

They’re not expected to follow the truth wherever it leads. They’re not expected to engage with intelligent people who disagree with them. They’re not expected to marshal evidence to create persuasive arguments. 

Students know that they can skip over so much of the intellectual heavy lifting. 

Just scrawl a platitude on some poster-board and start chanting slogans the campus boomers agree with. Then, if things get too real on the front lines, look for some helicopter grandparents to make you feel safe. 

Ted Balaker is a filmmaker, and former network newser and think tanker. His recent work includes Little Pink House starring Catherine Keener and Jeanne Tripplehorn, Can We Take a Joke? featuring Gilbert Gottfried and Penn Jillette, and the new feature documentary based on the bestselling book, The Coddling of the American Mind, by Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt. Stream the very first “Substack Presents” feature documentary here.