Last spring, American universities descended into chaos. From state schools to exclusive private institutions, students assembled to express their First Amendment rights and protest Israel and the war in Gaza. The movement’s mobilization rivaled only that of the student-led Vietnam War protests that erupted 60 years ago. Protestors cited these mobilizations of the 1960s, which ultimately earned protesters widespread legal protection and public sympathy, as justification for their cause. Though powerful, this equivocation is ultimately flawed. Pro-Palestinian encampments diverge from past student demonstrations in one crucial aspect: constitutionality. Based on decided First Amendment precedent, the nature of many encampments merited a strict response from campuses. While the chaos may have subsided, ongoing legal battles show the continual challenges that American universities face in light of last year’s protests. 

As if the subject matter of pro-Palestinian encampments was not polarizing enough, tensions climaxed when universities moved to disband them. Of the 121 encampments established in 2024, over 50% were dissolved by schools or local authorities [1]. University crackdowns resulted in hundreds of student arrests at institutions across the country. Students involved in encampment activities also faced, and continue to face, suspension, expulsion, and withheld diplomas. The forceful apprehension of student protesters received harsh disapproval from the public and many media outlets. In April, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) published a letter intended for the presidents of academic institutions that reminded them of their legal obligation to uphold the First Amendment [2]. According to the ACLU, universities have violated the freedoms of speech and expression that are integral to the central objective of higher education. 

Just as in the 60s, much of the public vocally condemned efforts to “stifle” and “intimidate” students [3]. Students sought sympathies of the past by directly comparing themselves to the anti-Vietnam War movement. At the University of Michigan, encampments reused the same locations students used in the 60s and claimed to be “building on things that have been done before” [4]. Across the country at Occidental College, protesters said “the parallels [between the two movements] cannot be more obvious.” Students hoped that the comparison to a highly-regarded era of protest would garner further public approval for their own.

The issue of student protests has evolved from a media controversy to a question of legality and rights. In October of 2024, two students and two faculty members from UCLA filed a suit against the UC Regents for events that ensued during the campus’s pro-Palestinian encampment last spring [5]. The suit claims that UCLA violated the constitutional freedoms of its students and faculty by forcibly disbanding the encampment. When interviewed by the ACLU, plaintiff and Associate Professor Graeme Blair said that he was “disgusted” by the “brutal chaos” evoked against students “simply using their voice to call for social change” [6].

Blair v. Regents of the University of California is hardly alone in its objective. Similar suits have been filed against University of Colorado executives, the University of Michigan, and numerous other colleges and universities where student encampments were forcibly disbanded [7]. These lawsuits raise critical questions about the legality of last year’s encampments and all future student protests in America.

Constitutional precedent offers answers to all of these questions. At first glance, the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution makes itself abundantly clear: “Congress shall make no law… abridging the freedom of speech or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances” [8]. Neither the government nor any publicly-funded entity can restrict an individual’s ability to speak, assemble, or protest. This assertion appears first in the Bill of Rights because the founding fathers—having escaped the tyranny of England’s monarchy—wanted to ensure citizens could express any opinion without limitation [9]. However, applying the Constitution to today’s world creates a huge interpretive challenge. 

In the 234 years since the First Amendment was ratified, American courts have made numerous attempts to clarify its intentions. In defense of the disbanding of student encampments, the Anti-Defamation League emphasized the “antisemitic” and “intimidating” nature of the protests [10]. Similar sentiments were echoed by various right-wing and pro-Israel media engines, who asserted that freedom of speech should not include threats. Campus protesters in 2024 utilized slogans that stirred much controversy over historical and colloquial uses, with some of the most common being “From the River to the Sea” and “Globalize the Intifada”[11]. The former phrase originated in the 1960s as a call for the freedom of Palestinians to retake Israeli territory and has gained attention recently for its use as a threat to eradicate Israelis and their state [12]. The latter refers to a Palestinian freedom movement during the late eighties and early twenty-first century that staged a series of deadly attacks on Israeli civilians. Some supporters and participants of encampments are adamant that they “do not mean to call for the erasure of Israel or the destruction of all Jews in that land” [13]. Though variable in use, both phrases have origins in violent threats to the Israeli people. Universities were not alone in their concern over these phrases. The U.S. House passed a bipartisan resolution in April of 2024 to disapprove of the use of “From the River to the Sea” and similar calls in government [14]. In addition to bipartisan, the condemnation of antisemitic slogans has become global. Even Britain's left-center Labour Party considers “From the River to the Sea” suggestively violent and suspended a party member over its use in October of 2023.

And yet, the Constitution does not consider these phrases to be “true threats”. The differentiation between an actual threat and political hyperbole was established during the Vietnam War in Watts v. United States. This case involved a protester who was federally prosecuted for making a threat toward the president by announcing “If they ever make me carry a rifle, the first man I want to get in my sights is L.B.J” [15]. The Supreme Court ruled in Watts’s favor, asserting that Watts’s words did not pose any legitimate threat to the President. They based this decision on the lack of harm Watts could have inflicted or incited upon Johnson.

By only determining what was not a “true threat”, the actual definition remained rather ambiguous. The Supreme Court eventually affirmed the meaning of “true threat” in Brandenburg v. Ohio. In a unanimous decision, the court decided that only a threat with an expectation of immediate and unlawful response could be put down [16]. Since Watts did not threaten the President on the steps of the White House and student encampments were not cited explicitly calling for immediate harm to Jewish students, these protests could likely qualify for Constitutional protection. The plaintiffs in Blair v. Regents of the University of California note this and claim that the UC Regents wrongly expelled protesters on the premise of controversial but “nonviolent” messages. 

Even if the encampments could be ruled non-threatening, there are additional caveats to the freedom of speech. Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits any kind of conduct on federally funded property that is discriminatory based on race, religion, and other protected categories [17]. Thus, this law would require public universities such as UCLA, which receives federal funding, to disallow harmful speech that could severely harm students' learning environment. In a letter to students and faculty, former UCLA Chancellor Gene Block echoed this principle. It affirmed the university’s responsibility to prevent “activism that harms our ability to carry out our academic mission and makes people in our community feel bullied, threatened, and afraid” [18]. Despite the claims made in the lawsuit against his university regents, Block did not cite controversial messaging as the source of this purported bullying. Instead, he specifically referenced cases of protest that created a hostile environment for specific groups of students. Many active suits against universities highlight the constitutional protection for controversial language, even that which makes students “feel bullied, threatened, and afraid”. What they fail to mention, however, is that public universities also have a unique obligation to protect their institutional objectives.

Private universities are also worth mentioning, as schools like Columbia and Vanderbilt received pronounced media attention for the occupation of campus property. These establishments possess a simpler justification for blocking discriminatory speech. As non-government entities, private universities have constitutional permission to block any speech they deem “hateful and offensive” [19].

The legal precedent for protest removal does not stop there. In 1989, Ward v. Rock Against Racism established the “Time, Place, Manner” exception to the First Amendment [20]. The court ruled that private and public institutions have a right to decide when and where protests can happen, so long as the decision is content-neutral and the relevant group has access to an alternative means of communication. Thus, colleges had a right to put an end to overnight encampments, which violated rules against camping on university property. Many schools invoked “Time, Place, Manner” to justify student removals [21]. At numerous universities, encampments occupied lecture halls and arbitrarily controlled and restricted student access [22]. In addition to overnight camping, this gave universities not just a reason, but an obligation to bring an end to the encampments. By preventing students from accessing parts of campus, encampments at these universities violated the ability of academic institutions to uphold their educational objectives. Videos on social media displayed encampment occupants blocking students from entering UCLA’s Powell Library and Royce Hall, exemplifying the very behavior a “Time, Place, Manner” limitation seeks to prevent [23].

 Ultimately, dismantling unconstitutional student demonstrations is essential to ensuring the continuation of constitutional ones. According to William Blackstone, who authored the English common law and inspired the U.S. Constitution, civil law is both “commanding what is right and prohibiting what is wrong” [24]. The First Amendment does not intend to just protect rights; it also prohibits the misuse of them. Universities have an equal obligation to foster constructive discourse and protect students from that which is unlawful. By dismantling student encampments, American universities were not suppressing First Amendment rights; they were clarifying them and the important role that academic institutions play in our society.