ARI SHAPIRO, HOST:
College campuses around the country are bracing for more tensions this fall. The Israel-Hamas war has prompted some of the most volatile campus protests in decades. This summer, student organizers are rethinking strategies and tactics. And as NPR's Tovia Smith reports, so are counter-protesters and college administrators.
TOVIA SMITH, BYLINE: It was, to many student organizers, a crushing coincidence of the calendar...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: Get back. Get back.
SMITH: ...That just as months of protests were coming to a crescendo...
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UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Don't touch me. Don't touch me.
SMITH: ...The semester abruptly ended and students suddenly left.
MARIE ADELE GROSSO: It was definitely very jarring. I just wanted so badly to still be in New York, just trying not to lose that momentum.
SMITH: Junior Marie Adele Grosso was a student organizer at Barnard College and Columbia University, planning the rallies, protests and encampments that ended with hundreds of arrests, including hers twice. Like many students, her criminal charges have since been dropped, and her school suspension was downgraded to probation. Now she's among those around the nation using the summer to rethink what activism might look like in the fall.
GROSSO: We're not going to just be copying encampment, encampment, encampment. We will be doing whatever action we choose, escalations if that's necessary. We will do what is necessary.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: There is only one solution.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Intifada, revolution.
SMITH: In Cambridge, Mass., students home for the summer or living on now-quiet campuses nearby are keeping busy by joining up with community activists instead.
UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: Say it loud, and say it clear.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Refugees are welcome here.
SMITH: In this case, it's a protest run by a Boston group blocking traffic outside the offices of Elbit Systems, an Israeli military supplier.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Continue in disrupting. That is our fight.
SMITH: Students here say they're learning from their elders, as they put it, many veterans of the Vietnam era who are sharing lessons on tactics and how and when to escalate them. Leslie University senior Soledad Dolorico implored fellow students to keep up the pressure this fall, even if it means more of the most volatile scenes from last spring.
SOLEDAD DOLORICO: Resistance is always justified when people are occupied by any and all means necessary. I could not care less about students busting up some windows when they're getting degrees revoked for protesting the killing of human beings.
SMITH: Many schools see it as a dangerously heady mix - students rested, ready and riled up and intensifying conflict in the Middle East and a turbulent U.S. election season.
JEFF HUNT: It's just getting amped up. And unfortunately, I think that translates into the potential for more, frankly, violent sort of activity on campuses.
SMITH: Crisis communications consultant Jeff Hunt, who's working with dozens of schools this summer, points to the escalating rhetoric, for example, in Washington, D.C., where some protesters were supporting not just the Palestinian people in Gaza but also Hamas and Hezbollah.
HUNT: That's pretty [expletive] scary. Excuse me. So there's a lot of administrators at these institutions quite worried and doing their best to try to prepare.
SMITH: For many schools, that means tightening their rules on protests, disciplinary action and security. Beginning today, Columbia is restricting campus access to people with school IDs and their registered guests. The university is also considering giving their security officers the power to make arrests. Other schools are tightening limits on when and where protests can happen and whether they can use bullhorns and signs, for example. Multiple colleges declined to comment on policy changes as they're still in the works.
ALEX MOREY: We have schools going, how can I make this so that we're not seeing, you know, the crazy protests next semester? And we're going, you don't. You don't.
SMITH: Alex Morey with the free speech group FIRE has been tracking policy changes. Some she sees as reasonable restrictions, like not blocking access, sleeping outside or being too loud, and some Morey calls overcorrections.
MOREY: We don't want students to have to be checking the campus map and figuring out, where's the free speech zone and are these free speech hours? And, you know, have I given enough free speech notice? Like, that is way too strict for a campus that promises free expression.
SMITH: At the same time, schools are also grappling with pressure from Congress, the Department of Education and lawsuits challenging what some Jewish and pro-Israel students and their supporters call a hostile environment. Columbia University junior Elisha Baker is among those accusing administrators of lax enforcement, which he believes portends a more tumultuous fall.
ELISHA BAKER: We're definitely preparing for the worst because what we know from the last 10 months is that the university doesn't hold people accountable when they break rules. So they've learned basically that those actions don't have consequences, which means that they can act again with impunity.
SMITH: Columbia declined to comment on those complaints. But at some schools that have cracked down on violations, certain students are planning to take a more low-key approach this fall.
ANNE-MARIE JARDINE: I'm scared of getting arrested again. So maybe I'll just hang out in the shadows this time.
SMITH: That's Anne-Marie Jardine, who just graduated from the University of Texas Austin and is headed to grad school. She says she spent this summer healing from injuries she suffered when police arrested her and scores of others.
JARDINE: I don't want to go through that again. And that's, like, kind of a guilt I have. The cause is so important, but, like, they brutalized me.
SMITH: There are other students also choosing a less confrontational tact not out of fear but out of their belief that it may be more successful.
MAHMOUD MUHEISEN: Now it's, all right, everybody, let's calm down. You know, let's take the diplomatic approach, see what happens.
SMITH: Mahmoud Muheisen just graduated Wayne State University in Detroit, where protesters have been demanding divestment from companies with ties to Israel. Students have been testing various strategies by role playing, a method they started in the spring, with Muheisen playing an administration official.
MUHEISEN: Here's the deal. The university is willing to offer a meeting if you guys take down the encampment. What's your response?
SMITH: Another student, playing herself, rejects the offer outright. So Muheisen pretends to call the media to show how students' intransigence could be used to make them look bad.
MUHEISEN: Now this is Channel 7 news. Watch this. We offered to meet. We gave in on two grounds, and they said no.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: We don't have...
MUHEISEN: But now we're on the back foot again.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #4: Now we're on the back foot.
MUHEISEN: I say we don't...
SMITH: As Muheisen sees it, students may be better served, for example, by a petition than another protest.
MUHEISEN: We want to talk to the university in sort of a language that they might understand. But if they don't, we have no issue taking it to the streets again, but we don't want to be doing all this when we could have done something that's a lot quieter.
SMITH: It's definitely been a quieter summer for students at Brown University, one of just a dozen or so U.S. campuses where students ended their encampments voluntarily in exchange for meetings on divestment. As one Brown student put it, they're now doing the unglamorous side of organizing, like revising a report they hope will help boost their case. Meantime, pro-Israel students are gearing up to boost their narrative after many of them laid low last year for fear of blowback.
SHABBOS KESTENBAUM: I would say to buckle in because unfortunately, it will be very difficult.
SMITH: Harvard graduate Shabbos Kestenbaum says more students are now planning to increase their volume and visibility to counter what he calls the slander of the Jewish state.
KESTENBAUM: No, the Jewish state is not a settler colonial entity. No, it is not practicing apartheid, nor is it committing genocide. It is a vibrant democracy that has been thrust into a war not of its own choice, and they are defending themselves as best as they can. And if we have to be loud about it and if I have to lose friends over it, which I have, so be it.
SMITH: To that point, a growing number of schools are scrambling this summer to institute new programs promoting civil discourse and education. They see it as a kind of inoculation against vitriol and violence. As one dean put it, education is what we do. It takes a lot of guts and a lot of work, he says, but if universities can't pull this off, who can? Tovia Smith, NPR News.
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