Late on April 13, 2024, my phone rang. It was my youngest son, a student at Columbia University. He rarely called, so I jumped up to answer. He asked if his dad could join the call, so I knew something was wrong. He wanted to update us on the student protests over the genocide in Gaza. We knew he had been involved, but I am embarrassed to admit I knew little about the conflict. I knew Hamas had attacked Israel at a concert in October, killing approximately 1,200 people and taking some 250 people hostage, and that Israel had responded brutally, killing at least 41,000 people (likely an undercount) and displacing around 90 percent of Gaza’s total population . For my son and his peers, Israel was clearly in the wrong; decades of violence had preceded the current conflict. While older people blithely shrugged and said, “It’s complicated,” whenever the subject of Israel-Palestine came up, to these students, it wasn’t: Israel was committing genocide, funded by the US, and their universities were invested in companies that profited. They wanted it to stop and didn’t want their tuition dollars supporting attacks on Palestinians.
He explained that since the university was not responding to their demands to divest from Israeli companies, the students organizing the protests planned to escalate. They were well organized, holding regular meetings, following governance procedures, and researching the university’s financial ties. They planned to set up tents overnight on the main quad and refuse to leave until the administration met their divestment demands. They were looking for students to join the planned encampment. When I asked whether he would attend class, he said no. He was scared to talk to his professors, for fear of retaliation or damage to his academic record, but he planned to inform them and keep up with coursework. I perhaps stupidly asked about bathroom arrangements; they had a plan for that, too.
As he was talking, the mom in me felt scared, but the activist in me was intrigued. I had participated in plenty of protests in our small East Texas town, enduring intimidation from coal-rolling trucks (modified to emit black exhaust as a scare tactic). I’d marched in the 2018 Women’s March and served as a board member of Ordain Women, a group of Mormon feminists advocating for female priesthood. Our first big action was a peaceful march at Temple Square, where women asked to be admitted to a men-only church meeting. Before heading to Salt Lake City for that event, my husband and I explained to the kids that I could be excommunicated, which made my girls feel sad and scared. My son, though, asked whether I would be arrested. I said it was possible, but I hoped not. Naively, I added that if I died without ever being arrested at a protest, I hadn’t fought hard enough for what I believe in.
Apparently, he had taken my talk of getting arrested to heart, because he was ready. He said they would vote the next day on whether to escalate, and each person had to commit to a role. When I asked how many would join, he hoped for one hundred, which seemed like a safe number to me. Surely Columbia wouldn’t come down hard on one hundred people. Then I asked about his role. “The highest level of risk,” he said. My stomach lurched. “Why?” I asked. “Because I can,” he replied, explaining that others, like international students for whom disciplinary action could mean deportation and low-income students who have fewer resources to rely on should things go south on campus, couldn’t. His role entailed setting up the encampment and staying until their demands were met or they were arrested. Others less willing or able to accept that level of risk were tasked with picketing around the encampment to protect the students inside. When I asked why this, why now, he said: “Because this is where I go to school, and I can’t just ignore it.” I had no rebuttal.
We made sure he’d thought through the risks. My husband bluntly reminded him that we couldn’t help if he got into trouble—we didn’t have money for a lawyer or the means to fight the system. My son said he knew and understood. I asked why he was calling, since he clearly wasn’t seeking permission or advice. He chuckled and said he just wanted us to know what he was doing and why. We told him we loved him, asked him to keep us posted.
The next night, my son called late to say they had voted to proceed with the encampment, though they likely wouldn’t get one hundred students as hoped. I went online, reading about the protests and Gaza, following student-led Instagram accounts. Then, I waited. On Tuesday night, I stayed up late, endlessly scrolling, hoping for news about the encampment or a message from him, though he’d already told us he wouldn’t have his phone.
When we respond with repression and use law enforcement to bully our students, we sacrifice too many of our collective goals on the altar of authoritarianism and conformity.
In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, I groggily picked up my phone and started doom scrolling. They had done it—set up tents in Columbia’s main quad overnight, with signs explaining their cause. These kids weren’t messing around. By morning, they were peacefully marching around the encampment. While the mom in me was still scared, I was in awe of their commitment.
Glued to my phone, I read articles, social media posts, and updates from the Columbia Spectator and tuned in to WKCR-FM, Columbia’s student-run radio station. I listened to podcasts about the protests, which were spreading to other campuses, and learned a lot about the divestment movement from student-run accounts. They stayed out there for two days. They set up a Liberation Library tent, sharing books relevant to their cause, and a first-aid tent. They served food in an orderly fashion. They assigned volunteers to conduct checks around the clock to ensure the safety of all participants. They created a democratic governance system. They attempted to negotiate with university administrators.
Finally, midday on Thursday, Columbia administrators called in the New York Police Department to arrest the protesting students. NYPD showed up on campus, some in riot gear, apparently ready for a fight. The students were sitting on the ground, arms interlocked, chanting and singing, some crying. NYPD officers walked onto the beautiful lawn at Columbia, a place that boasts about its storied history of student activism, a place where learning and advocacy are held sacred and where ideas are supposedly challenged and debated, and arrested all the kids there, approximately fifty. I scanned every Instagram story and news article for a glimpse of my son, but did not see him.
As I walked in to the classroom where I teach, I received a text from my son saying that he had been arrested. As my shaking hands fumbled to turn on the computer and the projector, I could not hold back the tears. My students looked worried. This was an intro to education course that I taught at a regional comprehensive university in a deeply red part of the country. Many of my students actively resisted all my talk of social justice, identity, and intersectionality. But I worked hard to connect with them, to meet them where they were. We had developed rapport, even though I knew some of them were not buying what I was selling.
More than 40 percent of the students at my university are first-generation college students. Most of them work part-time and some even work full-time jobs and squeeze classes and homework in around their shifts. When I saw that a student organization was hosting a “Postcards for Palestine” event, I called an acquaintance who works in campus security because I feared that in Texas, a deep-red state that allows licensed gun owners to carry concealed weapons on college campuses, pro-Palestine students would not find a lot of sympathy for their cause, and the thought of violence breaking out on our campus filled me with dread. In my class that day, I choked out that I was having a very difficult day because my son had been arrested at a protest on his college campus. My students looked surprised and, to be honest, baffled. When I said, “He was arrested at a pro-Palestine protest,” I was met with a sea of blank looks.
Later that afternoon, a friend texted me a video of my son being put into an NYPD Corrections bus. My aunt, who lives in the city, saw the same video on local news. I watched it over and over. My son had been arrested and was being held—possibly overnight—in a New York City jail cell.
He was eventually released and charged with trespassing—a puzzling charge, since campus was his literal home. I also hoped, as I do with my own students, that campus felt like a metaphorical home, a safe space where he could encounter new ideas and people and then test them, debate them, weigh them. How could he have been trespassing in his own residence?
I was appalled by the way university administrators handled the protests. As the days marched on, student protesters set up 121 encampments at 117 universities across the US. Around 3,200 students, staff, and faculty were arrested. Some students were evicted from campus housing, some were prohibited from setting foot on their campuses for weeks as disciplinary processes languished in limbo; some were even suspended or expelled. On some campuses, local police deployed tear gas and even shot protesters with rubber bullets. I remember learning in history classes about the antiwar student demonstrators who had been killed at Kent State University and couldn’t believe it was happening again. We were collectively failing in our mission to help students become informed, engaged citizens.
My son was temporarily suspended from campus and, after weeks of minimal communication from Columbia, was eventually put on disciplinary probation for approximately 13 months. Only he can say what he learned from the experience.
But as someone who has spent my entire adult life in higher education, and particularly as someone who trains future EC-12 teachers to create nurturing, stimulating, trusting learning environments, the damage potentially wrought by these university administrators’ actions is irreparable. Higher education is facing some very real challenges, including politicians calling for reduced funding and increased oversight to remedy perceived liberal biases on college campuses, declining enrollment, and growing skepticism of the value of a college degree. This crackdown on student activism was unlikely to inspire confidence in higher education.
For starters, universities are supposedly spaces where ideas can be freely exchanged and debated. Calling in law enforcement to arrest students for exercising their First Amendment rights and threatening and, in some cases, withholding students’ degrees for engaging in antiwar protests silences student voices and squelches dialogue. It undermines a core mission of academia, which is to promote critical thinking and open debate. We cannot expect students to engage deeply in the work we, as faculty, are asking them to do if we threaten and, in some cases, follow through with, disciplinary sanctions and legal actions when they attempt to tackle big ideas and issues.
Second, we love to criticize young people for being disengaged. Media outlets decry the low voter turnout among young adults. Older adults harp on young people for always being on their phones. Higher ed media is replete with articles and books about how to engage today’s stunningly disengaged, disconnected, and fragile college students. And yet, when some college students engaged, protesting a war on the other side of the world, we silenced and punished them. We showed them we really only want them to engage in the world in ways that coincide with our own beliefs and values.
Third, the collective and authoritarian actions of institutions of higher education in response to the student protesters eroded trust between students and faculty. When we visited our son in New York City shortly after his arrest, I heard students talking about the lack of support from faculty and, in some cases, making fun of what they now considered hypocritical action or inaction. One quipped, in reference to a professor, “Umm, yeah, we’ve read your articles about critical theory and liberation in JSTOR, where are you now?” That comment was followed by jokes about professors teaching seminars about colonialism while seemingly ignoring both the encampment and the conflict itself.
In addition, harsh responses to the student protesters may also have eroded trust between parents and universities. As for me, the last several times we have visited our son, we have been barred from campus. Armed guards stand at the campus gates as sentinels. It is the antithesis of welcoming.
Fourth, the experience of arrest, legal consequences, and institutional disciplinary action can have lasting deleterious psychological impacts on students, which may very well impede students’ academic performance. In addition, there are financial costs associated with students’ getting kicked out of dorms. In New York City, some students were kicked out of their dorms and were unable to access the campus cafeterias. Where were these kids eating? Where were they sleeping? At some point during the conflict, I read about a crowdsourced document circulating among nearby community members offering up their couches and spare bedrooms to students evicted from campus housing. While it is lovely to see community members supporting the students who attend school near them, this kind of off-the-record housing situation is ripe for abuse. Many students also slept on the sidewalk outside the city jail where they believed their classmates had been taken. I was not excited to contemplate all these young people, my son included, sleeping on city streets, waiting for their friends to hopefully get released.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, universities sacrificed precious opportunities to foster meaningful dialogue about global issues. Institutions could have capitalized on many teachable moments; instead, many shut down dialogue and resorted instead to punishment and censorship. I still believe that universities can be spaces that nurture open dialogue and dissent, even and perhaps especially regarding politically charged topics. When we respond with repression and use law enforcement to bully our students, we sacrifice too many of our collective goals on the altar of authoritarianism and conformity. The result is that, sadly, many students, staff, and faculty did not learn more about what is happening in Gaza, where approximately 80% of schools have been damaged or destroyed. Instead, some learned to make themselves small. Some learned to silence their concerns and fears. Some learned that their universities are not actually places that want them to learn and grow and stretch.
My son spent the summer working in Brooklyn. Columbia’s then-president, Minouche Shafik, announced in mid-August that she was stepping down. The first communication from the new president to the larger Columbia community affirmed “a fundamental commitment to free expression, open inquiry, and generous debate.” I hoped that the fall semester might look different from spring—even though the conflict in Palestine raged on and we faced a contentious presidential election season. I was thus heartbroken and profoundly disappointed to see that NYPD arrested student protesters on the very first day of class. Meanwhile, I spent my first class meetings trying to get to know my students, working to build the kind of connections we need to tackle tough topics together. I want my students, as well as my son, to complete their degrees. I also want them to wrestle with difficult issues and confront new ideas on their university campuses. If we want them to engage with us in transformational learning experiences, like we say we do, we must renew our commitment to open dialogue and affirm our collective responsibility as educators to work with them toward a brighter, more inclusive future. 
Heather Olson is an educator at Stephen F. Austin State University and the mother of a student at Columbia University.
Featured image: The reinstated Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Columbia University, fifth day (2024). Photograph by Abbad Diraneyya / Wikimedia Commons