California campus president quits in protest fallout

The president of California State Polytechnic University Humboldt has agreed to step down as US faculty and students continue to fight back against their treatment during the past semester’s anti-war protests.

Tom Jackson Jr will end his five-year tenure next month after a no-confidence vote by faculty that was driven largely by his decision in April to deploy police against largely peaceful student-led demonstrators.

The president publicly gave no reason for his decision, saying in a statement without elaboration that he would return to his work as a professor of education.

More than 3,000 people were detained or arrested on campuses across the US this past semester, in uprisings sparked by congressional Republicans demanding that institutional leaders forcefully end largely peaceful protests sympathising with Palestinian civilians being killed by Israeli military forces.

The presidential resignation at Cal Poly Humboldt, said James Woglom, an associate professor of education and chair of the university senate, in large measure reflects resistance to the broad national trend of university leaders acting in ways that neglect their own campus communities while prioritising their growing financial dependence on donors and lawmakers.

Cal Poly Humboldt authorities reported 32 arrests – including 13 students and one faculty member – after the president ordered police to break up what Dr Woglom and others described as peaceful demonstrations on behalf of Palestinians.

While Professor Jackson’s actions may have been based in part “on his own philosophical understandings of things”, Dr Woglom said, “I do think there’s a de-emphasis on academic primacy in university settings.”

Dr Woglom made clear that he respected Professor Jackson, Cal Poly Humboldt’s first black president. “I acknowledge it was probably a very complex and difficult decision for him,” Dr Woglom of the handling of the student protests. But in that case and others, the president went ahead with his plans without consulting faculty at all, Dr Woglom said.

Amid the tensions of the Palestinian protests, “to ascribe criminality to students in that space, or specific students, based on the chaos of that week, is putting the blame on too specific a group of people”, Dr Woglom said.

While not many such cases across the US have ended in presidential resignations, there has been a growing number of instances in which punitive actions have been walked back. The retreats are typically taking the form of local prosecutors dropping criminal charges and institutions rescinding academic sanctions.

They include Columbia University, where the local prosecutor dismissed criminal trespassing charges against 30 protesters detained over the high-profile occupation of a central campus building; Barnard College, which lifted nearly all of the 55 suspensions it imposed on students at a pro-Palestinian protest encampment; Princeton University, which relented on its initial withdrawal of diplomas to two seniors who disrupted a speech by the campus president, Christopher Eisgruber; and Dartmouth College, where its president, Sian Leah Beilock, publicly apologised for calling in police to break up a student protest.

There were, nevertheless, numerous other institutions where penalties remained in effect. Among them is the University of Florida, which is sticking to a policy of three-year suspensions for any student caught up in protests that the administration had forbidden.

That included the case of Keely Gliwa, who lost her chance to graduate in May with a master’s degree in biochemistry and molecular biology after she was arrested while allegedly consoling a student who felt a sense of panic when police arrived to break up a peaceful pro-Palestinian protest on the Florida campus.

University officials said they could not discuss specific cases but intended to stick to their policy. “The University of Florida was clear from the very beginning that an arrest for violations of prohibited activities would result in an interim suspension and a trespass order for three years,” the institution said in a statement.

In general, it is difficult to track how many US colleges and universities are backing away from such harsh punishments because of privacy rules and because the legal processes were still playing out, said Jessie Appleby, an attorney with the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, a campus free-speech advocacy group.

The Florida case, however, was clear evidence of a university that toughened its policy and approach at a moment of political pressure for action against campus demonstrations, Ms Appleby said. The rule about three-year suspensions was announced in April, one day after the first pro-Palestinian demonstration on the Gainesville campus, she said. “So there’s no reason to suspect that three-year suspensions would be especially common for fairly minor rule violations in the past,” she said.

paul.basken@timeshighereducation.com