This comprehensive guide provides college and university administrators with actionable steps to protect students’ right to protest—especially Muslim, Palestinian, Arab, Jewish, and allied students—while maintaining campus safety and inclusion.
🏛️ Institutional Responsibilities
- Uphold First and Fourteenth Amendment rights for all students—including non-citizens.
- Ensure protest policies are content-neutral, transparent, and free of ideological bias.
- Prohibit selective enforcement of rules that disproportionately affect marginalized communities.
🛡️ Protecting Protesters
- Ban excessive force, surveillance, and intimidation by campus security.
- Prevent doxxing and harassment by offering mental health support, legal aid, and privacy tools.
- Create a Student Protest Protection Fund to support targeted students.
👩🏽🏫 Faculty Protections
- Protect faculty from retaliation for political speech or academic advocacy.
- Include faculty in shaping protest policies through shared governance.
- Defend academic departments’ right to issue political statements.
🧾 Immigration Status Protections
- Guarantee equal rights for undocumented and visa-holding students.
- Train staff to refuse cooperation with ICE/CBP without a warrant.
- Implement sanctuary policies and complaint mechanisms.
⏰ Time, Place & Manner (TPM) Guidelines
- Allow spontaneous demonstrations and amplified sound.
- Avoid restrictive “free speech zones” or arbitrary time limits.
- Ensure protesters have access to visible, meaningful campus locations.
⚖️ Differentiating Protest from Harassment
- Clearly define harassment to protect political expression.
- Prevent misuse of policies to silence anti-genocide protesters.
- Require evidence before applying punitive measures.
🌱 Building an Unhostile Campus
- Publicly oppose Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian racism.
- Protect student and faculty activists from retaliation or censorship.
- Promote dialogue and protect the right to dissent.
