Tensions about the Israel-Palestine conflict came to a head on many college campuses last spring. Tents arrived as students camped out for days, sometimes weeks. Some protests were disbanded through peaceful negotiation with administrators, while others were broken up by riot police, including at my own school. The result has been anything but peaceful. Students and faculty alike are furious with university administrations for vetoing pro-Palestine speech and arresting protestors, who they argue posed no threat to the university community. The fallout has no end in sight.

Having always been hubs of progressive thought, American colleges have spearheaded protest initiatives since the 1960s. A university should be the perfect place to engage in peaceful protest; after all, institutions of higher education should encourage free expression and the challenging of ideas in order to further intellectual progress. I am, and always will be, supportive of peaceful protest. However, in light of the ongoing debate about free speech at American universities, I find it hard to back my fellow students when, attacking law enforcement officers and disregarding the rules of the schools they pay to attend, they seem to forget about the very purpose of civil disobedience.

In his renowned “Letter from Birmingham Jail,” Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. stated that he and his compatriots engaged in serious self-reflection before engaging in any kind of public demonstration, asking themselves, “Are you able to accept blows without retaliating?” and “Are you able to endure the ordeals of jail?” When denouncing the evils of segregation and racism in 1960s America, detainment and ridicule were not just risks, but probabilities.

By preaching that “nonviolence demands that the means we use must be as pure as the ends we seek,” King required that his fellow protestors prepare themselves to face the consequences of their actions without anger or violence because he believed that “it is wrong to use immoral means to attain moral ends.”

King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” was revolutionary in the American understanding of civil disobedience. The goal of such demonstrations is to express dissatisfaction or even anger with the ruling system in a productive and nonviolent way by drawing attention to the plight of the oppressed: a noble cause. In such cases, King states, it is morally acceptable to break existing laws to engage in these demonstrations—if these laws are unjust. Mandates of segregation are unjust laws because they deny the human dignity of all Americans; therefore, there is no moral obligation to obey such laws. In fact, it is permissible and even good to take a stand against such laws in order to secure “liberty and justice for all.”

I wholeheartedly support the right of Americans to engage in protests. It is one of the unique freedoms guaranteed by our First Amendment and one that should not be taken lightly. Even when I disagree with the desired end of a protest, I believe that there is good in standing up for one’s convictions and demanding justice.

Why, then, did I watch students kicking and screaming as the police dragged them away for violating the university policy prohibiting tents at protests and demonstrations? Why did they howl profanities and compare the university police department to the Ku Klux Klan when the encampment was forcibly disbanded after multiple warnings of university policy violations? I’m not sure that Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. would have much sympathy for such a comparison.

I struggle to admire these student protestors when they refuse to take responsibility for their actions. It is good to be strong in your convictions and noble to engage in civil disobedience of an unjust law, but I think anyone would have a hard time arguing that the rules against encampments are unjust when they are enacted to avoid fire hazards and the risk of concealed weapons.

When the protestors know that they are at risk of arrest, there are two respectable options: to accept arrest willingly as “martyrs” for their cause or to disband the encampment and form another legal type of protest. Many students around the country did neither, choosing instead to fight law enforcement officers and claim victimhood.

Whether or not police were justified in using less-than-peaceful ways to break up such protests (such as by deploying pepper spray on students) is another topic. I do, however, think that the example of the protestors would be much more powerful if they had the courage of conviction to accept arrest for the sake of their cause.

The purpose of civil disobedience is peace—not imminently, but for future generations. King wrote that peaceful protest is intended to create tension that will later result in greater justice. An encampment, constructed within the just parameters of the surrounding legal domain, creates tension. That can be a good thing. Violence and aggression against dissenters is not a good thing. Perhaps the students at these protests would have done well to ask themselves, “Am I able to accept blows without retaliating?”

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Image credit: public domain