The Public Stands with Shutting Down the Encampments
In recent weeks, college and university presidents used the police to clear unlawful, anti-American, and anti-Semitic student protest camps as well as arrest violent protestors on campuses nationwide. Students and faculty violated numerous campus rules regarding disruptions and community conduct standards, creating dangerous and threatening environments for students and the larger collegiate communities. The encampments and protests are not an issue of free speech, persuasion, debate, or expression, but of coercion and intimidation.
School leadership has the unquestionable right to dismantle and prevent encampments, which is worth mentioning as some leaders at Harvard, Rutgers, and Northwestern foolishly tried negotiating with the protestors. Yet, there are vocal groups of Americans who strongly oppose police action on collegiate campuses, believe that free speech rights are being infringed upon, and that these actions are too . However, this is not the view of the majority. In line with the current political culture of the press and social media to legitimize and amplify extremes, this vocal minority skews public perception.
The most vocal activists are not in the majority or in the right. The recent events at the University of Texas–Austin offer a great example. with its Israel-Hamas War protests and the subsequent . Despite the outcry of the loud and organized minority of students at UT Austin, Texans are overwhelmingly supportive of the police’s intervention on campus.
Data from the shows widespread support for police action. Over 1,200 Texans of all backgrounds, for instance, were asked for their views on the response to campus protests. Noting that the President of the University of Texas had warned “students in advance that their protests were violating the rules for campus events” and that they would be “arrest[ed] and remove[d],” the survey shows that support for the UT President’s actions was three times greater than opposition. (69 percent in favor of the police being called compared to 23 percent against the police action) And, the data reveal that as awareness about the protests increased, support for the UT President requesting police assistance increased; support for police action reached 75 percent among those followed the news a “great deal” or “very much” about students and faculty holding protests on campuses of Texas universities.
Relatedly, 68 percent of respondents believed police should be brought on campus to respond to protests violating campus regulations, while 17 percent disagreed. Despite calls for the termination of the President in response to calling the police by some faculty, seven out of ten Texas voters (70 percent) believe the university president should not be fired for calling in the state police.
There is widespread support among Texans for holding students accountable for their actions of setting up settlements on quads and calling for the destruction and death of fellow students. This disdain for the recent words and deeds of the protestors which run against the values and virtues of a university runs so deep that traditional socio-political differences lines do not even hold here. For instance, while a significant gender gap has emerged in American politics, there is little difference when the protests are considered as 66 percent of women and 71 percent of men supported the calling of the police. Similarly, the urban-rural gap did not emerge here as three-quarters (75 percent) of rural Texans supported the police, and two-thirds (64 percent) of urban/suburban Texans felt the same way. While there were racial differences in support of the police, which given the Black Lives Matter movement, it was still the case that a majority of Texan African-Americans (56 percent) supported the action to remove the students. This was lower than the 61 percent of Hispanics and 75 percent of Anglo Texans, but there was widespread support for the police across all traditional lines of division.
There was a bigger gap in police support among age cohorts. About 81 percent of Texans over the age of 65 and 72 percent of those between 55 and 65 supported the police’s actions. Among Texans aged 18 through 44, the number was 24 points lower at 57 percent—still a majority. The data is not broken down further here but this lower number is presumably being pulled down lower by younger Gen Z and Millennials who are generally more supportive of disruptive protests. Younger generations must learn that protests and speech are encouraged, but there are limits to the rights of speech and protest on campus and those limits were made clear on campus in Texas.
What becomes apparent is that the majority of Texans are behind law enforcement taking action against protesters who created dangerous situations on campus and this support is deep and widespread. Certainly, warnings should be given to students and police behavior must be professional, but the idea that there are large numbers of Texans and Americans who are unsupportive of action to stop this hate and unlawful madness after collegiate leadership has attempted to diffuse tense situations is simply untrue.
