The UW’s Tents Situation

UW Madison Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin made a tough call. I think it was probably the wrong one.

Yesterday, Mnookin ordered that the relative handful of tents on Library Mall be removed by force. I get it. The encampment violated campus rules. The protesters had been warned repeatedly. This should not have come as a surprise. In addition, there’s evidence that the encampment was attracting people who weren’t students and who might have been looking for an escalation. In fact, most of the people who were charged with obstructing officers yesterday were not UW students.

On the other hand, building access was not being blocked. Any student who wanted to go about their regular business was not impeded. And then there’s the calendar. Exams are next week and then everybody takes off. This thing got off to a late start, was not especially large and probably would have been gone in 10 days.

And then there’s the optics. No matter how well this was executed by the cops — and it looks like they did it well — the image of police with shields (they wisely avoided wearing full riot gear) pushing protesters is never going to look good. The protesters mostly got the images they wanted. Victimhood is the highest sacrament of the hard-left and there is no more certifiable act of victimhood than to be removed by police from a protest.

Moreover, within hours some of the tents were back up in the very same place. It seems nobody anticipated that. What now?

As to the content of the protests, that needed to be irrelevant to Mnookin’s decision. And maybe that was part of her calculation. If the UW didn’t move against this encampment what happens if a pro-Israeli group sets up their own tents next door? If you wait for that to happen then it will look like you acted only after the other side did the very same thing. And what happens if next year neo-Nazis set up tents in the same spot?

But while content could not be one of the chancellor’s considerations, it can be one of mine. I’m against these protesters, though I’m for their right to protest. If they were simply calling for peace, I’d be with them. If they were specifically calling for a ceasefire after Hamas released its hostages without conditions, I’d support that too. But these protests have taken on an anti-Israel, sometimes openly anti-Semitic and, at times, pro-Hamas texture. And I’m very much opposed to that.

So, I’m sympathetic to Mnookin’s position. She had solid reasons to do what she did. It’s just that, on balance, in this case I think the wiser course of action would have been no action. Chances are this thing would have fizzled out by itself.