University of Colorado bars students from campus for protesting violence against Palestinians

For obvious reasons I have an extremely high incredulity threshold when it comes the University of Colorado’s administration, but even I was taken aback by the events that led to this lawsuit filed today. I suggest people take the five minutes necessary to read sentences 61 through 105 of the complaint to get the gist of what’s going on. The shorter version is that two students were barred from campus for two months for any purpose other than attending class, because they participated in a completely peaceful three-minute protest inside the student union, that disrupted nothing, and that most people in the vicinity of the protest weren’t even aware was happening. A press release about the lawsuit is here.

This sanction took place with the punished students receiving no hearing or any other form of due process, and with the additional indignity of an administrative minion filing a facially fraudulent complaint with the police against them.

In addition, the student group to which the students belong, Students for Justice in Palestine, had its status as a registered student group revoked, again for no reason other than its organization of a completely innocuous protest. It appears, however, that protesting the policies of the Israeli government in Gaza is considered far from innocuous by certain persons and organizations that have considerable influence with the University of Colorado’s administration, as the discovery in this lawsuit seems likely to reveal. (The lead attorney for the plaintiffs, Dan Williams of Hutchinson Black & Cook, was also my attorney in my successful lawsuit last year agains the university).

It would be an understatement to say the university’s actions in this matter violate core First Amendment free speech principles. It would also be an understatement to say the university’s policies in regard to protests about the Israel/Palestine conflict are not content-neutral (See the complaint for full details).

The complaint also touches on how the university’s actions are part of a larger nationwide pattern in higher education — one that has cost several university presidents their jobs, and subjected countless students to arbitrary and flagrantly unconstitutional sanctions, as in this case.