The Counterpublic Papers vol. 8 no. 15

One week ago today, members of the Hopkins Justice Collective created an encampment at the bottom of “the beach”—the large grassy area in front of the Johns Hopkins campus library off of N. Charles. President Ron Daniels met with protestors in the early morning, and after they’d taken down the encampment Daniels sent an email to the Hopkins community touting an agreement with protestors, only to see the encampment sprout again the next morning, where it still stands. 

The move harkens back to eighties era divestment protests against South Africa—the Free South Africa Coordinating Committee was one of the University of Michigan’s most important student led protest organizations in the early eighties—as well as to the Occupy Wall Street occupations. I noted that the Hopkins protest followed others. MIT began the first encampment, followed by encampments at NYU, Cal Poly Humboldt, and Harvard (Source: ABC). Following the lead established by Black Lives Matter protests, there are now or have been encampments on every continent.

While these protests have largely been non-violent, in many instances they’ve been met by police. Here, instances at NYU, Columbia, Emory, UCLA, and Washington University in St Louis stand out, although there’ve undoubtedly been others. In some instances the police have been called in as a result of counter-protest action, but in most instances they appear to have been called after the encampment developed but while the encampment was peaceful. 

I’ve visited the encampment every weekday (and night) last week. While I saw counter-protestors on two nights—in each case performing the counter-protest equivalent of drive-bys—I have only seen non-violent protest activity. During the middle of the week I witnessed protesters hold de-escalation training, and presume (but cannot say for sure) that this training is standard. 

A few issues ago I mentioned that I’m coming up on the last semester of my term as a Krieger School of Arts and Sciences Senator—I was part of the first group to be elected. As part of my duties, I’ve been a representative to a larger body of Hopkins faculty and administration, one designed to give faculty more of an opportunity to participate in governance if not actual government. We met last Tuesday with administrators (including Hopkins President Ron Daniels) to talk about this incident. It’s worth noting that the last similar protest incident at Hopkins happened over the proposed Hopkins private police initiative, an initiative that’s being rolled out. Just as the students have likely been in communication with students at other places, administration has likely been in conversation with admin on other campuses. All one needs to do is read the headlines to get a sense of what administrators are fearful of, and what they think the protestors are doing. 

Below I share a text of the letter the Krieger School Senate drafted:

On Thursday, May 2, President Daniels forwarded to the broader Johns Hopkins community an email he wrote to the Hopkins Justice Collective, the group responsible for the current Beach encampment. The letter urges the Collective to disband, citing a number of concerns, including risks to health and safety and its inconsistency with the core values of the university.

What we wish to do in this letter is establish principles that we recommend be used by the administration to address issues arising from this encampment, in the hopes that it will establish productive standards with which to go forward. Unfortunately we live in a time of significant polarization and radicalization, one that poses great risks but also great opportunities for learning, growth, and engagement. 

The university at its best is a space that works to develop civic capacity in its students and the broader community, in the hope that such capacity can be used to increase the breadth and depth of democratic practice. A number of faculty, including KSAS Senators, have visited the protest as observers; we have seen that the encampment has largely been civil and emphasizes the types of engagement that many faculty seek to develop in our students. Their protest has adhered to the sound principles of non-violence. The Collective has established a written participant agreement explicitly requiring all participants to reject any form of violence and hate speech. Moreover, they have transformed the Beach into a space of learning. At the very time President Daniels’s letter was emailed to the broader Hopkins community, students were learning de-escalation tactics. This was followed by a lecture delivered by a member of the Maryland House of Delegates.  

While faculty members have witnessed instances of counter-protest, these instances have been largely met with attempts to de-escalate and, at most, an attempt to document and archive. We note that the University’s guidelines on student protest allow for the designation of separate counter-protest areas. Similarly, while administrators are concerned with the possible threat of counter-protest attempts to incite violence, it is worth recognizing that there is an admirable history of police and other forms of authority to be used to protect protest and enable peaceful coexistence between protest and counter-protest.

We commend President Daniels for his commitment to take seriously some of the protestors’ demands, and his broader commitment to the principles of freedom of expression. Particularly given the non-violent nature of the protest, and the willingness of students to use this opportunity for education and training, we urge President Daniels to continue to follow principles of dialogue, engagement and de-escalation. The importance of this for our community was underscored in the report from the Faculty Fact Finding Committee on the 2019 Garland Hall sit-in. In that report, faculty committee members suggested that the deeply unfortunate spectacle of university-sanctioned police action against the Garland Hall protestors could have been avoided through a greater adherence to these principles. Democracy in America and abroad has grown by fits and starts, often attended by disruption. Many of today's Hopkins students (and faculty and staff) might not have become members of the Hopkins community without the institutional and social progress resulting from student protests at Hopkins and elsewhere. We echo the recent ACLU letter to university presidents that urges university administrations “to defend the university’s core mission of encouraging debate, fostering dissent, and preparing the future leaders of our pluralistic society to tolerate even profound differences of opinion.”

Wesleyan and Oberlin both are permitting encampments. We see no reason why it should be necessary to address the encampment at Hopkins through police action. Any police action taken by Hopkins to disrupt a peaceful protest will heighten antagonism between Hopkins and surrounding communities, undermine some of the pro-democracy initiatives that Hopkins administrators have championed, and scar our community in unpredictable ways. As emphasized in the ACLU letter, college administrators “should involve police only as a last resort, after all other efforts [emphasis ours] have been exhausted.”

We also wish to remind the protestors of the lost opportunities of the 2019 Garland Hall sit-in. When finally offered an open dialog with the university, protestors were unable to agree on how to approach this meeting, and ultimately did not attend. As detailed in the report from the Faculty Fact Finding Committee, the diffuse nature of that group’s leadership made it difficult for the students to coordinate and reach decisions quickly. Here and now, good faith engagement will require developing the capacity and structures to make collective choices, as well as to hold individual protestors accountable to the participation agreements that the larger group has required.

Faculty have been in continuous dialogue with the student protesters and stand at the ready to continue their mediating role. While we understand and share justifiable concern about student safety, we believe the appropriate response is to redouble our collective efforts to protect students exercising their rights and moral convictions. As lifelong educators we know that time is a powerful tool. And we emphatically believe that, as a community, we have abundant time to get this right without resorting to hasty action that curtails dialogue already in progress. We accordingly implore the Administration and protestors to continue the wise strategy of engagement and non-intervention.

(The references to Garland Hall refer to the last major student-led sit-in, a 48 day long occupation of the central administration building in opposition to its attempt to create a private police force. The link above may not be available to non-Hopkins readers.) Hopkins was the first American research university. While its history is complicated and fraught, it is my hope that Hopkins stakeholders, faculty, staff, and administration in particular, take this opportunity to ensure that Hopkins lives up to its best rather than worst ideals. 

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I think there are a few black faculty and staff at Hopkins among my readership. If you read this by Tuesday at noon, please remember the annual luncheon with President Daniels—I’ll be co-moderating the event with Regine LaForest-Sharif. And on Saturday at 7pm I’ll be in conversation with Melinda Cooper, talking about her new book Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance.