The spring semester is usually full of talk about final exams and impatiently waiting for summer to begin. But last April, more than six months after Israel’s Gaza war began, students frustrated that university administrators ignored calls to divest from companies that support the war effort filled campus streets and lawns with pro-Palestinian demonstrations and tent encampments.
Many of these demonstrations ended in unjustified and unnecessary arrests, assaults, and verbal abuse of both students and professional journalists after university administrations deployed local and campus police to suppress student activism.
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Four months later, the war is still ongoing—and protests are likely to return. As students return to campus for the 2024-25 academic year, the Freedom of the Press Foundation (FPF) has written letters to universities across the country outlining the constitutional framework that protects the press and providing guidelines for university administrators and law enforcement agencies to enable journalists to cover protests freely and safely.
From the Vietnam War to climate change to the Black Lives Matter movement, college and university campuses have always served as gathering places for students, faculty, and community members to protest their grievances. These moments shape history, and journalists must be allowed to report on them. Universities used students’ antiwar activism from the past for nostalgic marketing and public relations campaigns, but when that history repeated itself during the Israel-Gaza war, universities suppressed coverage by arresting journalists.
Colleges should not repeat the same mistakes. In the letter, FPF explains that even when protests get out of control, journalists have the right to remain on the ground and are legally entitled to document, record, or film any officer in the performance of their duties without fear of arrest. Student journalists covering pro-Palestinian camps last year were met with irritants, fireworks, police kettles, and arrests—all violations of their First Amendment rights, especially when journalists were targeted. As the letter explains,
Recipients of the letter include the University of Texas at Austin, Columbia University, Stanford University, the University of California, Los Angeles and many more.
For example, you can read our correspondence with UCLA here or below. And if you think the school administration could use a reminder about press rights, please reach out and let us know.
