Statement on Recent Protest Arrests at the University of Minnesota Law School
We, as law students at the University of Minnesota, are outraged by events that took place in our own halls the afternoon of November 3. Supporters of the movement for justice in Palestine, including members of the campus community, protested a talk given by Israeli scholar and Israeli Defense Forces ethicist Moshe Halbertal. Halbertal was invited — and paid $5000 — by the Law School to give the annual Dewey Lecture in the Philosophy of Law, in a talk entitled “Protecting Civilians: Moral Challenges of Asymmetric Warfare.”
The purpose of this letter is not to defend or denounce the decision by protesters to stand, one by one, and make statements challenging Halbertal, the University, or the Israeli occupation of Palestine, followed by chanting outside of the lecture hall. Whether such actions are justified or effective is the subject of substantial legal, political, and academic debate.
Instead, we wish to draw attention to the behavior of the University Police and sweeping anti-protest statements made by high-level Law School personnel. The response was unnecessarily punitive and seems to be part of a broader trend toward unnecessarily harsh treatment of nonviolent protests by the university. Dean Wippman’s statement about the protest paints an incomplete picture of what happened; his claim that University Police “handled the situation with great professionalism and restraint” ignores events that occurred both inside and outside the auditorium. To start, we have received multiple reports of police inside the auditorium ordering people who appeared to be Arab or Muslim to leave, even though they were not participating in the demonstration. The first arrest of the protest was of a local civil rights attorney and University of Minnesota Law School alumnus who was an attendee not disrupting the lecture, but rather was filming the removal of protesters from the auditorium by police. It is settled law that private citizens may record police in public fora so long as such recording does not interfere with the execution of the police’s lawful duties. (1). Not only was the attorney arrested, he was also thrown onto the concrete dividing wall outside of the auditorium for no apparent reason.
Two protesters were also arrested. One of them was thrown through the doors to the auditorium, wrestled to the ground, and then arrested. The other had already left the auditorium and was part of the protest outside, when the supervising Lieutenant told her that she had to leave the building altogether or be arrested, at which point she was arrested. The same Lieutenant approached others whom he seemed to think were leaders and issued the same ultimatum. The violence of the former arrest is alarming, as is the targeting of leaders for arrest. None of these arrests seem to meet the standard of “professionalism and restraint” that Dean Wippman praises, or that we expect from our campus police. However, given that physical force was used primarily outside the auditorium and shielded from the view of the lecture attendees, we can assume that Dean Wippman simply did not see what happened.
After the three arrests, the Lieutenant on site then proceeded to threaten everyone in the hallway with arrest, claiming that 50 officers (presumably mutual aid, rather than University Police) were on their way. While the remaining protesters then left and no more arrests were made, such a threat to “kettle” and mass-arrest protesters inside the Law School invariably would have included law students doing no more than innocently passing by on their way home from class.
Finally, the three arrested activists were booked in the county jail on disorderly conduct and trespassing charges and held for about seven hours on $300 bail each. This booking decision appears to be violative of Minn. R. Civ. P. 6.01(a), and to serve no legitimate law enforcement objective besides extra-judicial punishment. (2). However, it is not the first time this Lieutenant has made such a decision. When students decided to sit in at President Kaler’s office in February, they could have been cited and released, as is the practice nearly everywhere else in the country for such protests, but instead they were booked into county jail and held on bail.
Such retributive punishment of nonviolent protesters by police has no place on this campus. We fear that the police conduct described above is emblematic of a broader trend in unnecessarily punitive and unreasonable police conduct at the University of Minnesota.
Moreover, we are concerned that these arrests will have a chilling effect on free speech at the Law School and on campus. Shortly after the protest had ended, police checked identification from students entering and leaving the building, regardless of whether they were involved in the protest. The message that University Police sent to law students by conducting these arrests and ID checks in our hallway is that protest will not be tolerated, and that there will be consequences even outside of the rule of law. The police’s behavior runs in direct contradiction to the idea that “First Amendment rights, applied in light of the special characteristics of the school environment, are available to teachers and students. It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech or expression at the schoolhouse gate. This has been the unmistakable holding of this Court for almost 50 years.” (3).
Statements in the aftermath of the protest from Dean Wippman and high-profile Law School faculty likewise condemn the protesters, denounce them as “hooligans,” (4) and argue that the protests were “fundamentally illiberal and destructive to the core values of an educational institution.” (5). Such statements ignore the historic role that disruption has played in the progress of our society and the fact that those who lack institutionalized power often rely on disruptive tactics to push for change because they are left with few other options. To brand such tactics writ large as morally indefensible represents an all-too-common line of thinking that ignores the ways oppression operates; educational institutions are not magically immune from blame in perpetuating hegemony. It would be wrong for the events of last week to narrow the space for future protesters of all viewpoints.
We call on the Law School to take affirmative action against this unacceptable police behavior. At a minimum, the Law School should publicly oppose the criminal prosecution of these three activists. We also ask the Law School to implement policies designed to protect students’ and community members’ right to dissent and to film the police inside and around the Law School to ensure that the violent and arbitrary actions of police are not repeated.
Finally, if the Law School administration is sincerely interested in “hearing a wide range of viewpoints,” it will work with the below-signed organizations and provide funding to bring in speakers who can meaningfully represent Palestinian perspectives on the Middle East crisis.
Signed,
National Lawyers Guild, University of Minnesota Law School Chapter
References:
- See Minn. Stat. § 626a.02, Subd. 2(c) (“It is not unlawful under this chapter for a person acting under color of law to intercept a wire, electronic, or oral communication, where such person is a party to the communication or one of the parties to the communication has given prior consent to such interception.”). See also Statement of Interest of the United States, Garcia v. Montgomery County, No. 8:12-cv-03592 (D. Md. Mar. 4, 2013), ECF No. 15, http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2013/03/20/garcia_SOI_3-14-13.pdf (“Core First Amendment conduct, such as recording a police officer performing duties on a public street, cannot be the sole basis for such charges. . . . [T]he First Amendment right to record police officers performing public duties extends to both the public and members of the media, and the Court should not make a distinction between the public’s and the media’s rights to record here. The derogation of these rights erodes public confidence in our police departments, decreases the accountability of our governmental officers, and conflicts with the liberties that the Constitution was designed to uphold.”); Statement of Interest of the United States, Sharp v. Baltimore City Police Dept., et al., No. 1:11-cv- 02888 (D. Md. Jan. 10, 2012), ECF No. 24, http://www.justice.gov/sites/default/files/crt/legacy/2012/04/12/Sharp_SOI_1-10-12.pdf.
2. “In misdemeanor cases, peace officers who decide to proceed with prosecution and who act without a warrant must issue a citation and release the defendant unless it reasonably appears: (1) the person must be detained to prevent bodily injury to that person or another; (2) further criminal conduct will occur; or (3) a substantial likelihood exists that the person will not respond to a citation.” See also Standing Order re Pre-Appearance Release Procedures and Bail Schedule (Minn. Dist. Ct. Oct. 11, 2013), http://www.mncourts.gov/Documents/4/Public/Court_Administration/Orders/CRM-PreAppearance_Releae_and_Bail_Schedule_10-11-13.pdf.
3. Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District, 393 U.S. 503, 506 (1969).
4. Oren Gross, Denounce the Hooligans Who Jeered a Guest Lecturer at the U, Star Trib. (Nov. 5, 2015), http://www.startribune.com/denounce-the-hooligans-who-jeered-a-guest-lecturer-at-the-u/341298291/.
5. Dale Carpenter, Israeli Academic Shouted Down in Lecture at University of Minnesota, Wa. Post (Nov. 4, 2015), https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/volokh-conspiracy/wp/2015/11/04/israeli-academic-shouted-down-in-lecture-at-university-of-minnesota/.
