If you ask Lisa Kurian Philip how her year is going, the first thing she might say is “it’s been hard.”

As the higher education reporter at our partner WBEZ in Chicago, she’s spent a lot of time covering student demonstrations and university fallout at various colleges in her city in the wake of Oct. 7, 2023.

I spoke to her this week because I’ve been mulling why free speech issues surrounding the Israel-Hamas war have manifested so prominently and specifically on American college campuses. This spring we saw students across the nation protest, participate in encampments and even get arrested for speaking out against Israel’s attacks on Gaza and the Palestinian death toll that has ensued since Hamas attacked Israel a year ago.

“You have students who are young adults — they’re just entering adulthood and trying to figure themselves out, and then they're wrestling with this really tragic and very politically charged situation, and trying to express their emotions of it,” she told me.

One reason could be that college students at these four-year universities making the news simply have the time and ability to participate in a way that people with full time jobs, families and other life responsibilities cannot. Claire Rafford at our partner Mirror Indy looked into this earlier this year when she wrote about why the response to encampments at IUPUI was so markedly different (calm) than at Indiana University’s flagship campus in Bloomington, where numerous students were arrested and snipers were positioned on top of campus buildings.

IUPUI “attracts a far different student population than other universities, including students from working-class backgrounds and older adults returning to higher education to train for new careers,” Claire wrote. “These students may feel just as strongly as their peers at other colleges, but for a variety of reasons aren’t in a position to risk retribution by escalating protests.”

I wanted Lisa’s thoughts on this because she reports in a city that’s made headlines for the severe repercussions students have faced for speaking out in support of Palestine.

“I think another reason is that universities have had to walk this line of not upsetting certain groups, of not trying not to take sides, although you could argue that they have absolutely taken sides,” Lisa said. “In doing that, at least in Chicago … they have really for the most part ignored or failed to acknowledge to students what is happening in Gaza and acknowledge that it is sad and that students are grieving, and I think that's just really made students feel an escalating need to speak out and to make themselves heard.”

She wrote about this earlier this week, outlining the University of Chicago’s new restrictions on where, when and how students and faculty can exercise free speech on campus. While the university says the changes are meant to protect students and prevent disruption to campus operations and teaching, some worry this is direct backlash to pro-Palestinian speech.

“There is this sort of, ‘You can have free speech as long as you run it by us in exactly this way,’” University of Chicago Professor Eman Abdelhadi said.

We’re a few months out from the new year, when legislative sessions will start up in many states. While Lisa and our partners throughout our network are closely covering free speech issues on campuses, I suspect we’ll see a lot more discussion and legislation about what’s appropriate to say in these spaces.

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Elsewhere on Open Campus

From Indianapolis: This Mirror Indy story details how Indiana University systematically acquired around 300 acres of land from a historically Black neighborhood to form the campus that would become IUPUI in 1969. It’s a story rich with photos, vivid anecdotes and records that lays out what it was like to live in Indy’s lost Black neighborhood before residents were forced out.

From Ohio: Amy Morona outlined how Ohio colleges are getting involved in nonpartisan voting efforts on campuses statewide for Signal Cleveland.

From Texas: Immigrant students are continuing to be affected by FAFSA fallout, Sneha Dey writes. Though universities don’t track the immigration status of student’s households, Texas counselors who help students apply for financial aid to make post-secondary education more accessible say college hopefuls from households with mixed immigration statuses received less money than they were eligible to get.

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