I protested against Vietnam, but I have mixed feelings about current campus protests | Opinion

As a First Amendment lawyer who marched against America’s involvement in Vietnam a generation ago, the campus protests of the war in Gaza are tough for me on many levels.

Instinctively, I sympathize with students and other protesters who feel passionately about their cause. But I find it hard to unequivocally pick who’s right and wrong when the choices are between Hamas, a terrorist organization, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whose blunderbuss response to the October 7 attack on his country has turned much of world’s opinion against the Jewish state amid the deaths of tens of thousands of innocent civilians.

In our country, protests of the war in Gaza have resulted in more than 2,400 arrests nationwide. The politics of the war have divided families, friends and co-workers.

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I must admit that the former Vietnam protester in me feels a twinge of guilt whenever I have felt Pro-Palestinian protesters were misguided or getting out of hand.

There have been protests that have combined free speech with unlawful civil disobedience. Many people who were stuck on the Golden Gate Bridge when Gaza protesters blocked the span last month felt frustrated and perhaps even angry with the protesters. I understand those feelings. And protesters largely fail to acknowledge the threat faced by Israel and the true horror of what Hamas did both on October 7 and before and after that horrible day. Moreover, the protests have veered into antisemitism on many occasions.

Protesters also declare the war “genocide” when Amnesty International and other groups have stopped short of calling it that. Over-reaction by a combatant in a war isn’t necessarily “genocide.”

But we shouldn’t sacrifice our treasured First Amendment rights and freedoms because we disagree with protesters. Most colleges and universities seem to have recognized that preserving the right to free speech — what the U.S. Supreme Court famously called in 1964 “uninhibited, robust and wide-open” speech — is essential, while simultaneously holding protesters to “time, place and manner” regulations.

The so-called “time, place and manner” doctrine allows governments to enact narrowly tailored restrictions on speech to protect public safety or other compelling interests. For example, you can’t yell fire in a crowded theater. And, along those same lines, it might be permissible to say you can’t demonstrate loudly in a college library even though you can rally in the campus quadrangle.

Thus far, most campuses seem to have hewed reasonably close to First Amendment norms in dealing with protests. That isn’t always easy because protesters have sometimes caused problems for other students and those with differing viewpoints.

Indeed, the nuanced agreement recently reached between Sacramento State leaders and groups representing protesters — in which the campus said it would investigate its direct and indirect investments to ensure practices of only “socially responsible investment strategies” — showed that colleges can listen to peaceful protests and that peaceful protests can prompt action, as they did when protests against Apartheid led to an end to that practice in South Africa.

None of this is to say that everyone is getting along and there is no shouting or disruption, or worse. These are bitter times on and off college campuses. The symbol of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee in the ’60s was two hands clasped together. Today, a clenched fist is a symbol used by many groups seeking social and political change.

We can hope that today’s students and their elders heed the old saying, “I may not agree with what you say but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” We also hope that America avoids the bloodshed which has too often been spilled in the Middle East.

Karl Olson is a First Amendment lawyer in San Francisco.