Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International and the ACLU issued a press statement last week about protecting the right of students to peacefully protest:
College and university presidents across the US need to respect and protect the right to protest in support of Palestinian rights the American Civil Liberties Union, Amnesty International, and Human Rights Watch said today in an open letter.For months the organizations have raised concerns about the potential use of unlawful force when university administrators call in law enforcement officers to break up demonstrations on campus. This new letter comes after reports of heavy-handed and excessive force by some campus police and local law enforcement against peaceful protests and encampments across the country.The groups provide recommendations for colleges and universities to ensure they protect the right to protest on their campuses. The organizations also urge university administrations to refrain from taking any further measures to suppress student protests on campus, including stopping the use of so-called less lethal weapons and ensuring that coercive police power is used only as a last resort, among other recommendations.
The statement did not define "peaceful protests."
Plenty of pro-Palestinian protests last year disrupted classes, intimidated students, broke into buildings, barricaded doors, vandalized campus property, silenced any expression of Jewish pride, threatened and celebrated violence and terror. The human rights groups did not say a word in defense of students, mostly Jews, who have been under siege on campus for a year now. Presumably they consider these actions "peaceful."
Compare Human Rights Watch's silence and implied support of those protests with how they condemned protests at Tunisian universities in 2011 that, based on their description, were virtually identical to those we've seen in 2024:
The Tunisian authorities should protect individual and academic freedoms from acts of violence and other threats by religiously motivated groups acting on university campuses, Human Rights Watch said today. Both the university authorities and the state security forces will need to cooperate to protect the rights to security and education of students and faculty.One university suspended classes on December 6, 2011, because of security concerns. Demonstrators have caused disruptions on the campuses of at least four universities since October, demanding imposition of their own interpretation of Islam in the curriculum and in campus life and dress. They have interrupted classes, prevented students from taking exams, confined deans in their offices, and intimidated women professors.“Tunisian authorities should of course protect the right to protest peacefully but should show zero tolerance when groups of protesters disrupt campus learning with threats of violence,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East and North Africa director at Human Rights Watch. “The timing and location of some of these protests suggest that they were planned to cause maximum disruption by interfering with exams, thus depriving thousands of students of their rights.”The principles of university autonomy and non-intervention on campus should not be used by the government as an excuse to relinquish its obligation to ensure security of students and professors, to deter outsiders from disrupting academic activities, and to see to it that demonstrations do not disproportionately impair the rights of others, Human Rights Watch said.The Tunisian government should ensure swift intervention of security forces whenever requested by the faculty to prevent third parties from seriously disrupting academic life, Human Rights Watch said. Authorities should also put in place monitoring systems so that physical attacks and threats on schools, teachers, and students are tracked, to identify those responsible and to hold them accountable in conformity with the Tunisian penal code.While the state has the obligation to ensure the right to peaceful assembly, including of professors and students, and their freedom to peacefully organize and participate in campus protests or other gatherings, it also has the responsibility to secure the safety of students and professors and to ensure that demonstrations do not disproportionately interfere with their right to education and other rights.
That last sentence is common sense. And that common sense has not been stated by any human rights groups over the past year in the US or Europe.
The article includes several examples of what the protesters did in Tunisia. It was practically a duplicate of what we have seen on campus in the US - blocking a dean from entering (and leaving) his office, forming a human chain to block entrance to a building, pushing faculty when they tried to ignore the human chain and go it, and intimidating a female professor who did not wear a hijab and interrupting her class. Very little overt violence was described, but just the thuggish actions and threats were considered unacceptable by HRW in 2011.
Not today. While no analogy is perfect, this one is damn close, and HRW chooses to react to intimidating behavior on campus in opposite ways when the victims are secular leaning Arabs and when they are proud Jews.
The hypocrites at Human Rights Watch do not say a word against those attacking academic freedom today, because they agree with the attackers.
When you pick and choose which human rights to defend depending upon the victim, you are not a defender of human rights.
