How to Navigate Israel-Hamas War Protests on K-12 and College Campuses
A security consultant shares his opinion on how educational leaders have handled campus conflicts associated with the ongoing war and ways they can improve.
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In Georgia, a middle school teacher was fired for allegedly threatening to behead a student. In Indiana, a woman was arrested for intentionally crashing her vehicle into a school. In New York City, administrators locked a high school teacher in her office for protection after dozens of students threatened her. What do all of these recent incidents have in common? Hate toward people of Israeli/Jewish or Palestinian/Muslim descent and those who show support for them.
K-12 schools are hardly the outliers. According to a Jan. 2024 report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), in the three months following the start of the Israel-Hamas war, anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. increased by 360% compared to the same period one year prior. The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) says it received 3,578 reports of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian incidents during those three months — a 178% increase from the year prior.
During a joint session of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations and the Knesset Committee for Immigration, Absorption and Diaspora Affairs, Adam Lehman, president and CEO of Hillel International, said anti-Semitic incidents on U.S. college campuses since the start of the war passed 1,000 on Feb. 19 — a 700% increase compared to the same period last year.
Also on U.S. college campuses, both pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian student groups have sued their schools, claiming they haven’t protected them from hate crimes or have violated their First Amendment rights by having the groups suspended. In November, the Brandeis Center and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education filed a lawsuit against the University of California system and UC Berkeley, claiming the university did not appropriately respond to a “longstanding, unchecked spread of anti-Semitism” at the institution.
The University of Florida’s Students for Justice in Palestine also sued the state university system for Governor Ron DeSantis’ call to deactivate two of its chapters. Chancellor Ray Rodrigues, head of the State University System, accused the group of providing “material support” to Hamas. The group claims its deactivation by the state of Florida violates its First Amendment rights to free speech and association.
Most recently, in Feb. 2024, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) suspended a pro-Palestinian group that protested against Israel’s airstrikes in Gaza and a looming invasion of Rafah, claiming they broke campus demonstration rules.
All of these hate crimes and clashes raise many questions, including:
- What have K-12 and college leaders done right and what have they done wrong in how they respond to these incidents?
- How can they better mitigate and respond to them in the future?
To answer these questions, Campus Safety spoke with Jason Russell, former Secret Service agent and founder and president of Secure Environment Consultants.
College Leaders, Faculty Struggle to Remain Neutral on Israel-Hamas War
While most college campuses have plans for handling protests, Russell believes the disconnect often lies in leaders’ inability to remain impartial. (22:53).
“I think college safety and security is more prepared [than K-12 schools] in some ways, but I think college administrators in many ways are less prepared because they have a really hard time staying in that neutral lane, which we see more often in higher ed than we do in K-12,” he said. “When there is an indication from administrators that the university feels a particular way, on one side, it creates permission to do things that maybe shouldn’t be done. On the other side, it creates fear. I think in almost every case they’re indicating to one side or the other that they really support their particular point of view.”
Russell says another challenge is that both historically and today, college and university faculty have shown far more open expression of a particular ideology or stance than K-12 educators, which can create situations where students feel unsafe dealing with particular staff members.
“I think it’s important for universities to express that what you do in your personal life is appropriate, you can do whatever you want, but when it impacts the feeling of student safety in your particular class or on your campus, then it crosses a line that we cannot allow you to cross,” he said. “Higher ed police and security do a really good job because they’ve dealt with this, right? This is not uncommon. There are protests all the time on these campuses. But from the staff and from the administration, I think those would be two groups that I would point to that I think have handled this terribly, quite frankly. They haven’t done a very good job at all of staying neutral, haven’t done a very good job at all of trying to avoid making people feel marginalized on their particular campus.”
Russell does note, however, that plenty of college and university leaders have remained neutral — we just don’t hear about them because they aren’t “newsworthy” or “headline-grabbing” (24:19). Colleges are also taking different approaches to mitigating potentially contentious gatherings, such as setting up formal classroom debates, hosting moderated panel discussions, and setting aside dedicated time each day for students to demonstrate their beliefs and opinions.
“Allowing for a structure so that things are planned and organized allows you to put security in place and allows you to do some additional things to increase safety, so certainly to the extent that these can be organized protests or discussions that allow for planning for safety,” Russell said. “The issues become when they’re not planned or organized and they’re kind of spontaneous, and then we see issues because schools haven’t planned for this.”
How Are K-12 Schools Addressing Israel-Hamas War Protests?
While Russell strongly believes college faculty should remain neutral, K-12 educators have even more of an obligation to do so (06:16).
“Free speech doesn’t necessarily extend into the classroom because they’re teaching to a curriculum, and the curriculum doesn’t allow for a teacher to bring in political or ideological issues, public school especially,” he said. “So while everybody has the right to free speech, that doesn’t mean you as a staff member or teacher have that right to free speech within your classroom every single day because you’re teaching to a curriculum. And in that environment, you are to remain neutral, whether you have a belief on one side or the other.”
Overall, Russell believes K-12 school leaders have done a solid job at “containing issues” and handling them on a case-by-case basis to ensure kids are safe but also allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights.
Schools are struggling, however, with deciding if they should discuss the war with students. Whether or not schools choose to discuss current events, depending on their age, students are likely consuming information through social media, their peer groups, or at home, Russell emphasized (12:53). Much of that information is likely to be skewed, so bringing neutral talking points into the mix can be beneficial. He recommends looking for reputable nonprofits that provide schools with ways to talk to kids about polarizing issues.
“I think talking about current events is certainly important, but the way you talk about them needs to be very delicate because you don’t want to increase tensions or increase issues,” he said. “I think that’s the struggle that schools are finding right now is that it’s really difficult to figure out a way to do it correctly, so schools would rather not do it at all, which I don’t necessarily think is a good idea either. Schools in some ways could model how to bring groups that have completely different viewpoints, and figure out ways to get those groups to have a reasonable dialogue about their points of view.”
No matter how K-12 schools choose to navigate war discussions, Russell says schools have to recognize it’s never going to be 100% received (19:17).
“That goes for anything that school administrators do in many ways. We put more and more and more on our educators. We’ve asked them to educate our kids. Now we’re asking them to be security. Now we’re asking them to weigh in on political issues and really difficult ideological issues and that’s a lot,” he said. “We don’t give them enough space. We don’t give them a lot of room for errors or room for trying to see what works. They want to focus on education — which, I want my child to go to school and be educated, I don’t necessarily want them going to school every day for a political debate — but I think there’s some value to current events. But they also have to teach math and science and all the other things that are important.”
Although most college campuses have plans for handling protests, K-12 schools should have them as well. While the content of the Israel-Hamas war protests is new, leading practices for handling protests aren’t and can be applied in nearly all contentious scenarios (28:41).
“You want to say, ‘Okay, yeah, we have some framework of a plan for something close to this, so let’s at least start deploying that,’ as opposed to saying, ‘We never really considered this, so now we have to come up with a way to try to deal with it,’ and they just end up being behind,” said Russell. “Make sure that you’ve thought through a bunch of different scenarios that could happen so that you have some plan in place to respond. Whether it be a spontaneous protest or not, we do a really good job of planning for things like fire and weather, but these things that are kind of spontaneous, we don’t really take time to prepare for those.”
However, when a once-peaceful protest starts involving threatening behavior or violence, it becomes “a whole different issue,” said Russell, and schools must switch over to their emergency plans (14:34).
“We really work hard for our districts to understand where that line is and how they can optimize the chances of a protest not becoming violent,” he continued. “That’s by creating space, by providing security, making sure that people know where they can be and where they can’t be, setting up perimeters or setting up some rules, but also allowing for that space for that free speech to happen.”
How Schools Can Protect Vulnerable Students, Staff
To mitigate potential violence against individuals most impacted by the continued Israel-Hamas war, Russell also recommends both higher education institutions and K-12 schools teach staff how to de-escalate situations — something he says he doesn’t see schools at almost any level focusing on (26:02).
“It’s really a mixture of both verbal and nonverbal, so it’s identifying threatening nonverbal warning signs. It’s identifying speech that could potentially be threatening and how to deal with that in a way that allows you to pull some of the emotions out of the interaction to reduce the likelihood of violence,” he described. “We talk to organizations and schools all the time, and communication is about 80% of what we do as human beings. We’re communicating in some way, either verbally or non-verbally. How do we do a better job of not alienating the person we’re talking to or making them feel threatened? How do I use my words and my nonverbal communication to better communicate with people and not make them feel threatened?”
Russell also strongly encourages schools to reiterate the importance of both students and staff reporting both direct and indirect threats (09:26).
“It’s important to stress that we want to know if you feel threatened or if somebody sends you a threatening email or if somebody makes a threatening statement or something that makes you feel unsafe. The teachers, the students, everybody needs to feel like they have a place to take that information. And unfortunately, now we may need to push that down to younger age levels because we are seeing increased threats of violence, even in the K-5 area, which we didn’t typically see 10 years ago,” he said. “And then the school needs to have a plan on how to deal with that. What do we do once we get this information? We have to actually put a plan in action to try to determine if these threats are viable and if they’re real. And if they are, then we need to try to take some action to help bring in law enforcement or bring in whatever we need to do to keep these people safe and secure.”
Conclusively, both K-12 school and college leaders must strive to ensure their words or actions aren’t further marginalizing or impacting the safety of the students and staff they serve.
The full interview transcript is below. Discussions related to higher education campuses start at 20:22.
Watch the full interview here or listen on the go on Apple or Spotify.
NOTE: The views expressed by our podcast guests are those of the guests and do not necessarily represent the views of, and should not be attributed to Campus Safety.
Amy Rock (00:00): Today I’m speaking with Jason Russell, a former Secret Service agent and founder and president of Secure Environment Consultants. We’re going to discuss best practices for schools to protect students and staff both on K-12 campuses and college campuses as they continue to navigate ongoing tensions related to the Israel-Hamas war. I have a lot of questions, so we’ll get right to it. In your current role as a security consultant, have you spoken with K-12 schools that are dealing with these tensions spilling into their schools, and if so, what do most of their concerns look like, whether that be verbal fights, physical fights, social media threats?
Jason Russell (00:37): We are seeing it in the K-12, certainly at the high school level, especially. It seems to be more prevalent with the older kids and it is kind of all across the board. It’s coming some from staff, some from students, and obviously schools have a duty to really stay neutral and kids have the ability to express free speech. I think where we’re seeing the most issues is when we have staff getting involved or other staff issues. I think for the most part, schools are actually doing a pretty good job of maintaining security. Certainly in the K-12 environment, we see a little bit of more difficulties in higher ed, but K-12 schools so far have done a pretty good job of at least containing issues and kind of dealing with them on a case-by-case basis to make sure that they keep kids safe, but also allow kids to express their First Amendment rights.
Amy Rock (01:32): Now historically, you’ve been in this area of work for a long time, have you seen certain conflicts lead to increased intentions in K-12 campuses? I’d assume this isn’t the first time in at least semi-recent history that schools have been faced with navigating these challenges.
Jason Russell (01:49): I think the one that was probably most significant was George Floyd and the issues between law enforcement and the community. That’s probably the one that we saw the most issues in terms of protests. The thing with that is it was mostly all on one side. [The war] is very different because there are two unique points of view in this one, which creates additional conflict. I would say that this one is definitely significantly more in terms of the potential for issues because it’s not nearly as cut and dry in terms of the students in the K-12 environment. This is one where we’re seeing definitely an increase in concern and increase in animosity on both sides. Schools are definitely worried about how to control these things and not let things get out of hand and keep everybody safe.
Amy Rock (02:42): Do you think there are certain aspects of societal issues or matters, whether they’re local or regional or worldwide, that make it more prone to become contentious? And I think, like you said, there’s suffering on both sides. I’m sure that adds to it. But for instance, if religion is involved, does it tend to become more contentious?
Jason Russell (03:04): I think exactly what you said, whenever you’re talking about race or religion, strongly held beliefs that both sides feel really strongly about are the most difficult because certainly each side believes that they’re 100% correct and their point of view is the right one. So when it comes to those types of strongly held beliefs, which generally fall into religion, politics, and race, we certainly see the increase in potential violence and increase in just overall tension within the school environment.
Amy Rock (03:40): Are you finding the tensions created in this specific war are different than other contentious issues? And if so, why do you think that is?
Jason Russell (03:50): We deal with schools around the country, and I really think sometimes it’s regional. Where we see issues, it really depends on the particular politics of that area. In some of our suburban schools, we see very little if any issues with this particular conflict. And then in some schools we see a lot, and that’s particularly when you have large populations that sit on either side of this particular conflict. So particularly on the east side of Michigan, we have a large population of Palestinians and also a large Jewish population, and those people are mixed in those schools and their families are mixed in communities. So when you have those types of situations, just the increase in sheer numbers of people, you’re going to have the increase in those tensions. I think so far the schools have done a pretty good job of trying to remain neutral, definitely at the K-12 level. I think schools from the administration perspective have done a really good job of trying to remain neutral, but also making sure that they allow space for points of view until those points of view become a danger. And then we have to make sure that we’re protecting everybody.
Amy Rock (05:01): I know you said K-12 schools have been handling a lot of these situations well, which there’s a lot to be learned from that, but there’s also stuff to be learned from mistakes. Are there some mistakes that you’ve seen schools make in handling when these tensions spill on campus? They don’t necessarily have to be Israel-Hamas war tensions, but something that can be applicable in some ways maybe.
Jason Russell (05:21): I think sometimes the mistakes that are made are more perception of the people that are taking in the information. In other words, if they don’t feel like the school has come out strong enough on their side or if they don’t feel like their side of this conflict has been represented, then I feel like they feel like the school is not handling it correctly. I think the one area where I would say there’s more kind of potential for issues from the school level is with staff. We see staff that are far more vocal, whether it be in the classroom or even on their social media or things like that, where they’re definitely clearly on one side of this particular issue. That’s really where we’re seeing the issues most often is because we have staff that are certainly on one side of the issue and that can alienate and cause fear for families and kids that may be on the opposite side.
Amy Rock (06:16): That’s a good question actually, or a good segue into my next question, which was in November, a high school teacher in Queens hit her office to avoid a mob of students who were mad that she posted a photo of herself at a pro-Israel protest shortly after Hamas’ attack on Israel. You mentioned schools remaining neutral and teachers on social media — should schools be having discussions with teachers about remaining neutral in these situations? Or is this too much of an infringement on free speech? I think maybe it differs between public and private schools as they have different governing rules.
Jason Russell (06:52): Let me say this. First of all, teachers should be careful what they’re posting on social media. They shouldn’t really be connected with students at all, quite frankly. There’s so many reasons that it’s just not a good idea. We talk to schools about making sure that teachers have their social media on private. What they do in their private life is their private life, but when it’s visible to kids, then it becomes an issue for the school in terms of free speech. Free speech doesn’t necessarily extend into the classroom because they’re teaching to a curriculum. And the curriculum doesn’t allow for a teacher to bring in political or ideological issues, public school especially. While everybody has the right to free speech, that doesn’t mean you as a staff member or teacher have that right to free speech within your classroom every single day.
So I think the issue, first of all, is you shouldn’t be communicating with kids on social media. They shouldn’t have access to your Instagram, Facebook, all these other things. And you should understand that part of your role, part of the job that you’ve taken on is when you’re in the school environment, you’re teaching to the curriculum. in that environment, you are to remain neutral, whether you have a belief on one side or the other.
Amy Rock (08:10): I’m curious how schools have handled situations with teachers because I’m sure there are teachers who don’t abide by that rule of sticking to the curriculum. I’m curious as to how schools handle that disciplinary.
Jason Russell (08:25): I think a lot of times they might not even know unless a student brings it up to their parent, then the parent brings it into the school. I have two kids in school and I know that they talk about issues in their classrooms that probably aren’t within the curriculum. They don’t necessarily violate any, they’re not going to create any increased tension, but I think the idea is schools, first of all, should set an expectation for staff and their social media presence for any situation. They shouldn’t be seeing teachers on vacation on a beach. They should really be very strict on what they allow teachers to share and teachers should want to keep things private. I think these types of situations bring it to light more than anything else because when you have a teacher who’s at a protest or posting pictures, if you happen to be on the opposite side of that issue, you automatically are going to feel like you’re marginalized in that classroom and you’re not somebody who matters to this person. So I think it’s a dangerous situation to be in.
Amy Rock (09:26): Are there recommended practices for schools to protect teachers who might be targeted or confronted — whether they’re Jewish or if they’re Palestinian or Muslim in this specific scenario — what can schools do to protect teachers?
Jason Russell (09:40): I think what it goes back to is we deal with these threat cases all the time, whether it’s in a school or other environments. I think schools really have the duty to try to do the best they can to physically protect their staff when they’re at school, certainly, but also having some awareness of risks that that person may face away from school, so they will at least make them aware that these issues have occurred. If there are any threats that are coming in or if there are any negative sentiments toward a particular staff person, they should be aware of it and the school should do everything that they can do to try to provide a reasonable level of protection for that person. In K-12 schools, the security is very structured for the most part. They’re locked pretty tight during school hours, but it’s after school hours that everything opens up. So I think making sure that you understand what the risks are, what the potential problems you could have to make sure that you’ve put some plans in place for these people.
Amy Rock (10:41): That reiterates the importance of both students and teachers reporting potential threats, even if they feel trivial. Maybe an adult might feel silly reporting some sort of threatening comment a student might’ve made, but it just reiterates the importance of reporting this.
Jason Russell (10:56): That is hugely important. And anonymous reporting is available in many states. I think [it’s important to stress that] we want to know if you feel threatened or if somebody sends you a threatening email or if somebody makes a threatening statement or something that makes you feel unsafe. The teachers, the students, everybody needs to feel like they have a place to take that information. And then the school needs to have a plan to how to deal with that. What do we do once we get this information? We have to actually put a plan in action to try to determine if these threats are viable and if they’re real. And if they are, then we need to try to take some action to help bring in law enforcement or bring in whatever we need to do to keep these people safe and secure.
Amy Rock (11:39): Kind of switching gears to protecting students, there was another instance where a Palestinian boy was punched in the face. How can schools be proactive in protecting students who, like I said, might be prone to confrontation during these current times?
Jason Russell (11:53): Such a tough situation to predict, especially at those younger age levels where they’re really going to be influenced more by what’s being said in the home. I think what you’re looking for in those situations is warning signs. Is this student becoming more aggressive? Are we seeing more behavior issues? Are they making statements that are concerning in terms of hating a particular group of people or a particular person? And then just your normal school security elements are going to play a role, which is making sure we’re keeping constant supervision. And once again, the reporting, if somebody feels unsafe, they need to be letting an adult, letting a trusted person know that they feel unsafe and somebody’s been saying something to them. And unfortunately, now we may need to push that down to younger age levels because we are seeing increased threats of violence even in the K-5 area, which we didn’t typically see probably 10 years ago.
Amy Rock (12:53): I would say it’s probably safe to say that social media might have a lot to do with that. And so that’s going to my next question. How much do you think social media is playing a role in these tensions spilling into schools?
Jason Russell (13:05): I think it’s almost all of it, right? I think social media plays such a role in these kids’ lives from an early age, and that’s really where they get their information. Younger kids get their information from their parents and social media, and as kids get older, their information comes more and more from their peer groups and from social media, so if your peer group and the social media that you tend to watch or pay attention to is giving you particular ideation, then you tend to follow that and you tend to believe it. I think that’s the important part for schools to understand is really that focus on staying neutral. If you are having discussions on this from the school’s perspective, it needs to be as close to neutral as possible because it’s really important that the school doesn’t make one side or the other feel marginalized or concerned with their safety.
Amy Rock (14:04): The younger they are, obviously the less likely they are to understand that not everything they see or read is true or accurate, and I think it’s important to emphasize that. And then a loaded question that I’m sure we could talk for a very long time about, but do you have recommended best practices for handling staged walkouts or in-school protests related to the war? I’d imagine there are different approaches in violent versus nonviolent situations, but do you have any overall recommendations for handling that?
Jason Russell (14:34): I think schools need to be prepared for those situations. They should have plans, quite frankly, and we work with our districts. We talk to them about preparing for protests both inside the school, outside of the school and how they can allow for expressions, free speech and allow for those types of protests without creating increased safety issues. Once safety issues start, once there’s threats, once there’s violence, then it becomes a whole different issue. Now you’re dealing with the school emergency plan, so we really work hard for our districts to understand where that line is and how they can optimize the chances of a protest not becoming violent — by creating space, by providing security, making sure that people know where they can be and where they can’t be, setting up perimeters or setting up some rules, but also allowing for that space for that free speech to happen.
Free speech doesn’t allow for threats though. Once you cross the threshold from free speech to the threatening speech or violent speech, now we’re no longer in a protest situation — we’re in a threat situation. So we really work with our schools to understand, okay, where is that line? When have we crossed over from something that’s just a peaceful protest into something that is either trying to start violence or is violent and making sure that they know, okay, now we need to deal with this in a different way. That may require bringing in law enforcement but I think it’s important for schools to have some general framework of a plan that they would be able to deal with a protest.
Amy Rock (16:11): With COVID or like you mentioned previously the murder of George Floyd, schools have to learn from these challenges and update their response plans to reflect those lessons learned. Are there resources out there to help them do this regarding tensions in times of war?
Jason Russell (16:33): I think the resources that I would look for are reputable nonprofits that provide schools with ways to talk to kids about these issues in a neutral fashion. On the security side, I think schools need to really look at their plans, work with their local law enforcement. If they have consultants, work with their consultants and have plans and do what we call tabletop exercises, which is work through your plan, put yourself through some scenarios to see how your plan would actually work, and make sure that what you’re doing is appropriate.
But I think for the education side of it, really looking and finding good neutral information that if they have to communicate about these situations, that they’re communicating in a neutral way. And the unfortunate reality is it’s really hard to find completely neutral information. It’s extremely difficult to find because it seems that everything is skewed in one direction or the other. So I think schools really have to be careful at what they’re presenting. I think talking about current events is certainly important, but the way you talk about them needs to be very delicate because you don’t want to increase tensions or increase issues.
Amy Rock (17:45): The schools probably used to be able to sweep some of this stuff under the rug in that they didn’t have to really discuss it with students. But like we said, between social media and kids having access at younger and younger ages to information, you kind of need to address it. Obviously, in age-appropriate manners — you’re not going to speak to a seven-year-old the same way you’re going to speak to a 17-year-old about it.
Jason Russell (18:06): Definitely. I think that’s the struggle that schools are finding right now is that it’s really difficult to figure out a way to do it correctly. And so schools would probably rather not do it at all, which I don’t necessarily think is a good idea either, because then you get these two camps forming that have such strong beliefs that the tension just begins to build. I think schools in some ways could model how to bring groups that have completely different points of view, figure out ways to get those groups to have a reasonable dialogue about their points of view. The unfortunate reality is it’s very difficult to do. And because this issue is so contentious, I think schools want to avoid even the potential of bringing it up if they can avoid it at any cost. They want to focus on education, which, I want my child to go to school and be educated, I don’t necessarily want them going to school every day for a political debate, but I think there’s some value to current events, but we also have to teach math and science and all the other things that are important.
Amy Rock (19:17): Yeah, teachers have and administrators obviously just have so much more on their plate and expectations than they used to, and they’re kind of in a tough spot because you’re damned if you do address it, damned if you don’t, because you’re going to get angry parents no matter what, however you choose to approach it.
Jason Russell (19:36): Schools have to recognize that no matter what you do, it’s not going to be 100% received. That goes for honestly anything that school administrators do in many ways, as you described it, which is it’s just we put more and more and more on our educators. We’ve asked them to educate our kids. Now we’re asking them to be security. Now we’re asking them to weigh in on political issues and really difficult ideological issues. And that’s a lot. And we’re asking them to teach our kids, and we’re really putting so much on them, and we don’t give them a lot of space. We don’t give them a lot of room for errors or room for trying to see what works.
Amy Rock (20:22): Well, we don’t give them a lot of money, either.
I want to switch gears to higher ed campuses with these tensions. I’m assuming, for the most part, colleges are better prepared to handle these situations. Many protests are held on public campuses and colleges have hosted controversial speakers for years, so they have better processes in place overall. But with that being said, in current news, the Israel-Hamas war has led to the Office for Civil Rights to investigate a growing list of campuses over alleged antisemitic and anti-Muslim or anti-Palestinian discrimination. And students and student groups from both sides are suing universities for discrimination and not doing enough to protect them from hate crimes. It’s all so complicated and hard to reduce to just a few questions, but to ask some of the same questions I asked regarding K-12 schools, are you finding the tension created in this specific war are different than other contentious times for college campuses? And if so, why?
Jason Russell (21:23): Yeah, I think for a lot of the same reasons in the K-12 environment, it’s just really strongly held beliefs on either side. And obviously, colleges have typically been kind of a place where young adults start to really express themselves, and protests are far more common on college campuses than they’re in high schools or certainly in early education. So I think that we’re seeing so many more of these. The thing that you said at the beginning, which is I think colleges are more prepared, I think college safety and security is more prepared in some ways, but I think college administrators in many ways are less prepared because they have a really hard time kind of staying in that neutral lane, which we see more often in higher ed than we do in K-12. And when there is a kind of an indication from administrators that the university feels a particular way, on one side, it creates permission to do things that maybe shouldn’t be done, and the other side, it creates fear. So the one area where I see colleges, especially at the administrative level making massive mistakes, is they’re not doing a very good job at all of remaining neutral. I think in almost every case they’re indicating to one side or the other that they really support their particular point of view.
Amy Rock (22:53): You mentioned mistakes. Are there any other mistakes you’ve seen colleges and universities making in recent months when it comes to handling these tensions?
Jason Russell (22:59): The staff at colleges and universities, we see the same thing. We see a lot more free open expression of a particular ideology or a particular stance far more than we do in the K-12 environment from educators, and that creates situations for students where they feel unsafe dealing with particular staff members. So once again, I think it’s important for universities to express that what you do in your personal life is appropriate, you can do whatever you want, but when it impacts the feeling of student safety in your particular class or on this campus, then it crosses a line that we cannot allow you to cross. So I think we see, as you mentioned, higher ed schools’ police and security do a really good job because they’ve dealt with this, right? This is not uncommon. There’s protests all the time in higher ed campuses. But from the staff and from the administration, I think those would be two groups I would point to that I think have handled this terribly, quite frankly. They haven’t done a very good job at all of staying neutral, haven’t done a very good job at all of trying to avoid making people feel marginalized on their particular campus.
Amy Rock (24:19): Now, on the flip side, are there examples you’ve seen of colleges taking the right approach to handling these protests?
Jason Russell (24:27): The funny thing about that is you don’t hear about those campuses. So there probably are a bunch of them that are doing a fantastic job, but we’re not hearing about them because nothing is happening. We’re only hearing about the places that, quite frankly, are doing things incorrectly. And the reason we hear about them is because something goes wrong. There’s violence or there’s lawsuits or there’s something that happens. So I would venture that a good portion of our campuses are doing a really good job of trying to remain neutral, trying to allow for space, but also setting up guidelines and some structure. We’re only hearing about the ones, that aren’t really doing a very good job of this, and that’s why we hear about them.
Amy Rock (25:07): Are there recommended practices for college campuses to keep protests and demonstrations peaceful? We’ve e seen some campuses do formal classroom debates, some have done moderated panel discussions, or maybe having dedicated time each day where students can demonstrate. Are there good practices to follow?
Jason Russell (25:28): I think allowing for a structure so that things are planned and organized, which allows you to put security in place and allows you to do some additional things to increase safety. So certainly to the extent that these can be organized protests or discussions that allow for planning for safety. The issues become when they’re not planned or organized and they’re kind of spontaneous, and then we see issues because we haven’t really had time to plan for this. We don’t really have the security in place to really deal with this.
Amy Rock (26:02): People feel respected and heard if their school is saying, ‘Okay, we hear you. Here’s what we’re going to do to help you get your opinion and voice out there.’ And putting the security in place is important.
Similar to the K-12 question I had, what about recommendations for protecting students and faculty who might be targeted victims of hate crimes related to the war?
Jason Russell (26:25): One of the things that I don’t see schools almost at any level focus on is teaching staff how to de-escalate situations. So we teach de-escalation training, right? And it’s really a mixture of both verbal and nonverbal, so it’s identifying threatening nonverbal warning signs. It’s identifying speech that could potentially be threatening and how to deal with that in a way that allows you to pull some of the emotions out of the interaction to reduce the likelihood of violence. We talk to organizations and schools all the time, and communication is about 80% of what we do as human beings. We’re communicating in some way, either verbally or non-verbally. We don’t almost ever train people how to communicate better, how to communicate even in issues that are contentious. How do we do a better job of not alienating the person we’re talking to, make them feel threatened? So one of the things that I would strongly encourage schools to pursue is de-escalation training for staff. How do I use my words and my nonverbal communication to better communicate with people and not make them feel threatened? That’s probably one of the main recommendations that I would have.
Amy Rock (27:40): Professors and staff are obviously the ones that are face-to-face with students every day, and they kind of get to know their students and have a baseline of what their personality is. And so they’re the ones probably best suited to be able to say, ‘You know what? This person has been very agitated lately’ or whatnot. They’re the ones who are able to recognize that before anyone else really.
Jason Russell (28:03): We always talk about when we’re looking at students changes in behaviors, what is the baseline for this student? And then when something changes from the baseline, then we know, okay, we have an issue here that something is causing this change from the baseline. And part of our role as adults and educators is to figure out what is that — what is causing this stress? What is causing this anger or this fear? And then we try to find out what it is and try to reduce that for kids and even young adults, even up through college age. We really need to focus on trying to identify when kids are struggling.
Amy Rock (28:41): Yeah, absolutely. Well, that’s all the questions I had. I didn’t know no pressure at all, but if there’s anything else you wanted to share on the topic that we didn’t go over that you think would be important for our readers to know or learn?
Jason Russell (28:54): The only thing that I would probably add is I think, especially in education, occasionally looking at your safety and security — not only your physical security but also your policies and procedures. Make sure that you’ve thought through a bunch of different scenarios that could happen so that you have some plan in place to respond, whether it be a spontaneous protest or we do a really good job of planning for things like fire and weather, but these things that are kind of spontaneous, we don’t really take time to prepare for those.
We always encourage schools to have assessments done. Assess your current security and your emergency procedures and your plans for a variety of different events. Make sure you have something in place that should something bad go wrong, you can respond appropriately and you’ve thought about it before.
Amy Rock (29:45): Yeah, I would imagine, no matter the subject, there’s at least some part of a formula that can be used to handling protests no matter what the tensions are about.
Jason Russell (29:55): And you don’t want to think about it when it’s already started, right? You want to say, okay, yeah, we have some framework of a plan for something close to this, so let’s at least start deploying that. And then as opposed to saying, we never really considered this, so now we got to come up with a way to try to deal with it, and they just end up being behind. So that’s probably one thing I would stress.
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About the Author
Amy Rock, Executive Editor
Amy is Campus Safety’s Executive Editor. Prior to joining the editorial team in 2017, she worked in both events and digital marketing.
Amy has many close relatives and friends who are teachers, motivating her to learn and share as much as she can about campus security. She has a minor in education and has worked with children in several capacities, further deepening her passion for keeping students safe.
