Universities have needed law enforcement support to remove illegal anti-Israel encampments from campus, but what if the police won’t come? That’s what’s happening at George Washington University, where District of Columbia police are refusing to help the school re-establish order on campus.
Is she even looking? In a letter to the school community on Sunday, GW President Ellen Granberg disagreed. From the moment the students established an “illegal and potentially dangerous occupation of GW property,” she wrote, they were “in direct violation of multiple university policies.”
The school encourages free speech and diverse viewpoints, she explained, but the encampment was never lawful. When protesters “vandalize a university statue and flag,” intimidate students “with antisemitic images and hateful rhetoric” and “chase people out of a public yard based on their perceived beliefs,” Ms. Granberg wrote, “the protest ceases to be peaceful or productive.”
She’s right, and this isn’t a hard call. GW retains a university police force to protect students and handle discrete campus incidents, but it isn’t equipped to manage a mass encampment sprawling across the GW University Yard. That’s the job of an urban police force.