Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer: ‘Please, could we have our campus back now?’

Shadi Bartsch-Zimmer is the Helen A. Regenstein Distinguished Service Professor of Classics at the University of Chicago and director of the Institute on the Formation of Knowledge.

In December 2023, as campuses remained in turmoil over the massacre on October 7 and its aftermath in Gaza, I wrote an op-ed piece for the Chicago Tribune. In it, I pointed out that thanks to the Kalven Report of 1967 and the 2015 Chicago Principles established under our late President Robert Zimmer, at the University of Chicago protests and encampments were not considered an example of free speech, but—when they disrupted other students’ ability to attend their classes or do their work—a chilling influence on free speech. In this regard, both documents are in line with Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It’s a good lineage.

I have been faculty at this university for 26 years, and I worked directly on its behalf for ten as Bob Zimmer’s wife, but it turns out I was sorely mistaken. In May of this year, the administration of the University retreated from the principles that have guided our intellectual freedom as faculty and students.  For over a week, an encampment of students seeking University action on behalf of the suffering in Gaza noisily occupied the central quad. There were scuffles between campers and anti-campers, and the Palestinian flag was briefly flown on the University’s flagstaff. I had to move my class on Friday, May 10, because of the volume of the chanting drowned out our attempts at discussion. Jewish students who had nothing to do with Netanyahu’s policies were exposed to shouts of “Justice for Jihad” and “From the river to the sea,” re-activating fears they thought were safe to set aside in the US.  The disruption of intellectual life was evident. After the administration’s attempts at appeasement failed (attempts that were not disclosed to the faculty), the police were called in to dismantle the encampment. Emotions ran high about these developments, and it’s not clear they are yet over. 

My own overwhelming feeling was and is sadness and disappointment at the end of an era. I talked to other faculty and students who were equally depressed at what was happening on campus.  It’s not that they were anti-Palestinian.  It’s that they had believed in the University’s own rules around free speech, the Chicago Principles which were adopted (if not enacted) by others who emulated us. Being a member of the University of Chicago community meant one could argue for one’s point of view about anything.  You assembled your evidence, shifted through the verdicts of history, read what others have thought, and gently led the sacred cows out of their field. Then you listened to your interlocutor, carefully and generously. At UChicago, you can explain to a professor why she’s wrong (I was exhilarated when this happened in my class); you can argue about polytheism in Genesis; you can suggest that economics should be in the humanities.  Hell, you can even argue against evolution—you just need to have an argument. Not a screed. Not an effort to shout down others. A reasoned argument. It didn’t matter if your argument offended people. That was free speech, as described in the Freedom of Expression Committee Report.

In the old University of Chicago, you could not disrupt the ability of others who have made the sacrifice of time, work, and money to be here, who wished to inhabit this space of thought to do their reading, teaching, thinking, learning, or debating.  You could not drown out speakers, disrupt classrooms, intimidate other students, or take over University grounds with tents.  You could not brandish signs that supported the genocide of any people. No matter how just your cause felt, no matter how much pain you were in, the path to success was not campus disruption.  This place existed for something else: freedom of thought and expression, without bullying and intimidation. Those were the terms we agreed to when we signed up to be here, whether that was as faculty, a grad student, or an undergraduate. Those are the principles we all committed to uphold.

Learning how to speak rationally about something you feel great passion for-– this is not a bad skill to master.  Another good one is listening to people who disagree with you, and trying to understand why they disagree. After all, there are many good causes in this not so perfect world we inhabit.  They demand argument, as do Netanyahu’s policies, Hamas’ tactics, and so many other topics going back to the dawn of human memory. But encampments, signs, shouting, and slogans are not arguments.  They do not make complex statements or buttress them with research. They are not a place of discourse and openness.  By nature, they do not admit of different points of view. They do not belong at the University of Chicago.  Nor, for that matter, do the police.

Please, could we have our campus back now?

* The views expressed in this article solely represent the views of the author, not the views of the Chicago Thinker.