CSHPE’s Charles H.F. Davis III speaks with media outlets about nationwide campus protests

An assistant professor in the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, Charles H.F. Davis’ research and teaching focus on issues of race and racism, systems of oppression, and structures of domination in U.S. higher education and its social contexts. As student protests in response to the war in the Middle East have dominated headlines in recent weeks, Davis has spoken with reporters from Diverse Issues in Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed, and the Chronicle of Higher Education about topics ranging from student demands to the increased police presence on campuses.

Schools including Columbia, USC, UT Austin, and Cal Poly Humboldt have all come out in support of free and political expression, but at the same time have sought to quell disruptive behavior, reports Diverse Issues in Higher Education. Davis told the outlet this is antithetical to what it means to protest.

“It's deeply hypocritical and counter-intuitive,” Davis said. “Protest, by definition, is intended to be disruptive ... [of] business operations as normal as it relates to institutions' research functions or their educational functions. ... This is what differentiates protest from general demonstrations or other forms of political engagement.”

Speaking with Inside Higher Ed about the employment of local and state police to crack down on student protesters is neither new nor surprising, said Davis, despite the calls for policing reform that arose from the 2020 racial justice protests following the murder of George Floyd.

“It’s a deeply hypocritical set of actions when many institutions have broadly committed to being deliberately anti-racist,” he said. “I think what is interesting about it is the speed with which the escalation has taken place in the face of what are peaceful protests and encampments.”

In regard to student demands for divestment, Davis told the Chronicle for Higher Education that today’s students continue to draw on the precedent colleges set during the anti-apartheid movement. Although he said students know divestment isn’t going to happen right away, they believe it points to what they see as hypocrisy between a college’s mission and where it’s using its money. Many of them are frustrated that their colleges won’t even begin a conversation about divestment, Davis said, or consider it an option despite how administrators responded to other demonstrations in the past.

Speaking with the Chronicle again, this time regarding three colleges that have successfully struck agreements with their protesting students, Davis said: 

“It seems like this appeasement and pacification meets students on some things that may or may not have been on the table originally, and not the principal thing for which we are fighting,” Davis said. “It allows the institute to say, ‘We’ve done something, even if we didn’t do the thing that we’ve been asked or demanded for us to do.’”

On May 1, Davis and colleagues from peer institutions penned an op-ed published by Inside Higher Ed, titled "Police Repression Is the Problem, Not the Solution."