Caitlyn Oviedo’s Post

The ACLU’s take on freedom of speech, campus protests, and university responses. There is a lot here and it is worth reading in its entirety. https://lnkd.in/gNyzVARk #campusprotests #freespeech #highered #Gaza #Israel ACLU

In this NorthJersey.com article, Daniel Munoz shares the challenges recent college graduates in New Jersey are facing and strategies young professionals can implement to land jobs. I’m proud to lead Braven in #Newark and work in deep partnership with Rutgers University - Newark to equip students with the skills, networks, confidence, and experiences to navigate the job market and land jobs worthy of their degrees–many of which are referenced in this piece. If you’re interested in learning about our impact in Newark, check out our 2024 Jobs Report: https://lnkd.in/esy5fsSR.

“To resolve issues in the long run, we need to have a culture of dialogue rather than a culture of fear. It’s time to heal our divides so that we can solve our problems.” Great piece by BridgeUSA’s CMO, Jessica Carpenter! Protest is an important part of democracy, and it’s necessary, especially when folks feel there is no other way to make their voices heard. That said, we would posit that the best way to solve incredibly complex challenges in very divided times is through dialogue. It’s the first step towards building understanding. Right now, we need builders. And young people can lead the way. https://lnkd.in/gb9Re2CP

Fisher Phillips' Jennifer Boussy Carroll and Susan Guerette write: As protests erupt across college campuses, educational institutions are grappling with how to handle escalating situations and balance important interests like free speech and student safety. ... We’ll give you the key points to consider and seven tips for crafting a protest policy. #colleges #freespeech #universities #protestpolicies #studentprotests

Perhaps Brown University has set an example for how to navigate through a crisis by listening to their stakeholders. In the face of the recent protests, it is in everyone's interest for administrators to seek first to understand stakeholder concerns, and then to find a way forward-- together. Let's consider this example and prioritize collaboration and communication in all our endeavors. #crisismanagement #communication #collaboration

Fascinating to see the protest encampments established at NYU, Yale, the University of California at Berkeley, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, Emerson College and Tufts in the US 🇺🇸 Mass student arrests at Columbia University and Yale. The delicate balance between freedom of speech and the safety of students is being played out on campuses worldwide and is central to our work in internationalisation and cultural understanding. Should universities be a safe place for this debate? When does it cross-over to hate speech and a breach of code? I wonder if these protest will grow from here or if the authorities will take an even tougher stance moving forward? More to follow in The PIE…

In our 100th issue of Better Conflict Bulletin, we explore the nuances of campus protests through the eyes of a journalist, a professor, and students. Each offers a unique perspective on what fuels escalation and how we might foster meaningful change. Their insights remind us that asking better questions is more valuable than having all the answers. 🔗 Dive into these thought-provoking viewpoints on Substack: https://lnkd.in/gmqrPU2H #CampusProtests #ConflictResolution #BetterQuestions

The question about academic freedom is interesting. Very much so in a Western perspective. In Scandinavia academic freedom is used as blanket argument for NO sanctions against Israeli edu institutions, while in the US academic freedom is one of the most important rationales for protesting financial and military support (and possibly academic support) to Israel. What a Wild Western World!

Possible third rail post here. Recent events -- college protests, reactions to commencement addresses by everyone from Jerry Seinfeld to Kansas City Chiefs kicker Harrison Butker, conversations with friends -- keep bringing me back to this scene from one of my favorite movies, The American President. Free speech is hard. Our forefathers knew this. That's why it's baked into the very first of the original 10 amendments in the Bill of Rights. It's that important and central to American democracy. We have a right to say what we want even if it's an anathema to someone else as long as we are not engaging in illegal conduct. We don't necessarily have a right to exercise free speech anywhere we want if it interferes with the safety of people and the function of that organization. That's why colleges, businesses, women's clinics, churches and elsewhere are free to enforce their own rules on what can happen on and around their premises. Like others, I was galled by Butker's commencement speech, especially the jab at Taylor Swift who clearly exemplifies the opposite of all he espoused. But he seems to have known his audience and received a standing ovation. Students at Morehouse turned their chairs at President Biden's commencement address and students walked out of Seinfeld's speech at Duke. That makes the job of PR person at related organizations tough because somehow we have to manage the potential reputational hit from those that are upset by someone's words or actions with regularly commenting on said words and actions of everyone in our organization. Having been in a communications leadership role where this was becoming required, I can tell you what we did: We removed ourselves from the inflammatory situation to avoid needing to regularly comment on actions we did or didn't agree with and could not control. That's where having guiding principles and policies that are evenly applied is critical. Then you are objectively enforcing rules, not making judgment calls about what is a good or bad position. That's why the ACLU, seen by some as a liberal organization, has supported the KKK's right to march. Actors, senior executives and likely players often have conduct or morality clauses that require acceptable behavior and provide an out when it's violated. This can apply to lots of different situations, getting drunk at a party or having a fight with a neighbor, but it's not going to cover arguing for women to become mothers and housewives. This scene totally captures it when President Andrew Shepherd says, "America isn't easy. America is advanced citizenship." #freespeech #democracy #citizenship #leadership #PR

Columbia Begins to Suspend Student Protesters University officials gave the pro-Palestinian demonstrators a 2 p.m. deadline and threatened to suspend them if they did not leave. Faculty encircled encampment. This is a peaceful protest demanding a cease fire to atrocities elsewhere in the world. Reinhold Martin (born 1964) is an American architectural historian and professor. He currently serves as Professor of Architecture[1] in the Graduate School of Architecture, Planning, and Preservation at Columbia University, where he directed the Temple Hoyne Buell Center for the Study of American Architecture. He is also a member of the Institute for Comparative Literature and Society and the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia. Video https://lnkd.in/e7Sj8KbX Three questions about politics and the campus protests The New York Times Jess Bidgood April 26, 2024 Columbia University students have spent several days encamped on a lawn at the school’s main campus. The pro-Palestinian student encampments protesting the war in Gaza swept across the country this week, and with them, dramatic imagery of arrests and crackdowns from New York to Texas to Southern California. Soon, the comparison to another protest-filled election year inevitably arose. Is 2024 going to morph into something that feels like 1968? That year, protests at Columbia University exploded amid a nationwide movement against the Vietnam War, one that involved violent clashes as police moved in on protesters at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago that summer. Democrats, who had been deeply divided over the war, ultimately lost the election to President Nixon. It is much too soon to know whether the campus protests happening now will come to feel like what happened that seismic year. But the bubbling up of protest activity across college campuses half a year before a presidential election has made 2024 — a year already knotted by war overseas and deep domestic political division — that much more complicated. It’s another question mark in a political season already full of them. Do the protests represent a broad disaffection that will hurt Democrats? Humphrey lost the election in 1968, following the assassinations of MLK in April and RFK in June, and the debacle at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. How are Republicans trying to use the protests to their advantage? Nixon won the election in 1968. Where does it go from here? Watergate? An insurrection? #highereducation #highered #antisemitism #Israel #Palestinians #Gaza #protests #academicfreedom #censorship