Some college presidents responded with tough rhetoric, like “the encampment must go.” Others responded with mushy word salad about community and understanding that seemed designed to offer some solace to everyone without actually saying anything. But some of the college presidents who decided that the way out of the dilemma raised by students who refused to leave but couldn’t act to force them ended up negotiating with the protesters. Some, like Northwestern, capitulated to the protesters demands.

Lawprof John O. McGinnis explains the problem with capitulation.

Northwestern University, where I teach, has reached an agreement with Gaza-protesting students to end their encampment. The university agreed to the terms under duress, as the students were breaking Northwestern’s rules and threatening further disorder; their capitulation will incentivize more rule-breaking in the future. The agreement’s substance will further entrench identity, rather than truth, as a foundation of university life. Until universities return to the business of education and reject identity politics, they will be subject to such holdups.

He goes on to explain why reasonable time, place and manner restrictions on protest are constitutional, and that the students knowingly violated them. While Northwestern is a private institution, and hence the First Amendment does not apply, what the students did would have been wrong regardless. They knew, or should have known, that wrapping up their actions in the rhetoric of protest didn’t give them carte blanche to lawfully do as they pleased. They didn’t care. As far as the students were concerned, they were passionate, they were moral, they were on the right side of history. That meant they were entitled.

And when the outcome is negotiation and capitulation, the students turned out to be right.

Entering into an agreement with these students invites further campus disruptions. It also puts the school in a bind. If Northwestern holds firm against a future band of agitators, it can be rightly accused of playing favorites—a charge inimical to the university’s mission of drawing on ideas from all corners and transmitting knowledge.

To put it another way, once you’ve surrendered to a small cohort of students who took a portion of a campus hostage by giving in to their demands, you’ve made clear that violating the rules is the path to getting your way. You’ve made clear that you are unwilling to take the unpleasant actions to free the campus from the small group of students who demand control and let them, rather than the governing body of the university, the vast majority of the faculty who didn’t lock arms to protest the protesters and the rest of the student body, seize control of the university. You’ve validated their scheme. You’ve set the precedent.

Worse than the university’s capitulation may be the substance of the agreement itself. First, Northwestern agreed to admit and provide full scholarships to five Palestinian students. This offer is legally dubious, as Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibits admissions that discriminate based on “national origin.” The university might be relying on how Title VI applies only to people “in the United States,” but the statute is binding once those students set foot stateside; after all, a university surely could not design an admission program for exclusively white foreign students. Northwestern shouldn’t be able to argue, either, that Palestinians’ special hardships warrant making an exception to Title VI. The Supreme Court, in its recent Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case ending affirmative action, rejected diversity of experience as a compelling interest justifying discrimination. The same objections can be lodged about the provisions to bring over two Palestinian academics as visiting professors.

Legal or not, this provision reinforces Northwestern’s commitment to identity politics. To be sure, many Palestinians are suffering, but so are others of different nationalities. What about Ukrainians, Uighurs, Haitians, and, in fact, Israelis? Rewarding groups by their identity is exactly what has emboldened constituencies to demand privileges that compromise the school’s institutional neutrality.

The specifics of the capitulation are, as McGinnis explains, problematic. While they may vary from school to school, they are invariably predicated on identity. It’s not as if  anything any school does is going to have any impact whatsoever on the fighting in Gaza. If they both cared about Gazans and had the capacity to think, they would have realized that the only path for helping Gazans was to protest Hamas rather than give it their support and comfort, thus emboldening it by showing that American students support its terrorism.

Civilization has progressed by creating organizations with separate and limited tasks. We have political institutions that respond to constituent pressures. Universities are an epistemically neutral forum for disagreement and must stand apart from politics. A university’s neutrality, once compromised, cannot be easily regained. As Northwestern will learn, surrendering to students with a political agenda comes with costs.

Some have tried to compare what’s happening on campus now to what happened in 1968. There were many differences, but perhaps the most important one was that students’ neighbors, brothers, ROTC members and, if they flunked out, roommates were being drafted and sent to die in ‘Nam. The universities were directly implicated in the conflict. This time, the schools had no connection to the conflict, and were left to do the one thing that universities exist to do. By capitulating, they taught one lesson, that they are weak and easily manipulated, and lack the fortitude to fulfill their mission.