Last spring, Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and other groups of the UMN Divest Coalition secured former University of Minnesota President Jeff Ettinger’s agreement to discuss coalition demands that the University divest its financial interests from Israel and corporations profiting off Israel’s oppression of Palestinians. 

However, in August, soon after President Rebecca Cunningham took office this summer, the Board of Regents resolved it would not pursue divestment. Faced with the administration and Regents’ refusal to continue negotiations, SDS occupied Morrill Hall on Oct. 21 as a protest tactic. It was nonviolent (despite the administration’s claims to the contrary).

Occupying Morrill Hall is something of a civil disobedience tradition at the University. Students have done so multiple times, most famously, in 1969 when the administration refused to make progress on student demands. 

Fifty-five years ago, University leadership stalled on responding to anti-racist measures presented by the Afro-American Action Committee. With Morrill occupied by about 70 Black student protesters, administrators chose to return to negotiations rather than send in police. 

The final outcomes of the discussions included the creation of the University’s renowned African American and African Studies (AAAS) Department. During that stint in Morrill, students damaged University property and disrupted operations. They confronted staff, made some of them uncomfortable and ordered them to leave the building. None of those actions were in any way inconsistent with peaceful protest.

Today, the University rightly celebrates the 1969 Morrill takeover, and trumpets the founding of the AAAS Department as “one of the first of its kind in the nation.” 

You can read about the takeover itself on a historical marker right outside Morrill, where it is honored as a chapter in the University’s ongoing efforts to “broaden its commitment to equity and diversity” while serving “as a national leader around these issues.” 

But the administration’s response to the Oct. 21 occupation shows no such principled commitment or leadership. 

The causes are different, but in all key respects the students’ actions on Oct. 21 aligned with students’ actions in 1969. The only difference is the administration’s decision to resort to force and to dispatch militarized police to subdue and arrest occupiers. 

The scale of the police response was absurd. Faculty present outside Morrill Hall on Oct. 21 saw over 20 squad cars, a SWAT team and numerous armed officers deployed to arrest 11 unarmed protesters engaged in civil disobedience.

President Cunningham justified this response in a subsequent email to the University community, insisting the occupation was “not a form of legitimate protest” because it damaged property and was a “terrifying experience” for staff inside Morrill who were “unable to exit the building for an extended period of time” (a claim later called into question). At the University Senate on Oct. 24, Cunningham conjured a sensationalized account of menacing “masked individuals” in “tactical gear” threatening University employees.

By characterizing them as “threatening” because they were masked (they wore keffiyehs),  as “violent” (they broke some glass) or as dangerous because some staff were startled by the disruption but never actually unsafe, the administration is deploying alarmist and Islamophobic rhetoric that equates protesters with terrorists. 

It’s hardly surprising, then, that Ethan Roberts, deputy executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, actually did label the occupiers as “terrorists” and praised Cunningham for the repressive police response. 

As faculty, we’re horrified that the President charged with leading our university is creating such openings for outside organizations to vilify and endanger our students.

Rhetoric aside, the administration’s narrative of events on Oct. 21 is, at best, dubious.

Videos and counter-statements shared by SDS and local onsite reporters, as well as evidence assembled by faculty witnesses, indicates that protesters inside Morrill calmly asked employees to leave, with occupiers offering to escort staff to exits. 

According to faculty members present as witnesses, as well as video evidence posted by SDS, by about 4:45 p.m., all employees appeared to have left the building. There was no actual threat to anyone’s safety — until the administration introduced one by having police storm Morrill with weapons drawn around an hour later.

The University jeopardized the student protesters further by extending their stay in Hennepin County Jail, where they remained for over 36 hours because charges were not filed in a timely manner. Several were held in solitary confinement. 

President Cunningham has expressed more concern for Morrill’s broken windows and spray-painted security cameras than for her own students. 

Jail is not a safe space for anyone, and by choosing to have protesters handed over to the carceral system, the administration abdicated its duty to protect student safety — a duty that remains unaltered even when students violate university policy and/or the law.  

We’re not alone in challenging the administration’s overreaction on Oct. 21. Minneapolis Council Member Robin Wonsley has introduced a City Council resolution in support of the Morrill occupiers, pointing out something that President Cunningham and the administration have decided to ignore: namely, that the “repression and punishment of nonviolent student activists . . . contradicts our city and University’s stated values, undermines democratic norms, and often falls on the wrong side of history.” 

University leadership has chosen to be on the wrong side of the largest and most significant campus protest movement of our moment. 

When the 2024 occupation of Morrill is commemorated by the University at some point in the future, they won’t be mentioned on historical markers. 

President Cunningham and other leaders will be remembered as unable or unwilling to recognize the ethical urgency of the moment and the righteousness of the students’ cause. 

The authors are University of Minnesota faculty.