The ongoing protests at northeastern campuses are a symptom of a larger lack of commitment by the last few generations of administrators to free speech and academic freedom.
Both public and private universities have gotten away with a loose-goosey approach on campus speech for decades, so, predictably, they respond with inconsistency and arbitrary action when there’s a flashpoint. If they had drawn a clear line straight from the hard lessons of the 1960s, as the AAUP has done, there would be nothing to “manage.”