We live in a country that has long honored activists. The men who fought for a vision of America free of British rule. The women who risked arrest to earn the right to vote. The students who sat at lunch counters and joined others in marching for the struggle for racial equality.

Nearly four centuries ago, it was an activist who established the city that the university I lead calls home. In 1635, Roger Williams fled from Salem, Massachusetts, where he had been convicted of sedition and heresy, and landed his canoe in what is now Providence. Williams held the then-outrageous view that people of all religious beliefs — including “Jews, Papists and Turks,” in addition to the wide variety of Protestants — should be free to practice their religions as they chose. Rhode Island was founded on that principle. So was Brown University.

Today, in the challenging moment that college and university presidents find themselves navigating, a Roger Williams quote from 1652 is particularly salient. He asked that “the beauty of civility and humanity be maintained among the chief opposers and dissenters.” Williams understood and valued the role of dissenters in society — after all, he was one himself. And yet he also believed that dissenters should not dehumanize those with whom they disagree.

We might understand the same about Alexander Hamilton, Susan B. Anthony, and the black students from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical College who led the sit-ins for civil rights. All of them exemplified this notion of civility and humanity in the practice of opposition and dissent — that is, of activism. History rightly regards them as heroes.

Today, the word activism has, for many, a far less positive resonance. Since the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel, activism conjures images of masked, angry, and sometimes destructive student protesters. Across the country, there were moments when protests undeniably crossed the line into harmful dehumanization of groups of students on college campuses. And as video clips of campus protests went viral, public opinion of student activism sank, accompanied by intense legislative scrutiny of how protests were managed. This was immediately followed by questions about whether colleges and universities were living up to their responsibilities to hold students accountable.

Yet the recent challenges over student protests do not mean we should aim to quash campus activism. Rather, we should approach it through the lens of education — which is, after all, the mission of colleges and universities — and teach students what effective, constructive activism looks like. Under the right circumstances, student activism can be a vital part of learning how to become a leader who changes society for the better.

My own education about activism started early. I was raised in a Quaker household during the Vietnam War, when Sunday school lessons focused on civil disobedience, pacifism, and conscientious objection to the draft. I valued the fact that this was not taught as dogma. 

Instead, we students were free to develop our own views about the tenets of Quakerism and were respected even if we disagreed. And I did: I couldn’t square pacifism with what I saw as the clear imperative to take up arms against Hitler. After I converted to Judaism, I learned about the important role of Jewish activism in key moments in history. I will forever be proud of my father-in-law, who as a young man had been a hair-on-fire Labor Zionist who was briefly interned in Cyprus for running guns and Holocaust survivors through the British blockade of Israel — a decidedly un-Quaker-like thing to do.

Young people have been, and always will be, energetic and idealistic. They will see flaws in the world that they want to repair, even as they are still developing the capacity to think strategically about how to accomplish their goals, or even assess whether their goals are laudable. We often observe that much of the activism that happens on campus is misguided, uninformed, or underinformed, and wholly ineffective. Some of it is outright offensive.

The question, then, is how can college and university leaders guide student activists down productive paths that enhance their educations? What guardrails should we put in place for students who embrace activism to ensure it becomes part of the process of learning, to help them eventually mature into informed and effectively engaged citizens? What is our obligation as educators to shape the future of student activism?

After the October 7 attacks, Brown, like many of our peer institutions, did not have experience managing a flavor of activism that most of us had neither encountered nor even imagined: activism that set groups of students against each other. To my knowledge, never before had universities and colleges needed to address situations in which protests by one group could create hostile environments for other groups.

The experiences of the past 18 months have distilled my views on how college and university leaders should respond to campus activism into three fundamental principles:

Colleges and universities need to provide opportunities for students to learn about the full range of ways to effect change.

Activism is about making a transformative impact, and students often have not learned yet that effective activism takes many forms. The standard tool kit of protests — marches, walk-outs, and (increasingly) digital campaigns — have the advantage of being readily accessible and easy to implement. Although they occasionally achieve desired results, most often they don’t. We must help students understand that other approaches are often more effective: voting, volunteering, political organizing, running for office, filing lawsuits, pushing for legislation, and working in organizations that advance specific agendas.

America’s history demonstrates that effective activists succeeded by embracing a broader set of strategies. The signers of the Constitution, the suffragists, and the students who led the sit-ins at lunch counters engaged in political organizing, get-out-the-vote campaigns, and other movements. Universities must broaden the thinking of student activists — through courses, internships, or guest speakers — about the range of strategies and approaches for making a difference on issues that matter to them.

The tools they need to succeed — strategy development, negotiation, fundraising, marketing and communications, leadership skills, and the ability to study and understand multiple sides of an issue — are valuable skills to teach, regardless of how students will apply them in their future lives.  

I often think of an alumnus of my university who told me that, at the beginning of his time at college, he marched around our main administration building carrying signs in support of global causes. At some point, he realized that what he was doing was merely performative and that there were better approaches to making change. He went on to a distinguished career as a nonprofit leader, eventually (and ironically) leading an organization that he had protested as a student. He insists today that the early attempts to make change were an important part of his learning experience.

Students need an environment that cultivates this learning. This brings me to the second basic principle for a university leadership response to campus activism:

Strive for a culture that prizes both freedom of expression and respectful discourse.

The role of a university is to advance knowledge and understanding. This mission can be fulfilled only if students and scholars are free to study and learn what they choose, without fear of censorship, and to advance, contest, and debate — often vigorously — opposing points of view.

This can result at times in a tumultuous academic environment, but discovery is often messy, and the path to learning about complicated issues is never easy. The last thing we want are faculty and students who are not committed to pushing the boundaries of knowledge and ideas. If everyone complacently accepted the status quo, science would stagnate, ideas about what makes for peaceful and prosperous societies would not advance, and the practice of art would be frozen in time. On campuses, we have to be prepared to be challenged and to hear things we do not agree with. This is the price of embracing free expression as a core value.

At the same time, activism that attempts to shut down opposing points of view, or that results in harassment or hostility, has no place on a campus. Colleges and universities have to be places where all members of their communities bear the same responsibilities to honor free expression as a foundational principle. Debasing or dehumanizing others who have different views stifles learning and debate. It deprives others of their right to be full participants in the life of the institution and is the antithesis of what should happen at any college or university.

It’s important to note that, despite images and headlines that focus on some of the most egregious acts of violent protest across the country, most student activism does not violate the law or university policies. Nor does it harm other students. Over my 13 years as a university president, I have seen activism emerge on a wide range of issues: free speech, financial aid, climate change, homelessness, racism, access to education, university governance, and a host of other social and political issues. The vast majority of student activists understand that they need to use persuasion and reason, rather than hostility or intimidation, to make change. Although the work of these incredible students rarely makes the headlines, it’s important to recognize that they are making a difference in so many ways, and we can be proud of them.

Yet we undoubtedly continue to witness approaches to activism and protest sharply at odds with community standards. This leads to my third and final critical point:

Colleges and universities must make sure the rules that govern activism are crystal clear. And campus leaders need to enforce them.

Teaching students about guardrails around activism is part of our job as educators. University officials need to prioritize meeting with students before protests begin so that we make sure students understand their rights, responsibilities, and the consequences of different types of actions. It means teaching the “why” of rules — that they do not exist to subdue or quash activists, but instead to protect the rights of all members of the community to participate fully in the life of the campus.

No college or university should tolerate or accept protest that dehumanizes or harasses any member of the community, or deprives others of their ability to work, study, or learn. Students need to hear this message loud and clear. Sometimes students decide, quite purposefully, to step across the lines of allowable behavior. This may include prolonged sit-ins or trespassing by refusing to leave a building or location. When these acts violate policies or the law, students must be fully informed of the implications of their actions and be prepared to bear the disciplinary and legal consequences. 

This is a core pillar of the educational case supporting the role of student activism. Just as it is important to teach students about the range of ways to effect change through their activism — and just as this activism is enabled by ensuring a learning environment that cultivates the free exchange of ideas — we must also confront behaviors that threaten the fulfillment of these core principles.

With appropriate standards in place, activism can play an important role in developing students into the leaders and changemakers we want our graduates to be. We can remind and re-remind students and readers alike of that wonderful plea from Roger Williams, that “civility and humanity be maintained among the chief opposers and dissenters.”

We cannot expect 18-year-olds who want to change the world to enter college fully equipped to do so. Their first attempts may be misguided. Instead of telling them they are wrong for trying — that they should be complacent — we should teach them what it takes to inspire and lead change.