New draft resolution for Faculty Senates concerning nonviolent civil disobedience

The previous draft went through a number of revisions, making it difficult to read. Here is the current version. Comments still accepted on the blog or by email to me.

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Whereas the theory and practice of nonviolent civil disobedience is one of the great moral achievements of the past 200 years,

Whereas in particular the use of nonviolent civil disobedience was an essential part of the movements for women’s suffrage and for African-American civil rights that changed American society forever,

Whereas our charge as educators includes the nurturing of proper means of expression of the consciences of our students,

Whereas the “negotiated management” paradigm for dealing with nonviolent civil disobedience[1] was widely and successfully used in the 1980s and 199os and offers both police and nonviolent civil disobedience participants the opportunity to negotiate the conditions of arrests, and is thereby congruent with university values of reasoned discourse,

Whereas the “strategic incapacitation” paradigm currently in use eschews the practice of negotiation, and is thereby incompatible with the values of universities,

Whereas the “strategic incapacitation” paradigm licenses the use of batons, pepper spray, sound cannons, rubber bullets, and other “less lethal” weapons, without negotiation,

Whereas some of these weapons have been recently used in shocking and unjustified displays of violence by university police at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of California, Davis,

Therefore, the Faculty Senate of (… University)

Calls upon the (Chancellor / President) of the University

To forbid the use of “strategic incapacitation” tactics on University grounds when dealing with nonviolent civil disobedience,

To mandate the immediate adoption of, and training in, the “negotiated management” paradigm by University police when dealing with nonviolent civil disobedience,

And to commit the University to policies that protect the rights of students, faculty, and staff to engage in the historically significant and morally justified practice of nonviolent civil disobedience on University grounds. 

[1] Patrick F Gillham, Securitizing America: Strategic Incapacitation and the Policing of Protest Since the 11 September 2001 Terrorist Attacks. Sociology Compass 5 ⁄ 7 (2011): 636–652, 10.1111/j.1751-9020.2011.00394.x (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1751-9020.2011.00394.x/full).