University protests by students (the act of rejecting a certain people from speaking on campus, or protesting against behaviors and rules that are perceived as bad) are useful because of three reasons:
1. It is useful to generate interest in a certain idea,
2. It facilitates students in soul-searching their own priorities ideal,
3. It facilitates students in finding their place in the national conversation.
However, it should not be without limits:
1. It should not obstruct the fundamental purpose of universities to advance and disseminate knowledge.
2. It should not promote the narrative of tyranny of democracy, where everyone must think, feel, and act alike.
Students are not always inclined to respect those boundaries. Of late, student activists have found themselves provoked by disagreements with guest speakers whom faculty members have invited to speak to classes; by the subjects and readings that professors have assigned in their classes; even by the behavior of professors themselves. Activists have found such controversies sufficient to justify disrupting classes in order to voice their objections. In doing so, they undermine the ability of other students to learn and to take full advantage of their own collegiate opportunities, as well as the ability of professors to exercise their academic freedom to teach.
Securing academic freedom in order for professors to be able to teach and publish the fruits of their expertise has been one of the principles of the AAUP (American Association of University Professors). And although some might argue that sometimes it’s justified to ban people like Steve Bannon from speaking, the protests go to people much less controversial than him:
University of Illinois activists forces their professor to cancel an Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) from speaking in their class,
Reed College in Portland, Oregon activists forces their professor to switch the focus of their humanities studies away from Western civilization. These protests are conducted in a way that even prevents arguments from the other side to be expressed, and sometimes even includes violence. Ideally that shouldn’t be the case.