Students Want Charges Dropped. What Is the Right Price for Protests?

Youssef Hasweh expected to receive his diploma from the University of Chicago on Saturday.

What he got instead was an email from the associate dean of students informing him that, because he was under investigation for his participation in a protest encampment on the campus quad, “your degree will not be conferred until the resolution of this matter.”

Like scores of other student demonstrators across the country, Mr. Hasweh has been swept up into a kind of disciplinary limbo. Although he was allowed to participate in graduation, his university is withholding his degree until it determines whether and how to punish him for breaking its code of conduct for refusing to vacate an encampment, which the police cleared on May 7.

He has already been formally reprimanded by the university for being part of a group that occupied an administration building last year in a protest over the Israel-Hamas war.

The question of how harshly to discipline these students cuts deep in academia, where many universities take pride in their history of student activism, on issues such as civil rights, the Vietnam War, South African apartheid and income inequality. Some faculty members themselves celebrate such activism and encourage students to become politically involved — and have also faced arrest and discipline for doing so.

But today, some students have made a demand of their colleges that is vexing administrators and veterans of past social movements: They want all charges against them, both academic and legal, dropped. Many students have been charged with criminal misdemeanors, such as trespassing. Others have faced discipline from their universities, which can range from a warning on their records to suspensions and expulsions.