The U.S. presidential election is causing anxiety among some students, according to a report by Tamara Walker in Asbury Park Press.

Despite the anxiety, students also report feeling hopeful about the election. (July 2024)

Student protesters on college campuses frequently invoke the First Amendment to shelter their actions, which often include chanting slogans, occupying buildings and setting up encampments. Legal experts have weighed in on how these activities are protected — or not — under the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.

This past spring, student protests brought about by the Israel-Hamas war popped up at many U.S. college campuses. The students protested the war's rising death toll and called for universities to separate themselves from companies advancing Israel’s military efforts in Gaza.

In June, Louisiana enacted a new law limiting speech on university campuses in response to pro-Palestinian demonstrations at colleges.

Governor Jeff Landry, a Republican, signed Senate Bill 294, which exempts any act that bears a criminal penalty from free-speech protections. Campus free-speech policies no longer defend civil disobedience, says the website Louisiana Illuminator.

"What we need on college campuses is education, not activists," Republican state Senator Valarie Hodges, who filed the bill, told the Illuminator.

These laws aim to curb civil disobedience and protests, especially those related to the Israel-Hamas conflict.

“We are once again in our history seeing laws that likely target speech, especially speech that some might find objectionable,” Roy Gutterman, director of the Tully Center for Free Speech at Syracuse University, said in an email to VOA.

“We saw it in the Red Scares, during the civil rights movement and during anti-war protests in the 1960s,” he said.

Under the law, “activities in which an individual or group is knowingly being monetarily funded or organized by any individual, corporation, business or organization that has been designated as a foreign terrorist organization or foreign adversary by the United States Department of State” is also barred from protection.

Zach Greenberg of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression told VOA that it is important such policies be enforced in “a content viewpoint neutral manner,” meaning that “they can't be enforced against people differently based on what they say and what they believe.”

Gutterman said the First Amendment “is the protection for citizens to be able to speak, publish, gather and complain about government policy without legal restrictions or punishment for that expression.”

“But, of course, there are lots of specific exemptions, like causing a riot, defaming someone and many others,” he told VOA.

These limitations might take many different forms, such as controlling the amount of noise that people can produce, limiting the number of demonstrators who can occupy a certain space, prohibiting protests in the early morning or late at night, and regulating the size and positioning of signs on public property.

Greenberg said that while the First Amendment generally protects students’ right to protest, this protection has limits. "Speech is protected unless it falls into categories like discriminatory harassment or severe disruption," he said.

“Encampments, which are often used in protests, are not typically protected and can be regulated through content-neutral time, place and manner restrictions,” he said, adding that this means the First Amendment does not establish a right to occupy a campus as an expression of protest.

The limitations can also vary based on whether the protest is at a public or a private university.

"Public universities are bound by the First Amendment, whereas private universities are only bound by their own policies, which can act as a contractual obligation to provide free speech," Greenberg said.

Gutterman agreed that private colleges are not bound by the First Amendment in the same way as public colleges but said they still “should operate within the spirit of free speech values and academic freedom.”

He also pointed out that activities such as occupying buildings or setting up encampments generally fall outside First Amendment protections. "You do not have a First Amendment right to stay overnight in a park, and similar restrictions apply on campus," he said.

Last month, The New York Times reported that when police were called in to break up a student encampment at Columbia University in April, it was the first major detainment of protesters. Since then, more than 3,100 people have been arrested or detained on campuses across the country, the Times reported. Most charges were for trespassing or disturbing the peace, but some people have faced more-serious charges, such as resisting arrest.

As student protests evolve, understanding the balance between free speech rights and university policies remains crucial. Universities are required to navigate these issues to protect free speech while maintaining campus safety and order.

Although college sports have long been considered amateur athletics, a federal appeals court said there should be a legal test to determine when athletes are playing for fun and when they are working for a school or college.

ESPN.com reports that when the efforts of college athletes directly benefit a school, they may be subject to federal wage and hour laws. Defendants in the lawsuit include the NCAA and member schools such as Duke University, Villanova University and the University of Oregon.

International pressure is mounting on Bangladesh to end its violent crackdown on protesting students after scores of video clips and photos surfaced on social media over the past week showing police, army and paramilitary forces firing directly upon the protesters.

The United Nations, European Union and Amnesty International are among those that have called on the Dhaka government to ease up on the students, who have been demanding an end to quotas for government jobs that would limit their employment prospects.

University teachers have joined in the protests, which began after a July 1 High Court ruling re-establishing the quotas, and analysts say the students are enjoying broad support from ordinary citizens.

According to the quota system, 30% of civil service jobs – considered the steadiest job option for young Bangladeshis in a country facing high unemployment – would be reserved for the grandchildren of those who fought against Pakistan in Bangladesh’s 1971 Liberation War.

The students are demanding a merit-based system of job allocation. However, what started as a nonviolent protest turned violent after police fired bullets, pellets and tear gas at unarmed students.

According to reports by police and hospitals, more than 200 people died in the violence between July 16 and 22. Many deaths remain unregistered with bodies not reaching hospitals and police stations. Unofficial figures have put the death toll between 300 and 500.

Last week, Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina blamed the Bangladesh Nationalist Party [BNP], the largest opposition party in the country, for the unrest. She said that she had ordered the deployment of police, paramilitary and army “to protect the students” but called the protesters “militants.”

Hasina, in office since 2009, has been accused of authoritarianism and corruption. Her party has been accused of rigging the last three general elections, a charge that the party denies.

On July 21, the Supreme Court scrapped most of the quotas and ruled that 93% of government jobs would now be open to candidates on merit, meeting a key demand of the protesters.

However, members of Students Against Discrimination [SAD], whose campaign against job quotas precipitated the unrest, said that the protests would continue until their latest set of demands is met.

A statement from SAD said on Monday that four ministers, including the home and law ministers, must be removed from the Cabinet. They also demanded that the police and pro-ruling party “goons” who fired on the students be arrested and prosecuted for “murdering” unarmed protesters.

In response, the government began arresting student leaders and opposition political activists.

One Dhaka-based rights group, which asked not to be identified for fear of official retaliation, said more than 10,000 people, mostly students, have been arrested over the past few days.

The police have already detained at least 10 of the more than 50 SAD coordinators who are leading the protest. One of the coordinators, who was released from police custody briefly before being detained again, said they were tortured in custody and pressured to call off the protests.

Several student leaders and rights activists said on Tuesday that the police, with the help of the army and paramilitary force, were conducting raids across the country and detaining students. The government is trying its best to demoralize the students and sabotage their protest movement, they said.

"Every night they are conducting block raids and picking up students and young people who took part in the uprising,” said a Bangladesh-based rights activist, who asked not to be identified for fear of reprisal from the government.

“Many of them have become traceless, which means they have become victims of enforced disappearances,” the activist told VOA. “The detained activists are being tortured in custody in the name of remand. This is how the judiciary is collaborating in torturing the students and young activists by sending them in for remand and by denying them bail.”

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres called attention Monday to the reported mass arrests of thousands of students and political opposition members. U.N. spokesperson Stephane Dujarric said Guterres was “deeply concerned about the situation in Bangladesh.”

“We continue to raise our concerns about the situation in the country with relevant authorities, both in the capital, Dhaka, and here in New York, and we count on Bangladesh to respect and uphold human rights, including as a top troop-contributing country to United Nations peacekeeping missions,” Dujarric said.

Smriti Singh, the regional director for South Asia at Amnesty International, said in a statement Monday that the mass arrest and arbitrary detention of student protesters was a “witch hunt by the authorities to silence anyone who dares to challenge the government.”

“Reports suggest that these arrests are entirely politically motivated, in retaliation for the exercise of human rights,” Singh said.

VOA reached out to the Home Ministry of Bangladesh for a response to the international criticism but has not yet received a response.

Ali Riaz, political analyst and professor of political science at Illinois State University, said the underlying cause of the upheaval is the “sense of disenfranchisement among people, both economic and political.”

“A large number of people are facing dire economic situation while those connected to the regime are plundering and siphoning off money to other countries. On the political front, three consecutive fraudulent elections have left no opportunity for them to participate in politics,” Riaz told VOA. “This is an outburst of these discontents which have transformed the movement.”

The income gap between white and Black young adults was narrower for millennials than it was for Generation X. That's according to a new study examining income mobility during the two generations that was released last week by researchers at Harvard University and the U.S. Census Bureau.

It also found that the class chasm between white adults born to wealthy and poor parents widened between the generations. The study says that Black people born in 1978 to poor parents ended up earning almost $13,000 a year less than white people born to poor parents by age 27. That gap narrowed to more than $9,500 for those born in 1992.

The income gap between white and Black young adults was narrower for millenials than for Generation X, according to a new study that also found the chasm between white people born to wealthy and poor parents widened between the generations.

By age 27, Black Americans born in 1978 to poor parents ended up earning almost $13,000 a year less than white Americans born to poor parents. That gap had narrowed to about $9,500 for those born in 1992, according to the study released last week by researchers at Harvard University and the U.S. Census Bureau.

The shrinking gap between races was due to greater income mobility for poor Black children and drops in mobility for low-income white children, said the study, which showed little change in earnings outcomes for other race and ethnicity groups during this time period.

A key factor was the employment rates of the communities that people lived in as children. Mobility improved for Black individuals where employment rates for Black parents increased. In communities where parental employment rates declined, mobility dropped for white individuals, the study said.

"Outcomes improve ... for children who grow up in communities with increasing parental employment rates, with larger effects for children who move to such communities at younger ages," said researchers, who used census figures and data from income tax returns to track the changes.

In contrast, the class gap widened for white people between the generations — Gen Xers born from 1965 to 1980 and millennials born from 1981 to 1996.

White Americans born to poor parents in 1978 earned about $10,300 less than than white Americans born to wealthy parents. For those born in 1992, that class gap increased to about $13,200 because of declining mobility for people born into low-income households and increasing mobility for those born into high-income households, the study said.

There was little change in the class gap between Black Americans born into both low-income and high-income households since they experienced similar improvements in earnings.

This shrinking gap between the races, and growing class gap among white people, also was documented in educational attainment, standardized test scores, marriage rates and mortality, the researchers said.

There also were regional differences.

Black people from low-income families saw the greatest economic mobility in the southeast and industrial Midwest. Economic mobility declined the most for white people from low-income families in the Great Plains and parts of the coasts.

The researchers suggested that policymakers could encourage mobility by investing in schools or youth mentorship programs when a community is hit with economic shocks such as a plant closure and by increasing connections between different racial and economic groups by changing zoning restrictions or school district boundaries.

"Importantly, social communities are shaped not just by where people live but by race and class within neighborhoods," the researchers said. "One approach to increasing opportunity is therefore to increase connections between communities."