Occupy Protests, the Rule of Law, and California Public Universities

This is a delayed note but it is disheartening to see the steps universities have taken recently to block, with unnecessary violence in the case of Berkeley and now Davis, the Occupy protests from occupying university space.  As Robert Hockett noted regarding NYC’s decision to oust Occupy Wall Street, the question should not be the right to remove protesters but the wisdom of doing so.  There have been some “official” reactions by law professors highlighting the problematic nature of university responses (see Letter to Campus Administrators from Berkeley Law Faculty and Duncan Kennedy’s letter regarding Harvard’s overreaction).  The Colbert Report’s segment on the Berkeley police repression probably does the best job calling attention to the violence protesters have faced.  But given what I see as the promise and importance of the occupy social movement, such repression is all the more intolerably at odds with the professed values of universities.