I'm not so sure of this. With great self-assuredness, perhaps. If you read the signs at most of the protests, though, you struggle to find any clarity of thought.

"Release all Palestinian prisoners!" Really? Including the ones who are there for killing large numbers of civilians?

"By any means necessary!" So, like, actual genocide of Jews is acceptable?

"From the river to the sea!" You got into one of the best universities in the country, but don't understand that this phrase is hopelessly contaminated with the idea that Israel must cease to exist? Or you do understand, but the courage of you convictions only allows you to say so in a "dog-whistle"?

I can understand if a few protestors say things like that, but when you have a group of supposedly very bright people standing around with lots of such signs and not cringing or asking them to please put that down, it seems like the students have surrendered much of their smarts to the instinct for tribal unity.

I think the heavy-handed approach of many universities is extremely misguided--both highly inconsistent with the mission of the university as a whole and counterproductive as a pragmatic matter. The appropriate parallel is not Tienanmen, but rather the exact same phenomenon in the U.S. in the 60s against the Vietnam War.

But let's not kid ourselves that the best and brightest, supposedly, don't end up beholden to some pretty bad ideas. The Free Speech part of the Free Speech Movement remained, but the countercultural burn-it-all-down rage-against-the-machine attitude flamed brightly, caused some damage, and fizzled out before it could cause yet more damage.

I don't think you need anything as complicated as committees.

Make the students pay for the needed 24 hour security to ensure that the protests remain peaceful, and get them to pay for any destroyed grass or anything else. If individual students engage in speech that threatens other students, use ordinary disciplinary procedures to handle it: talk to them first, suspend or expel them for severe misbehavior, and yes, do involve law enforcement if they commit assault.

Uphold freedom of speech, but don't let students get away with saying "freedom of speech" when they mean "freedom to harass other students and destroy things and not be held accountable for our bad behavior because we state that we care about far worse behavior somewhere else".