Smith, Penn, and Penn State presidents join student police protests
Keith Button Keith Button Contributing Editor
Higher Education News
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Higher Ed Dive
Dive Brief:

The president of Smith College in Massachusetts, Kathleen McCartney, led a campus vigil on Monday for the high-profile police killings of black males after getting a lesson from students in social media political correctness.

Pennsylvania State University President Eric Barron, who last week attended a student “die-in” protest of the police killings, is now facing heat from state Rep. Jerry Knowles because he was photographed using the “hands-up-don’t-shoot” gesture adopted by protesters.

University of Pennsylvania President Amy Gutmann participated in a “die-in” with students who showed up unexpectedly at her annual holiday party to protest Penn’s lack of financial support for Philadelphia schools.

Dive Insight:

The Chronicle of Higher Education put the three protesting presidents together, though Penn’s Amy Gutmann was more the target of the protest than a participant. Students staged a sit-in at her home during the party, pushing for the untaxed university to make payments in lieu of taxes to support the Philadelphia City School District. Smith’s president, Kathleen McCartney, used the phrase “all lives matter” in an email about planned campus actions to promote healing and “equity and justice” in the wake of the police killings, but she didn’t realize that the phrase was used by critics of the #BlackLivesMatter protest movement, and apologized for her mistake.

In the case of Penn State’s president, Eric Barron, Republican state Rep. Jerry Knowles has demanded that Barron either resign or apologize because, he says, the hands-up-don’t-shoot gesture portrays a false narrative that police are shooting civilians who throw their hands up and surrender. Barron said he supports law enforcement and that he joined the protest to show support for the students.