As protests erupted across college campuses this spring amid the Israel-Hamas conflict, Arizona State University (ASU) president Michael Crow—who runs a large state institution with nearly 80,000 students enrolled on campus and more than 65,000 online—was not immune from the heat. In late April, pro-Palestian protesters erected an encampment on the school’s Tempe, Ariz. campus; police took it down and arrested more than 70 people, 20 of them Arizona State students. “We protected free speech,” says Crow. “We did not permit hate speech or genocidal speech. We have to continue operating a university. We graduated 20,000 people, our largest spring graduation effort. We had over 250,000 visitors. We held over 30 convocation events. They all went on and people were able to demonstrate. But nothing was interrupted.”
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Crow took over Arizona State back…
