Many of the protesters at UCLA and campuses across the country have been hiding their identities using scarves and medical masks.
According to PBS News, student protestors at the University of Michigan’s campus in Ann Arbor told reporters they were afraid of retribution by the university, while organizers said some participating students had been “doxed and punished.”
Google fired over 50 employees for participating in a protest over the company’s ties to the Israeli government. One Google employee who was fired told The Guardian that doxing “is the main reason that people chose to conceal their identity in relation to this protest.”
Doxing, according to Syracuse University Professor Emeritus Lynn Greenky, was something Vietnam War or Apartheid protesters didn’t have to worry about because the internet wasn't around during those times.
“The impact of what social media has done in every aspect of our lives, including how it has affected our rights of free speech, is just tremendous,” she told KNX News. “And we're still sort of figuring it out. Applying some of the old rules and the rules pre-digital times to our current situation is difficult and, you know, we're just sort of learning as we're going along.”
Greenky added that despite these digital times, protesters are exercising their freedom of association, which the Supreme Court ruled on in the 1960s during the civil rights movement.
“The Supreme Court recognized the fact that as a right of their association, their identities did not need to be revealed. That they do have that First Amendment right,” she said. “And these students have the same right. They can hide their identities if they so choose.”
Greenky does add that while students have First Amendment rights, this won’t protect them from getting hired.
“As long as it's a private corporation, it's not the government so that it's not a viewpoint, discriminatory choice but private non-governmental entities, of course,” she said.
On Thursday, over 200 pro-Palestinian demonstrators were arrested after law enforcement dismantled the UCLA encampments. L.A. County District Attorney George Gascón told KNX News Chief Correspondent Charles Feldman that most of the protestors will likely be charged with misdemeanors, not felonies.
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