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Annelise Orleck has been teaching U.S. and Jewish history for more than three decades at Dartmouth College. But during a protest on campus last week, the 65-year-old feared she might become a key figure in future textbooks.

After she told police officers to stop arresting students on the campus green, Orleck said, officers threw her to the lawn and knelt on her back. She said she couldn’t breathe.

“It did occur to me that I could die,” Orleck recalled.

Orleck is one of many faculty members across the country who consider themselves to have added job responsibilities since pro-Palestinian protests emerged on college campuses last fall and particularly in the past month. She and others who spoke to The Washington Post said they’ve felt a duty to support their students and stand up for their own ideological convictions, often against college administrators who have called law enforcement on protesters.

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At Columbia University, the epicenter of recent college protests, faculty members guarded the students’ encampment. Hundreds of faculty members at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill signed a petition in support of suspended student protesters. At other schools, faculty members have physically stood between police officers and students.

Some teachers have suffered similar consequences as the students they sought to protect — arrests, suspensions and injuries. While tenured professors have job security, adjunct professors and instructors who work on contracts fear being let go — even with support from local and national unions.

The protests have forced some teachers to contemplate how far outside of the classroom their support for students should extend. Some have become the faces of pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel movements at their colleges, displaying loyalty to some students but receiving harassment from others.

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Orleck’s arrest prompted discussion about police invention on campuses after videos of her interaction with local police officers circulated online.

While she was on the ground in Hanover, N.H., Orleck said, her hands were zip-tied before officers escorted her to a van and charged her with criminal trespass. Orleck said she was banned from parts of the campus as a condition of her bail, although the school said Tuesday that the ban would be lifted. Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock said in a statement that the protesters’ “actions have consequences.”

Hanover Police Department Chief Charles Dennis said in a statement that “local and state law enforcement agencies responded to maintain public safety and assist in stopping unlawful conduct.” He did not respond to a question about Orleck’s treatment; state police, which were also involved in the confrontation, did not respond to inquiries.

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Orleck said she does not know what the repercussions on her job will be, if any, but said they were worth standing with her students. She said her right wrist and left shoulder still hurt, and she has struggled to sleep since May 1, the day of the protest.

“We were just worried that they would be assaulted, and we were right to be worried,” Orleck said. “It never occurred to me that I, as an older woman Dartmouth professor, would be arrested.”

Anita Levy, a senior program officer for the American Association of University Professors, said the faculty union has seen more universities disciplining professors in recent months for speaking against the Gaza war or advising student groups.

The swift suspension of faculty members raises questions about whether they were given due process before being placed on leave, Levy said. Summarily suspending professors without a hearing or proceeding, she said, is a violation of their faculty union’s contract. Levy encouraged suspended faculty to seek redress through the union.

“Politicians are putting the pressure on administrations to crack down in ways that we haven’t seen before,” Levy said. “This is a significantly different moment” than other recent protest movements.

One of the largest crackdowns occurred at Washington University in St. Louis, where six faculty members were placed on paid leave due to their alleged involvement in an April 27 pro-Palestinian protest on campus. The private university has banned some of those professors from contacting students or colleagues, using university systems, engaging in work activities or representing the institution, unless their deans make an exception.

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“Universities are making up the rules as they go, trying to suppress free speech on campus,” said Angela Miller, a professor of art history and archaeology and one of the faculty members facing discipline. “... It results in these jerry-rigged procedures.”

If students need to meet during her office hours, Miller said, an administrator must be present to monitor the interaction. Emails the professor receives from students with questions about their final class projects must be referred to the office manager for a response, Miller said.

Megan Green, an adjunct professor in Washington University’s School of Social Work, said she has also been placed on leave. She said she’s been allowed to finish her public policy course on Zoom, but she doesn’t know whether she’ll be invited to return next semester. Michael Allen, a senior architecture lecturer, said he has been banned from campus and is only allowed to complete grade work.

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All three said they were only at the protest to observe and support their students.

“I thought the presence of faculty outside the encampment would help de-escalate the situation,” Allen, 43, said. “I had no idea within less than three minutes I would be in handcuffs.”

Green said that what started as a peaceful demonstration with students sitting and eating together turned violent as police arrested protesters on April 27. Chancellor Andrew Martin said in a statement that the demonstration wasn’t peaceful, claiming that protesters swung flagpoles and sticks, attempted to break into locked buildings and deface property, and bellowed chants that “many in our community find threatening and antisemitic.”

Allen was taken into custody for trespassing, one of at least 100 people detained that day. The next steps are unclear to him.

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“They have leveraged these suspensions to make public examples out of students and faculty,” he said. “I am exhausted.”

The university has said it’s investigating the teachers’ involvement in the protests. A spokesperson for Washington University declined to comment on personnel matters.

Allen said he would have backed student protesters regardless of what they were supporting.

“Maybe we all learn something from this happening,” Allen said, “and create a safe space for protest of any kind in the future.”

Still, some colleges have tried since Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel to limit protesting by faculty members. The University of California’s board of regents is weighing a policy that would ban political statements by faculty members on university websites, while Barnard College in New York City instituted a similar policy shortly after the start of the conflict. Those actions have done little to deter faculty members.

Benjamin Robinson, an associate professor of Germanic studies at Indiana University, faced a line of police officers in riot gear on the Bloomington, Ind., campus on April 25. Behind him, dozens of student protesters linked arms in front of a newly built encampment.

Administrators had called police to a lawn on campus to disband the encampment, but Robinson tried to act as an intermediary.

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“These are kids,” Robinson, who wore a shirt that said, “Jews Say Cease Fire Now,” recalled telling officers. “Are you going to use violence against them?”

He said police advanced on him and students a few minutes later. Robinson and 33 other protesters were arrested, according to university officials, who said in a statement that protesters violated campus policy by erecting tents. University police banned Robinson, 61, from campus for a year, according to a letter he provided The Post and a school official.

Robinson, who’s Jewish, said he has found himself at a crossroads between his values and actions taken by the government of Israel. Some Jewish students have called him a traitor, he said.

He said he understands that the protests have made some Jewish students feel isolated, and he has spoken with some about getting involved with on-campus Jewish organizations. While Robinson said the demonstrations haven’t featured antisemitism, the university cited “a troubling rise in antisemitism nationally” as a reason it called police to the protest.

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On Friday, Robinson, who has worked at the college for two decades, was one of three plaintiffs who filed a lawsuit against Indiana University’s trustees and president. The complaint, made in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana, alleged that the campus ban on faculty and student protesters violated their free-speech rights.

University spokesman Mark Bode declined to comment on the lawsuit.

Robinson, who was charged with criminal trespass, is scheduled to be arraigned on June 5 at Monroe County Circuit Court. Meanwhile, the encampment has been rebuilt on the lawn where Robinson was arrested, according to the university’s campus newspaper, the Indiana Daily Student.

While he’s appealing his ban, Robinson said he’s permitted to enter campus. He already knows how he would respond if police return to the encampment.

“I’d be back on the field with the students in a heartbeat,” he said.

Faculty members supporting pro-Palestinian protesters aren’t the only ones who said they have faced repercussions. Shai Davidai, an assistant professor at the Columbia Business School and an outspoken supporter of Israel, wrote on X on April 22 that Columbia had barred him from entering campus. Samantha Slater, a spokeswoman for Columbia, declined to comment on Davidai’s claim.

At Dartmouth on May 1, Orleck said she and a group of fellow professors were attending what she called a peaceful protest on campus before state police officers arrived. She said she stood in front of a group of students outside an encampment, thinking her presence would deter officers from pursuing students.

But after she videotaped students’ arrests and told officers to leave students alone, Orleck said, she became one of the 89 people arrested.

Orleck said she and nearly a dozen students sang civil rights songs in the police van and in their jail cell in Lebanon, N.H., including “Solidarity Forever” and “We Shall Not Be Moved.” After a Vermont labor group posted her $40 bail a few hours later, she said, her 24-year-old son called her and asked she stop protesting.

But on Friday, Orleck said, she taught her two history classes on Zoom, where students discussed their anxiety about more police intervention. The next day, she said she received an email from a Palestinian student, who wrote that Orleck was the first professor to make her feel safe since the Gaza war began in October.

“All of this made me feel like we need each other,” Orleck said, “and I need to keep teaching.”

Niha Masih in Seoul and Richard Morgan in New York contributed to this report.

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