New classes, new textbooks, and new protests: As college students prepare to return to campus for the spring semester, they can expect to encounter more disruptive anti-Israel demonstrations as authorities fail to discipline those accused of running riot over many campuses across the country. 

For a sense of what’s to come, look no further than the pro-Palestinian sit-in held by 26 students and two faculty members at the University of Chicago Office of Admissions. The university charged them all with “criminal trespass to real property,” but state prosecutors at Illinois’s Cook County dropped the charges at a court hearing in December. 

While the bar for litigating against First Amendment rights is high, disruptive student demonstrations like the one at Chicago cross that threshold. Even the fiercest advocates of free speech are urging state prosecutors and school administrators to take action against protests that are disrupting university classrooms and libraries and undermining the education experience.

Holding students hostage in a library could constitute the crime of “involuntary confinement.” So says the co-founder of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, Harvey Silverglate, in a conversation with the Sun.

Mr. Silvergate says he believes universities are afraid of disciplining Palestinian protesters because it would require them to draw a line in the sand against all such rhetoric that could incite violence. “They could certainly do something to those students if they wanted to, but they would have to do it consistently,” he says. “I don’t think they have the guts to be consistent in this area.”

In the past, campus protests tended to take place outdoors, but in recent weeks, they’ve gotten noisier and more disruptive as they’ve moved inside. “That invites legal challenges,” a senior program officer at FIRE, Zach Greenberg, told the Sun, “to figure out what is the difference between criminal trespass and protected political expression.” 

The free-speech rights of students at public universities are protected by the Constitution, while those of students at most private colleges are outlined in student codes of conduct. The First Amendment does not protect nonviolent unlawful conduct undertaken as a form of protest — otherwise known as what American intellectual Henry David Thoreau called “civil disobedience.”

Thoreau’s disobedience was refusing to pay a poll tax associated with slavery, which led him to a jail at Concord in 1864. Today, students who occupy campus buildings must “be aware that you may be arrested or face punishment through your college’s disciplinary process,” FIRE advises. The anti-Israel student occupation of Widener Library on Harvard’s campus last month,  Mr. Silverglate said, constitutes “a crime.” 

The University of Chicago students and faculty originally charged with criminal trespass, typically a Class B misdemeanor in Illinois, could have faced up to six months in jail and a $1,500 fine. The university is still holding several disciplinary charges against them, and some alumni of the school are now raising funds for the protesters to expunge the charges from their records.

“Decisions about whether to pursue or drop charges in a criminal case are made by the Cook County State’s Attorney office,” the University of Chicago told the Sun in a statement. “The University’s own disciplinary processes for violations of policy are independent of decisions made by prosecutors. We do not comment on disciplinary matters.”

The school has a storied history of protecting academic freedom. In November, its president, Paul Alivisatos, outlined students’ right to protest along with the need to observe campus guidelines. “Protests and demonstrations are an essential part of our culture of free expression, and within the University are protected as essential venues for truth seeking,” he said, adding that this is the case as long as students are “complying with the University policies on protest and demonstration.”

“At Chicago, they’re not trying to penalize — they’re trying to lower the temperature,” Mr. Silverglate says. The failure to reprimand, though, risks becoming a self-fulling cycle. Authorities might decline to punish these students believing that the anti-Israel demonstrations should be treated the same as the other ones on different topics that have erupted in recent weeks. 

“If the university engages in any kind of internal discipline,” the legal director of American Civil Liberties Union of Virginia, Rebecca Glenber, told the Sun, “it should be careful to think about how they have treated similar protests in the past and ensure that they are engaging in equal treatment.” 

“I really hope that universities will take seriously the free-speech rights of students,” Ms. Glenber said. “Protest is one of the ways that we learn from each other and look for ways to make this an educational moment instead of just a confrontational one.” 

One case, though, stands out. In November, Columbia University temporarily suspended the groups Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace for engaging in an unauthorized protest. Demonstrations over the Israel-Hamas war subsequently calmed down on campus, and pro-Israel voices laud the school’s president, Nemat Shafikon, for taming the tumult.

“From a university point of view, the critical thing is to maintain and protect the ability to speak freely no matter how unpopular the point of view,” Mr. Silverglate says. Otherwise, schools risk becoming “simply credential-producing organizations.” He adds, though, that “you can say whatever you want, but you can’t disrupt the educational enterprise.”