With graduation season in full swing across Southern California, public school officials are confident that high school commencement ceremonies will not be disrupted by the kind of student activism that has flared at college campuses throughout the nation over the Israel-Gaza war.

Educators say that although they have not seen student-led demonstrations at their high schools, they still are prioritizing safety — and maintaining the “celebratory” environment — at upcoming commencement events, when thousands of graduates in Los Angeles, Orange, San Bernardino and Riverside counties will receive their diplomas.

“Safety, it’s always our top priority, especially at events such as graduation,” said Hilda Ramirez Horvath, a spokesperson for the Pasadena Unified School District. “Graduations are always a really important milestone for students and their families, and we want these events to be special and meaningful for our community.”

Horvath said the district will take general safety precautions — with support from the Pasadena Police Department and venue security — at its six ticketed graduation ceremonies planned at Pasadena’s Civic Auditorium, starting with Blair High School’s commencement at 11 a.m. Thursday, May 30. But, she quickly added, those measures are “not related to the idea of any protest.”

Similarly, Temecula Valley Unified is “not aware of any incidents or info related to either side of this issue on our campuses,” spokesperson James Evans said, but he noted that security measures will be in place as they routinely are at large campus events.

“As always, safety and security is our number one priority,” said Evans, noting that the district’s graduations are scheduled for June 6 and 7.

In the Long Beach Unified School District, which will hold its graduation ceremonies in June, spokesperson Elvia Cano said, “We remain confident in our safety preparedness for a successful graduation season.”

The Orange Unified School District, which will have its commencement events June 5 and 6 at Fred Kelly Stadium, is making  preparations “to ensure a safe and memorable experience for our graduates and all attendees,” spokesperson Hana Brake said.

Other Orange County districts, including Newport Mesa Unified, Garden Grove Unified, Santa Ana Unified and Irvine Unified, echoed similar sentiments for upcoming late May and June graduations. Officials said they haven’t seen protest activity on high school campuses, and schools have established safety protocols in place to ensure a smooth graduation.

“We do not have any indication that protests will occur during graduation ceremonies,” Irvine Unified spokesperson Annie Brown said. “As with any IUSD-related event or activity, our priority is the safety and well-being of our students, staff and families.”

And in the Jurupa Unified School District, where graduations for its four high schools already are underway, spokesperson Jacqueline Paul said, “Everything is going well.”

School district officials throughout the region are mindful that their graduating seniors have been exposed to widespread media coverage of pro-Palestinian campus protests at universities for more than a month. Locally, UCLA, USC, UC Irvine, Cal State L.A., Chapman University and Pomona College have been hotbeds of student activism.

And, recently, some graduates have walked out of commencement ceremonies nationally — notably, at Harvard, Yale, Tufts and George Washington University — and others at Morehouse College turned their backs on President Joe Biden during his address to highlight their support of a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and divestiture of its financial support for Israel.

Columbia University, ground zero for the pro-Palestinian campus protests, canceled its main commencement, as did USC, which pivoted to smaller ceremonies for individual schools after tensions boiled over partly because of the cancelation of a speech by Muslim valedictorian Asna Tabassum, a Chino Hills resident.

Whether graduating high school seniors in Southern California feel empowered to emulate their college counterparts, of course, is unknown, but public secondary schools operate under slightly more restrictive free expression rights.

High schoolers are limited partly because public schools mandate attendance up to a certain grade level, while going to college is voluntary, said Aaron Terr, director of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), which defends and promotes free speech on school campuses. Additionally, he said, teachers and administrators, working under strict district guidelines, stand in the place of parents to some extent while students are at school.

Still, Terr said, public schools cannot punish students for free speech just because “it expresses a view that makes students or administrators uncomfortable.”

Student speech on public secondary school campuses, the Supreme Court has ruled, is protected unless it substantially disrupts or interferes with school operations. That standard emerged from a high court decision in 1969, Tinker v. Des Moines, that affirmed public school students’ First Amendment right to wear black armbands to school to protest the Vietnam War.

“Students don’t shed their constitutional rights at the schoolhouse gate,” the justices wrote, affirming the right to the armband protest because it was quiet and passive, and did not interfere with other students’ learning environment.

“The following year, millions of college and high school students around the country participated in walkouts to protest the United States’ escalation of the Vietnam War and, soon after, the Kent State shooting,” Terr said. “Like the current campus protests, they were a mix of peaceful protest, civil disobedience, and violence or lawlessness.”

Terr also recalled the 2018 walkout of students at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, to protest gun violence in the wake of the shooting that killed 14 students and three staff members, and injured others.

That demonstration, he said, is “another historical precedent” for the current student-led, pro-Palestinian protests.

Public school districts say they are mindful of the need to balance student rights to free expression with the desire to avoid disruptions at school events, such as commencement exercises.

“We strive to allow students the opportunity to express their viewpoints in a way that is consistent with maintaining safe and welcoming environments,” said Los Angeles Unified School District spokesperson Rebekah Salgado.

LAUSD — which this year has 116,507 students in grades 9 through 12, including thousands of graduates — has specific plans in place to “ensure that graduations are safe and welcoming events,” Salgado said, noting that commencement ceremonies begin in early June.

At all events, she said in an email, the district will welcome students’ voices “amplified and supported as appropriate to the ceremony. We support each school on a case-by-case basis, factoring in several elements such as size of the graduation, venue, etc.”

In the Torrance Unified School District, activities at commencement ceremonies must abide by the district’s policy on civility, which maintains that “all speech and expression will comport with norms of civil behavior,” spokesperson Sara Myers said by email.

About 2,000 seniors will be graduating from the district’s four high schools the week of June 10, and Myers said commencement events will have “well-communicated rules and security protocols” to help manage crowds.

“We recognize the effect that global events and tragedies can have on our students, so we have continued to work as a community to support each other and promote wellness, safety and kindness during these trying times,” Myers said.

Torrance schools, she said, have hosted multicultural events that celebrate all backgrounds, customs and traditions, and they welcome that spirit of diversity at school events.

Similarly, Pasadena Unified’s Horvath said, “As far as protests, our position is always that the best place for students to talk about concerns or issues is in school with teachers and staff. We actively encourage dialogue and campus activities where all opinions are respected in both words and actions. And so we have structures for that to happen.”

One high school senior who participated in an off-campus, pro-Palestinian protest in Redlands said she hopes to see more activism from secondary school students in her community and beyond.

“I feel like our voices are always the most important because we have staff members, adults and community members looking at us, and we’re the next generation, so it means even more,” said Bayan Yousef, a member of a student-led group called Redlands for Palestine. “Sometimes, because we’re young, we get more attention on the cause when we do it, too.”

Yousef, who plans to attend community college, acknowledged that those who protested with her in early May at Sylvan Park were concerned about retaliation from school officials or college admissions offices. But compared to what’s happening in Gaza, she said, that seems unimportant.

“I was a little worried that they were going to take our graduation away for protesting, and some people were worried their university acceptance letters would be revoked,” she said, “but it doesn’t stop us, of course.”

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As tensions boil at universities across the country amid scattered police confrontations with pro-Palestinian protesters, Southern California colleges are grappling with campus safety issues as graduation ceremonies near in the coming weeks.

Locally, major disruptions have occurred at four campuses — USC, UCLA, UC Irvine and Pomona College — over student-led demands for a permanent ceasefire in the war on Gaza and an end to financial support for Israel. And although security concerns there have been the most intense, other Southern California colleges are now taking measures to ensure their commencement activities — and the weeks leading up to them — are free of similar clashes.

Turmoil has been highest at USC, which found itself in a national spotlight when it canceled the commencement speech by Muslim valedictorian Asna Tabassum of Chino Hills over security concerns triggered by her anti-Israel social media views. A backlash over that decision from students and outside groups prompted the university to cancel all graduation speakers and honorees at its main commencement ceremony.

Then, days later as tensions flared, the LAPD arrested nearly 100 pro-Palestinian protesters at USC. University officials responded by canceling its “main stage” commencement scheduled May 10 over “new safety measures.” The ceremony was expected to draw 65,000 people to Alumni Park.

The school, however, still will host “dozens” of smaller, secure commencement events and receptions from May 8 to 11 where graduates can walk across the stage to receive their diplomas. The secured events will be ticketed, with a “clear bag” policy.

‘Massive overreaction’

Some have condemned USC for what they believe was an escalating series of missteps that provoked much of the hostility on campus.

Mike Ananny, a tenured USC professor who was among 50 faculty members protesting on campus Friday, April 26, blamed the university for “a massive overreaction” to the threats that surfaced over Tabassum’s speech. USC, he said, could have resorted to other options over stripping the valedictorian of her voice.

“I find ‘safety concerns’ hard to believe because the university has hosted many other contentious speakers and has invested security resources, so they chose not to do that,” said Ananny, 48. “I think (students’) voice is very much needed at this time. The big error and failure was inviting the LAPD in riot gear with nonlethal weapons, intimidating students and faculty and, really, the LAPD turned the campus into a zone of military activity.”

Must ‘protect our community’

However, USC President Carol Folt defended the university’s actions.

In a community email sent late Friday, Folt reiterated her responsibility as president to “uphold our Trojan values so that everyone who lives, learns, and works here can have safe places to live, learn, and speak.” She also called Alumni Park, the center of protests and the traditional site of commencement, “unsafe,” claiming that buildings were vandalized, among other safety issues.

“No one wants to have people arrested on their campus. Ever,” Folt said. “But, when long-standing safety policies are flagrantly violated, buildings vandalized, DPS directives repeatedly ignored, threatening language shouted, people assaulted, and access to critical academic buildings blocked, we must act immediately to protect our community.”

USC graduate student Morgan Dommu said the university hasn’t gotten the message from protesters.

“It’s clear whose interests this school has at heart,” Dommu said. “We want to learn, just not at the expense of someone else’s life.”

No ‘right to intimidate’

Meanwhile, organizers from the student-led USC Hillel issued a statement on Instagram last week saying that while students have a right to protest, “they do not have the right to intimidate or threaten Jewish students.”

“No student should feel unwelcome in their own campus home, and our Jewish students are telling us that these actions and this hostile rhetoric induce feelings of fear, terror, and instability,” the statement read. It further called on USC partners to ensure a safe campus.

Calling the commencement cancelation a “heavy blow” and noting that students in the Class of 2024 also were deprived of their high school graduation ceremonies because of the pandemic, the group decided to organize its own Jewish Communal Commencement at the Hillel on May 10.

Other campus protests

Across town at the Westwood campus of UCLA, a “Palestine solidarity” encampment that started Thursday with students outside Royce Hall grew to include more than 1,000 activists. They demanded that the UC system sever its connection to Israeli universities, support an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and end “the occupation and genocide in Palestine.” No arrests have been made.

Mary Osako, vice chancellor for UCLA’s strategic communications, said the university is trying to uphold its “history of peaceful protest” as it works to strike a balance between safety and First Amendment rights of free speech.

“It’s also important to note that we are following University of California systemwide policy guidance, which directs us not to request law enforcement involvement preemptively, and only if absolutely necessary to protect the physical safety of our campus community,” Osako said.

UCLA, which does not have valedictorians or a “main” graduation ceremony like at USC, is planning for multiple college ceremonies on Friday, June 14. Officials did not respond to questions about security related to the events.

At UC Irvine, where a large pro-Palestinian demonstration was held on campus Thursday, this year’s graduation will be “business as usual,” spokesperson Tom Vasich said.

“A very different story” from USC, Vasich said.

While security protocols were in place at the campus-wide demonstration, Vasich said the university did not want to escalate the situation, saying they “want to protect (the protesters’) First Amendment rights.”

The school, which also does not have valedictorians, will host various commencement ceremonies from early May through mid-June.

Abri Magdaleno, a graduating English major at UCI, acknowledged students are concerned “that things are going to be impacted, such as commencement, because of how intense this is.”

“UCI has always been business as usual for pretty much everything — except for COVID, of course,” Magdaleno said. “Ultimately, I don’t think commencement will be affected. We’ll have to see what the administration does.”

Other colleges carry on

Officials at Chapman University in Orange said the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict has not affected any plans for graduation, with ceremonies scheduled from May 17 through 19. On Wednesday, the university’s Students for Justice in Palestine held a small protest on campus, but the event did not interrupt campus operations and there were no complaints from public safety personnel, said Chapman spokesperson Molly Thrasher.

Thrasher said the university is in the midst of commencement planning, and will continue to monitor political activities on campus.

At Cal State Northridge, commencement ceremonies will go on as scheduled from May 17 through May 20. The school’s website includes messaging on how it will handle security through the Department of Police Services, including metal detector screenings and a one-bag policy. Spokesperson Perrine Mann declined to comment about whether the potential for protests has affected their graduation plans.

Cal State Los Angeles also has “no plans to alter our traditional commencement” on May 20 and 21 at the Los Angeles Convention Center, said Victor M. Rojas Jr., the college’s chief of staff. Rojas added that all campus events have proper protocols to “ensure a safe and celebratory environment for all participants and attendees.”

Cal State LA students are planning a pro-Palestine protest on May Day, May 1.

“The university values freedom of expression as a cornerstone of a democratic society and believes it is essential to the educational process,” Rojas said.

Cal State Long Beach, the site of protests and vigils in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, has not had any form of physical attacks or violence, according to spokesperson Jeff Cook.

“We’ve remained concerned for any member of our community who feels impacted by perceived antisemitism or Islamophobia, and have in place procedures to both provide support and the substantive review of any concerns, if made,” Cook said in an email.

Cook also said safety during commencement — planned for May 19 through 23 at Angel Stadium — is “always central to our planning.”

At Cal Poly Pomona, spokesperson Cynthia Peters said university leadership, police and graduation organizers have been working together on plans “to ensure the safety of all commencement ceremonies,” which are planned for May 17 through 20 in the school quad.

Peters said there has been no major political disruption on campus, and that Cal Poly’s Dean of Students Office has “been in continuing dialog with the student groups most impacted by conflict in Gaza and Israel to listen and to learn how the university can best support them.”

At Cal State San Bernardino, commencement ceremonies are planned for May 17 and 18 at Toyota Arena in Ontario. Spokesperson Alan Llavore said university and city police will be present to ensure “that commencement can take place with little to no disruptions.”

UC Riverside also will conduct most of its eight graduations — scheduled from late May through mid-June — at Toyota Area. Spokesperson Sandra Martinez said university and city police will focus on “pursuing the highest level of safety for the community and guests.”

Martinez said that UCR has not had any significant protest activity on campus lately related to the Gaza conflict.

Nationwide reckoning

Some believe that unrest on college campuses is merely a reflection of a nationwide reckoning.

At a news conference in Beverly Hills late last week, Republican U.S. Senate candidate Steve Garvey called campus turmoil — from Columbia and Ohio State to the University of Texas and NYU — a “moment where terrorism is disguised as free speech.”

“I believe demonstrations that allow people to build encampments that obstruct the pathway to classes and the opportunity to learn is terrorism,” Garvey said. “I believe there is free speech but I also believe that demonstrations that disrupt the business and natural flow of colleges and universities to teach our young children about the future, and how to be future leaders, are interrupted by terrorists.”

Brian Levin, a professor emeritus at Cal State San Bernardino and founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, noted the rising number of hate crimes and rhetoric among both anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim groups in major cities since the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7.

Levin argued that college campuses are meant to foster open, nuanced communication — and students oftentimes have the loudest voice when it comes to causes. He said administrators must be sensitive about the “generational grief” that students, particularly those of color, are experiencing, and do their best to avoid a “militarized response when free speech has a technical violation of rules.”

“Taking passionate moral positions on the issues of the day is not only the right of students, but to peaceably do so is an obligation,” Levin said. “Universities have an obligation at large to engage in this conversation. … They are supposed to be that shining place, (where) free expression is the default.”

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CHICAGO (AP) — Conspiracy theorist Alex Jones arrived at a Texas courthouse for his defamation trial for calling the Sandy Hook Elementary School attack a hoax with the words “Save the 1st” scrawled on tape covering his mouth.

Although Jones portrays the lawsuit against him as an assault on the First Amendment, the parents who sued him say his statements were so malicious and obviously false that they fell well outside the bounds of speech protected by the constitutional clause.

The ongoing trial in Austin, which is where Jones’ far-right Infowars website and its parent company are based, stems from a 2018 lawsuit brought by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, whose 6-year-old son was killed in the 2012 attack along with 19 other first-graders and six educators.

Jones took the stand Tuesday and Wednesday in his own defense.

Here’s a look at how the case relates to the First Amendment:

ARE ALL DEFAMATION LAWSUITS FIRST AMENDMENT CASES?

They are. Defamation laws evolved through decades of U.S. Supreme Court rulings on what is and isn’t protected speech.

Typically, the first question jurors answer at trials is whether the speech qualifies as unprotected defamation. If it does, they address the question of damages.

Jones’ trial largely skipped the first question and went straight to the second. From the start, it focused not on whether Jones must pay damages, but how much.

WHY IS HIS TRIAL DIFFERENT?

Jones seemed to sabotage his own chance to fully argue that his speech was protected by not complying with orders to hand over critical evidence, such as emails, which the parents hoped would prove he knew all along that his statements were false.

That led exasperated Judge Maya Guerra Gamble to enter a rare default judgment, declaring the parents winners before the trial even began.

Judges in other lawsuits against Jones have issued similar rulings.

“I don’t know why they didn’t cooperate,” said Stephen D. Solomon, a founding editor of New York University’s First Amendment Watch. “It is just really peculiar. … It’s so odd to not even give yourself the chance to defend yourself.”

It might suggest Jones knew certain evidence would doom his defense.

“It is reasonable to presume that (Jones) and his team did not think they had a viable defense … or they would have complied,” said Barry Covert, a Buffalo, New York, First Amendment lawyer.

HAVE BOTH SIDES REFERRED TO THE FIRST AMENDMENT?

Yes. During opening statements last week, plaintiffs’ lawyer Mark Bankston told jurors it doesn’t protect defamatory speech.

“Speech is free,” he said, “but lies you have to pay for.”

Jones’ lawyer Andino Reynal said the case is crucial to free speech.

And Jones made similar arguments in a deposition.

“If questioning public events and free speech is banned because it might hurt somebody’s feelings, we are not in America anymore,” he said.

Jones, who had said actors staged the shooting as a pretext to strengthen gun control, later acknowledged it occurred.

WHAT ARE KEY ELEMENTS OF DEFAMATION?

Defamation must involve someone making a false statement of fact publicly — typically via the media — and purporting that it’s true. An opinion can’t be defamatory. The statement also must have done actual damage to someone’s reputation.

The parents suing Jones say his lies about their child’s death harmed their reputations and led to death threats from Jones’ followers.

IS IT EASIER FOR NON-PUBLIC FIGURES TO PROVE DEFAMATION?

Yes. They must merely show a false statement was made carelessly.

In New York Times v. Sullivan in 1964, the Supreme Court said the bar for public figures must be higher because scrutiny of them is so vital to democracy. They must prove “actual malice,” that a false statement was made “with knowledge that it was false or with reckless disregard of whether it was false or not.”

ARE THE PARENTS PUBLIC FIGURES?

Their lawyers say they clearly aren’t in the category of politicians or celebrities who stepped voluntarily into the public arena.

The high court, however, has said those who temporarily enter public debates can become temporary public figures.

Jones argues that Heslin did just that, entering the national debate over guns by advocating for tougher gun laws on TV and before Congress.

WHAT DAMAGES ARE BEING SOUGHT?

The plaintiffs are seeking $150 million for emotional distress, as well as reputational and punitive damages.

Reynal told jurors that his client has been punished enough, losing millions of dollars being booted off major social media platforms.

He asked them to award the plaintiffs $1.

CAN FIRST AMENDMENT ISSUES INFLUENCE THE TRIAL’S OUTCOME?

Indirectly, yes.

Jones can’t argue that he’s not liable for damages on the grounds that his speech was protected. The judge already ruled he is liable. But as a way to limit damages, his lawyers can argue that his speech was protected.

“Jurors could say (Jones’ defamatory statements) is actually something we don’t want to punish very hard,” said Kevin Goldberg, a First Amendment specialist at the Maryland-based Freedom Forum.

COULD JONES HAVE WON IF THE TRIAL WAS ALL ABOUT FREE SPEECH?

He could have contended that his statements were hyperbolic opinion — that wild, non-factual exaggeration is his schtick.

But it would have been tough to persuade jurors that he was merely riffing and opining.

“It was a verifiable fact the massacre occurred at Sandy Hook,” said Solomon. “That’s not opinion. It is a fact.” Even if the parents were deemed public figures, imposing the higher standard, “I think Alex Jones would still lose,” he said.

But Covert said defamation is always a challenge to prove.

“I wouldn’t discount the possibility Jones could have prevailed,” he said. “Trying to speculate what a jury would find is always a fool’s errand.”

MIGHT THE SUPREME COURT BE SYMPATHETIC TO ANY JONES APPEAL?

Conservatives and liberal justices have found that some deeply offensive speech is protected.

In 2011, the high court voted 8-to-1 to overturn a verdict against the Kansas-based Westboro Baptist Church for picketing military funerals with signs declaring that God hates the U.S. for tolerating homosexuality.

“As a Nation we have chosen … to protect even hurtful speech … to ensure that we do not stifle public debate,” the ruling said.

But it and the Jones case have key differences.

“They were both extreme, outrageous, shocking, deplorable. But the Westboro Baptist Church was also manifestly political and not defamatory … not about any one person’s reputation” Goldberg said.

He added: “I’d be shocked if (Jones’) case ever ended up in the Supreme Court.”

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