Universities are reopening for the 2024-25 academic year with a host of protest guardrails designed to head off the anti-Israel mayhem that enveloped campuses last year, and it won’t be long before they find out whether their policies pass the test.

Bans on outdoor camping have been enacted at multiple schools nationwide, including the University of Virginia, Vanderbilt University, the University of Pennsylvania and the University of California system, a response to the pro-Gaza encampments that peppered college campuses in the spring.

Schools, including UVA, have barred face-concealing masks. Harvard University now prohibits protests in classrooms, libraries and dining halls, while Indiana University forbids light projections on buildings and protests within 25 feet of building entrances.

Such time, place and manner restrictions on “expressive activities” are expected to be put to the test as students return to campus, bringing with them an expected resurgence of the pro-Palestinian activism that roiled U.S. universities in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and others.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer, president of the Orthodox Union, said universities deserve credit for strengthening their policies, but whether they succeed in avoiding last year’s chaos depends on a number of factors, including their adaptability.

“The universities did their homework over the summer. That’s the good news. The bad news is the protest movement did a lot of homework over the summer as well,” Rabbi Hauer told The Washington Times. “It’s kind of difficult when you’re fighting yesterday’s war. They used tactics last year that the universities are now addressing, and now they’re going to have a new bag of tricks.”

Anti-Israel student protesters wasted no time picking up where they left off with demonstrations timed to the start of classes at several campuses, including Columbia University, George Washington University, Cornell University, and the University of California Berkeley.

Nowhere were tensions higher than at Columbia, where two people were arrested Tuesday at a noisy protest outside the campus gates. Inside the grounds, the “Alma Mater” statue in front of Memorial Library was vandalized with red paint.

Rabbi Hauer warned that the protesters “are not letting up,” a message echoed this week by Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine.

“Instead of listening to the student body, Columbia University is doubling down,” said the group, which was banned Tuesday on Instagram, on X. “We will not stop & we will not rest until @Columbia divests from apartheid and genocide. This is just the beginning.”

Columbia responded by implementing its newly developed campus-status system. The school declared Wednesday an “orange” day, the next-to-the-highest level, at the main Morningside campus, meaning that only those with campus ID cards and preregistered guests were allowed to enter.

Columbia Interim President Katrina Armstrong, who took over after the resignation of Minouche Shafik, vowed to “make the changes necessary” after the antisemitism task force’s report released last month found “serious and pervasive” problems, but doubts about the university’s readiness remain.

“We are hoping for the best, but we are all wagering how long before we go into total lockdown again,” Columbia history professor Rebecca Korbin, who served on the task force, told the AP. “There haven’t been any monumental changes, so I don’t know why the experience in the fall would look much different than what it did in the spring.”

Those watching to see how universities deal with anti-Israel activism include Rep. Virginia Foxx, chairwoman of the House Education and the Workforce Committee, who has already launched antisemitism investigations into a half-dozen colleges.

“Expectations for this semester aren’t high,” she told The Washington Times. “Most universities have failed to enforce their rules and give those responsible for last spring’s chaos any reason to change their behavior.”

She noted that a protest mob recently vandalized Cornell’s Day Hall, breaking a window and spray-painting in red messages such as “Blood is on your hands” and “Israel bombs, Cornell pays.”

“On the first day of classes, protestors vandalized Cornell University with antisemitic graffiti and police were forced to face off with aggressive, pro-Hamas mobs at Columbia University,” said Ms. Foxx. “Jewish students deserve a safe environment, and that’s why the Committee is going to remain laser-focused on this. We will hold those who are complicit accountable.”

One question hanging over the academic year is whether universities will penalize students who violate the rules. Last semester’s protests resulted in hundreds of arrests and suspensions, but the number of students actually expelled was minuscule.

At Columbia, which arguably saw the most virulent of the anti-Israel protests, 22 students were arrested in the April takeover of Hamilton Hall, but not a single student was expelled, according to a House Education and the Workforce Committee report.

It was a different story at Vanderbilt, where three students were expelled, one was suspended, and 22 received disciplinary probation for their involvement in a March sit-in at Kirkland Hall, according to the Vanderbilt Hustler, the student newspaper.

Adam Kissel, visiting fellow at the Heritage Foundation’s Center for Education Policy, applauded the example of the University of Florida, headed by former Sen. Ben Sasse, which issued a list of prohibited protest activities and gave three-year suspensions to students who broke the rules.

“They actually got people suspended for three years because students did things that were on the list,” Mr. Kissel said. “They had clear warning. That’s the gold standard. You have clear standards and you enforce them. You don’t make it up during the crisis.”

On the other end, he said, was Columbia, “which couldn’t figure out how to punish people who took over a building and roughed up a security officer.”

No matter how consistently their rules are enforced, schools could be dealt a wild card this year in terms of the conflict in the Middle East, where changes on the ground could inflame protesters.

“It’s very hard to predict the amount of antagonism toward Israel or Jewish students that we’re going to see because it’s unclear what Iran will do, unclear what Israel will do,” said Mr. Kissel, a former Trump Department of Education official. “Will there be a regional war which America might have to be part of? Will other countries feel like they have to get in?”

He added: “We have just humongous question marks. And who the next president is, if it’s the spring term, that might also matter.”

The encampment bans may slow down activists, but Rabbi Hauer urged university officials to be nimble in their reaction to protest tactics.

“The question is if they’ll have the dexterity to figure out how to respond to the next move and the next move,” he said. “Will they just have learned tricks to fight to the last battle, or will they have learned that we have to be on our toes? That’s what’s going to separate them.”

• Valerie Richardson can be reached at vrichardson@washingtontimes.com.