Some University of Cincinnati students are rallying behind a student who was arrested by UC Police on Tuesday during a counter-protest against non-students spouting hate speech. An expert on college campus free speech told CityBeat it’s harder than ever to walk the line between harassment and the First Amendment.
How it started
It all started on Tuesday afternoon, when a group of non-students began picketing in UC’s Bearcat Commons, a high-traffic area for students walking to and from class. The demonstrators held signs that read “Muslims are Terrorists,” “Women are Property” and “The Jews Killed Jesus,” among other signs. But the signs were only part of the message; Laila Shaikh, founder and president of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at UC, told CityBeat she watched as the men shouted racist statements at specific students passing by.
“They come to campus very, very often, but Tuesday in particular they had very loud mics,” Shaikh said. “Every time they’d see a woman wearing a hijab, or a brown student, or a student wearing a keffiyeh, which is a Palestinian scarf, he would go on the mic and say, like, excuse my language, ‘You’re a fucking terrorist.’”
Shaikh told CityBeat other UC students joined in on the jabs lodged by the man with the megaphone.
“There were even crowds of students, who were predominantly white, that were, like, cheering and clapping every time he’d make very derogatory slurs to different students walking by,” she said. “Obviously, it was making a very tense and dangerous environment on campus for many students of many different backgrounds.”
Some students quickly started counter-protesting, making their own signs and shouting at the demonstrators. At one point, a student named Collin Miller was standing close to the main demonstrator while holding a Palestinian flag when officers with UC Police (UCPD) told Miller to back away from the man. Police accused Miller of bumping into the demonstrator and, by standing in front of him, prevented him from walking away.
“Officers attempted to detain Collin Miller when he made multiple attempts to resist officers’ orders after being told to stop interfering with the leader of the demonstration on campus,” the arrest report reads.
A video showing part of the arrest quickly spread online, showing five officers physically restraining Miller as he appeared to resist. Charges describe Miller as using his elbows to “prevent officers from handcuffing him,” kicking and “flailing his body” before being placed in handcuffs.
CityBeat has requested body-worn camera footage from UCPD.
“Police officers warned the student several times not to impede the movement of the demonstrators,” said Kelly Cantwell, senior public information officer for UC’s Department of Public Safety. “The student became involved in an altercation with the demonstrators and disregarded police officers’ directions.”
Collin was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct and resisting arrest. He pleaded not guilty in Hamilton County Court.
Students in support of Miller quickly mobilized to protest his arrest outside the Hamilton County Justice Center on Tuesday night. Maxon Agosta, a spokesperson for UC Young Democratic Socialists of America, told CityBeat the organization helped ensure Miller had access to an attorney. Agosta believes Miller’s rights were violated during the arrest.
“Collin was not violent or anything towards protesters. [Police] just kept on telling him to stop. Collin never stopped,” Agosta said. “He was asking, ‘Am I arrested? Am I being detained?’ Police were not giving him an answer or letting him know what he was charged with, etc. And so he was a little bit resisting.”
Legally, officers in Ohio aren’t required to immediately disclose the probable cause of an arrest, and Miranda Rights are only required to be read before questioning, according to the Ohio Bar Association. But Agosta argues Miller’s interaction with the demonstrators never warranted an arrest in the first place, especially with such force.
“Why continue confronting a student about blocking protesters when there is no violence happening in that moment?” Agosta said. “If you want to play the whole free speech thing, like, ‘Hey, the Nazis were technically allowed to be there.’ Okay? So was Collin. These were grown adults spewing hate speech and harassing students who are just walking to class, who were just doing their own thing. But instead, police decided to respond to a student who pays to be at this campus.”
During the February Nazi demonstration in Lincoln Heights, CityBeat spoke with Ryan Thoreson, an assistant professor of constitutional law at the UC College of Law. While discussing the protester vs. counter-protester dynamic, he said counter-protesters can find themselves in a more vulnerable position than Nazi demonstrators.
“I think a lot of the [white nationalist] organizations that have engaged in offensive protests have the advantage of coming into it kind of clear-eyed about their goals and what they intend to convey,” he said. “Whereas counter protesters do not, right? They are in a deeply emotionally charged moment where they are being confronted with awful and offensive messages, without coordination among the people who are there – I think that does often set people up to respond in ways that might not be [legally] protected in the way that the original protesters are.”
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Free speech on campus
Because UC is a public campus, non-students are allowed to demonstrate their First Amendment rights in common spaces, including holding signs with hate speech. Neal Hutchens is an education professor at the University of Kentucky specializing in the intersections of higher education law, policy and free speech. Hutchens told CityBeat that UC has very narrow control beyond the First Amendment to control speech on its campus.
“Where universities can tend to regulate are what are called time, place and manner,” he said. “For instance, they can say you can’t go into certain buildings, you can’t protest at 3 a.m., we’re not going to put you in front of a residence hall.”
According to UC’s facilities guide, the university prohibits the use of some noise amplification equipment, like the bullhorn used by Tuesday’s demonstrators. Bullhorns can only be used if they are no louder than 90 decibels at 45 feet, and their use is relegated to Bearcat Commons on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 12:30-2 p.m. Miller was arrested at 3:30 p.m., according to records, and student witnesses told CityBeat the demonstrators were “using [the bullhorn] for the majority of that time.”
Hutchens said details like these can get tricky.
“This is a pretty constant source of tension for colleges and universities,” he said. “Some of these groups that specialize in this kind of hateful messaging, they actually love it when a university will try to deny them access, because they love to go to court and get the court order, because they’ll still get access, and then that helps them get all their other supporters to give money.”
UC also has an individual policy on campus for harassment, which students claimed was taking place when the demonstrators called some brown students “terrorists,” but UC’s anti-harassment policy only applies to students and staff of the university, not the general public. Even still, the bar for harassment within speech is high, according to Hutchens. You must be able to prove the harassment prevented someone from accessing an education.
“It’s a very high bar, and that’s one of the problems that institutions encounter,” Hutchens said. “Under the First Amendment, you get groups on campus that engage in mean, hateful, terrible speech, but at the end of the day, it’s protected by the First Amendment.”
But Hutchens added that a university could be under a legal responsibility to protect students from harassment if the speech qualifies as harassment under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
“It’s very much something that the Biden administration, before they left office, focused on that you could have a violation of federal law if you’ve got language and harassment directed at individuals on the basis of race or ethnicity or religion,” he said. “The current administration, they’re focused on antisemitism only.”
UC is one of 60 universities in the United States that have been sent a letter from the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) warning the university is at risk of “potential enforcement actions if they do not fulfill their obligations under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to protect Jewish students on campus.” But this warning was not to the semi-regular demonstrators with signs like “The Jews Killed Jesus,” it was in response to pro-Palestinian demonstrators.
“The University of Cincinnati administration has shown SJP and student organizations and organizers repeatedly that they get to step in and impede on our free speech when they disagree with it,” Shaikh said. “But someone directly yelling and encouraging other students to say comments and derogatory slurs to Black students, to Muslim students, Arab students, women in general – that’s half of UC’s entire student population – they are actively choosing not to step in.”
Miller will appear in court for a pre-trial hearing on April 7.
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This article appears in Apr 2-8, 2025.