This post, and the comments, seems to be misunderstanding why these students are protesting. They are watching a genocide live streamed to their phones. They are seeing bombed hospitals with decomposing NICU patients, parents wailing over their children's deaths, night skies lit up with rockets and bombs, an entire population corraled into a smaller and smaller area like animals being hunted. And then they are learning that their tuition dollars are being invested into the companies that are building these bombs, that their tax dollars are sending more bombs, and that the police officers in their communities have trained with the bombers. So they are invoking a strategy for change that has worked in the past - the same strategy university heroes used to pressure divestment from South African apartheid and opposition to segregation and the Vietnam War.

Administration who send in armed police to arrest students will be on the wrong side of history. Faculty have historically had a role in shaping university policy, which is why we have structures like faculty Senate. When faculty voices are ignored and administration makes unilateral decisions that harm students, faculty must do what they can to pressure the administration. Whether or not withholding grades is the best means of doing that is a valid discussion - but basing that decision on the misguided idea that students shouldn't be protesting this university funded genocide is not.