In the campus battles between students and security forces that are emblematic of the current political scene in Egypt, academics are taking divergent stances. These positions are arguably affecting the course of the conflict.

At Cairo University, the faculty’s position reflects a situation that is remarkably different from other universities. University President Gaber Nassar strongly condemned police brutality following the death of Mohamed Reda, an engineering sophomore at the university.

Reda was shot dead, allegedly by police, on November 28 during clashes between security and students belonging to the Muslim Brotherhood, who have turned university campuses into a new battlefield against the military-backed interim government.

Despite the steadfast denial of the Interior Ministry, an investigation committee formed by Nassar confirmed that the student was killed by police.

At the Faculty of Engineering, the dean, Sherif Mourad, and his deputies presented their resignations to protest what they described as a failure to protect the students from police violations.

Faculty members also held protests in solidarity with the student movement against police brutality, demanding retribution for Reda’s death. The faculty members, mostly belonging to the March 9 Movement for the Independence of Universities, said any intervention from the police is to the detriment of academic freedoms.

The March 9 Movement was founded 10 years ago to challenge the Hosni Mubarak regime’s restrictions on campus independence and academic freedoms. In 2010, the movement won a landmark court verdict ending police presence in university campuses. Although the Ministry of Interior appealed the verdict, the Supreme Administrative Court supported the ruling. It was only implemented after the January 25, 2011 revolution.

But the scene is different on other campuses.

Al-Azhar University President Osama al-Abd has called on the police to intervene several times on campus to disperse protests by students belonging to the Brotherhood, despite the death of student Abdel Ghani Hamouda there in November. Other university administrations, particularly that in Mansoura, always allow police to intervene.

The situation in campuses was exacerbated this fall by a Supreme Council of Universities decision to grant campus administrative security some arrest powers. Dozens of students have been arrested as protests have increased in the past few weeks.

Hany al-Hosseiny, math professor at Cairo University and a member of the March 9 Movement, told Mada Masr that the faculty is in ongoing discussions with students to transfer expertise on how to battle police brutality and defend campus freedoms, as they see themselves as implicated as the students. But he pointed out that this sense of responsibility is not shared by all faculty members.

“Most of the faculty do not want to intervene in the matter, imagining that another external power should intervene to end the crisis,” he says. “They are awaiting the decisions of the university’s president, while others believe that police intervention is the best solution.”

For Professor of Political Science at Cairo University Ahmed Abdel Rabou, the support of the faculty to the cause of the students is important, because it makes the cause more valuable and “it gives a sense that the cause is bigger than just an anger by the young students.”

Indeed, age is a determining factor in faculty support, as argues Abdel Rahman Nasser, the head of the student union at Cairo University’s Faculty of Engineering.

“Most of the professors who supported our strike are the young ones, mostly teaching assistants and those in their 40s. Those are the ones with more thirst for change,” Nasser explains.

Students of the Faculty of Engineering stopped classes to protest Reda’s death, forcing the university administration to officially suspend classes.

“We have other professors in their 70s and 80s. For them, we are crazy and angry kids who should be disciplined,” Nasser adds. “It is the same conflict in the wider political scene. Older generations cannot understand younger generations or their aspirations.”

But aside from Abdel Rabou’s seemingly altruistic position, for others faculty support is a cornerstone in the protection of academic freedoms without which they would not be able to function.

A group of academics from the private American University in Cairo issued a statement in December condemning security practices in campuses, tying the notion of security presence on campus to the wider question of academic liberties that transcend government-owned universities.

“The country’s security and stability is tied to the independence of its universities. There is no guarantee for security and stability without the presence of an open space where ideas can be presented freely and where we can be allowed to live together with our differences,” read the statement.

But in public universities, this support may come at the cost of clashing with university administrations.

“Sometimes we will need to attack university administrations because many of them openly support police intervention, while in other cases we coordinate with the administrations to make sure other solutions are implemented,” Hosseiny explains.

And with the Brotherhood using university campuses to fight their battle against the political exclusion that started with the ouster of President Mohamed Morsi on July 3, faculty support of campus freedoms was challenged.

“Students of the Muslim Brotherhood hijack every movement by the student body for political gains, and sometimes deliberately escalate with the police, which makes the intervention of the police inevitable,” says Madiha Doss, professor in the Faculty of Arts and March 9 Movement member. “And we have all seen what happens when the police intervenes.”

For her, rather than trying to garner partisan political gains, the real challenge ahead is to direct student anger toward pressuring university administrations not to resort to security solutions.

But this is not an easy challenge given the general political environment around the current university battles.

“I do not think that we have magical solutions to the conflict amid the escalating situation,” says Hosseiny. “We will not be able to turn the universities into a cradle of peacefulness in a nationally escalating situation.”