Democratic politics involves far more than voting in elections. Yet, while we spend endless hours preoccupied with largely fabricated problems with elections, few pay any attention to the law of protest and assembly or its inadequacies. When we do, the question is essentially, “when would it be legal to disband the inconvenience and disruption that is protest?” This past week, I had the pleasure of engaging in an informal discussion with John Inazu (Wash U.), Ashutosh Bhagwat (UC Davis) and Tim Zick (William and Mary) about the legal and constitutional dimensions of recent campus protests and the problem with this narrow conception of the question. Beyond those issues that John identifies in his linked blog, our conversation discussed the problems with policing protests and the role of universities and colleges in our democracy.