Some observers said that for all their efficiency and outspokenness, this new generation of student protesters lacked the edge of their predecessors. Dr. Hass said she found the activists to be “really impressive people,” but at the same time, a bit risk-averse.

“A lot of the models of the past are not the ones students necessarily feel comfortable with,” she said. “I don’t see, for example, today’s students going to jail. Sometimes it’s the opposite. They want to be confident there won’t be any negative consequences for their actions.”

The protests have split campuses, to some degree, along generational lines.

Janet Halley, a legal and feminist scholar at Harvard, said she supported the right of students to demand that Ronald Sullivan Jr., a fellow law professor, be removed from his dormitory position for representing Mr. Weinstein. But she thought it “cowardly” of the university not to be more forceful in defending the legal principle at stake.

“We’re living in a hyper-polarized time,” Dr. Halley said. “If we can all be fired because of people who can be offended, there’s going to be a gigantic housecleaning around here.”

At Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania last month, two fraternity houses stood eerily empty as people gathered from across the country for graduation festivities. Students had recently published graphic accounts of sexual abuse by fraternity brothers, prompting an uproar on campus. On April 27, as protesters occupied one of the houses, Phi Psi, Swarthmore’s president suspended fraternity activities. Fraternity members said days later that they were disgusted too, and that they were closing voluntarily.

Even some of the protesters were surprised at how quickly the houses shut down. “People at Swarthmore have been trying to get rid of fraternities since the 1980s, and even before then,” said Daria Mateescu, a rising senior.