BOSTON — Boston University President Melissa Gilliam announced a temporary pause on the removal of flags and signs from campus windows on Sunday, after weeks of faculty protests, a petition with more than 2,000 signatures, and a legal threat from one of the country's leading free speech organizations.

The reversal comes after BU staff pulled Pride flags from at least three campus locations over spring break — the Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies offices at 704 Commonwealth Avenue, the BU Children's Center, and Professor Nathan Phillips' fourth-floor office window in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Phillips said his flag was removed twice in three days — once on March 12 and again on March 15. He received a note each time informing him it had been taken down.

The rule BU cited is its Events and Demonstrations Policy, which restricts unattended placards, banners or signs on outward-facing windows and doors. It has been on the books since 1982.

For 44 years, nobody enforced it. Then this year, the university started pulling Pride flags.

BU spokesperson Colin Riley said the policy is "content-neutral" and "not an endorsement nor rejection of any point of view." Faculty weren't buying it.

Joseph Harris, an associate professor who co-leads BU's chapter of the American Association of University Professors, called the removals "disappointing" and said they amounted to suppressing free speech on campus.

Professors pointed to what they said was selective enforcement. A "divest" sign had hung in a campus window since 2012 without a peep from administration. A Taylor Swift balloon stayed up for five months. Nobody batted an eye.

The Pride flags lasted three days.

On Thursday, hundreds of students and staff gathered outside Gilliam's office at the John and Kathryn Silber Administrative Center. The group, organized under the name Terrier Courage, delivered a letter demanding a revision to the signage policy along with more than 2,000 signatures.

"Our own institution, like so many others, has imposed an expanding stranglehold on what we can say," one speaker told the crowd.

The university's vice president and chief of staff accepted the petition and said administrators were open to future discussions.

Things escalated when the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression — FIRE, the same group that has taken on universities from coast to coast over speech issues — sent a letter calling on BU to reverse the policy. "Removing all outward-facing flags simply because they're visible is overreach," FIRE wrote.

Then Yosef Abramowitz got involved. Abramowitz is a BU alumnus and one of four students who successfully sued the university in the 1980s over the removal of anti-apartheid signs. He warned the administration that it had "stepped on the public and legal landmine of limiting free speech at a private university."

When someone who already beat you in court once tells you you're making the same mistake again, most people listen.

In her announcement Sunday, Gilliam said enforcement of the sign policy would be temporarily suspended. The university would "continue having conversations with students, faculty, and staff" and develop "new opportunities to discuss the complex issues raised by the policy," she said.

The policy itself remains on the books. The flags are back up — for now.