I can understand banning laptops during exams, but why would you ban them in class? I was at a big university with pretty much all my classes having more than 100 students, so most of my lectures consisted of the prof presenting slides with little to no interaction from students. The only advantage of having a laptop was that you could annotate the slides easier

Agreed. If I'm attending higher education as an adult, I expect to be treated as one. Laptops may be harmful to learning for some students, but may be extremely helpful for others. The university is not the one who gets to decide that - the adult paying absurd sums of money to attend the class is.

Large lectures (100+ students) should have little to no interactions between students and lecturers. It has been this way since the 11th century. You are not supposed to be learning the material for the first time during a lecture. Using the syllabus you should do the pre-work and the lecture concretizes the information. Office hours, tutoring, self study, homework, and online/AI resources can be used as tools to deepen your understanding of the material outside of the lecture hall.