first published April 6, 2026 on substack https://alicerothchild.substack.com/p/dangerous-times-for-students-and
Essay for a special issue on Palestine by the Brill journal, Protest, Volume 5, Issue 2 (September 2025)
In early 2025, I was invited to write a short essay for the “Protest Special Issue: Palestine Campus Protests” for a medical journal, “Brill” from Purdue University Northwest. I submitted the essay on time, it was reviewed, edited, rewritten, addended when the issue was delayed, and ultimately accepted. I have been unable to find evidence that it was ever published and the editors have repeatedly not answered my queries. I can only assume that it was censured because it dealt with the issue of suppression of Palestine solidarity on campuses. I am publishing it in full on Substack as it deserves to be read. Please read and share as it is still relevant to today:
Student protests, such as opposition to the Vietnam War and apartheid South Africa, have long been a hallmark of the political landscape in the U.S. These earlier efforts were met with severe pushback from elected leaders, university administrators, police and national guard, and student expulsions. [personal experience]
Today, the responses to student protests to the Israeli assault and genocide in Gaza are much more brutal and dangerous to institutions of learning and to society as a whole. The academy’s reactions are deeply threatening to free speech protections, academic integrity, the rights of foreign-born students, and the basic structure of and assumptions about universities as academic institutions whose job it is to protect intellectuals, their research activities and publications, and particularly the voices of dissent within faculty and student bodies.
ANALYSIS
These are certainly dangerous, uncharted times for students, faculty, colleges, and universities. The charge of antisemitism has been weaponized and the meaning of antisemitism, a bigotry grounded in white, racist, fascistic movements that tend to hate Jews, people of color, women, LGBTQI folk, immigrants, and Muslims, has been distorted beyond recognition. Ironically, the students and faculty most at risk in today’s educational institutions are Palestinians, Arabs, people of color, transgendered, nonbinary folks, and the people who defend them.
Supporters of Palestine and critics of Israel are under attack for calling attention to Israeli policies in the occupied territories, for the well-documented genocide in Gaza, the assaults on the West Bank, and the racist, rightward direction of Israeli leadership basking in full U.S. support. The political ideology of Zionism, which is hotly debated in many sectors of the Jewish community, is being conflated with Jewish identity and falsely held as a protected status inherent to one’s identity as a Jew. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of Jews, particularly younger Jews, are finding Zionism, which is grounded in harm to Palestinians, incompatible with Jewish ethics and religious beliefs.
The false charge of antisemitism is being used by Trump and his stalwarts to take down the academy, one executive order and one suspended grant at a time. If the government’s goal was Jewish safety, there would have been no amnesty for the armed rightwing fanatics that attempted to stop Biden’s election. There would be serious work, including gun control, to reign in the white nationalists, the armed, bigoted skin-heads, and the fanatical Christian Zionists, that dominate Trump’s circle of adoring fans. Elon Musks’ straight armed salute and warm feelings towards Nazis would have appalled every elected official in the Republican Party.
Instead, we have the drumbeat of rightwing, racist authoritarianism: crush the centers of learning, stifle scholars, research, free speech, intimidate, defund, and deport the “foreign aliens” in our midst. The overt racism towards people of color and Palestinians in particular, the Islamophobia, the violations of the First Amendment and a host of other U.S. laws are front and center in this assault on decency, human rights, and the foundations of democracy.
The challenge for universities is deeply compounded by outside forces, litigious, well- connected and well-funded, with powerful social media presences swirling in a toxic brew of fear, racism, militarism, easy surveillance technology, and the rise of authoritarianism in our own government.
This is clearly a time for strategic, principled resistance, for finding and building like-minded communities, organizing at every level of institutions and government, using social media carefully, taking well thought-out risks when needed, working with good lawyers, supporting brave students, and standing against the fascism and totalitarianism that is creeping across the land.
REVIEW OF LOCAL AND NATIONAL MEDIA REPORTS
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY
The epicenter for student protests and a poster child for the wrath of Trump and his minions is Columbia University, which has a long and storied history of student activism and resistance, as well as tensions between students and faculty. In the 1960s, Edward Said, a literary scholar and author of “Orientalism,” was the voice of Palestine solidarity at Columbia. He was followed by the preeminent scholar, Rashid Khalidi, who researched the history of the Middle East with a focus on the development of modern nationalism, particularly in Palestine, and the impacts of colonialism in the region.
In the early 2000s, allegations were made against “pro-Palestinian” professors intimidating “pro-Israel” students. After months of debate, a faculty panel reported no evidence of antisemitism, but the battle lines were drawn. Bolstered by the subsequent 2016 IHRA definition of antisemitism, criticism of Israel or Israeli policies came to be defined as equivalent to antisemitism. Student protests against the ideology of Zionism, the Israeli occupation, siege, and Israeli military assaults against Palestinians culminating in the Gaza genocide, were increasingly described as inherently antisemitic by a growing chorus of local and national voices.
PROTESTS AFTER THE OCTOBER 2023 ATTACKS
Following the Hamas attack and the massive Israeli assault in the fall of 2023, many campuses, including Columbia University, were rocked with street demonstrations, protests, teach-ins, encampments, and calls to divest from companies with ties to Israel. In November 2023, Columbia responded to these protests by suspending Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace, for the rest of the fall semester.
At Columbia in January 2024, two counter-protesters who had served in the IDF sprayed students with a chemical that sent 15 of them to the hospital. The injured students sued the university, the counter protesters were suspended after pressure from students, but the university failed to provide support for the victims of the attack. The counter protesters then sued, claiming bias and a “harmless expression of free speech.” The university settled, awarded them $395,000 and lifted their suspensions, a warning of things to come.
PROTESTS ESCALATE
After two weeks of encampments, marches and rallies at Columbia demanding Palestinian liberation and divestment from academic connections with Israel, on April 30, 2024 protesters occupied Hamilton Hall, harking back to an occupation of the building in 1968 to oppose the war in Vietnam War. Breaking windows, locking doors, and using furniture and vending machines, inside demonstrators barricaded themselves and outside demonstrators formed human chains. They demanded that Columbia divest from companies and institutions that profit from the Israeli war machine and occupation of Palestine. They renamed the building “Hind’s Hall” in memory of the IDF killing in Gaza of six-year-old Hind Rajab as she begged for help. Negotiations continued for several days; some faculty came to physically protect the students.
One of the student protest negotiators, Mahmoud Khalil stated:
The actions at Columbia
has sparked [a] nationwide international movement, anti-war movement across U.S. colleges and universities, national universities. So we already achieved a lot by just starting this encampment and we will remain here until all U.S. universities, especially Columbia, will divest…
Some students and faculty claimed they felt fearful and that some in the encampment expressed support for Hamas. One video surfaced where a student stated, “Zionists don’t deserve to live.” He was suspended and subsequently apologized.
Claiming that Columbia had failed to protect students against antisemitism and harassment, other students filed a federal class action lawsuit against the university. 1,600 alumni, donors, and others signed a letter demanding President Minouche Shafik take down the encampments and punish the protesters. There were also continued public and not-so-public efforts including “Multiple lawsuit, [sic] congressional hearings, meetings with influential (now former) donors, meetings and calls with people in DC, dozens and dozens of newspaper articles, an entire database of information that has been used by Congress and lawyers.”
April 29 2024, after months of protests against the Israeli assault against Gaza, the university summoned the NYPD to arrest students; at least 85 were suspended and some expelled. For the first time since 1968, administrators asked the police to end a student protest, the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, with attacks and mass arrests. Students defiantly set up a new encampment the following day.
STUDENT ACTIVISM CLASHES WITH THE UNIVERSITY
Students working with the Palestine Working Group who had organized a Resistance 101 event to discuss the Israeli occupation, were told to hold this off campus, on zoom, or to change the date. The event was held off campus, but U.S. lawmakers pressured the university, and private investigators were sent to the students’ residencies and emailed them that they had to cooperate with their interrogation within 48 hours. The students then received an interim suspension for violating university policy and endangering the “well-being and safety of the community.” No evidence was offered. Students responded, saying they needed to speak with their lawyers.
The students objected to the university’s handling of the disciplinary process through the Center for Student Success and Intervention, where they had no right to an attorney or witnesses, rather than through the University Judicial Board which was a democratically elected body within the university senate that had been set up in 1968 to handle student protests. The students were ordered to vacate their housing within 24 hours (as opposed to the customary 30), and lost access to their health care and financial aid.
Without waiting for their lawyer’s allegations, Columbia used the suspensions to allege further disciplinary actions and ultimately banned the students from campus, preventing them from attending classes, graduating, maintaining their scholarships and campus research jobs.
In January 2025, in memory of Hind Rajab, protestors poured cement into Columbia’s International Affairs Building sewage system and sprayed the business school with red paint.
February 3, 2025, the Columbia students who had been previously banned, filed a 65 page lawsuit against the university for its attacks on pro-Palestine activism and suspensions for said behavior, in violation of the institution’s own policies. They cited dozens of examples where the school targeted activists and ignored established protocols. The students said they were being singled out for the peaceful expression of their opinions, police were encouraged to respond violently, NYC landlord tenant and eviction laws were violated, and the university ignored the assaults and abuse from faculty and students designed to silence the plaintiffs.
Columbia Jews for a Ceasefire, along with other university and student-led groups in the U.S., condemned the crackdown and called on the university to protect its students against Trump’s executive orders targeting student visa holders who are active in Palestine solidarity. They called this a form of legal repression based on confusion between feeling uncomfortable versus being actually unsafe when challenged, rooted in false definitions of antisemitism. They noted that megadonors like Columbia trustees, Jeannie and Jonanthan Levine, funded biased polling, relied on faulty information from the Anti-Defamation League and Hillel International, used the contested IHRA definition of antisemitism which conflates criticism of Israeli policies with antisemitism, and that this resulted in forced deportations.
BACKLASH
These events occurred amidst an extraordinary national backlash. In April 2024, Minouche Shafik, President of Columbia University, was grilled at a McCartheyesque congressional hearing, similar to the December 2023 interrogations of the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania that resulted in their resignations due to accusations of alleged inadequate responses to rampant campus antisemitism. Despite Shafik’s efforts at repression of pro-Palestine efforts, it was not enough, and she resigned months later.
February 6, 2025, Trump announced an antisemitism investigation at five U.S. universities, including Columbia. The Justice Department opened a task force to “root out anti-Semitic harassment in [K-12] schools and on college campuses.” The president also signed an executive order to deport non-citizen students who had taken part in pro-Palestine activism. This was publicly opposed by many Jewish and Israeli faculty at Columbia and Barnard. Jewish law faculty who did not share similar opinions on the deportations, nonetheless felt compelled to issue a statement on their “shared values.”
They noted:
One of those values is that the University respects and protects its students, and therefore resolves allegations of misconduct through disciplinary processes that are fair and legitimate. …This model of self-governance is jeopardized when outside agitators single out specific students, or groups of students, for public humiliation or targeted punishment. In light of centuries of pogroms against the Jewish people, Jewish members of the University ought to be particularly wary of such efforts—and particularly steadfast in refusing to cooperate with them.
There were also increasing concerns about the weaponization of deportations as well as aggressive online attacks on Columbia students. External organizations were publishing dossiers on students and demanding Immigration and Customs Enforcement deport the accused under an executive order issued by President Donald Trump. The right wing ultra-Zionist groups Betar U.S. and Eretz Israel submitted hundreds of names to the Trump administration. Betar U.S. is a branch of the right-wing paramilitary organization founded in 1923 by Ze’ev Jabotinsky who was inspired by fascism and Mussolini. First Amendment lawyers agreed that it would be unconstitutional to deport foreign students or cancel visas on the basis of their views on Israel or Palestine.
In this heightened environment, at the end of February, demonstrators entered Barnard’s Milbank Hall and staged a several hours sit-in, protesting the expulsion of two students who had disrupted a class on Israel, demanding amnesty for students who had been suspended, and a public meeting with the dean
March 13, 2025, Jameel Jaffer, director of the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia, described on social media the government’s letter as essentially saying, “We’ll destroy Columbia unless you destroy it first.” One of the most troubling governmental demands was:
Begin the process of placing the Middle East, South Asian, and African studies department under academic receivership for a minimum of five years. The university must provide a full plan, with date certain deliverables, by the March 20, 2025 deadline.
Trump also announced he was cancelling $400 milllion in grants and contracts and demanded a definition of antisemitism, banned wearing of masks that “conceal identity or intimidate.” He threatened 60 more universities if they failed investigations into their handling of antisemitism.
RESIGNATIONS, SUSPENSIONS, AND EXPULSIONS
In January 2025, after twenty-five years at Columbia Law School, Professor Katherine Franke, resigned because of “institutional harassment and scrutiny she endured for pointing out—correctly—that Israeli students who complete their military service and come to Columbia have ‘been known to harass Palestinians and other students’ on campus.”
In March 2025, Columbia announced the suspensions and expulsions of students who were involved in the earlier occupation of the campus building and noted, “The punishments levied include ‘multiyear suspensions, temporary degree revocations and expulsions.’” Even 19 Israeli students, alumni, and postdocs published an open letter deriding the deportations, claiming the executive order weaponized the accusation of antisemitism rather than addressing it. They noted that they also frequently criticize the actions of the Israeli government and that “’weaponizing accusations of antisemitism to silence criticism of Israel not only undermines free speech but also fails to protect Jewish people.”
In fact, we believe that protesting unjust policies is one of the most fundamental and important tools at our disposal to shape our political reality. As Israeli citizens with a range of political opinions and affiliations, we have participated in protests against Israeli policies, including the military occupation of Palestinian territories and the judicial overhaul.
…we value free speech because critical opinions are necessary to oppose injustice and resist oppressive regimes. First Amendment values like the freedom of expression, assembly, and petition must thus extend to all students without discrimination or selective enforcement. Trump’s directive ignores the real and growing threats posed by neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups in the United States, which continue to incite violence and hatred towards Jewish people.
The Israelis felt morally obligated to challenge the interruption of a student’s education and the deportation to countries or territories where their activism could be dangerous and to regions that might be warzones. They critiqued the consequences of the executive order that
entrenches an environment of fear and distrust in our campus communities. By encouraging institutions to ‘monitor and report activities by alien students and staff,’ the executive order promotes a culture of surveillance where citizens are incentivized to inform U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement through tip lines about the behavior of others.
The repressive atmosphere at Columbia culminated in the March 8, 2025 arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, a lawful US permanent resident and prominent Palestine activist, who was taken from his apartment by unidentified officers from the Department of Homeland Security and imprisoned in an ICE facility in Louisiana, denied access to legal support, and despite a judge’s order to delay deportation, threatened with deportation. He had previously endured a campaign of hateful harassment and doxing and had appealed unsuccessfully to the university for protection. He was not accused of a crime. A petition for his release has been signed by 3.2 million people. A second Palestinian involved in protests at Columbia, Leqaa Kordia, was then arrested by US immigration agents for overstaying her student visa after it was terminated January 2022 and for an arrest 3/13/25 related to her campus activism. Another Columbia student, Ranjani Srinivasan was reported entering Canada after her student visa was revoked.
A First Amendment lawyer at Columbia recently advised students who are not U.S. citizens to avoid topics related to Palestine, protests, the Middle East, and be very cautious with social media. The Dean of the School of Journalism stated, “‘Nobody can protect you…These are dangerous times.’”
OUTSIDE FORCES
Beside the obvious messages coming from Washington DC, there are many powerful and sinister groups working behind the scenes to criminalize support for Palestine in a manner evocative of the Red Scare of the early twentieth century. At Columbia there is an over 1,000 member WhatsApp group that includes parents, students, and professors dedicated to identifying pro-Palestine activists and criticizers of Israel, claiming that viewpoint is equivalent to supporting Hamas, (ie., protestors as terrorists), and working with the NY police and FBI. Using their phone numbers, the identities of the WhatsApp group have been confirmed by The Intercept. The Columbia Alumni for Israel group focuses on ““Identifying the Columbia student-Hamas-sympathizers,’” and getting them arrested and deported. An alumnus volunteered to access the tech needed to identify faces, another member posted to the ICE tipline. Screenshots singled out Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian students, as well as Jewish student leaders. “Arresting them for hate crimes is not enough. We have to get rid of them.” It is unclear how Columbia has responded to these actions, although it appears that there have been meetings and communications with school administrators and these opposition leaders.
One issue that concerns this group is that many of the student protestors are U.S. citizens, but they note that if the funding for these opposition groups can be traced to “terror organizations,” they are not deportable but they can be arrested. A group called CU-Monitor is an online platform that maintains an archive for the group, Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus at Columbia U. They track anti-Zionist activities on campus and identify protesters who support divestment, working closely with the Columbia Jewish Alumni Association, developing lists for those who will carry out Trump’s orders to combat alleged antisemitism.
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee has called out these activities, “‘an across-the-board attempt to silence and take away the First Amendment right of people simply because they don’t agree with them. It’s a very dangerous precedent.’” Palestine Legal has noted that the “‘Palestine exception to the First Amendment’” is not new and as of May 2024 had filed three complaints with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights alleging a pattern of anti-Palestinian discrimination at Columbia University in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. While the targeting of pro-Palestine students has skyrocketed since the Trump administration, the groundwork developed over years as universities increasingly targeted students with more aggressive disciplinary tactics, surveillance, and the use of police on campuses.
Some students targeted by the WhatsApp group are also named by the Canary Mission, a right wing group that publishes names of people critical of Israel and attempts to destroy their reputations and employability. The group “Documenting Jew Hatred on Campus at Columbia U,” and Betar U.S., the aggressive rightwing Zionist group, created social media posts attacking students they wanted deported and sent lists to the White House, ICE, and other federal agencies.
There were also efforts to approach megadonors to the university to pressure the school. For instance, in 2023, alumni reached out to Robert Kraft, the billionaire football team owner who has donated at least $8.5 million to Columbia. Kraft then announced he would withhold financial support to the university as he disapproved of the handling of the pro-Palestine protestors on campus. He was obviously sympathetic as he had established The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism and he posts on the X account, Stand Up to Jewish Hate.
In November 2023, an antisemitism task force was founded at Columbia by mostly outspoken supporters of Israel. They pressured the university to state that anti-Zionism was, by definition a form of antisemitism, reflecting the widely adopted IHRA definition. They also demanded that all new students and faculty be required to attend an orientation on antisemitism.
OTHER UNIVERSITIES
Mondoweiss reported that Gaza solidarity encampments spread to 174 universities during the spring of 2024 and students have become more defiant and ready to defend their rights. Jewish Voice for Peace wrote that four students at the University of Rochester have been arrested and charged with felonies, eight arrested at NYU and dozens barred from campus. At University of California Berkeley and University of North Carolina Charlotte, police took down Gaza solidarity sukkot. Betar U.S. threated pro-Palestine protesters at UCLA. “We demand police remove these thugs now and if not we will be forced to organize groups of Jews to do so.”
At Princeton, 13 students are going to trial in April 2025 on charges of “‘defiant’ trespass” for occupying Clio Hall after a campus solidarity encampment demanding financial divestment from companies profiting from Israeli military campaigns, occupation, and apartheid as well as research on the Department of Defense’s “weapons of war.” Police shut down the encampment, arrested students, but the encampment continued. When the university refused to meet with students, 13 activists occupied Clio Hall. The students claim they have been banned from campus, and experienced intimidation and surveillance. More than 1,000 people signed a petition asking that charges be dropped.
At New York University, Mother’s Against College Antisemitism boasts more than 62,000 Facebook members. The group was founded after the October 7 attacks to promote deportation of all foreign students who “support Hamas,” urge members to file complaints against students and faculty, and administrators to behave aggressively towards student protesters. NYU recently decided that the political ideology of Zionism was now a protected class under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, thus officially “restricting political agency and speech.”
The NYU chapter of the American Association of University Professors has called for an independent review to determine if communications between this group and the university violated university policy or Title VI federal law that prohibits organizations receiving federal funding from discrimination based on race, color, or national origin.
Nine universities have suspended their Students for Justice in Palestine chapters and Governor DeSantis is attempting to fully ban the organization.
TRUMP AND CONGRESS
Trump is clearly supportive of these efforts as he has promised to “‘quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses’” and he equates opposition to Israeli policies as support for Hamas and thus support for terrorism. He frequently refers to students as pro-Hamas, pro-Jihadists, anti-Jewish leftists, and anti-Americans.
His January 2025 Executive Order to Combat Anti-Semitism included:
- Expanding on his Executive Order 13899, President Trump’s new Order takes forceful and unprecedented steps to marshal all Federal resources to combat the explosion of anti-Semitism on our campuses and in our streets since October 7, 2023.
- Every Federal executive department and agency leader will review and report to the White House within sixty days on all criminal and civil authorities and actions available for fighting anti-Semitism.
- Immediate action will be taken by the Department of Justice to protect law and order, quell pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation, and investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.
- The Order demands the removal of resident aliens who violate our laws.
The House of Representatives has approved HR 9495 that would “give Congress the authority to revoke the tax-exempt status of any nonprofit organization it accuses of having terrorist affinities, without access to the evidence or the right to due process.” While this is obviously aimed at Palestine solidarity organizations, if adopted by the Senate it could easily be used to crush a large number of organizations that Trumps has defined as enemies or un-American.
Another executive order encourages administrators, faculty, and students to monitor each other, and report students who protest in support of Palestine. A “New York–based national defense and cyber intelligence company, Stellar Technologies, [has] pledged to use its AI technology to help identify masked protesters—an effort it calls ‘Operation Wrath of Zion’.”
These political realities are grounded in the work of Project Esther, a document written by the creators of Project 2025. The paper bills itself as a directive to counter antisemitism, silence critics of Israel, and deport voices of dissent from college campuses, especially through active surveillance of educational institutions starting in kindergarten.
Other bills to watch in congress include the Antisemitism Awareness Act which would make antisemitism (as defined by IHRA) a federal offense and the Columbia Act which would place federal monitors at universities to search for antisemites and hold them accountable. The Israel Anti-Boycott Act, now called the IGO Anti-Boycott Act forbids complying with EU boycotts or boycotting of Israeli settlement projects, subject to fines and imprisonment. HR 9495 would permit the Treasury Secretary to remove tax exempt status from nonprofits, understood to be aimed at nonprofits working for justice in Palestine. There are other controversial bills aimed at the Palestinian Authority, the International Criminal Court, DEI, immigrants, etc. The list is long. Many universities are unwilling to risk the consequences of defying the government, particularly with the very real threat of losing significant amounts of funding.
At the same time, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs and the National Council of Jewish Women and 85 Jewish organizations have noted disagreements with the executive order on antisemitism and Trump’s plans for mass deportation. Columbia Jews for Ceasefire has condemned the deportation order and weaponization of the IHRA definition of antisemitism.
SOCIAL MEDIA
Many students rely on social media as their primary source of information, but social media companies have also contributed to the atmosphere of fear and silencing on Palestine in general and Gaza in particular. Meta, a company that owns and operates, among other products, Facebook, Instagram, Threads, and WhatsApp, is the largest social media company in the world. Aljazeera documented on “The Take” how Facebook and Instagram mishandled and censored pro-Palestine content and were systematically biased towards Israel. Palestine related posts were routinely deleted, even expressions of sympathy for family members killed in Gaza or discussions of watermelon cupcakes at a community fair in the Muslim employee research group, were axed. Staff experienced retaliation, deactivation of accounts, financial losses, suspensions, and firings.
Interestingly, many of the senior leadership have deep connections to Israel or Israeli interests. For instance, Guy Rosen is the chief information security officer who helped build Facebook’s content moderation tools. Like dozens in Meta, he was formerly in the elite Israeli unit 8200, the country’s cyber intelligence group known for surveilling Palestinians living under occupation. Human Rights Watch and other digital rights groups have found FB users experienced shadow bans and outright censorship, a policy heightened after October 2023. There is also the Israeli Cyber Unit 2015 that notifies companies of social media content they deem promotes violence and or terrorism. Thus, social media companies are now moderating their content at the request of a foreign country. These policies clearly affect the public understanding and perceptions of the war on Gaza.
INCREASED HARASSMENT
In the first five months after October 7, Palestine Legal reported over 1,500 complaints of harassment, abuse, doxing, and loss of employment—a seven-fold increase over the whole of 2020. The Council on American-Islamic Relations reported in the last 3 months of 2023, a 178% increase compared to the same time 2022. There have been growing levels of direct violence against people perceived to be Palestinian including the shooting of three Palestinian American students in Burlington, Vermont who were wearing keffiyehs and speaking Arabic, and the stabbing death of a six year-year-old by his landlord.
Elise Stefanick led the charge in congressional hearings, interrogating university presidents “for failing to do enough to end what she called the threat of genocide of Jews by students who were protesting an actual genocide of Palestinians.”
Universities have hired private security to control student protests and free speech on campus, and three tenured faculty have recently been fired or suspended for criticizing Israel, Maura Finkelstein, Steven Thrasher, and Jodi Dean.
The attack on universities in the U.S. under the guise of a false definition of antisemitism that is highly contested and a claim to be working for the protection of Jewish students, is dangerous not only for students and educators but also for Jews and the country at large. It is dangerous because this is one of the first major wedges hammered into our long-established and valuable institutions that augurs rising levels of repression, autocracy, and fascism. It is dangerous because there are actual crises in the world that beg to be called out, examined, and rectified if there is any possibility for a more just and sustainable planet. If knowledge creation is lost, we are all doomed to amnesia and group-think. We are now at extreme risk by an out-of-control executive and a phalanx of skilled, well-funded henchmen ready to move forward with an immensely anti-democratic, racist agenda. This is the time to mobilize.
Addendum May 18, 2025
Since the completion of this essay in March 2025, the weaponization of antisemitism, student protests against the genocide in Gaza, and the active suppression of student and faculty voices has only accelerated in an environment of intensive condemnation from the Trump regime. FBI raids, suits and countersuits, and attacks by groups like the Anti-Defamation League and Canary Mission are ongoing, aiming to destroy reputations and livelihoods.
A number of students, including Alireza Doroudi, Efe Ercelik, Mahmoud Khalil, Mohsen Mahdawi, and Rumeysa Ozturk, as well as sympathetic faculty, have been interrogated, detained, sometimes in a brutal detention facility in Louisiana, and threatened with deportation. The courts have pushed back and several students have been released. Some campuses, such as UCLA, have turned “into more of a fortress than a place of higher learning.”
A renewed Israeli military assault and the total blockade of all humanitarian aid and commercial supplies to Gaza declared on March 2, 2025 continues with repeated reports of widespread hunger, malnutrition, and famine, and skyrocketing death rates. Students have responded with more protests, building occupations, hunger strikes, and have been met with aggressive police raids, Trump administration attacks, and threats to revoke the 501C3 status of their institutions. Professors are proposing “mutual defense” pacts urging a unified response from institutions of higher learning to the onslaught of attacks, from admissions, course material, to funding.
The assault on institutions of learning goes on at a devastating pace, threatening free speech and the ability to debate and create knowledge, think critically, advocate for just causes, all essential to a modern democracy. The misleading call to protect “endangered” Jewish students by suppressing progressive activists and the conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism, has merged with other culture war mantras such as opposition to DEI and a belief in the threat of replacement of white (Christian) people by people of color. Organized resistance is building on the local and national level and much of it is happening on US campuses with brave and principled students in the lead.