On Thursday, February 27, the NYPD stormed a pro-Palestine protest at the City College of New York (CCNY), arresting four people in another blatant assault on the right to protest. The cops locked the gates of the college as a way to block protesters from community allies. Under normal circumstances, outdoor areas are open to the public. This intrusion of the NYPD onto campus to repress campus protest once again shows that our university administrations are not out for our best interests, but the interests of the rich and powerful. They will put students at risk in order to do so. 

The police presence was felt by all entering CCNY’s campus; entrances were blocked off, gates padlocked shut, and guards posted at checkpoints where students were not only asked to show university IDs but, in some cases, their class schedules as well. The police were assembled in response to students gathering to protest a scheduled visit by New York Governor Kathy Hochul who forced CUNY to remove a job posting related to Palestinian studies at Hunter College earlier this week. In an important show of solidarity, the students were joined from outside the gates by students and activists from Columbia University and Barnard College. These students and community members had picketed earlier in the day outside Barnard’s gates against the recent political expulsions of two pro-Palestine students. The arrests and level of police presence should outrage everyone. As one CCNY student told us:

It was all so ridiculous. It was a small protest, completely peaceful, standing in a street that the cops themselves had blocked off access to before the protest even began. They just arrested them because they were chanting about Palestine. There’s no other reason, no other excuse. They just want to fucking scare us. The cops have no business on our campus and shame on our president for, once again, calling the cops to repress our students, faculty, and community members. The cops were more disruptive of our classes than the protest was. Their barricades made it impossible to get to class on time, many of my classmates were late today because of that.

This is a blatant McCarthyist attack on the student movement that has begun to question the bipartisan nature of U.S. imperialism and Zionism, especially as Biden and Harris gave unshakeable support to Israel’s genocide. Over the last year and a half, Gaza has been leveled and an estimated 200,000 people have been murdered in a U.S.-funded genocide in Palestine. Trump is threatening to escalate the United States’ genocidal policy, calling to make Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Meanwhile, he threatens to deport all international students in the United States who have protested for Palestine. Meanwhile, Kathy Hocchul is censoring the academic study of Palestine and Eric Adams sends the police to repress student protests. There are eight CUNY community members who, to this day, are facing felony charges for participating in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment last April. The brutality in Palestine is bipartisan, as is the repression against the movement for Palestine. 

These arrests and the crushing of the protest is meant to break student unity — the unity of the struggle in solidarity with Palestine, against repression, and against McCarthyist censorship at universities across the country and especially in New York City — a so-called liberal bastion controlled by Democrats — which has been an epicenter of the student movement. 

The state and university administrators are working together to criminalize dissent against the backdrop of an unprecedented attack against university students and workers. These attacks also come as the Trump administration and mainstream media are trying to pressure university administrators to expel and repress even more students. In fact, the same day as the repression at CCNY, Mike Pompeo — Trump’s former Secretary of State and who is slated to teach at Columbia University — went on Fox News to say that the students at the Barnard sit-ins earlier in the week should be “banished and thrown out from the school.” Similarly, columnist Bret Stephens from the New York Times has also called for the immediate expulsion of these students. At CUNY, these attacks are building on the Lippman Report commissioned by Kathy Hochul which equates anti-Zionism with antisemitism and claims that CUNY has an antisemitism problem. 

It’s clear that Democratic Party politicians like Eric Adams and Kathy Hochul are paving the way for the advance of the Far Right and their allies against the university. Despite their bluster, here is an area where the Democrats and far-right Republicans agree: when it comes to Palestine, the right to protest must be diminished, the right to organize restricted, and the right to free speech limited. 

The Far Right wishes to go further, launching attacks intended to destroy and then remake the university in the Far Right’s image. They see universities as the enemy because they have been sites of political expression. The current crackdown against students at universities is a test run for the broader suppression of dissent, repression of political speech, and the silencing of discussions of Black struggle, immigrants rights, trans rights, and other so called “woke” topics that Trump wants to ban. If these attacks go unchecked today, the state and university officials will only feel emboldened to escalate their attacks — against other students, workers, activists, immigrants, trans folks, and anyone who dares to speak out and protest.
The current escalation of political repression at universities is meant to not only silence, but completely bury the radical spirit of student protests that have shaken the whole country and the world in solidarity with Palestine. Particularly, the police sought to divert any cross-campus solidarity and unity. As Trump and the Far Right escalate attacks on oppressed people and workers, they also want to silence any kind of protest. But as we chant at protests: “The more you try to silence us, the louder we will be.”

Students across universities in New York City, workers at universities — faculty and staff — and activists across the city need to unite and fight back. We must demand an end to repression and political expulsions. Students who have already been sanctioned should be immediately reinstated. All charges should be dropped against the students arrested tonight, as well as against the CUNY 8 facing felony charges. We must unite to demand that the  NYPD stay off of university campuses, which should be places of discussion, learning, and activism, not of violence, racism, and brutality. We demand the right to learn and study the history of Palestine, as well as the history of all oppressed, exploited, and marginalized people. We demand that our universities divest from Israel and stand with Palestine. We need everyone to join in this fight: all who want to stand against censorship and repression, who stand with Palestine and who want to fight against the attacks on immigrants, trans people, and workers. We demand action from our unions against these attacks and must organize across our campuses. Fighting the repression of dissent requires the unity of students, workers, and communities.