On Tuesday morning, Trump blasted out the following warning to colleges and universities across the country in a bald-faced attempt to intimidate and repress the student movement for Palestine.
All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University that allows illegal protests. Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came. American students will be permanently expelled or, depending on the crime, arrested. NO MASKS! Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Then on Friday, Trump canceled $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia, claiming that the university has turned a blind eye to antisemitism. Trump’s public threats to “imprison” or deport anyone participating in “illegal protests” and cut federal funding for universities are not mere bluster; they are part of a significant escalation of the state’s attempts to silence and crush the movement for Palestine– and escalate attacks on the university as a whole. Trump’s choice of words — not naming the Palestine movement but instead saying “illegal protest” highlights Trump’s actual intentions. He is attempting to silence and preemptively suppress dissent of all kinds.
Trump is using the Palestine movement as the point of the spear to repress the right to protest itself — opening the way for even more attacks on labor, trans rights, immigrants rights, and the university itself. He is also using attacks on the Palestine movement as a way to defund, cut, and gut the university. These attacks are easier for Trump because he has the complete agreement of the Democratic Party and university administrators with suppressing the movement for Palestine. As Palestine Legal has denounced, there has long been a “Palestine exception” to free speech. But Trump wants to make the exception into the rule, curtailing free speech on issues of oppression and exploitation.
This is an attack on us all: on the movement for Palestine, on the labor movement, on Black studies, and on immigrant and trans rights. This is an attack on anyone who defends the right to protest, who wants diverse academic subjects at the university, and who values universities as spaces of thought and inquiry.
As Trump escalates imperialist policies abroad and domestically, attacks on trans people, immigrants, federal workers, and more, it’s clear that these struggles are interconnected. Defeating these attacks requires unity; and unions, student groups and social movements must wake up and fight back, breaking isolation and siloes to build a united and mass movement that strikes with one fist against these interconnected attacks.
A New Wave of Attacks
These threats come as Trump’s Department of Justice begins a tour of major universities to target the pro-Palestine movement that has shaken the country and the world for the past year and a half. The Justice Department will visit Columbia, New York University (NYU), Harvard, and other institutions to investigate alleged antisemitism in order to pressure the university administration to discipline students and workers even more.
On Friday, the White House canceled $400 million in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University. Further, Fox News has reported that the State Department revoked the visa of a student who participated in the movement for Palestine, and Saturday night, Columbia graduate student activist Mahmoud Khalil was arrested by the Department of Homeland Security, despite having a green card.
- On his first day in office, Trump promised to deport international students and workers involved in the movement for Palestine.
- Eight CUNY community members are still facing felony charges for the Gaza solidarity encampment at City College. Seven activists are facing felony charges for participating in the encampment at the University of Michigan. Thirteen Princeton activists are facing petty trespassing charges for holding a sit-in on their campus.
- In the last two weeks, three Barnard College students have been expelled, and over the past year, dozens have been suspended.
- As students’ protested these expulsions, Barnard called the NYPD onto campus to arrest students.
- Meanwhile, Democratic Governor Kathy Hochul pulled job listings for faculty who specialize in and would teach about Palestine at Hunter College, calling for an investigation into the job postings as an instance of antisemitism.
These escalations are already taking place, backed by the Democratic Party and university administrators. The Biden administration and the Democrats opened the way for this by criminalizing the protests during the Biden administration and even before.
But the attacks are not exclusive to the movement for Palestine. Trump has a project to attack universities as a whole, especially the most poor and oppressed sectors of students, faculty, and staff. ICE is now allowed on college campuses, and trans people are being excluded from sports. The teaching of queer studies, as well as Black and Chicano studies, is being questioned and curtailed. Further, there are significant cuts to research funding. As NPR reported, some National Institute of Health grants to universities could be cut by more than 75 percent in some cases. Additionally, Trump is threatening to eliminate the Department of Education and overturn the minimal student debt relief passed under Biden.
These attacks are being cheered on by right wing agitators and Zionists. Just last year, the Heritage Foundation released Project Esther, a blueprint to attack the movement for Palestine that calls for a crackdown on teaching and learning about Palestine and calls for the President to persecute any groups or organizations that criticize Israel. Further, parent and alumni groups at NYU and Columbia are organizing to support the repression and even deportation of students.
Meanwhile, Trump is attacking anything considered “DEI” — specifically, Trump has threatened to pull all federal funding from any higher education institution doing race-related “DEI” content such as scholarships and special programs intended for students of color. Trump is threatening to get rid of the Department of Education and to essentially gut universities as we know them, including eroding poor and oppressed people’s access to learn their own history and to even have access to higher education.
In short, Trump wants to erode the most progressive elements of the neoliberal university, alongside defunding the entire institution. The neoliberal university, based on debt, precarious work, and undemocratic administrative bloat, has, throughout the neoliberal era, acted as a strong mechanism to contain class struggle. But as the neoliberal system entered a crisis, so did the neoliberal university. The university that fulfills the interests of the bipartisan regime is coming into conflict with the needs and aspirations of students, workers, and oppressed people. And Trump is responding to this crisis by taking a reactionary turn and attacking the whole university.
This is part of a broader right-wing advance, which includes firing federal workers, escalating attacks on immigrants’ rights and trans rights, and a brutal expansionist imperialist policy.
Trump is Afraid of the University Movement
To understand these attacks, we must understand the depth of the movement over the past year and a half; Trump is terrified of the potential of university students and workers. In that sense, this is a preemptive attack against the movement’s revival and strengthening in the face of Trump’s international and domestic attacks.
Last year, the university movement for Palestine rocked the entire country — and indeed, the world. Students across the United States, including at some of the most prestigious institutions, took up the struggle of the Palestinian people, reshaping the terrain of class struggle both in the United States and globally. There hasn’t been such a large wave of university occupations since the 70s. And this movement was more than just a protest –- it expresses a deep change in consciousness, a questioning of U.S. imperialism and our university’s complicity with U.S. empire. The student movement, along with the broader movement against the genocide in Gaza, shifted the national consciousness about Palestine. Today only 46 percent of Americans support Israel, the lowest rating in the past 25 years.
This university movement built off of the experience and radicalism of Black Lives Matter, the biggest social movement in U.S. history. It is also connected to an uptick in support for unions and strikes at the national level, as well as increased strikes of university workers, who demand more.
Unlike Black Lives Matter, which had its base in the streets, the movement for Palestine found its nexus in the university –- a place where students and workers go every day, where you will see fellow protesters for days, weeks, and years to come. The movement for Palestine not only questioned Zionism, but also critiqued universities investments and business-like functioning. We must understand Trump’s current attacks as a furious reaction to the disruptive and radical potential of a new wave of this movement –- which this time unites all our struggles.
This movement for Palestine opened a huge political crisis for Biden, playing a role in Kamala Harris’s defeat. Trump cynically attempted to position himself as better for Gaza than the Democrats, when both candidates and parties represent brutality, violence and ethnic cleansing.
After the tenuous ceasefire, there is a new escalation of violence against Palestine, alongside a developing plan for the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians from the region, benefiting both U.S. and Israeli capital. This includes Israel cutting off aid to Gaza, deploying tanks in the West Bank, and Trump’s threat to turn Gaza into the “Riviera of the Middle East.” Since taking office, Trump has authorized $12 billion in aid to Israel.
This is part Trump’s flavor of U.S. imperialism that has become more unilateral, violent, and explicit in its thirst for resources — and now, explicitly, for land acquisition. Trump’s imperialist international agenda goes hand in hand with attacks on the domestic front, where his program of tax cuts for the rich, tariffs, and mass firings of federal workers only mean worsening conditions for the working class and poor people.
By attacking the movement for Palestine, he is attacking the right to protest all his policies –- he makes it more difficult for workers to strike, for us to march for trans and immigrant rights. By attacking the movement for Palestine, he opens the way for gutting the university, making it even more an exclusive privilege for the wealthy and cutting the study of oppressed and marginalized people.
Part of establishing a right-wing hegemony on campus involves crushing sectors that resist — particularly the university movement for Palestine, which questions these imperialist politics and the attacks on the university itself. The movement for Palestine could serve as the spark for an anti-Trump movement, and Trump, his far-right allies, and the Democrats are determined to stop it. But in order to effectively face these attacks, the movement seeks to build the broadest possible unity against repression and unite with other sectors attacked by Trump.
The Democrats Open the Door for the Right
Trump’s far-right agenda has been facilitated by the Democrats, who have paved the way for these attacks. In other words, Trump is able to be more repressive because of the foundations laid by the Democratic Party. It was, of course, Joe Biden and the Democrats — with the help of Republicans — who provided unconditional support of Israel, providing billions of dollars in arms in a horrific live-streamed genocide.
Moreover, the Democrats have set the stage for a more repressive domestic environment. Over the past year and a half, they have passed bills and resolutions that equate anti-Zionism with antisemitism, sent police to attack students and professors, and charged protesters with felonies. It is a Democratic district attorney who refuses to drop the charges against the CUNY 8, who are facing felony charges for speaking out in support of Palestine. It is Eric Adams and the Democrats who have sent the NYPD and specifically the brutally violent Strategic Response Group (SRG) to repress protesters in New York City, including bringing the SRG on Barnard’s campus.
This is perhaps most evident at CUNY, where it is none other than Kathy Hochul, the Democratic governor, who is investigating the university for antisemitism and who took the gross step of censoring a job posting on Palestine in a blatant disregard of faculty governance and academic freedom.
The fact that the Democrats open the door to the right is evident when it comes to the movement for Palestine, but also around all other issues. Harris ran a right-wing campaign against immigrants rights, supporting the claim that immigrants are a problem so that now, Trump can go on an increased offensive against immigrants’ rights. Over and over, Democrats attack the rights of working class and oppressed people, which only opens the door to the likes of Trump.
We must hold onto the lesson we learned at the height of the movement for Palestine: the Democratic Party is a genocidal, imperialist party. The attacks we are experiencing now are in large part, because of their attacks. They are our enemies, and the sooner we learn it, the stronger we are.
University Administrators Are Complicit
University administrators have also opened the door for these attacks — not only on the Palestine movement, but also on due process and the basic right to protest. Universities have long fostered a “Palestine exception” to free speech, with a pattern of silencing speech about Palestine, including firing and sanctioning professors, banning and surveilling Students for Justice in Palestine, and more.
In the past year and a half, university administrators have only strengthened their repression against discussions of Palestine, freedom of speech and protest on campus. This includes expanding mechanisms of surveillance, including hiring private surveillance companies to investigate students. Several universities, including Harvard, have ruled that protests are not allowed in classrooms, libraries, dining halls, or “places that would interfere with the normal activities of the university.”
New York University has introduced a new student code of conduct that includes “Zionist” as a category protected by the school’s non-discrimination policies. In other words, a reactionary ideology that supports ethnic cleansing by the Israeli state is now treated as a protected category, alongside groups like queer, Black, Jewish, and Latinx students. Many universities that had encampments remained fortified and heavily policed.
A series of suspensions have paved the way for expulsions. Last April, Barnard suspended 46 students and evicted at least 55 others who participated in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. These students were forced into an “Alternative Resolution” process that stripped them of their rights to due process and their ability to formally challenge these punitive measures.
While Trump recently stated that he wants to ban masks, similar actions are already taking place on university campuses across the country at the hands of university administrators.
Yet, these same administrators are being attacked by the Trump administration and from the Zionist Democratic Party, as we saw with the forced resignation of Harvard’s President. In the face of these attacks, administrators promise to be more repressive, although this may spell their own demise via cuts and austerity. That is because these administrators represent the capitalist status quo in higher education, where universities run like businesses with donations from Zionists, with stock investments in the arms industry. These administrators seek a passive student body that will continue to pay exorbitant tuition fees and go into debt for a diploma. Their primary role is to suppress any potential for radical student movements like those seen in the 60s and 70s that question that class character of the university. They won’t step out of that role –- even when their own jobs depend on it.
Fight Repression, Fight for All of Our Rights
This attack comes precisely because of the strength and the depth of the movement over the last year and a half. Although the movement for Palestine is at an ebb, there is more and more support for the Palestinian cause among the broader U.S. population –- and especially among students. Just one expression of this support is the divestment resolutions that have been passed by students around the country. We must tap into this passive support in order to fight the current attacks and continue to fight for Palestine and for divestment.
In this context,it is clear that Trump, the Democrats, and university administrators are united in order to crush the movement for Palestine at universities. But the movement for Palestine cannot face these attacks alone and cannot understand these attacks as solely on Palestine. Trump’s attacks on the student movement for Palestine have the goal of opening the path to attack the university, the right to protest and all oppressed and exploited people.
We must confront these attacks. We must say loudly and clearly –- this is about Palestine, this is about the continued struggle to divest our institutions from Israel. And it’s also about university funding, free speech, and our right to protest. Trump is attacking the labor movement, trans rights, and immigrant students. Trump is attacking researchers and cutting funding. They are coming for all of us, and we must all rise up. We must unleash the full strength of the labor movement and the student movement to fight these attacks: we must respond with the full strength of students, workers and the community mobilized and organized from below.
We need our unions to stand up and begin organizing the struggle from below — against the expulsions, against repression, against censorship, against the defunding of the university, and for cops and ICE off campus. Attacks on students’ right to protest are an attack on the labor movement, and we must treat it as such. Many universities are unionized through the UAW. Now in the face of these attacks, we need rank and file UAW members, like those in Local 4811 who went on strike for Palestine at the University of California, to force the UAW leadership to take action to fight Trump’s repression of the student movement.
So far, unions have said and done little, allowing a feeling of fear and passivity to creep in among the rank and file. Many, including PSC-CUNY (AFT Local 2334),, organize their forces to fight against resolutions to divest our unions from Israel, but do little to fight for Palestine or against this repressive onslaught. This is unacceptable. The labor movement is strong and powerful and must fight this with all our strength. For the UAW, instead of supporting Trump and his reactionary tariffs, we need the UAW to stand up and fight back.
Student governments must step away from their administrative, apolitical roles within the university and become a fighting force for the student movement — standing against the attacks that are coming and the ones that have already arrived.
The movement for Palestine must fight the repression –- understanding that fighting repression is central to the struggle to free Palestine and that the fate of the movement is linked to the struggle against all of Trump’s attacks. In order to defeat this repression, we need mass indignation –- a democratic campaign that brings in the broadest possible umbrella to push back against this right wing attack. Enough with separate protests for different sectors of the movement for Palestine —PYM, SJP, PSL, JVP, and Within Our Lifetime must unite and march together against these attacks. We also need to call on the movements for trans rights, immigrant rights, and labor to fight alongside us for the rights of us all.
While we must make these demands from the leaders of the movement, that does not mean we must wait around for them to organize. These struggles should not be organized from above, but from below — students, faculty, and staff together — organizing by department or campus to discuss what is happening and create democratic spaces to strategize our fightback. We must call for movement assemblies, bringing together the university community with the broader community and social movements, which, far from hiding political differences among groups, will make them clear while standing together against this attack from the right. We must organize across campuses, as the attacks are across universities –- and organize spaces of democratic organization that erode the lines between campus and community, organizing a broad struggle in defense of the university. Organizing from below will also bring more people into the struggle — and we need everyone in this fight.
At the same time, we are in a political moment where most university administrators are acquiescing to every one of Trump’s attacks –- even as Trump is attacking the university itself. The $400 million in cuts from Columbia affect every single student, faculty, and staff member. This shows that the university administrators do not represent the interests of students of workers, research, or the university, not to mention free speech. In this moment, we must be clear that we must overcome these university administrators –- that the people who run the university are allowing it to be gutted. We must take this opportunity to explain that our struggle is not for the neoliberal status quo, but for a different kind of university –- one that is free and public, run by students, faculty, staff, and the community— the people who are currently defending the university. We need institutions that are open to all and are meant for teaching, learning, and inquiry, not as a machine for debt, low wage labor, and investments in genocide. As we fight the attacks against Trump, we must collectively put forward a new vision for the university we need, one that our movement, organized democratically from the bottom can put forward.
We need to make it clear to Trump, as well as the Democrats and university administrators who support attacks on the movement for Palestine, that we will protest, stand up, and even shut it down — bringing back the political strike — in order to defend against expulsions, incarcerations, and deportations of those in the movement for Palestine, against the expulsions, against repression, against censorship, against the defunding of the university and for cops and ICE off campus. We will continue to struggle against Trump’s brutal imperialist policies in Palestine and to divest our institutions from genocide. United, we can defeat these attacks and lay the foundations to fight for more.