Middle East

Truthout -  This semester at U.S. universities, campuses are being transformed from centers of struggle against the genocide in Gaza to epicenters of repression against student activism. University administrations, desperate to prevent a return of the encampments that captured national and global attention in the spring, have issued new regulations curtailing student organizing, canceled lectures and the classes of professors who stood by their students in the encampment movement, and in some cases, suspended Students for Justice in Palestine campus chapters for their activism. While student protest and activism was met with harsh repression in the spring semester — at Columbia, the university’s harsh response and ushering in of the NYPD brought about increased protest, which then generalized the encampment movement across the country — the repression has only intensified this fall semester. This time, universities aim to quash campus activism before it can take center stage as it did in the spring.

Universities have adopted draconian policies targeting individual professors, student organizers and student organizations. Northwestern University, for example, suspended journalism professor Steven Thrasher over the summer for standing alongside his students and protecting them from police assault at the encampment in the spring. In May, Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania fired Jewish anti-Zionist professor Maura Finkelstein for speaking in support of Palestine in the classroom and online; she continues to fight her dismissal. More recently, Cornell University suspended graduate student Momodou Taal after a September 18 Palestine solidarity action; he is now facing deportation, a terrifying precedent for international students involved in campus activism.

But the draconian policies are not limited to individual universities and cases. They are part of sweeping policy changes to institutionalize repression across universities, demanded by Democratic and Republican politicians alike and heeded by university administrators.