Mondays are usually devoted to climate-related content, but today I’m pivoting to the oppression happening on university campuses here in the U.S. (which, as you know, is frequently touted as the world’s greatest democracy and defender of free speech).
I’ve written before about the oppressive tactics employed against college students around the country who don’t want their tuition and taxes used to fund a genocide of Palestinian people (here, here, and here), and today am linking to a sobering article from Truthout about the ramped-up efforts to crush dissent.
“…Israel is committing scholasticide in Gaza and throughout Palestine. In Gaza alone, more than 625,000 students have no access to education because 85 percent of schools have been directly hit or damaged, all universities have been destroyed and entire pathways of knowledge and wisdom have been annihilated. Given this context, it is particularly egregious that U.S. universities resume classes this fall more determined than ever to silence and repress speech and action in support of Palestine.”
Rather than spending the summer months meeting their students’ demands for transparency and divestment from weapons manufacturers, the universities spent that time encoding repressive policies to crush dissent.
Alongside outright bans on encampments at virtually every university come a coordinated set of campus policies, including mask bans, mandatory ID policies, bans on chalking, new protest guidelines and even curricula and syllabi review, all of which promise to severely undermine academic freedom and free speech. On some campuses, as in the California State University system, these restrictions are enacted through “Time, Place, and Manner” policies, which — while they claim to be “content-neutral” — are clearly a direct response to the student movements that transformed campuses last spring, as they explicitly prohibit “vandalism, property damage, trespass, [and] occupation of a building or facility.”
The California State University system restrictions feel personal to me as I was a student at several of those campuses. Shame on them.
Jarmakani continues:
Even more chilling is the fact that these policies seem to presumptively assume that “unlawful discrimination, harassment, and defamation” are the goal of the prohibited activities, specifying that they are “not protected by the First Amendment,” and setting them up for punitive action, even though the right to protest is a central pillar of the First Amendment. Of course, no university should tolerate discrimination, harassment and defamation on its campus, but amid a new “red scare” driven by contrived charges of antisemitism, in which outside Israel advocacy groups weaponize Title VI to argue that criticism of Israel constitutes discrimination and harassment, we must be clear that the actual purpose of such policies is to penalize pro-Palestine speech.
A writer I admire recently wrote on a private forum that they worry that within a year or two, open discussion of Israel will be censored under law. That doesn’t feel like an exaggeration.
I highly recommend reading the entire article which is filled with links to examples of the many egregious practices aimed at crushing students’ voices. I’ll close with the final two paragraphs (emphasis mine):
Student encampments were examples of principled protest, nonviolent civil disobedience, collective education and political resistance; they intentionally cultivated spaces of popular education, mutual aid and collective care. Through this ethic, their demands for divestment not only invigorate the movement for Palestinian liberation — they make urgent connections among U.S. imperialism through the war on terror, Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza, and deadly policing practices in the U.S., all through the lens of weapons manufacturers. We must not let them be silenced.
In the face of ongoing genocide in Gaza and devastating attacks on Lebanon, I take solace in the communal forms of knowledge and practice that activate and sustain us. The actual S.O.S. urgently before us does not call for the securitized response of militarization and repression; it demands our urgent commitment to life and collective liberation.
Thank you for reading this far. I’d love to hear your thoughts in the comments. Until next time . . . solidarity! ✊🏾
Tracy Abell 