Higher Education

Faculty Rally Nationwide For Free Speech And Free Tuition

April 24, 2025 Barbara Madeloni, Labor Notes. Resist! Anti-fascism, Campus Movement, Free Speech, Higher Education, Palestine, Tuition

Faculty-student pairs set up “anti-fascist office hours” at three locations on the Northwestern University campus. Faculty, students, and staff created anti-fascist art at the University of Hawaii. American Association of University Professors members combined membership drives with tabling about the critical issues facing higher education on 30 campuses. And in New York City, 4,000 people rallied to defend higher education from Trump’s attacks, chanting, “ICE took our students, we want them back!” These were a few of the 170 events on campuses across the country April 17 in the second annual Coalition for Action in Higher Education day of action, organized under the banner of “Free Higher Education.”

Yale Professors Flee To Toronto School Linked To Massive Human Rights Abuses

April 10, 2025 Owen Schalk, Canadian Dimension. Educate! Canada, Higher Education, Human Rights, Toronto

In late March, three professors at Yale University—scholars Marci Shore and “fascism experts” Jason Stanley and Timothy Snyder—announced that they were leaving the United States to teach at the University of Toronto. They made the decision in the face of Donald Trump’s intensifying attacks on higher education, a deeply alarming trend that has seen agents from US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) abduct student activists off the streets with the aim of forcibly deporting them. Stanley and Snyder cite the complicity of the Columbia University administration in Trump’s assault on student activism as a major reason for moving to Canada.

FSU Students Crash President McCullough’s Ice Cream Social

April 6, 2025 Fight Back! News. Resist! Diversity, Florida, Free Speech, Higher Education

Tallahassee, FL – On Thursday, April 3, Students for a Democratic Society crashed the FSU president’s ice cream social, demanding answers about the university's subservience to President Trump’s and Governor Desantis’ attacks on DEI initiatives and free speech. Four members of SDS approached President Richard McCullough with a banner reading “Fight Trump and the GOP agenda! Stand with Palestine! Stop attacks on immigrants! Defend women’s and LGBTQ+ rights!” After waiting in line for ice cream, SDS member JJ Glueck was refused service by McCullough. The president hid behind student volunteers upon seeing SDS.

Student Debtors Under Attack, Organize For Free Education For All

April 1, 2025 Debt Collective, Popular Resistance. Resist! Free College, Higher Education, Student Debt, Trump Administration

In recent days, the Trump administration issued an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. Legally, this cannot be done without Congress, but in practice, this means most of the staff was simply fired. We talked a little bit about what that means for student debtors in this Twitter thread. In short, this makes the student debt crisis much worse. Shortly after that, Trump ordered the entire federal student debt portfolio — all $1.7 trillion — to be moved from the Department of Education to the Small Business Administration (SBA). The Small Business Administration is another agency within the federal government.

The Urgency Of Fighting For Our Rights While We Can

March 31, 2025 Margaret Flowers, Clearing the FOG. Podcast - Clearing The FOG Donald Trump, Free Speech, Higher Education, Immigrant Rights, Palestine, Repression

The repression of people who show support for Palestinian liberation has escalated. The Trump administration is using an antiquated immigration law and executive orders to target student activists, threatening them with deportation, and has gone so far as to kidnap students and professors. Clearing the FOG speaks with a Cornell University PhD student, Sriram Parasurama, who was suspended for participating in pro-Palestine demonstrations and is currently a plaintiff in a case challenging two of President Trump's executive orders and with Chip Gibbons, a lawyer with Defending Rights and Dissent and the author of an upcoming book on the FBI, surveillance and the national security state. Both explain the urgency of fighting violations of our Constitutional rights and how to do that, as well as the implications of not taking action.

Tufts Student Targeted By DHS Wrote Suspiciously Pro-Humanity Op-Ed

March 29, 2025 Ari Paul, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. Educate! Free Speech, Higher Education, ICE, State Repression, Student Activism, Trump Administration

The journalism world has been reeling from news that a BBC correspondent was deported from Turkey, after he was “covering the antigovernment protests in the country” and was “detained and labeled ‘a threat to public order’” (New York Times, 3/27/25). Turkey has an abysmal reputation for press freedom (CPJ, 2/13/24; European Centre for Press and Media Freedom, 10/5/23), placing 158th out of 180 countries on the Reporters Without Borders index, so as distressing as this news is, it’s in character for a country many think of as illiberal and authoritarian (Guardian, 6/9/13; HRW, 1/29/15). Journalists have been arrested in the latest unrest in Turkey (AP, 3/24/25).

Explainer: The Lawsuits Aiming To Stop Trump’s Assault On Free Speech

March 28, 2025 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. Resist! Campus Movement, Columbia University, Donald Trump, Free Speech, Higher Education, Israel, Lawsuits, Palestine, Palestinian Solidarity, Repression, Student Activism, Trump Administration, UCLA

According to a tracker developed by Just Security, there have been at least 146 legal challenges to Trump administration actions since he took office. Several of those have dealt with the White House’s war on Palestine activists. In recent weeks, students, faculty, and legal organizations have launched multiple lawsuits aimed at halting the Trump administration’s draconian crackdown on Palestinian protesters and holding universities accountable for their complicity. Here are some of the legal efforts that we’ve seen so far.

What We Know About The Tufts University Student Kidnapped By ICE

March 27, 2025 Alysha Palumbo, NBC Boston. Educate! Campus Movement, Higher Education, ICE, Kidnapping, Louisiana, Tufts University

A Tufts University student is being held at an ICE detention facility in Louisiana, and there are growing questions about how she was taken into custody and the timeline of sending her out of state. One major issue is whether federal authorities defied the court order to keep Rumeysa Ozturk in Massachusetts, as it was issued just hours after her arrest Tuesday night. Video shows Ozturk, a Tufts University PhD student from Turkey, screaming as plain-clothes agents surrounded her and grabbed her on a Somerville sidewalk just off campus before taking her away.

Swarthmore Students Punished For Gaza Protests

March 27, 2025 Betsey Piette, Workers World. Resist! Campus Movement, Gaza, Higher Education, Palestine, Pennsylvania, Repression, Sanctions, Swarthmore College

Swarthmore College issued sanctions on March 6 against 15 students for participating in anti-genocide activism for Palestinians in Gaza. Their peaceful demonstrations of solidarity with Gaza occurred between October 2023 and March 2024. The college in Media, Pennsylvania, is located outside of Philadelphia. The most extreme sanctions are aimed against one graduating senior who was suspended, nine who received one-semester probation and one who received a two-semester probation. The second-semester senior set to graduate was suspended on the charge of “assault” for the use of a megaphone indoors.

Chris Hedges: Surrendering To Authoritarianism

March 25, 2025 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Educate! Authoritarianism, Campus Movement, Higher Education, State Repression, Student Activism

I was not surprised when Columbia University’s interim president Katrina Armstrong caved to the demands of the Trump administration. She agreed to ban face masks or face coverings, prohibit protests in academic buildings and create an internal security force of 36 New York City Police officers empowered to “remove individuals from campus and/or arrest them when appropriate.” She has also surrendered the autonomy of academic departments, as demanded by the Trump administration, by appointing a new senior vice provost to “review” the university’s department of Middle East, South Asian and African Studies and the Center for Palestine Studies.

The Chris Hedges Report: America’s Constitutional Crisis

March 20, 2025 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. Resistance Report Campus Movement, Deportation, Free Speech, Higher Education, Mahmoud Khalil, Repression, Student Activism

Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest and detention in a Louisiana ICE facility is a harbinger for a new authoritarian era of the United States. Khalil’s arrest, the capitulation of Columbia University against dissent and protest by its own students and the Trump administration’s threat of stripping the university of $400 million in grants if it does not meet its requests is just one place where the tentacles of fascism tighten their grip. Katherine Franke, a former law school professor at Columbia, is on the front lines of this assault. Her support for student protests and her condemnation of the university for not addressing the harassment of pro-Palestinian students has earned what she called, “a termination dressed up in more palatable terms.”

Right To Free Speech Curtailed On Cornell Campus

March 19, 2025 Katie Church, Danny Creamer and Josh Dolan, Popular Resistance. Resist! Campus Movement, Free Speech, Genocide, Higher Education, Palestine, Student Activism

On March 10, we as members of the Ithaca community joined with Cornell students and allies to exercise our First Amendment right to protest on behalf of the Palestinians in Gaza, who are the victims of genocide at the hands of the Israeli Occupation Forces. We and multiple students were arrested on the orders of Cornell’s president, self-proclaimed 1st Amendment champion Michael Kotlikoff. His office had invited a panel comprised of war criminals and genocide enablers from the US and Israeli government, with a token former Palestinian government official who had a <25% approval rating by Palestinians, under the guise of discussing "pathways to peace".

Brown University Professor Deported To Lebanon

March 18, 2025 News Desk, The Cradle. Educate! Deportation, Donald Trump, Hezbollah, Higher Education, Immigration, Lebanon

Rasha Alawieh, a Lebanese physician and assistant professor at Brown University in the US, was deported to Lebanon over the weekend despite holding a valid US work visa and a federal judge’s order temporarily blocking her removal. Her detention began Thursday at Boston Logan International Airport following a trip to Lebanon. Alawieh, 34, had traveled to Lebanon for a family visit, spending two weeks with her parents. Upon returning to the US on 13 March 2025, she was surprised to be detained by immigration authorities at Boston Logan International Airport.

Columbia Student Workers Rally Against Expulsions And Arrests

March 16, 2025 Olivia Wood, Left Voice. Resist! Campus Movement, Columbia, Higher Education, Repression, Student Activism, Unions, Worker Rights

It’s been an intense and infuriating couple of weeks at Columbia University. Students expelled. Visas revoked. $400 million in funding held hostage by the federal government. An escalation, when Mahmoud Khalil was told his green card was suspended before being arrested by government agents from the lobby of his apartment building in the middle of the night. And most recently, Thursday night, the announcement that 22 students and recent graduates had been suspended, expelled, or had their diplomas revoked. One of the expelled students is Grant Miner, the president of the Student Workers of Columbia.

Suspended For Pro-Palestine Speech

March 14, 2025 Helyeh Doutaghi, Mondoweiss. Resist! Artificial Intelligence, Higher Education, Palestine, State Repression, Yale

My name is Helyeh Doutaghi. I am a scholar of international law and geopolitical economy. My research engages with Third World Approaches to International Law (TWAIL), postcolonial critiques of law, and the global political economy of sanctions. I have specifically examined the mechanisms and consequences of economic warfare on Iran, as well as the forms of knowledge produced in International Humanitarian Law (IHL) to obscure and shield U.S. military operations from accountability. On October 1, 2023, I was appointed Deputy Director of the Law and Political Economy (LPE) Project and joined the team.

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