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Student Activism

San Jose State University Students Protest Revocation Of Student Visas

April 15, 2025 Fight Back! News. , , , ,
San Jose, CA – On April 9, around 60 San Jose State students and community members gathered by the campus’s Cesar Chavez arch to protest the recent revocation of student visas by the federal government. According to San Jose State University president Dr. Cynthia Teniente-Matson, 12 San Jose State University International students had their F-1 visas revoked. The revocations came as part of a wave of visa revocations by the federal government, most of which are student visas. As soon as the news broke, the San Jose chapter of Students for a Democratic Society called an emergency action to put forward several demands.

Creighton University Student Organization Helps Fight Medical Debt

April 12, 2025 Grace Updike, The Creightonian. , , ,
Throughout the 2024-2025 school year, Creighton’s Students for a National Health Program (SNaHP) chapter has worked to advocate and raise money for individuals struggling with medical debt. The organization recently reached their fundraising goal, raising over $10,000 for the non-profit Undue Medical Debt. SNaHP is a single-issue organization that advocates for single-payer universal healthcare through legislative advocacy and education. According to Allison Benjamin, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences and the outgoing president of Creighton’s SNaHP chapter, their mission is to achieve affordable, accessible and quality healthcare for all.

Hillel’s Empty Words

April 11, 2025 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. , , , , ,
In recent years, we have seen Palestine activists protest Hillel groups on campus. Pro-Israel organizations and pundits often insist that protesting the largest Jewish student organization somehow makes the Palestine movement antisemitic, but Hillel is not exactly apolitical. In the mid-2000s, they embraced the slogan “Wherever we stand, we stand with Israel,” they sponsor the Birthright program, and they forbid campus Hillels from partnering with anti-Zionist groups. Earlier this year, Yale Hillel hosted former Israeli solider and Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, which inevitably led to protest. At an event at Harvard Business School later he joked that he would give exploding pagers to protestors, alluding to the Israeli attack on Lebanon that killed dozens of people and injured thousands.

Trump Administration Revokes Hundreds Of Student Visas

April 9, 2025 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. , , , , , ,
The Trump administration has reportedly revoked hundreds of student visas, amid a widening crackdown on the U.S. Palestine movement. In recent days, dozens of schools have announced that draconian measures by the Trump administration have targeted some of their students. The list includes UC Berkeley, UCLA, Stanford, Ohio State, Minnesota State University, the University of Kentucky, Northeastern, and Harvard. Last month Secretary of State Marco Rubio guessed that he had revoked about 300 visas since arriving in office. “I don’t know actually if it’s primarily student visas,” Rubio told reporters.

Thousands Rally In Washington, DC For Palestine

April 8, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , ,
“We are the majority,” declare organizers of a mass demonstration outside the United States Capitol building opposing the genocide in Gaza and Trump’s attacks on students Thousands rallied in the heart of the US capital Washington, DC on April 5 to oppose Trump administration attacks on free speech and student activism, and demand an end to Israel’s relentless genocidal onslaught against Gaza. Students, organizers, journalists, artists, and workers came to Washington, DC from across the country to call for the release of pro-Palestine students such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk from ICE detention and to declare their fearlessness in the face of Trump’s attacks.

Jewish Pro-Palestinian Protesters Chain Themselves To Gates

April 3, 2025 Joseph Zuloaga, Spencer Davis and Daksha Pillai, Columbia Spectator. , , , , ,
Four Jewish pro-Palestinian demonstrators chained themselves to the gate near St. Paul’s Chapel early Wednesday afternoon in support of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, SIPA ’24, who was detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement on March 8. A new group of protesters tethered themselves to the Earl Hall gates later that afternoon. A Wednesday post from Columbia’s chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace cites a March 10 report from the Forward in which Ross Glick, former leader of Betar, a self-described “bold Zionist movement,” said he visited Washington, D.C. to meet with officials about Khalil.

We Have To Mobilize In Even Greater Numbers Than Ever Before

April 2, 2025 Natalia Marques, People's Dispatch. , , , , , , ,
As the Trump administration escalates attacks on the pro-Palestine student movement and Israel continues the genocide in Gaza in full force, thousands are expected to partake in a mass demonstration for Palestine on April 5 in Washington DC, undeterred by repression. Trump’s Secretary of State Marco Rubio has announced that he has signed off on the revocation of over 300 student visas for reasons related to pro-Palestine protest activity, raising alarms about free speech violations. We do it every day. Every time I find one of these lunatics, I take away their visa,” Rubio said at a press conference in Guyana on Thursday.

Columbia Students Fight Back Against Deportation Threats

April 1, 2025 Tamara Turki, Mondoweiss. , , , , ,
Hundreds of Columbia students gathered frantically on Tuesday, March 25 in a cathedral near campus for an emergency union meeting, debating how to respond against what they described as the university administration’s “concessions to fascism.” The uproar ignited on March 9, when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents detained Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate and student activist Mahmoud Khalil at his home without a judicial warrant. Federal authorities claimed to revoke Khalil’s green card from his involvement in pro-Palestine campus protests since Israel’s war on Gaza.

Jacksonville SDS Rallies Against Israeli Soldiers On Campus

March 30, 2025 Fight Back! News. , , , , ,
Jacksonville, FL – On March 27, Jacksonville Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) rallied dozens of students to protest a speaking event which brought two Israeli occupation forces (IOF) troops to the University of North Florida. The soldiers were on campus to justify their war crimes in Gaza during the first wave of the accelerated genocide. The Jacksonville Palestine Solidarity Network (JPSN) co-sponsored the protest, and several other student and community organizations were in attendance. The rally took place outside the UNF Student Union, where the speaking event was being held.

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

March 29, 2025 Ari Paul, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting. , , , , ,
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).

Thousands Protest ICE Abduction Of Tufts Student

March 28, 2025 Julia Conley, Common Dreams. , , , , , ,
As reports surfaced Wednesday that Rumeysa Ozturk, the Tufts University Ph.D. student who was abducted by immigration agents off a street in Somerville, Massachusetts, had been taken to a detention center in Louisiana, thousands of people assembled in the Boston-area city to demand Ozturk's release. Ozturk was transferred to the South Louisiana Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) processing center despite a court order barring immigration officials from moving her out-of-state without prior notice, and her lawyers shared a statement at Powder House Park saying they hadn't been notified about the Turkish student's exact whereabouts. They also said her F-1 student visa had been terminated.

Does Columbia Still Merit The Name Of A University?

March 28, 2025 Rashid Khalidi, the Guardian. , , , , , , ,
It was never about eliminating antisemitism. It was always about silencing Palestine. That is what the gagging of protesting students, and now the gagging of faculty, was always meant to lead to. While partisans of the Israeli-American mass slaughter in Gaza may have been offended by their protests, large numbers of the students whose rights of free speech have been infringed upon via draconian punishments were themselves Jewish. Many of those faculty members who are about to be deprived of academic freedom and faculty governance, and perhaps fired, are themselves Jewish, indeed some are Israelis.

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

March 28, 2025 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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.

Chris Hedges: Surrendering To Authoritarianism

March 25, 2025 Chris Hedges, Scheer Post. , , , ,
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.

Federal Agents Seek Detention Of Cornell Graduate Momodou Taal

March 22, 2025 Matt Dougherty, Ithaca Times. , , , , ,
Ithaca, N.Y. — Days after filing a lawsuit against the Trump administration that challenges the constitutionality of two executive orders that violate free speech, Cornell graduate student Momodou Taal has said that he is being watched by federal agents who could be looking to detain and potentially deport him before he can make his case in court on Tuesday. “This morning, shortly after a federal judge scheduled a hearing in my lawsuit demanding the courts strike down Trump's executive orders attacking free speech, law enforcement from an unidentified agency came to my home in Ithaca, New York,” Taal said in a social media post on Wednesday, March 19.
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