Nor, in a number of cases, did this offensive against the student left start, or end, at the campus gates. For instance, a targeted campaign against Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) kicked off in October, when the State University System of Florida, working with Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, announced that "based on the National SJP's support of terrorism" the student chapters must be deactivated."
Private universities would soon join in with their own public displays of intolerance. Brandeis, Rutgers, George Washington, and Harvard all imposed similar sanctions on student groups. Columbia broke new ground by suspending not only SJP but also Jewish Voice for Peace after its student chapter held "an unauthorized event" that included threatening rhetoric."
Over the course of the academic year, the student movement has been elevated, at least rhetorically speaking, to the level of a national security threat -- one which has figured prominently in White House briefings and House Republican hearings. And by far the greater part of the threatening rhetoric overheard in recent weeks has been directed not by the movement, but at the movement.
"We have a clear message," said House Committee on Education and Labor Chair Virginia Foxx (R-NC) in announcing the latest round of congressional inquisitions. "American universities are officially put on notice that we have come to take our universities back. No stone must go unturned while buildings are being defaced, campus greens are being captured, or graduations are being ruined." Held on May 23rd, the hearings were an exercise in twenty-first-century McCarthyism, with House Republicans going on the warpath against "radicalized students" and "so-called university leaders."
President Biden, when speaking of the student movement, has struck a hardly less belligerent tone, declaring that "vandalism, trespassing" shutting down campuses, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduations -- none of this is a peaceful protest" and that "order must prevail."
Step 2. Censor pro-Palestinian speech.
For all the talk of free speech and the right to protest, pro-Palestinian advocacy and antiwar activism have, in these last months, come to represent a notable exception to the rule. From the words of commencement speakers to the expressive acts of student occupiers, outright censorship has become the order of the day.
Take the case of Asna Tabassum, a graduating senior scheduled to give this month's valedictorian address at the University of Southern California. When, on social media, Tabassum dared link to a page denouncing "racist settler-colonial ideology," she was subjected to an organized smear campaign and ultimately barred from speaking at commencement.
Across the country, the cancellations have piled up. The Palestinian writer Mohammed El-Kurd was banned from speaking at the University of Vermont. The artist Samia Halaby saw her first American retrospective cancelled by the Eskenazi Museum of Art at Indiana University. And a group of Jewish students seeking to screen a film critical of Israel were denied space at the University of Pennsylvania.
Again, the trail of repression leads all the way back to Washington, D.C. Over the course of the past year, since the White House released its "National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism," the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) have shown an increasingly active interest in policing what can and can't be said on campus.
According to the latest White House fact sheet, dated May 7th, "FBI and DHS have taken steps to expand and deepen engagements with campus law enforcement and others." Such "engagement" has been evident for all to see in the recent crackdowns on campuses like Columbia's, where the administration bragged, in a leaked internal memo, about "coordinating with the FBI."
Step 3. Punish student protest.
It was not enough, however, for certain university administrators to ban Students for Justice in Palestine or censor pro-Palestinian speech. It was also imperative that they make students pay. The punishments have varied, ranging from interim suspensions to permanent expulsions to evictions from campus housing. What they have in common is a logic of retribution for even distinctly nonviolent student protests.
It became common practice for administrations to demand that students leave their on-campus encampments or be barred from graduating. In Harvard's case, the Corporation went ahead and struck 13 pro-Palestinian students from the rolls anyway, just days before commencement.
Expulsions have also proliferated in the wake of the occupation of administration buildings, from Columbia's Hamilton Hall to Vanderbilt's Kirkland Hall. In justifying the expulsions, Vanderbilt's chancellor helpfully explained, "My point of view had nothing to do with free speech."
Last but not least, student dissidents have been the victims of doxxing, with their names and faces prominently displayed under the banner of "Leading Antisemites" on billboards in public places and on websites belonging to a far-right organization, Accuracy in Media. The group was recently revealed to be bankrolled to the tune of nearly $1.9 million by top Republican megadonors.
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