The Trump administration has begun disappearing international students and workers from university campuses. This article, written by three academic workers, argues that this escalation was made possible by a campaign of repression initiated by universities themselves. After analyzing where we are and how we got here, the authors put forward their answer to the pressing questions: what would a fight back look like and how do we go about organizing it?
by Jon Archer, Alexandria H., and Cameron Pádraig
Introduction
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) abduction of Mahmoud Khalil, Leqaa Kordia, Rumeysa Ozturk, and Badar Khan Suri, as well as the potential deportations of Momodou Taal and Yunseo Chung and the forced displacement of Ranjani Srinivasan, are part of a mounting wave of repression on university campuses across the United States. Building on tactics spearheaded by well-resourced zionist organizations, Democratic Party officials, and liberal university administrators to quash campus protests, the Trump administration is launching an all-out offensive against migrant and immigrant organizers in the Palestine solidarity movement that will likely include further attempts to disappear, incarcerate, and/or deport campus dissidents—including those born in the US—in the coming weeks and months.
This escalation is part of a broader strategy of state repression that has at least three objectives: First, to deter Palestine solidarity organizing on college campuses, thereby undermining the growing opposition to U.S.-funded genocide, imperial expansion, and capitalist extraction in the region. Second, to test particular interpretations of immigration law and free speech protections in order to ascertain what, if any, limits the judiciary will place on political repression, all in the hope of expanding the state’s ability to crack down on any speech it classifies as oppositional to the United States or Trump himself. Finally, and perhaps most obscured by the fact that these attacks are flying under the cloak of “fighting antisemitism,” they aim to degrade and ultimately dismantle higher education as an independent institution (even if its actually-existing independence is severely limited).
The time to fight back is now. Small but significant efforts to defeat various parts of this growing repressive apparatus have already proven successful on several campuses, but building on these minor wins will require a commitment to deep organizing and a willingness to develop principled coalitions across movements, sectors, and organizations. By uniting immigration, labor, and Palestine solidarity organizing, we can not only build the power necessary to protect ourselves, but also develop an offensive strategy capable of shifting the balance of forces in our favor. When we organize together, we can do more than hold ground–we can gain it.
Where We Were
The playbook currently being used to bludgeon Palestine solidarity organizers originated through the cynical, bipartisan efforts of university stakeholders to paint pro-Palestinian students, staff, and faculty as “antisemites” and “terrorist sympathizers”. Even before the Trump administration’s more forceful intervention, universities’ punitive machinery was working in overdrive, including aggressive censorship of classroom discussions and political raids of students’ organizing and living spaces. University administrators also adopted increasingly punitive “Time, Place, and Manner” (TPM) policies, under which they arrogate to themselves the right to order students and workers to be arrested or disciplined for engaging in public political activities of almost any sort.
While an escalation, these most recent attacks on Palestine solidarity organizers are therefore not some bolt from the blue; the Trump administration is extending an existing bipartisan counter-insurgency campaign originated by liberal, zionist, and far-right elements alike, each of whom played or continues to play a role in attacking pro-Palestinian students and workers on campuses around the country. These attacks have run the gamut from physical assault, to rhetorical demonization in the press, to the use of the presidential pulpit to cast those organizing for a ceasefire and against occupation as dangerously naive at best and bigoted at worst, and thus deserving of whatever means necessary to hammer them into submission.
Indeed, Mahmoud Khalil makes it clear who he holds at least partly responsible for his arrest in a letter dictated from inside an ICE detention facility, arguing that, “[Columbia] Presidents Shafik, Armstrong, and Dean Yarhi-Milo laid the groundwork for the U.S. government to target” him by “arbitrarily disciplining pro-Palestinian students and allowing viral doxing—based on racism and disinformation—to go unchecked.”
Where We Are Now
It is unsurprising, then, that the Trump administration has picked up and begun sprinting with this ready-made formula. Still, given their supposed adherence to “liberal principles,” one might be forgiven for assuming that university administrators have changed their tune now that it is Trump and MAGA Republicans instead of Democrats who are baying for the blood of students and workers on their campuses. Of course, this is not the case. Columbia has already capitulated to the Trump administration’s demands to ban masks, deputize security officers to arrest students, and defund Middle Eastern Studies departments, in addition to collaborating with the far right to continue to harass, dox, and deport students, staff, and faculty. With increasing pace, universities around the country are also falling in line by firing unionized academic workers, expelling students, and even assisting ICE in their campaign of abductions. All of this to avoid the revocation of federal grants and other government funding that will almost undoubtedly be slashed anyway.
That seemingly “progressive” institutions like Cornell, Columbia, Georgetown, and numerous campuses within the University of California system would be active partners in an authoritarian purge of students, staff, and faculty reflects the deep flaw within liberal institutions: that justice-oriented principles and convictions are such in name only and commitments to justice are nothing more than a thin veneer peeling away with the slightest pressure. As is now clear for all to see, the vaunted liberalism of that part of the ruling classes found in the university is fully continuous with the technocratic-capitalistic structure of US imperialism which those classes uphold and benefit from.
What must be understood is that the fallout of collaborating with the Trump administration will extend beyond the Palestine solidarity movement and affect all aspects of the academy. By sacrificing their students, workers, and stated principles, university administrators are voluntarily opening the door to the complete dismantling of higher education.
Where We Are Heading
The right has a much wider agenda for the academy than merely ridding campuses of dissident students and workers. While the escalation in attacks on the Palestine solidarity movement are motivated largely by nativist racism and an effort to uphold US-Israeli geopolitical hegemony, they also demonstrate the right’s deep and enduring contempt for institutions of education, particularly universities.
Through extortion, lawfare tactics, and other means, the Trump administration is enacting a long-term strategy of remaking universities into subservient instruments of far-right hegemony. Horrific as instances of state-backed repression have been so far, we should only conclude that these are intended to test legal and social tolerances for far more extreme efforts. We can be sure that there are more ICE abductions, firings, and threats to revoke federal funding on the way. There should be little doubt that both the scale and breadth of these attacks will widen—there will be no “staying out of it”.
So far, administrators in charge of universities which are in the crosshairs of this assault have acceded to the demands Trump has placed before them, an advantage the right is certain to press. To put it bluntly, If Columbia’s administrators believe they satisfied the Trump administration by quickly (read: spinelessly) acquiescing to its orders, they are fools. For the far-right now in power, this battle is existential.
Ultimately, it is just as foolish for us as academic workers and students to expect anything else from campus administrators. Our point here is not to chide the academy for betraying its stated principles, but to demonstrate that those of us who learn and work within institutions of higher education must not rely on the university leaders to protect us. Instead, we need to build independent coalitions across a wide range of constituencies so that we can protect ourselves and foster the kinds of solidarities we will need to defeat the far-right’s offensive, both on campus and off.
How We Can Fight
The tasks before us involve the hard work of developing coalitions, identifying specific and achievable concrete objectives, and creating strategies of escalation that aim to secure them.
Constructing the sort of coalitions necessary to meet the moment, particularly those whose members are prepared to engage in large scale disruptive collective action, will not be easy. This deep organizing work begins with identifying an issue around which a variety of groups can be mobilized together. This might be a demand for the university administration to designate the campus a “sanctuary” for undocumented students and workers, or a campaign to defeat anti-free speech Time, Place, and Manner (TPM) policies, for example. Whatever the issue is, it will be necessary to bring wider layers of the campus into the fight.
Through an issue based campaign that encourages broad participation, it is possible to establish the foundation for a more stable coalition of constituent groups and organizations. As we demonstrate in the anecdote in the next section, these will likely be labor unions and student organizations.
The type of power we need to develop if we are to wage an effective counter-attack on the far-right and its liberal junior partners will not be given to us gracefully. Ultimately, we have access to one source of power through which to force the university into meaningful concessions. And that power lies in our potential ability to stop it from functioning altogether. Throughout all our on-campus organizing efforts, we should keep this one point in mind: that sooner or later we are going to have to strike, or engage in other forms of mass-scale disruptive activity. Because of this, our constant strategy should be the preparation of a mass base for supporting and participating in this kind of action, a process that also includes assessing the strength of our collective leverage by staying in close contact with members of that base. The constant question before us is this: What are the organizational forms that are necessary for the development of this kind of radical constituency?
Moreover, in their multi-pronged assault on universities as sites of radical organizing, Trumpist forces are exploiting the major weakness of campus-based organizing projects: their physical and cultural isolation from the broader working class and other oppressed groups. Student and worker organizers should also therefore consciously seek out new alliances with immigrant and worker organizations, both within the university and beyond. In particular, building together with labor unions to defend free expression and the safety of migrant workers can generate maximum leverage in struggles against common sources of repression, all while helping build toward the kinds of large-scale coordinated disruptive actions–especially multi-sectoral strikes–that could become increasingly possible and necessary in the time ahead. Now is an important moment to redouble efforts to ally with other sectors around common interests and demands.
An Example of Our Proposal in Practice
Recent cross-union organizing on the campus of UC Santa Cruz, against its version of the Time, Place, Manner (TPM) policy is a case in point. Throughout the first part of the academic year, university officials dispatched police officers and members of the university’s “demonstration operations team” to harass and intimidate workers and students at public political actions, using TPM as a pretext. Among other outrages, UC police officers arrested an undergraduate member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) merely for wearing a mask and using a bullhorn during a demonstration on October 7th, 2024. Members of other campus unions, including graduate workers union UAW 4811 and service workers union AFSCME 3299, were also subject to disciplinary threats by university officials for routine organizing activities like conducting rallies, hanging banners, and picketing without a permit.
Identifying TPM as a frontal attack on workers’ ability to self-organize in the workplace, six campus-connected labor unions responded by developing a joint anti-repression campaign, with an immediate goal of overturning the draconian new restrictions on speech and assembly. Crucially, the Northern California Carpenters Union, which is currently waging a campaign against the university’s reliance on a union-busting construction firm, joined the coalition and played a significant role in shaping its direction. The cross-union coalition also developed solidaristic bonds with student groups, particularly Students for Justice in Palestine, which has been the target of the university’s most heavy-handed forms of repression and surveillance. This multi-pronged and broad-based organizing effort culminated in a large demonstration in the main campus plaza in February, the purpose of which was to defy TPM in the most public way possible.
This united-front approach—ultimately backstopped by organized workers’ capacity to strike and otherwise withhold their labor—has helped shift the balance of power in the anti-repression fight. UC officials and police officers were nowhere to be found at anti-TPM rally and, as of this writing, have backed away from TPM enforcement entirely. While this example is limited, we believe it illustrates the possibilities in cross-sectoral organizing on campuses, led by students and workers themselves. These efforts, if effectively expanded, can build and leverage the necessary power to confront both the state and acquiescent university administrators.
The strategy undertaken by workers and students at UCSC underscores another important lesson: We must always fight, dramatically and quickly, for free speech and the right to organize, advocate, and mount political action. However, it is essential in these cases to avoid getting bogged down in “legalitarianism.” We cannot count on this society’s legal apparatus to guarantee our civil liberties; and, we should not organize around civil libertarian issues as if it could. Rather, when our legal rights are violated, we should move as quickly as possible, without losing our popular base, to expand any sort of libertarian moral indignation into a multi-issues political insurgency, exposing the repressive character of the university administration and its specific role in fostering the authoritarian drift of US capitalist empire.
Conclusion
We harbor no illusions about the university as it actually exists. For the most part, higher education institutions function as smooth instruments of capitalist and imperialist order. They churn out certain products required by government and industry,exploit those who study or work within them, reproduce multiple forms of oppressive hierarchy, and tend to stymy independent intellectual development despite their pretensions otherwise.
At the same time, the academy is a terrain on which struggle can and does take place. For the university to live up to its stated aspirations of promoting intellectual autonomy, democracy, and equity, workers and students—not a superfluous administrative layer—would have to be the ones directly determining how it functions. But we cannot win our collective liberation by appealing to, let alone trying to save, the liberalism of the existing order. As such, there is no reason for us to elide our criticisms of the university while defending higher education from a right wing onslaught. We must attend to both fights at once.
The situation before us is one instance where these struggles have converged, its outcome sure to determine the conditions that university workers labor under and those which students learn under far into the future. Whether we are able to meet the moment is not a question of fate, but rather how effective we have been in developing a strategy and how deeply we have committed ourselves to seeing it through.
Jon Archer is an academic worker and rank-and-file member of UAW 4811
Alexandria H. is an academic worker and rank-and-file member of the California Faculty Association
Cameron Pádraig is an academic worker and rank-and-file member of UAW 4811