In September alone, the Israeli occupation bombed four schools in Gaza. The al-Faloujah school, al-Zaytoun school, al-Jaouni school, and Kfar Qasim school. These schools have, since the start of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, turned into shelters for displaced Palestinians. Israel has marked these schools as targets. 

In Gaza this fall, there is no back-to-school. As Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues into its second year, its campaign of scholasticide has destroyed the Palestinian education system — over 80% of schools, and all 12 universities in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed. 

As Israel continues its war of conquest — now having expanded into Lebanon — the U.S. continues to supply it with the tools to realize it, from weapons to personnel to billions of dollars in “aid.” All the while, American universities, which have been a major site of protest as students demand divestment from the Zionist state, have remained committed to preserving the military and cultural hegemony of the occupation.

In protest of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, and the continued commitment of American universities to funding the occupation, students at over 120 universities set up encampments this spring on their college campuses, to “stop business as usual” and demand that their schools divest from and boycott Israel. 

By and large, the demands elevated by the encampments were not heeded by universities. San Francisco State University marks an exception — the school has begun divesting from weapons manufacturers aiding the Israeli army. But across the board, the demands of pro-Palestine students have been met with dismissal, police-initiated violence, and now, harshening policies of repression, intent on striking down the movement.  

As the dust settled from the spring student intifada and students left campus for the summer, university administrators got to work revamping their student-conduct policies to safeguard against future protests of this scale. 

As students returned for the fall semester, they were greeted with a new curriculum of repression. Now codified into policy are restrictions on where and how to protest, how to obtain the requisite administrative approval before protesting — lest all participants face immediate sanctioning — and restrictions on speech itself. 

This summer New York University made headlines as it announced the settlement of a lawsuit filed against it last November that alleged the university had failed to respond to antisemitism on its campus — so much so that it was allegedly in violation of Title XI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act. 

As part of the settlement agreement, NYU updated its Student Conduct Policy and Non-Discrimination and Anti-Harassment (NDAH) policies to reflect the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) definition of antisemitism — which claims that saying “the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor” is antisemitic. 

“Using code words, like ‘Zionist,’ does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH Policy,” reads the updated code. “Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists.” 

In mandating the protection of Zionism as an identity, NYU acts to protect an ethno-nationalist, violent state-building project, which has, for 76 years, brought terror upon the Palestinian people, and the surrounding region. The effects of this lawsuit have already been made palpable. 

On the morning of Sept. 13, students at the NYU Institute for the Study of the Ancient World (ISAW) found the words, “Betar was here” spray painted across the side of the building, referring to the far-right Zionist youth movement which allied with the Irgun militia in carrying out pogroms against Arab populations in the ’30s and ’40s. 

Despite complaints lodged by students, NYU has not responded to this instance of blatant anti-Palestinian racism — a continuation of the school’s pattern of failing to assume responsibility as its Palestinian, Arab, and pro-Palestinian students have been repeatedly doxxed, threatened and assaulted. 

The precedent set by NYU has already begun to take hold on other campuses. On Sept. 11 Barnard College issued an updated set of “​​Expectations for Community Conduct” that similarly cites Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and maintains that “Substituting the word ‘Zionist’ for ‘Jewish’ or ‘Israeli,’ for example, may constitute prohibited discrimination or harassment against those of Jewish or Israeli origin.” 

“A softer form of violence, but more corrosive in a way, is self-censorship. And I think that’s what we’re seeing,” Andrew Ross, a professor at NYU and the secretary for the national network of Faculty for Justice in Palestine told The Indypendent. “People are feeling the chilling impact of new regulations, disciplinary processes, [and] they self-censor. In an academic environment, there is nothing more corrosive and nothing more destructive than self-censorship. You’re not only giving up your rights, you’re enacting violence upon these rights.” 

The fall’s slew of new restrictions would not be complete if they didn’t address the biggest thorns in university administrators’ sides — protests. On Aug. 23, just days before the fall semester began, Columbia released its “Guidelines to the Rules of University Conduct,” in whichit maintained that protests are bound by restrictions on “time, place, and manner.” 

“You can’t have a university protest without first publicly releasing it and also sending a message to public safety that says, ‘Hello, we’re going to have a rally at this time, at this place,’” explained a member of Columbia University Apartheid Divest who did not wish to be identified. “If you don’t do that, then your rally is not protected by the university, and then you can be disciplined for participation in it regardless of whether that participation breaks any other of the university’s statutes.” 

The updates made to conduct policies as they pertain to speech and protest are but one aspect of the broader culture of repression that has taken hold on colleges and universities this fall. The very landscape of campuses has undergone a process of securitization. While the university actions vary, it is increasingly common to find public spaces cordoned off, freshly installed surveillance cameras to monitoring activities, campus police and private security details standing guard at every campus entry point, and stacks of metal barricades at the ready next to many buildings.

At NYU’s Gould Plaza — the site last spring of the first NYU Gaza Solidarity Encampment — now stands a wrapped plywood wall, reinforced with metal barricades and staffed by multiple campus safety officers. A sign on the wall reads “Our Future Taking Shape.” 

As the university claims, the future is taking shape. And at the moment, it’s being marked by a wave of measures intended to quell the pro-Palestine movement. 

“What we’re seeing is an attempt to obscure and repress in a more subtle way — just as insidious, but more subtle,” said Alex, an NYU student organizer who asked to be identified by first name only. “It’s suffocating. Essentially the strategy is to make sure students are aware, subconsciously or consciously, that they are being watched, so they should not act up. It’s a way of pacifying the movement without creating the same media spectacle that would’ve happened if they continued to arrest people or suspend people.” 

Uptown at Columbia, these same measures of securitization have repercussions beyond the university — they’ve affected local Harlemites as well. 116th Street, a public New York City thoroughfare that passes through Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus, has been made inaccessible to people who don’t have Columbia IDs.

What happens at Columbia is a reflection of the increasingly militarized securitization of New York City, and it doesn’t stop there. These dynamics are playing out across the country. Most notably, on the West Coast, the University of California’s Board of Regents in mid-September approved a request from UC campus police to bolster their inventory with military equipment, including projectile launchers, drones, pepper balls and hazardous devices robots. This only adds to the UCPD’s military-grade roster of weapons, which includes tasers, rifles, and pistols. 

“You’re coming into confrontation with the power of your own state and with institutions that mobilize civic authority,” Ross, a student at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, Pennsylvania,  told The Indy. “And the university is one of those institutions. That says a lot about the transnational power cordon that’s being drawn around Zionism. ”

Since the start of the fall semester, universities have targeted students and faculty for their pro-Palestine actions. At Muhlenberg College, Maura Finkelstein was fired in late May for reposting a poem by Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi on her Instagram account. Finkelstein, who is Jewish, is believed to be the first tenured professor to be terminated for anti-Zionist speech. 

At Cornell University, PhD candidate Momodou Taal is facing deportation to the United Kingdom after the university placed him on academic suspension for his participation in a pro-Palestine protest at a Cornell career fair on Sept. 18. The university has suspended his F-1 student visa and denied his appeals. 

“Yes, it’s about freedom of speech, but that cannot be divorced from Palestine. The issue why we’re facing such repression and such repressive tactics is because it’s about Palestine,” Taal said in an interview with Democracy Now! “It’s because you’re speaking anti-Israel and anti-Israel’s genocide in Gaza.” 

On Sept. 24 a review of the City University of New York led by former chief judge of New York Jonathan Lippman called for overhauling how the university handles complaints about antisemitism. It cited pro-Palestine protests from the past year as justification for cracking down on what it deemed to be hate speech. 

On Sept. 5 Columbia’s Interim President Laura Armstrong sent a university-wide communication to affiliates, writing, “I believe deeply in the values of free speech, open inquiry, and rigorous debate. But those rights cannot come at the expense of the rights of others to live, work, and learn here, free from discrimination and harassment.”

“We cannot stand by and watch this [genocide] happen,” Columbia University Apartheid Divest responded. “The only appropriate response to that is to say we will continue to organize no matter the cost.” 

Adrita Talukder is an NYU student and a member of the university’s Student Liberation Action Movement.

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