Universities Are Actively Corrupting Academic Freedom to Repress Gaza Protests Over 900 student protestors have been arrested in the past two weeks across the country in the student uprisings to create “liberated zone” encampments at their universities and call for divestment from Israel’s war machine. The arrests have been enforced by city police and state troopers in a heavy militarization of U.S. campuses in response to peaceful protest camp sites. Universities have chosen to erode academic freedom on their campuses while maintaining complicity in weapons companies amid the genocide of over 34,480 people in Gaza, including at least 14,500 children. We are seeing pervasive harm done to the international reputation of American universities and the pillars of academic freedom underscored by the First Amendment and our democratic ideals here in the United States. While most of us assume that these universities cultivate thought and are strongholds for constructive dialogue, logic, rationality, and activism—instead, what we are seeing today is the oppression of students with no evidence of their wrongdoing. Even the infamous New York Police Department officers making arrests at Columbia University noted the students were peaceful and that it was university officials who identified a “danger” posed by students—a clear sign of political theater and moral evasiveness by university officials in criminalizing these peaceful anti-war protests made up of young people. With more divestment encampment protests popping up every day across the country, American universities stand at a crossroads for academic freedom. University leaders must ask themselves: Do they embrace a separation between the moral, academic, and political? Does investing in an apartheid state that is waging a war of genocide in front of the whole world represent the values they advocate and stand for? This pivotal moment will define the reputation and standing of American universities for decades to come. Every infringement on the rights of students and their historic efforts for peace will be a dark stain on our history. As students show that they stand for justice amid a genocide and demand their colleges to do the right thing, we ask colleges to show us what they stand for. The university leaders know that their complicity with Israel is immoral and indefensible. They have the choice to change their policies rather than silence students who object to this complicity. We call for an end to the oppression of students and the threat to both their futures and the future of academic freedom. We call on universities to respond to students’ just demands for full disclosure of university investments in companies complicit in genocide and apartheid, for full divestment from these companies, and to drop their charges against students protesting peacefully for justice.
In solidarity, Americans for Justice in Palestine Action | 
