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AMERICAN UNIVERSITIES ARE COMPLICIT IN THEIR OWN DESTRUCTION  
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Eric Ross
March 31, 2025
Progressive Hub
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_ Last spring, university administrators facilitated the mass arrest
of over 3,000 students on more than sixty campuses—an extraordinary
repressive response to one of the largest student protest movements in
U.S. history. _

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To call what we are witnessing in this country an unprecedented
assault on basic democratic freedoms would be an understatement.
Universities are being strong-armed by the ruling regime to abandon
even the pretense of academic freedom and submit to an authoritarian,
ideological takeover. Students are being abducted
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criminalized, and held as political prisoners for the exercise of
their right to free speech. Others are targeted, detained, and
stripped of rights simply for who they are—for being international
students in a xenophobic police state.

In their standoff with the Trump Administration, Columbia University
chose the path of surrender and capitulation
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Elsewhere, university leaders perform outrage at the intensifying
crackdown on higher education and the erosion of civil liberties. And
yes, they should be outraged. But this liberal indignation obscures an
uncomfortable truth: this did not begin with Trump. It began with the
universities themselves.

The irony was glaring: the greatest threats to Jewish students on
campus were not the protesters, 97% of whom
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in nonviolent civil disobedience, but the very institutions that
claimed to protect us. At UMass an “independent investigation
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into the excessive police response during the encampment, which led
to 134 arrests
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included the baseless conclusion that “by acting as quickly and
decisively as it did, the Administration provided relief to students
and other members of the campus community, especially some (possibly
many) Jewish students and faculty, who felt threatened or alienated by
the Encampments.”

Nowhere in the report is there any acknowledgment of the many Jewish
students—not to mention Arab, Palestinian, or Muslim students—who
participated in or supported the protests, and who were not merely
made to feel uncomfortable, but were actively threatened by an
administration with a documented history of anti-Palestinian bias
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That UMass is now one of sixty
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facing a cynical federal investigation for its alleged culture of
antisemitism—an accusation invoked by university itself to justify
its repression—should come as no surprise.

While the Trump administration has escalated this campaign, it was
university administrations that initiated it. They were the ones who
conflated anti-Zionism with antisemitism. They were the ones who
demonized student protesters. They were the ones who broke with
precedent and called in militarized police on students engaged in
nonviolent civil disobedience against a genocide. They were the ones
who denied students any meaningful avenues to enact democratic change.

In placing themselves in opposition to their students and aligning
themselves with state repression, universities abdicated their moral
and historical responsibilities—and, in the process, helped author
the Trumpist playbook they now claim to reject. Their belated
disavowals ring hollow. The irony—if we can call it that—is that
through their hypocrisy and collaboration, the universities helped sow
the seeds of their own destruction. Should they ultimately not survive
this sustained attack from Washington, their autopsy will read:
murder-suicide.

As an American and as a Jew, as a historian and as an educator, I know
where ethno-nationalism and militarism lead. I know the dangers of
criminalizing dissent, of bending education to the will of the state,
of deploying fear as a tool to silence voices of conscience.

Whatever stance our universities take, we will not be terrorized into
submission. We will continue the struggle for a more just and truly
democratic world—one centered on the inherent dignity and humanity
of all people. We will continue to raise our collective voice and
demonstrate our collective power with unwavering resolve. No to
fascism. No to genocide. No to imperialism. No to white supremacy. No
to xenophobia. No to deportation.

Not in my name. Not now. Not ever.

_ERIC ROSS is an organizer, educator, researcher, and PhD Candidate in
the History Department at the University of Massachusetts Amherst_

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_— Norman Solomon and Jeff Cohen, July 2021_

* Donald Trump
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* universities
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* student activism
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