As Trump Takes Office, Punishments for Pro-Palestine Protests Escalate
/CONTACT: Danya Zituni, media@palestinelegal.org
With reports that the Trump administration is plotting a whole-of-government crackdown on pro-Palestine campus demonstrators and other orders that could devastate higher education, Palestine Legal has received a recent wave of reports from students across the country confronting a new level of repression for pro-Palestine protests.
These reports of repression from students also follow a recent trend where scores of American universities have adopted new university policies of “institutional neutrality” with lightning speed, often in response to student and faculty organizing in solidarity with Palestinians.
Palestine Legal believes that these incidents paint a clear picture of a heightened campaign of repression against pro-Palestine students where extreme and police-enforced sanctions of year-long suspensions or evictions without justification – punishments more commonly reserved for students accused of toting an assault rifle to campus – represent a collapse of due process and threaten the future of the right to protest on campuses:
At the University of Chicago: Mamayan Jabateh, a queer, Black, low-income Chicagoan from the Southside and fourth-year Resident Advisor at the University of Chicago was forcibly evicted by police from their dorm room on December 11th, 2024 over participation in a pro-Palestine protest this fall – where UChicago’s private police force pepper-sprayed students and city police attacked protestors with batons. Jabateh is now awaiting court proceedings and a disciplinary trial with the university, and in the meantime has been barred from campus under the threat of arrest without justification. This incident follows a pattern of severe discrimination against Palestinian and associated students outlined in a lengthy Title VI complaint filed with the Dept of Education.
At New York University: Nadine Fattaleh, a Palestinian PhD student in the Department of Media, Culture, and Communication at New York University, was suspended for a year for simply being in the library on December 11, 2024, during a nonviolent protest. Ten other students were also suspended, with more likely to follow. This draconian case of collective punishment follows widespread public condemnation of NYU’s arrests and declaration of two tenured faculty members as Personae Non-Gratae, where none of the campus procedures for disciplinary action of faculty were followed. UPDATE: As of January 28th, Nadine has been unsuspended on appeal, but remains on disciplinary probation. 13 students at NYU are still suspended.
At the University of Minnesota: Rowan Lange is one of seven UMN students who are now facing up to two and half years of suspension in the new year and $5,000 in alleged damages without evidence, months after being arrested during the October 21, 2024 occupation of Morrill Hall (renamed Halimy Hall).
University administrators should resist pressure to erode academic freedom and free speech, and defend the rights of students and academic workers to speak up for freedom and justice — not only for Palestinians, but also for all people threatened by the Trump administration.
Contact us at media@palestinelegal.org to speak with Mamayan, Nadine, or Rowan and their Palestine Legal attorneys.