Back to School? Top 3 Ways Trump & Universities are Bulldozing Your Right to Protest.
/September 9, 2025 — Since taking office, Trump has put into action a right-wing playbook to dismantle the Palestine movement. Universities have been a key target – and most of have complied with Trump’s demands by intensifying their punishments of student speech and protests.
Students are being surveilled, investigated, suspended, arrested, and threatened with deportation all for support of Palestinian freedom or criticism of Israel. In many places, universities have become unrecognizable fortresses with extreme police and security presence to crack down on protests.
All of this is being done to crush any resistance to the US-Israel genocide in Gaza, a crime in which many university leaders are now fully complicit.
While universities across the country have rapidly bulldozed the right to protest and free expression on campuses, students, faculty, and community members have also been successfully fighting back.
These attacks on the right to protest harm not only the movement for Palestinian freedom, but also all movements for justice. Likewise, funneling tuition dollars into militarized campus policing shrinks civic space for all students and faculty, especially working class, Black, Indigenous, and other historically marginalized groups impacted by racist state violence.
Universities need to fulfill their mission as centers of learning and free expression — not turn their students, faculty, and staff into prime targets for fascist government repression to cover up their complicity in a genocide.
The ruling establishment invests millions in repression of the student movement for Palestine because they fear its power and influence over the broader public. However, despite their attempts to control the narrative, the tide is turning. Millions are continuing to rise up for Palestinian freedom.
“While today these attacks are focused on the Palestine movement, by giving in to the demands of the Trump administration and enacting ever more restrictive speech policies, universities are rapidly destroying everyone’s right to protest on campus,” said Palestine Legal senior staff attorney Tori Porell.
“There is nothing preventing universities and the extensions of the police state they are investing in from using the same policies and tactics against any other movement, whether that is students advocating for immigrants’ rights, racial justice, the environment, or expressing any criticism of the university or the government.”
Here are the top three ways we are seeing universities intensify their crackdowns on campus activism, and ways they’re being challenged:
Universities nationwide are expanding law enforcement to crush protests – including unprecedented partnerships with ICE.
In April 2025, Inside Higher Ed reported at least 15 Florida public universities have signed agreements with ICE, giving campus police the power to question and detain undocumented immigrants. Immigration experts have told Inside Higher Ed these are likely the first agreements of their kind. Students and faculty have protested the agreements, including multiple Florida faculty senates that have voted in favor of canceling the partnerships.
In June 2025, The Guardian revealed that the University of Michigan paid over $800,000 to a private security company to surveil pro-Palestine campus groups. The undercover agents trailed students on and off campus, harassed them, and even staged confrontations, including faking a disability to falsely accuse them of theft. But after the Guardian exposé and public outcry, UofM cancelled the undercover surveillance contracts.
2. Universities are enforcing new anti-free speech policies with severe sanctions for protest.
In May 2025, Sereen Haddad, a Palestinian American student at Virginia Commonwealth University, was denied her degree for participating in an April 2025 memorial commemorating violent police arrests at VCU’s 2024 student encampment. This punishment came after VCU introduced a new policy in fall 2024 banning protests on the lawn, a prominent space in the heart of campus, after Republican Attorney General Jason Miyares denounced the spring 2024 encampments and asked universities to instate harsher rules. Sereen had her degree restored after an appeal, a successful pressure campaign, and representation from Palestine Legal.
As of August 2025, UCLA is pursuing disciplinary proceedings against students accused of being involved in the pro-Palestinian encampment more than a year earlier, including continuing to withhold a number of student diplomas. Even though campus protesters were the ones viciously attacked by a pro-Israel mob during the encampment, UCLA has so far issued suspensions for 5 students, censured 7 lecturers and librarians, and fired a respected and beloved lecturer and theologian all for exercising their right to free speech and demanding divestment from genocide according to Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA. Palestine Legal continues to actively work on these discipline cases. UCLA community members have also filed the largest civil rights lawsuit to date in response to anti-Palestinian repression. To learn more about the case and follow future updates, go to peoplevucla.com.
3. Universities are bending the knee to the Trump administration and enforcing the Israel Lobby definition of antisemitism to investigate and censor pro-Palestine speech.
Starting this school year, in response to Trump administration threats to pull funding, The Guardian exposed that a wave of universities implementing mandatory “antisemitism” trainings designed by Israel lobby groups like the ADL. The Guardian reviewed training materials and found that their overarching message is that criticism of Israel or Zionism is antisemitic. In one example at Northwestern University, the training asks students to attribute the statement ‘every time I read Hitler, I fall in love’ to an ‘anti-Israel activist’. Meanwhile, the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers’ union, voted to cut ties with the ADL due to its abuse of the term “antisemitism” to punish critics of Israel’s human rights violations.
In July 2025, Columbia University announced it would further repress pro-Palestinian student activism by adopting the distorted IHRA definition of antisemitism and partnering with the ADL. The announcement came after months of negotiations with the Trump administration to restore $400 million in funding the government terminated. Students, civil rights and legal experts including Palestine Legal condemned the new policies, noting that Columbia is “agreeing to operate like an arm of the state to censor and punish speech the Trump admin doesn’t like”. Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University, withdrew his fall course from the university in protest.
Palestine Legal has also seen many examples of universities investigating pro-Palestinian students, due to complaints from students who oppose Palestinian rights. In June, a university found that one of our clients had NOT engaged in antisemitism, after a months-long investigation of an incident where a pro-Israel student had been filming her without her consent, in an attempt to dox her. One pro-Israel student penned an op-ed in The Times of Israel admitting to reporting fellow students and faculty for antisemitism, arguing they shouldn’t be allowed to “share campus” grounds. Due to the nature of such complaints, students fear speaking out publicly about them. An anonymous Palestine Legal client notes that the investigations “have attempted to isolate and villainize the conscious student class from the larger college community, but we carry with us the steadfast Palestinian spirit. We know it's our duty to fight the fight for Palestinian liberation in the belly of the beast and we have a duty to win.” If you are facing an investigation over your pro-Palestine speech, contact Palestine Legal!