Media Roundup: Palestine Legal's 50% Increase in Requests for Legal Support Last Year
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Palestine Legal received over 2,000 requests for legal support last year, a 55% increase from 2023, and a 600% increase from 2022. About two-thirds of reports of people targeted for their Palestine-related advocacy that Palestine Legal received in 2024 were campus-related, including over 100 reports at K-12 institutions.
This data is part of our 2024 report, “A New Generation for Liberation: Historic Student Protests Defy University Crackdowns.” The report, published in April 2025, came as the Trump administration threatens and implements sweeping actions against Palestine protestors on college campuses, including deportations, federal investigations, and withholding hundreds of millions in funding from universities.
The report demonstrates how universities and other institutions helped lay the groundwork for Trump's supercharged attacks on political speech that defies his agenda. It details major trends in repression on campuses and beyond, including brutal police crackdowns, floods of university disciplinary cases against students, faculty and staff, as well as high rates of employment discrimination and retaliation for people speaking out in their workplace, doxing, harassment, physical violence against Palestinians and allies, and more.
“A New Generation for Liberation” also highlights stories of resilience where student activists across the US have defied university crackdowns and other attempts to silence their activism for Palestine.
Below is a media roundup of the top 5 stories citing Palestine Legal’s new report from outlets including The Guardian, Mondoweiss, and American Community Media.
The Guardian
They staged protests for Palestine. The consequences have been life-changing | April 26
“A majority of students who are contacting us for support are either Palestinian, Arab Muslim or other students of color,” said the advocacy group Palestine Legal’s staff attorney, Tori Porell. Additionally, low-income students or those who rely on financial aid are hardest hit by disciplinary actions, she said: “Students who live on campus might rely on campus meal plans. If they are abruptly suspended, they are losing access to housing, to their food, to healthcare, and they might not have funds to just fly home the way some students with more resources would.”
In 2024, Palestine Legal received more than 2,000 requests for legal assistance, with about two-thirds coming from students, staff or faculty on college campuses.
The Guardian
Hope as US universities find ‘backbone’ against Trump’s assault on education | April 27
“In order to give any meaning to free speech, academic freedom, equal rights, and the pursuit of truth and justice, universities have to make drastic changes to their conduct over the last year and a half,” said Tori Porell, an attorney at Palestine Legal, which has represented many students facing universities’ disciplinary action and in the last year received more than 2,000 requests for legal support. “That very conduct has put them and their students and faculty in danger. If universities are serious about standing up to Trump and putting their words into action, they will provide meaningful protection for their students, faculty, and staff.”
Mondoweiss
Power & Pushback: Trump blinks on student visas, Harvard | April 29
Trump has obviously launched an unprecedented assault on the Palestine solidarity movement, but the groundwork for the crackdown was laid before he regained power.
Palestine Legal’s 2024 year-in-review, which the organization just released, covers some of those details.
The report shows that the group received more than 2,000 requests for legal support last year. That’s a 55% increase from 2023, and a 600% increase from 2022.
Roughly two-thirds of the requests were campus-related, and 580 of them were connected to university disciplinary actions, five times more than such requests from the previous year.
101 cases occurred at the K-12 level, 162 concerned terminations, 255 involved doxxing, and 107 were connected to physical violence or the threat of physical violence.
“Trump’s extreme and authoritarian tactics, including abducting and deporting international students because of their protected speech and advocacy for Palestinian rights, are a desperate attempt to silence a movement that is successfully shifting public opinion to oppose US support for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza,” said Palestine Legal Executive Director Dima Khalidi in a statement. “The report underscores how racism against Palestinians was at the core of the widespread crackdown on student activists, and how it paved the path for Trump’s wild overreaches. But it also shows how at every turn, students and other activists have continued to defy the crackdowns to make their voices heard about an urgent moral crisis.”
The Guardian
More than 1,000 US students punished over speech since 2020, report finds | May 15
The disciplining of students over pro-Palestinian speech, and the flurry of new restrictions universities introduced following last year’s protests, set a dangerous precedent, advocates warn.
Such policies “are now on the books and available to be used against speech critical of environmental policy, racial justice, or really anything college administrators or the politicians exerting pressure upon them don’t like,” said Tori Porell, a staff attorney at Palestine Legal. In a report published in April, the group, which supports pro-Palestinian speech in the US, saw a 55% increase in requests for help in 2024 over 2023, and a 600% increase over 2022. Two-thirds of the requests came from university campuses.
American Community Media
Pro-Palestine Students Dig in Despite Government, University Crackdowns | May 27
Palestine Legal, a nationwide organization providing legal resources to student activists, is reporting that they received over 2,000 requests for legal support in the last year—nearly double the number they received in 2023. For context, in 2022, they received only 290 requests for legal support.
Nearly two-thirds of all reports were campus-related, from people targeted for their Palestine-related advocacy, including over 100 reports at K-12 schools.
2024 also saw a significant increase in incidents related to federal investigations and sanctions targeting university administration—Palestine Legal received over 580 such reports, more than five times the year prior.