Power & Pushback: New report shows how anti-Palestine repression builds authoritarianism

We know that anti-Palestinian repression inevitably leads to wider crackdowns on the domestic population, but a new study breaks down the process.

Americans Muslims for Palestine (AMP) has just published, a comprehensive report entitled “How Anti-Palestinian Repression is Building Authoritarian Precedent in America.”

“Since the beginning of the second Trump presidential administration, the U.S. government has dramatically escalated campaigns to punish pro-Palestinian activism in ways that create templates and legal precedents for the suppression of immigrants and minorities across the country,” it explains. “Indeed, these attacks go beyond a chilling effect — they move to punish and criminalize protest of U.S. government policy wholesale. The Trump Administration has weaponized federal agencies and regulatory bodies—including the U.S. court system—and a GOP-dominated Congress to bolster the power of the Presidency and uphold unconstitutional moves to silence and disempower the interconnected struggles of Palestinian rights, immigrant rights, and racial justice.”

AMP maps out the federal attacks on students and administrators, the revocation of visas, the illegal detention of activists, and the threats to university funding.

Additionally, the group identifies key players who are enabling or enforcing anti-Palestinian repression. This includes Trump administration officials, pro-Israel organizations, social media platforms, and congress members.

The report also highlights some case studies connecting to university repression.

Here’s the entry for an honors Psychology student at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU):

• “Sereen Haddad, a 20-year-old Palestinian American, was part of campus activism at VCU to raise awareness about Palestinian oppression and the genocide in Gaza. She has lost more than 200 members of her extended family during the genocide. In April 2024, she and other students attempted to set up a visible solidarity encampment on VCU’s campus. But the same night, university administrators called police to remove the students. When students refused to leave the encampment, police pepper-sprayed and violently attacked the students, seizing their property and arresting 13. Haddad had to be taken to the hospital when police slammed her onto the concrete six times, causing injury to her head, bleeding, cuts, and bruises. She was arrested but not charged. Later, she helped to stage a peaceful memorial for the victims of genocide in Gaza. But because the university was quickly changing the rules around campus protests, the memorial was considered a violation of university protocols for student protest. She was then denied her degree after four years, even though her grades granted her highest honors.”

The AMP report concludes with a number of policy recommendations. The group calls for the notorious “Nonprofit Killer Bill” to be opposed along with the controversial IHRA working definition of antisemitism, and for BDS policies to be supported, among other things.

“What must also be clear among those working in immigrant justice, racial justice, social protections, and pro-democracy work more generally, is that the Palestine exception to free speech and other rights has only enabled the degradation of institutional foundations of all of these causes,” it concludes. “Just as racial and prison justice, along with immigrant justice, are the north stars of fidelity to American values, it can no longer stand that Palestinians, Muslims, or pro-Palestine advocates are excusable victims of state violence or media and institutional erasure. Authoritarian, anti-minority precedent is set by cases of anti-Palestinian suppression.”

Columbia pays $200 million to restore funding

Last month, Columbia University announced that it would pay $200 million to the Trump administration over allegations that the school violated anti-discrimination laws.

“This agreement marks an important step forward after a period of sustained federal scrutiny and institutional uncertainty,” said acting university President Claire Shipman in a statement.

Columbia is also set to pay $21 million to settle investigations brought by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, and it agreed to end the consideration of race in its admissions process.

The move comes months after the university agreed to a list of demands from the Trump administration, nearly all aimed at curbing pro-Palestine protest on campus. They include a ban on mask-wearing at protests, an increase campus security officers, and overhaul of the Middle East, South Asian and African Studies.

The move coincides with suspensions and expulsions for nearly 80 students connected to Gaza protests.

“Disruptions to academic activities are in violation of University policies and rules, and such violations will necessarily generate consequences,” declared the school.

At Mondoweiss, Tamara Turki details how student activists are regrouping in response to this wave of repression.

“It’s just this insane cognitive dissonance that we’re watching babies’ stomachs eat themselves from starvation in Gaza, and Columbia students are the ones on trial,” says one student.

Rashid Khalidi cancels course

Rashid Khalidi, the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia, says he’s withdrawing from teaching his fall course over the agreement.

“I regret deeply that Columbia’s decisions have obliged me to deprive the nearly 300 students who have registered for this popular course – as many hundreds of others have done for more than two decades – of the chance to learn about the history of the modern Middle East this fall,” wrote Khalidi in a piece at The Guardian. “Although I cannot do anything to compensate them fully for depriving them of the opportunity to take this course, I am planning to offer a public lecture series in New York focused on parts of this course that will be streamed and available for later viewing. Proceeds, if any, will go to Gaza’s universities, every one of which has been destroyed by Israel with US munitions, a war crime about which neither Columbia nor any other US university has seen fit to say a single word.”

“Columbia’s capitulation has turned a university that was once a site of free inquiry and learning into a shadow of its former self, an anti-university, a gated security zone with electronic entry controls, a place of fear and loathing, where faculty and students are told from on high what they can teach and say, under penalty of severe sanctions,” he continued. “Disgracefully, all of this is being done to cover up one of the greatest crimes of this century, the ongoing genocide in Gaza, a crime in which Columbia’s leadership is now fully complicit.”

In an interview with Democracy Now, Khalidi was specifically asked about acting university President Claire Shipman, who has defended the deal.

Khalidi:

I think she’s acting as a mouthpiece for what I call this fifth column within the Board of Trustees, within the donor community and among the few senior faculty in the professional schools, for whom any critique of Israel is unacceptable, certainly many critiques of Israel are unacceptable, and any or many critiques of Zionism are unacceptable.

I don’t think that the values of Columbia include a government-appointed monitor from a company that in June celebrated Israel’s independence, or celebrated Israel, to be able to go into classrooms, to be able to go into meetings, to be able to harvest our data. If that’s the value that Columbia stands for, it’s a Stasi value. It’s a dictatorial value, where the government appoints a monitor to check on what is happening inside an independent, private university. What values are protected by the IHRA definition? The only value that’s being protected is Israel’s impunity as it commits genocide.

There are many other — there are many other aspects of the settlement, the appointment of a special provost, a vice provost. Why does Middle East studies require scrutiny? What’s wrong with what’s being taught at Columbia? These are enormously popular courses. They represent the scholarship of a vast array of people, not just the people teaching at Columbia. They represent, basically, the most respected scholarship in the field. There’s no need for a vice provost to supervise Middle East studies at Columbia, any more than there’s a need for it to supervise — this is intended, by the way, to go further and to cover other area studies. And undoubtedly, as the Trump administration squeezes and squeezes, we’ll be talking about race, we’ll be talking about gender, we’ll be talking about Columbia’s expansion into Harlem at the expense of the local community. Those things are going to be verboten. You’re not going to be allowed to speak about race, you’re not going to be allowed to speak about gender, just as you’re soon not going to be allowed to speak about — you’re now not allowed, under these rules, to speak about certain aspects of Israel and Zionism.

Some have pointed out that Columbia’s actions can’t be construed as “capitulation,” as the administration was targeting pro-Palestine students before Trump ever assumed office.

“We have to retire the framing ‘capitulation to the Trump admin,’ ESPECIALLY in the context of Columbia. Trump is providing a Bad Cop to university admins’ Good Cop in a coordinated assault on Palestine solidarity,” tweeted media critic Adam Johnson. “Columbia donors and execs largely agree with Trump on this.”

Further Reading

• The Guardian: How will police respond to rally against Palestine Action ban?
• New York Times: Gaza War Protesters Arrested at Offices of Schumer and Gillibrand
• Center for Constitutional Rights: Federal Appeals Court Denies Trump Administration Bid to Re-detain Mahmoud Khalil
• Jerusalem Post: UN’s Francesca Albanese loses ‘blue check’ verification on X amid coming US sanctions
• Reuters: US reverses pledge to link disaster funds to Israel boycott stance
• NPR: What we know about Columbia’s $221 million settlement with the Trump administration
• Al Jazeera: From Amazon to the Gaza flotilla – the journey of an activist
• PEN America claims to support free speech, but fired me for speaking about Palestine
• U.S. union leader Chris Smalls released by Israel after abduction from aid flotilla