The academic battle against Trump calls for unity

In 1931, the wife of a United Mine Workers organizer was terrorized in Harlan County, Kentucky, by Sheriff John H. Blair and his henchmen, who worked for the local mining company. The woman, Florence Reece, in response wrote the memorable song “Which Side Are You On?”

Reece included the lyric: “They say in Harlan County/There are no neutrals there/You’ll either be a union man/Or a thug for J. H. Blair.”

Academics today face a similar fight. There can be no neutrals among them in the battle against today’s thug, Donald J. Trump. And yet, we are seeing splits, with some laboring to stay away from the fray, unable to overcome differences they have with other academics to unite against a common enemy.

Today’s major cleaving isn’t a matter of labor vs. management, of miners versus the company. Instead, the battle is joined over Zionism and antisemitism, and it pits supporters of the First Amendment and academic freedom against Trump Administration overreach and the pretext of antisemitism the anti-“woke” president is using.

Troublingly, some of the least popular people on American campuses — especially at elite schools — are carrying the water for the rest at the moment. And that could cede the fight to Trump.

Consider a new lawsuit brought by the American Association of University Professors and local AAUP chapters at Harvard, Rutgers and NYU, as well as the Middle East Studies Association. The case, in which Columbia University’s Knight First Amendment Institute is providing legal counsel, is aimed at stopping Trump’s “large-scale arrests, detentions, and deportations of noncitizen students and faculty who participate in pro-Palestinian protests and other related expression and association (the ‘ideological-deportation policy’).”

The complaint points to administration actions such as the arrests of Columbia graduate Mahmoud Khalil, the revocation of permanent legal status for Columbia student Yunseo Chung, the arrest of Georgetown University postdoctoral fellow Badar Khan Suri, the persecution of Cornell University doctoral candidate Momodou Taal, which led to his self-deportation, and other student visa revocations. The common denominator: the targeted students all protested the Gaza War, backing Palestinians.

As Secretary of State Marco Rubio warned in early March on X: “We will be revoking the visas and/or green cards of Hamas supporters in America so they can be deported.” But is Rubio, a lapdog for Trump, really attacking Hamas supporters?

The AAUP-MESA lawsuit assails that Hamas contention. It argues that administration officials “have stretched that label beyond the breaking point to encompass any speech supportive of Palestinian human rights or critical of Israel’s military actions in Gaza.”

By contrast, the suit notes that demonstrators, including some Jews, had varying motivations. While some backed Hamas or damned Zionism, others just called for peace.

“Many of the pro-Palestinian protests included calls for a ceasefire and for humanitarian aid to displaced or wounded Palestinians,” the complaint says. “Others centered on calls for institutional divestment from Israel. Many included criticism or condemnation of Israel’s campaign in Gaza; and some included denunciations of Zionism.”

To be sure, many thoughtful people hold that the protestors were way off base. Certainly, they would have been better served to call on Hamas to lay down its arms and seek peaceful coexistence; clearly the simplest, fairest and least bloody solution. For various reasons — mostly bad ones discussed in other Substack pieces — the demonstrators didn’t see it that way, though.

Whether they were wrongheaded or misguided, however, those protestors were within their rights to speak their minds lawfully on campuses. And whether they were citizens or not, they remain protected by our First Amendment while they are here.

And, surely, there should be agreement among academic organizations in supporting academic freedom and those First Amendment rights.

Much as Jewish members of the American Civil Liberties Union such as David Goldberger decades ago supported the right of Nazis to march in Skokie, Illinois, so should campus groups such as Hillel and Columbia’s Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies join in lawsuits such as the AAUP-MESA case. If they don’t sign on as plaintiffs or file amicus briefs, the could at least offer intellectual support for the principles involved.

Instead, the Middle East Studies Association — an organization many rightly find repugnant because of its calls for boycotting Israeli academics — is standing alone among non-AAUP professional associations in this lawsuit. Where is the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, a group founded by a Princeton scholar in 2007 as a reaction to the anti-Israel bent of MESA? Yes, these rival groups are riven by deep differences, but do they not share a commitment to academic freedom and open discussion?

And none should miss the bigger picture here. The lack of a united front can only weaken all academic institutions in this fight.

Surely, all academics should decry the atmosphere of fear and intimidation that the Trump Administration is spawning in its intellectually bankrupt attack on “wokeness” at universities. Even as schools such as Columbia must root out antisemitism that darkens too many departments there, they should not bow to Trumpian financial extortion.

Columbia may or may not get back the $400 million in cut federal funds because of its genuflection to Trump, but the bully surely won’t relent, finding other ways to hound the school (note that he drove out the latest interim president, Dr. Katrina Armstrong). Emboldened by Columbia’s submission, he’s now threatening to withdraw billions in funding at Harvard and Princeton. In reaction, all such institutions should unite to fight him in the courts, not succumb to being picked off one by one.

As the president of Princeton, Christopher Eisgruber, wrote in The Atlantic, the government’s assault on Columbia presents “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.” He urged universities to speak up in defense of their rights.

“Every citizen and officeholder who cares about the strength of our country must also care about free speech, self-governing thought, and the untrammeled quest for knowledge,” Eisgruber wrote.

Just how bad are things on some campuses now? Take note of the claims in the AAUP-MESA suit. Academics avoid open discussion of Middle East matters for fear of retaliation, the suit maintains. The Trump policy, it says, “is accomplishing its purpose: it is terrorizing students and faculty for their exercise of First Amendment rights in the past, intimidating them from exercising those rights now, and silencing political viewpoints that the government disfavors.”

The suit provides several examples, including:

Noncitizen students of City University of New York history professor Beth Baron fear leaving the U.S. for research because they may be unable to return. Some who teach avoid discussion of Israel, Palestine and U.S. foreign policy for fear of deportation. At Columbia, a noncitizen organizer of a longstanding online community shut down the channel for fear of jeopardizing the status of noncitizen members. English and comparative literature associate professor Patricia Dailey says this denies her of access to information about the region and the university.

Another associate professor at Columbia, classics scholar Joseph Howley, last spring criticized the university for arresting student demonstrators and he now finds noncitizen graduate student instructors shunning his regular teaching sessions in fear. And a Rutgers English professor, David Kurnick, avoids publicly discussing the Middle East with noncitizen students and he limits his communications with noncitizens to in-person chats, all because he doesn’t want to endanger them.

With these and other detailed cases, the suit paints a picture akin to the darkest days of McCarthyism, an atmosphere that differs little from the repression once common in the old Eastern bloc. Back then, academics and others were forced into samizdat, secretly recording and distributing government-forbidden literature. Will that sort of system arise anew in the United States as Trump assaults more and more freedoms?

There’s no question that many Jewish students at Columbia and other universities lived in unacceptable fear of anti-semitism. And there’s no question that the pathology must be rooted out in every academic department polluted by it. Moreover, the best tack for the schools to take is to require protesting students to take coursework that would inform them fully about Middle East history, so they can understand how Israel has long been victimized.

But trading one fear for another is not the answer. And neither is allowing Trump to win by dividing those who should unite behind larger common aims.

By picking off his targets one by one, Trump prevails against some and weakens all — just look at how he has divided big law firms. Even as they differ on other important things, academic groups should stand shoulder to shoulder in supporting principles they can agree on.

Indeed, there can be no neutrals in this fight. That’s the way the bully in the White House wins.