The University of Southern California has canceled this year’s previously confirmed speech by class valedictorian Asna Tabassum. This outrageous act of suppression followed “complaints” from two Zionist campus groups over her social media support for the Palestinian people and her condemnation of Israel’s genocidal war against them. While the university cited vague “dangers,” Asna Tabassum has stated that she is 

Everyone who opposes the U.S.-Israeli genocide now being carried out against Palestinians in Gaza should unite strongly to demand that Asna Tabassum’s voice be heard. Everyone who supports freedom of expression must support this demand the same: SHE MUST BE HEARD!

To not stand with this demand is to support the 2,000-lb. bombs America sends to Israel to drop on defenseless Gazans. To not stand with this demand is to ignore the over 12,000 children—and that is a minimum number—who have been murdered by the U.S.-financed Israeli war, and the many thousands more now threatened with starvation. There is no middle ground. Everyone must demand: LET THE SPEECH BE HEARD!!

Why Is This Happening?

At the same time as we stand together to demand justice, there should be vigorous discussion and debate over WHY these things are happening and WHAT must be done to stop them. This is in fact only the latest in a massive wave of repression on campus, including the arrest of 20 students at Pomona College in Claremont last week, the firing of college presidents at Harvard and Penn, the suppression of pro-Palestinian student organizations at Columbia, Barnard, and other schools, etc.

In speaking of the repression now going on against pro-Palestinian students on U.S. campuses, the revolutionary communist leader Bob Avakian (BA) has said:

Why is this happening? Because fundamental interests of U.S. capitalism-imperialism are at stake. Because Israel plays a “special role” as a heavily armed bastion of support for U.S. imperialism in a strategically important part of the world (the “Middle East”). And Israel has been a key force in the commission of atrocities which have helped to maintain the oppressive rule of U.S. imperialism in many other parts of the world.

And this repression is happening because representatives of the ruling class in this country have a definite sense that if youth especially at “elite” universities begin to seriously question and act against what this system is doing—if the system “loses the allegiance” of large numbers of those students—that can be a big factor in creating a real crisis for the system as a whole, as happened in the 1960s: a crisis that, now more than ever, this system really cannot afford, when the whole country is already being torn apart by deep divisions, with bitter clashes right among the ruling powers. So, at the same time as they are bitterly divided, the ruling powers of this country are firmly united in their determination to punish and intimidate especially students at elite universities who have stepped forward to protest the genocidal slaughter of Palestinians. The ruling class is desperate to prevent opposition to its fundamental interests from spreading and involving masses of people, from all parts of society.

All this reveals, more “nakedly” than in “normal situations,” the actual dictatorship behind the outer shell of “democracy” of this country—and it shines a light on the strategic weakness of this system, when it does lose the allegiance of major sections of the people and this has the potential to spread to all parts of society, including among the dominant institutions of this system.