Even with most colleges out of session, the powerful wave of protests against Israel’s U.S.-enabled genocide in Gaza on campuses has continued—in the face of relentless slander, attacks, and brutal repression from the highest levels of government, Congress, university administrations, police, and other institutions.

With the horrific slaughter in Gaza escalating, students, faculty, and others are finding bold and creative ways to seize openings and continue the struggle. 

Just this past week, police violently assaulted and pepper-sprayed graduating protesters—outside the University of Chicago’s commencement ceremony! Nonviolent solidarity encampments were broken up and torn down at Wayne State University and UC Santa Cruz (where 80 were arrested). Meanwhile, university officials at the University of Chicago, Stanford, Harvard and elsewhere have banned graduating students from taking part in commencement ceremonies because they protested Israel’s Gaza genocide. 

The repression isn’t just targeting students. Universities are going after faculty sympathetic to their students and/or the Palestinian cause as well. To take one example, this past week San Jose State University suspended Professor Sang Hea Kil, the co-chair of the California Faculty Association's Palestine, Arab and Muslim Caucus. The university’s excuse: she told students to “follow their conscience” in deciding how to respond to the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza, and then later refused to counsel them to take down their encampment!

This kind of repression, which has been happening week after week, across the country and against nonviolent protesters, underscores the importance of the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian’s analysis of the real reasons driving it. As Bob Avakian (BA) lays out in his social media dispatch REVOLUTION #27, this repression is happening now:

…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.

The students have not backed down—and not accepted this repression as legitimate. Instead, it has sparked more anger, protest, and determination, and spread the movement to broader segments of society. 

This past week, 12,000 academic workers in the University of California system are now striking—not for wages and benefits, but for amnesty for protesters and against attacks on free speech and academic freedom. (This strike was sparked, in large part, by the violent April 30-May 1 pro-Israel mob attack on UCLA’s encampment, and then the police attack on it a day later.) And there is a debate taking place within the union about whether the demands should be for all-out divestment, with some arguing that there should be “no school while genocide is happening!” This is bringing new layers of the campus community, in particular graduate students, more directly into the struggle. 

It’s also significant that anti-genocide protesters have come back against repression by coming up with creative new tactics that capture the imagination. When Stanford, Harvard, the University of Chicago and other schools have banned students from graduations, protesters have turned that into another front of protest—including at the graduation ceremonies themselves! At Harvard, protesters walked out of commencement chanting “Let them walk,” referring to 13 students prevented from graduating as punishment for protesting genocide.

As the unimaginable nightmare taking place in Gaza grows even darker and more horrific, the system’s repression and the complicity of the universities and government stand out ever more sharply. This is deepening the anger, distrust, and disgust that many students and faculty feel for these “hallowed” institutions. “Your hands are red, 45 thousand dead and you’re arresting us instead?” students chanted as police assaulted them at Wayne State.

At Stanford, a demonstrator denounced the university’s focus on punishing students for protesting “one of the most horrific massacres that we’ve seen” instead of “actually doing anything about it… so, so disgusting.” Another, a Palestinian American, called seeing children killed and burned in Rafah “just devastating,” and criticized Stanford for turning a “blind eye” to these horrors. “The longer it goes, the more disappointing the silence and inaction the University is showing,” he said. “It’s reflective of broader silence within this country, which the government is leading by example.”

The self-sacrificing example protesters are setting—putting their bodies, and their futures, on the line—is something everyone needs to learn from. 

Here is more about some of what's above:

UC Santa Cruz, Police Break Up Encampment, Arrest 80 Protesters: Early in the morning on May 31, over 100 riot police from agencies across the Bay Area stormed some 150 pro-Palestinian demonstrators as they blocked the main entrance to the UCSC campus. At least 80 were arrested and their encampment, which had been in place since May 1, was torn down. One protester defiantly chanted. “UC, UC, you can’t hide, you’re committing genocide.” Another said, “Our side did not initiate the aggression. We are peacefully protesting against a genocide. This display of power shows they are scared of us and the truth.” 

At this writing, even with school ending, protests are continuing at various campuses, including Stanford, where on May 29, some 100 students marched against Israel’s attack on Rafah and the University’s banning of an anti-genocide activist. Over 500 students and faculty have signed a petition demanding charges be dropped against the banned protester. 

Wayne State University, “Your Hands Are Red, 45,000 Dead and You’re Arresting Us Instead?!”: Early in the morning of May 30, university and Detroit police stormed and broke up a Gaza Solidarity encampment which had been in place since May 23. A number of people were brutalized and 12 were arrested. Afterward students and supporters marched around campus and protested outside the Detroit Detention Center where those arrested were being held. “The use of excessive force on students by police in riot gear are indefensible," a spokesperson for the Dearborn-based American Human Rights Council said.

University of Toronto, Canada, Protesters Defy Deadline to Disband Encampment: In the face of threats of arrest, students at Canada’s largest university are refusing to dismantle their 175-tent, month-long encampment. One Jewish professor calls the encampment, named “The People’s Circle for Palestine,” a “precious learning space” bringing students together. “We have maybe never seen our campus be so alive with the spirit of debate, of creative thought, of rigorous conversation and dialogue,” she told Democracy Now!

“We know what we’re doing is just,” said Mohammad Yassin a Palestinian student with family in Gaza. “And all of us are willing to stand our ground no matter what happens…. [People in Gaza are] watching our encampment very closely, actually. They send us letters that are heartbreaking. You know, anytime I read them, I quite literally can’t stop crying. The sentiment is shared by everybody in the camp who I read these letters to…. My family in particular, you know, they’ve had to eat leaves and grass because they have no food to eat. You know, they’ve had to wake up every single day under bombardment. Their children are terrified constantly. They’ve lost all of their innocence. They can’t even live normally day to day. Yet we’re expected to sit here and just watch. You know, we can’t do that.”

Protesters at Portland State University, Oregon Demand Ties Cut to Bomb-Maker Boeing: The campus has seen weeks of protests against the U.S.-Israeli genocide in Gaza, including a dramatic days-long occupation of the university’s library. On May 23, about 30 protesters marched on the campus main administration building and two chained themselves to its doors. They were set upon by campus and Portland police, who threw some demonstrators to the ground, violently threatened others, and arrested seven. 

The next day, the university president met with protesters and reportedly agreed to some of their demands, but students remained defiant and are planning more protests. Their demands include Portland State cutting ties with companies supplying military equipment to Israel. This includes Boeing, which manufactured the GBU-39 bomb, used in the deadly May 26 Israeli strike that incinerated a refugee tent camp in Rafah, burning 45 Palestinians to death and wounding hundreds more. 

There have been protests at a number of other campuses in Oregon, including the University of Oregon in Eugene, where students recently ended their three-week-long encampment.