Campuses are reopening for the fall semester. But this is not the same university. Over the summer, university administrations enacted massive and unprecedented restrictions on protest, speech, and critical thinking itself. This is in direct response to the just upsurge of students, supported by many faculty, against Israel's genocide in Gaza backed by U.S. imperialism. It is an attempt to prevent a new round of struggle and to impose new norms of academic life (see “NAZI-fication of Universities Escalates Under Banner of Combating Anti-Semitism”).

At many campuses across the country, students opened the semester with pro-Palestine protests. But this is happening under these new repressive conditions. Here we call attention to a threatening situation facing a noted feminist scholar-faculty member at Columbia University in New York City, and to a creative rebuke by some Harvard professors to that administration's clampdown on political expression.

1. At Columbia, an Attempt to Silence and Dismiss an Outspoken Professor

At Columbia University, as at other universities, a number of professors have been targeted not only for standing with student encampments and demands, but also for promoting critical engagement in the classroom with concepts of “settler colonialism” and Zionism as an ultra-nationalist, supremacist ideology serving Israel's historic dispossession of the homeland of the Palestinian people and their continuing subjugation.

Katherine Franke, the Director of the Center for Gender and Sexuality Law, member of the executive committee of the Center for Palestine Studies at Columbia, and a staunch supporter of the student protests is now facing possible firing for comments she made on a Democracy Now! broadcast earlier this year.

Franke had talked about the ratcheting up of repression on campus. She pointed out that some former members of the Israeli Defense Force (the military-occupation forces carrying out the current slaughter against the Palestinian people) who are now exchange students at Columbia have been known to harass Palestinian and other students—and that some of these exchange students were involved in a chemical spraying of pro-Palestinian students at a Columbia campus protest in January. 

The MAGA-fascist Congressional committee investigating campus protest this past academic year explicitly denounced Professor Franke and demanded that disciplinary action be taken against her. The Columbia president at the time, Minouche Shafik, assured the committee that this was happening. Things took a further leap after Franke's Democracy Now! interview. Two Columbia professors filed an “anti-discrimination” complaint against Franke for creating what they charged was a “hostile environment” for Israeli students. The lie that has been spread is that Franke made anti-Semitic statements against Israeli students. Which she did not!

The moves against Franke are part of the ideological offensive spearheaded by the fascists, and carried out with the active (and increasingly virulent) complicity of many liberal university administrations, to equate anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism. It is a major pretext to squelch pro-Palestinian protest, and put new limits on curriculum and teaching—which Franke has been exposing. The Columbia administration is conducting an “investigation” of (against) Franke. The threat of dismissal hangs over her head, and she has had to take on legal representation to fight her case.

It is extremely important that people, on and off campus, stand with Franke and not allow the university to fire her. 

2. Five Professors at Harvard Publicly Defy New Campus Restrictions

Harvard University's crackdown on campus protest includes a ban on “unauthorized posters and chalking.” On opening day of the semester, five professors—among them a historian, a medical-school professor, and a classics scholar—defied the order. They colorfully chalked the site of last spring's encampment in support of Palestine. They displayed posters in front of the university's landmark statue. One of their chalking messages read: “Welcome Students, Ask Why Chalking Is Banned.” Others included: “Caution: Chalk Is Dangerous” and “The Long Chalk to Freedom.” 

These defiant professors have set a very good “instructional” example! 

***

As the genocide in Gaza continues and the system strikes back at protest, this is a time to come back stronger on the campuses. To step up the fight to stop this slaughter. To take on repression and prevent the all-out Nazi-fication of the university—when it needs to be even more of a hotbed of resistance and ferment in society.