With words they try to jail us: US universities are not citadels of freedom

Universities in the United States have been especially repressive over the past year. Several like Columbia University and New York University have redefined protests against the state of Israel and its founding ideology Zionism as acts of anti-Semitism. Campus after campus brought in law enforcement to have their own students, faculty, and staff arrested and charged for demanding an end to Israel’s genocide in Gaza and ever expanding illegal occupation of Palestinian territory. Many universities denied graduating students their degrees and suspended, expelled, or threatened to expel students for their participation in protests.

It wasn’t as if universities in the US had been tolerant of mass protests in the past. Universities called the cops on their students back in the 1960’s and 1970’s when they staged sit-ins for civil rights or protested against America’s war in Vietnam as well. In May 1970, the US National Guard killed four student protesters and wounded nine others at Kent State University in Ohio. That same month, two students were also killed and 12 others wounded by local law enforcement at Jackson State University in Mississippi.