Genocide rages on, but it’s business as usual at the neoliberal university

Israel’s genocide in Gaza continues without an end in sight. Settler violence and frequent military raids have left Palestinian communities in the occupied West Bank fearing a similar fate. Meanwhile, Lebanon has become a new battleground where dozens of civilians are killed each day.

As a result, with the beginning of a new academic year, protests in support of Palestinians and against Israeli aggression across the region have returned to university campuses in the United States.

Once again, student protesters are calling for a ceasefire and an end to occupation, and to achieve these goals, they are asking their institutions to urgently divest from Israel.

In the spring, university leaders made it clear that they would not negotiate with Palestine solidarity activists. Rather than listening to their students, they invited the police on campus to violently dismantle their encampments. Dozens of students faced censure, suspension and even criminal charges for demanding that their institutions end their complicity in Israel’s war crimes and illegal occupation of Palestinian territory.

When protests returned to campus in September, it became apparent that there has not been a change in the position of university leaders over the summer.

Rather than reflecting on their actions that objectively harmed students and stifled their right to free speech and assembly, most of them seem to have spent the summer devising new strategies and campus policies to better suppress protests and minimise their impact on the everyday function of their institutions.

Take New York City’s Columbia University.

After President Minouche Shafik’s resignation in mid-August over her dismal handling of the Gaza solidarity encampments, the university appears to be determined to put a lid on things this fall.

Access to campus is now limited to individuals with university IDs and prearranged visitors. There are extra private security officers standing guard at various entry points. Green spaces on campus have been fenced off, and encampments are prohibited.

The university’s protest guidelines have also been revised. They now require that the university receive prior notification “of any scheduled protests”. The guidelines also prohibit any protests that “pose ‘a genuine threat of harassment’ or ‘substantially inhibit the primary purposes’ of university space”.

The Columbia University- affiliated Barnard College, meanwhile, put out new guidelines that prohibit faculty from putting up signs on their office doors “supporting a geopolitical viewpoint or perspective”. They are also required to speak about the opposing perspective (ie both sides) if they choose to publicly express support for a particular political perspective.

As it would be expected in light of these new policies and guidelines, the fall semester began with New York City police officers arresting two Columbia student protesters who were at a campus demonstration calling for the university to divest from companies that have ties to Israel. The students were “held on suspicion of misdemeanours”, and they received tickets “ordering their appearance to court”. On the eve of the first anniversary of the October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel and the start of the war in Gaza, Columbia Law School administrators sent an email to faculty instructing them to call campus police on students if they try to disrupt classes.

Another New York City institution, New York University (NYU), took similar steps to curb campus activism. In a clear move to stifle pro-Palestinian speech, for example, it announced that it now considers “Zionist” a protected identity, like race, national origin or gender identity. This means that activists who criticise Zionism may be considered to be in violation of NYU’s nondiscrimination and antiharassment policy.

Across the country, the leaders of the University of California (UC) system have required that chancellors of all UC schools strictly enforce a “zero tolerance” policy against “encampments, protests that block pathways and masking that shields identities”.

The California State University (CSU) system has implemented new campus policies seemingly geared towards curbing on-campus activism. Disruption of someone’s speech, camping, overnight demonstrations, building of temporary structures, barricades and barriers, concealment of identity, and occupation of a building or facility are now prohibited at CSU schools.

In mid-September, 10 people, including two University of California-Irvine professors and four students, received the misdemeanour charge of “failing to disperse” for their participation in a Palestine solidarity protest on campus in the spring.

The Council of University of California Faculty Associations said UC administrators – in violation of state labour law – have threatened faculty “for teaching about the history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and launched disciplinary proceedings against faculty for supporting on-campus student encampments as well as backing a strike by student academic workers this spring“.

Yale University has similarly updated its “free expression policies” over the summer. Now all outdoor events have to end by 11pm, and it is prohibited to sleep outdoors or hold events on the Cross Campus quad. Those found to be in violation of these charges could face “dispersal, disciplinary action or criminal charges”.

For the 2024-2025 academic year, the University of Pennsylvania has also published a set of “Temporary Standards and Procedures for Campus Events and Demonstrations”. This includes restrictions on amplified sound (including “bullhorns, musical instruments, and amplified speakers”). Overnight encampments and demonstrations are not permitted. “Structures, walls, barriers, sculptures, or other objects on University property” built without permission from the vice provost of university life are to be removed immediately. It is also prohibited to climb on university statues and sculptures or cover them “with any material”.

At the University of Michigan, 45 protesters held a “die-in” demonstration in late August. They were sitting on the ground holding Palestinian flags and signs with pictures of Palestinians killed by the Israeli military. The police dispersed the protest so violently  that two people had to be hospitalised.

Recently, Maura Finkelstein, who had been working as a professor of anthropology at Muhlenberg College in Pennsylvania for nine years, became the first tenured professor to be fired for her pro-Palestine stance. Specifically, her employment was terminated for sharing a post by Palestinian poet Remi Kanazi “calling for the shunning of Zionist ideology and its supporters”.

Of course, nontenured professors and students have been the ones who are most vulnerable to this latest round of crackdowns on pro-Palestine speech at US universities.

Cornell University doctoral student Momodou Taal, a Gambia-born citizen of the United Kingdom, for example, was threatened with academic suspension and deportation for participating in a demonstration calling for the university to divest from companies selling weapons to Israel. After significant pressure, the university eventually allowed Taal to remain an enrolled student, albeit with some restrictions, allowing him to keep his visa and submit his dissertation.

These new policies and regulations designed to curb pro-Palestinian speech, however, were not developed entirely organically by university leaders.

Wealthy alumni and donors have long been pressuring university administrators to take steps to silence Palestinian solidarity activism on campus for good. Lawmakers have also threatened to revoke accreditation and pull federal funding from US universities who allow Palestine solidarity protests.

University leaders’ unwillingness to engage with the substantive demands of campus activists is not just about the finances of these institutions. It is also a reflection of the type of leaders that tend to run the neoliberal university. They are hired, not to be educators, but managers. And they believe their job is to ensure that the commodity (ie higher education) is supplied to the paying clients (ie students). They have little interest in the other equally, if not more crucial, functions of these institutions, such as their role as vectors of social change and progress.

So, from their perspective, the demands from students and faculty that their institutions divest from a rogue state committing genocide are just a disruption to what the neoliberal university is meant to do. Their immediate instinct is to find a way to manage away this disruption.

But with more than 42,000 Palestinians killed and civilian infrastructure reduced to rubble in Gaza, the Palestinians in the West Bank facing increasing violence at the hands of the Israeli military and settlers alike, war now raging across Lebanon, and the “liberal democratic” West’s global standing in tatters in light of its insistence on funding and defending this carnage, it cannot be business as usual at the neoliberal university.

Students and faculty will continue to demand change and to insist that this change starts within their own institutions. The demands for justice in Palestine and an end to Western universities’ complicity in Israel’s crimes cannot be erased with policies aimed at stifling free speech and protest on campuses. University leaders must recognise that higher education institutions have always been crucibles of social change, and act accordingly. They must ensure that the institutions they represent take a moral stand against the ongoing genocide. Their refusal to do so may save their jobs and funding in the short term, but in the long term, it will put them on the wrong side of history and further strengthen the disastrous perception that US higher education today is nothing but a money-making business.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.