Trump has turbocharged the attacks on free speech at US universities. I have seen it first-hand | Sandy Tolan

R.Try to try to deport a graduate of Colombia University Mahmoud KhalilAnd a permanent legal resident in the United States, which raises anger and protests at the level of the country. But although his arrest seemed to the world, it was unfortunately not surprising those of us on the front lines of the war over Gaza. Here in the United States, the building’s anger is granted to hostile hatred for a Palestinian, especially since Hamas attacks in October 2023 on Israel, Donald Trump’s cover to purify a “unwanted” country and undermine freedom of expression and academic freedom.

“If you love Hamas a lot, then why do you not be firm and move to the south of Gaza,” an angry reader wrote to me last spring, after Los Angeles Times published My opinion article My private university, South California University (USC), criticized its invitation to the riot police to arrest peaceful demonstrators. “Then, there will be hope that your name will be in a future raid on one of the projectiles.” A few months later, Robo’s depth explosion came with an estimated 4,000 of them, all of whom started “Sandy Tolan very hated”, after my country Sarcastic We mocked our campus insurance. And who can forget (I cannot) the anger, who scream those who objected to Rhetoric The evidence for the genocide of Israel in Gaza is determined only last week?

All this comes with the region. My experience was small compared to many of my colleagues, who put their bodies at stake to protect our students, then they faced arrest and Penalties. Or the students themselves, who were A listed in the black list, launched, with a suspension of implementationDoxed and ASCED job offers.

Even this is irreplaceable when compared to what happened to the people of Gaza over the past 17 months: more than 47,000 people, and many American ammunition launched by the Israeli forces. Countless from the missing and missing limbs. all Gaza universities destroyed. more than 100 university deans, professors Other university employees were killed, along with hundreds of other students; 170 journalists were killedAlmost all Palestinians are deliberately “killing”, according to the committee to protect journalists. hopelessness. Surgery without anesthesia. Bread made of animal feed. and Abyard 62000 starved. Last week, she met a doctor who lost 200 members of her family in Gaza.

The angry response to those of us who insist on testimony to this reality is a secondary result of the erasure near the Palestinian narration. In the framing of the American media, with a few exceptions, the Palestinians are terrorists or victims, and no human being completely.

This abstraction of humanity helps to explain the arrest of Khalil’s concern. President Trump Make up This frightening higher education is exactly its intention: “We will find, arrest us, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country,” published on the social truth. “We expect that each of the American colleges and universities will comply.”

Universities must resist the dictates of our authoritarian leader while there is still time. But long erasure and ignoring the Palestinians are working against our urgent mission. Automated acceptance of fake accusations of anti -Semitism did not make the task of resistance more difficult.

The charges of high hostility in the peaceful Gaza camps last year, which included the accusations of genocide and slogans such as “” “From the river to the sea– A concept found on the original platform of The Likud Ruler Party in Israel. Given that South Africa, With the support of other countriesThe accusations of genocide against Israel in the International Court of Justice brought, and that increasing numbers Genocide Even Holocaust scientists They have reached the same conclusion, it is hardly hostile to Semitism to express this opinion. Of course, real cases of anti -Semitism should be taken seriously. But some powerful people do these charges not because they are concerned about anti -Semitism, but as a broader attack on freedom of expression and universities themselves.

This month, 77 Jewish faculty, Judaism, employees and allies at the University of Southern California Written a letter To the university president, Carroll Volt, who gives birth to the new executive order of the Trump administration regarding “additional measures to combat anti -Semitism”. The message refuted “the strongest weapons conditions for the Jewish identity of the goals of this administration in repression and deportation”, and demanded that the University “not sacrifice the principles of freedom of expression”, even when the discounts threaten it in federal financing.

Now the Ministry of Justice is sending investigators to 10 universities, including USC, to “monitor and report foreign students’ activities.” Khalil’s arrest in Colombia, Trump’s promiseIt is “the first of many arrival”.

Billions of dollars in discounts are exactly what may compel universities, and even especially USC and colubia, to comply with Trump on student and university demonstrators Diversity, Equality and Inclusion Programs (Dei). This is the way last year’s campaign was for the pro -Palestinian demonstrators a kind of testing issue. That is why acceptance of this repression, the lazy acceptance of the false charges of anti -Semitism, and the negative eradication of the Palestinians, was very dangerous. They led us to the present moment.

Universities are already working to clean signals to Dei from their websites facing the public. As reported by Los Angeles Times, one department at the University of Southern California so Delete references to a scholarship For black and indigenous students. These claims Priorities of the Ministry of Education The question arises: Will you target the following black studies, Asian studies, and the original Latin and America studies, or to announce it simply? being Sexually illegal? When will universities draw the line and say, no?

This month, Colombia referred to the administration Cooperation with the investigation of the Ministry of Justice. But regardless of: Trump team I canceled $ 400 million From federal funding to university.

It is not logical to comply with authoritarian mandate, especially when you lose anyway, and when the broader repressive agenda is secret. Trump administration officials explained that their goal is to paralyze universities. Christopher Rovo, Strategic Expert Trump, said in Trump New York Timesand It is to put “universities in shrinking, in stagnation … in a way that puts them in existential terror.”

For universities, the response should be clear: no further sprain under repressive pressure from the ultra -horizontal Autocrats. It is time for us to defend our values ​​without shame, progress in courage to comply, defend knowledge, and fight for our students. note From the University of California, Advisor to the University of California Society in Berkeley, helps in directing the road:[W]E highly concerned with the recent federal procedures regarding higher education … in ways that threaten basic values: academic freedom, freedom of investigation, freedom of expression … We will be steadfast and unabated in our efforts to defend these basic values. “

Universities must become resistance centers. Silence is not a solution to the tyranny of installation – not on Dei, not on federal intervention, and certainly not in the practice of freedom of expression on Gaza, Israel And Palestine. Whatever the issue, we call for the continuation of the battle, along with our students, to show humanity, dignity and the rights of our societies at risk.

The forces of darkness have the upper hand. We must deal with facts, context, mind and mercy, and above all, courage, as long as we can.

• Sandy Tolan is a professor at Annnberg School of Communications and Press at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, and author of two books on the history of Israel and Palestine, including the best -selling books in the lemon tree