Finally, Some Very Hopeful Signs

Very encouraging news this week: Mohsen Mahdawi, Palestinian student activist and green-card holder, who has been detained at an ICE detention facility in Vermont since being entrapped by federal agents, was ordered released on bail by a federal judge. At his release, along with hundreds of ecstatic supporters, they sang, “We Shall Overcome.” Mahdawi said, “I am saying this loudly and clearly to President Trump and his cabinet: ‘I am not afraid of you.’”

Secretary of State Marco Rubio, seeking to justify this spate of arbitrary detentions, stated that Mahdawi, and other student activists, should be removed from the United States because their peaceful protests against Israel’s genocide in Gaza interfere with “America’s national interests.” Actually, Rubio is right. Since October 7, 2023, the United States has fully supported and actively facilitated Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Peacefully opposing this evil policy is against American interests, as currently stated. Yes, it may be in the interest of American empire to kill as many Palestinians as possible and to destroy Gaza. But it can never be in the interest of a sane United States foreign policy that respects human rights and upholds international law. In this sense, Mohsen Mahdawi and Mahmoud Khalil, and all the Palestine solidarity activists are calling this country to abandon empire and to return to its best self. This may account for some of the hostility of the authoritarian regimes in Washington and Tel Aviv. In any case, their high-profile detentions are massively increasing the visibility of their cause. Many Americans who have not previously identified with the pro-Palestinian cause see that these students have been mistreated and denied their rights under our Constitution, and this has strengthened our movement.

Last April in Polk Place, the Gaza solidarity student encampment at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, was violently dismantled by armed police. Student activists were injured in the raid, many were banned from campus, suspended or expelled, criminally charged. The Students for Justice in Palestine chapter was officially disbanded by the university administration, and new restrictions on student protests were put in place. There is no denying this draconian, fascistic suppression of their rights had a traumatic effect. In the wake of this repression, it was not clear what would become of the UNC student movement against the American-Israeli genocide in Gaza and its demands. And yet, amazingly, on the one-year anniversary of the administration’s attempt to tear down the student movement, hundreds of UNC students returned to Polk Place! They renewed their moral uprising against the gravest of all crimes against humanity. They repeated their chants. They strongly supported each other. They wore their keffiyehs. They ate wonderful Palestinian food. They rediscovered their joy. They reiterated their demands that the university disclose its investments, and divest from any corporations that are underwriting genocide or the occupation. There were no tents this time. But that just showed that the movement was not going to be predictable; not going to repeat past protest forms. They were going to innovate new ones. For many of us, the return to Polk Place was thrilling. The students AGAIN showed they are the harbingers. They demonstrated the courage and conviction to refuse to be silent. Now it’s up to the rest of us to follow their example.

It seems that other universities are following Harvard University’s lead in standing up to the bullying attempt on the part of the Trump administration to control what Harvard teaches, who they will hire, what their students and faculty say, what their mission as a university will be. The Big Ten conference of universities, actually encompassing 18 universities, is forming a kind of “Mutual Defense Pact” to come to each other’s aid if any Big Ten university is attacked by the government. This strategy prevents individual universities from being isolated and facing extortion alone. It allows for the pooling of resources, a united front, and strength in numbers. There is rising hope in many academic communities that this trend of self-empowerment and collective empowerment will continue.