Trump Threatens Campus Protesters With Imprisonment

In a move that one critic said was likely preemptively targeted at "protests against the long list of horrific measures" President Donald Trump plans to impose as well as Palestinian rights demonstrations, the president on Tuesday threatened students with imprisonment if they take part in "illegal protests" on campus.

Trump didn't cite any law or executive authority that would permit him to order the arrest of students who exercise their First Amendment right to participate in protests, noted Enzo Rossi of the University of Amsterdam.

"What does "'illegal' mean?" wrote Rossi. "An occupation? A sit-in? Ignoring arbitrary police commands?"

In addition to threatening students with imprisonment, the president said he would end federal funding for "any college, school, or university that allows illegal protests."

The threat came nearly a year after nationwide campus protests began over Israel's U.S.-backed bombardment of Gaza, with students assembling on their campuses and setting up encampments to demand that administrators divest from weapons manufacturers and other companies profiting from Israel's apartheid policies and attacks on Palestinians.

Those protests, though protected under the U.S. Constitution, were the subject of major crackdowns by police in New York City, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and other cities, with more than 3,100 students, faculty members, and supporters arrested for demonstrating against the U.S. government's broadly unpopular support for Israel's slaughter of Palestinians.

Former U.S. President Joe Biden said last year that he supported non-violent protests but suggested student demonstrators were causing "chaos" and signaled support for the nationwide police crackdown.

An analysis last May by the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project found that 97% of the demonstrations were non-violent—but pro-Israel academics and politicians from both sides of the aisle repeatedly condemned the protests.

Alejandra Caraballo, a clinical instructor at Harvard Law Cyberlaw Clinic, said that "a lot of cowards in academia will use [Trump's directive] as an excuse to crack down on campus protest," as many university officials did last year.

Journalist Jeremy Scahill pointed out right-wing policymakers' and commentators' frequent claims that they aim to defend "free speech on campus"—a rallying cry that tends to target progressive ideologies.

"If Trump or [Vice President] JD Vance or any of these hypocrites who claim to be free speech warriors actually believed in free speech, they would vociferously defend speech they hate, including pro-Palestine/anti-genocide speech," said Scahill. "But they don't. This has been the con from the start with that crowd."

Self-proclaimed "free speech absolutists" like Tesla CEO and Trump ally Elon Musk "would be going mad" if Biden had suggested protests "by conservative students or pro-life groups" were illegal, added journalist Mehdi Hasan.

Trump's statement came weeks after he signed an executive order that was purported to "combat antisemitism" by threatening international students with deportation if they join campus protests that the president characterized as consisting of "pro-Hamas vandalism and intimidation."

On Monday, the Department of Health and Human Services, Department of Education, and the U.S. General Services Administration announced they were reviewing $51.4 million in federal contracts for Columbia University, which was a center of the student protests last year.

Students occupied school buildings last spring to demand Columbia divest from Israel. The Trump administration on Tuesday accused administrators of "ongoing inaction" against antisemitism on campus.

The agencies were acting under Trump's executive order, which also created a multi-agency Task Force to Combat Antisemitism.

Author Jeff Sharlet said college professors on Tuesday should speak out against Trump's latest threat in their classrooms, and suggested the president's ultimate goal is to militarize university campuses.

"This is targeted first at international students, but it's deliberately broad enough to lay groundwork for a scene Trump and [Defense Secretary Pete] Hegseth have fantasized: troops on campus."