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'Cowardly': University of Michigan Blasted After Apologizing for Commencement Speaker's Praise of Pro-Palestine Students
“It should not be controversial to have one’s ‘heart opened to the inhumanity and injustice of Israel’s war in Gaza,’” said Professor Derek R. Peterson.
May 04, 2026
The University of Michigan is facing criticism after it apologized and said it was launching a review into a professor's commencement speech in which he praised the school's pro-Palestine student movement for highlighting the “injustice and inhumanity” of Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.
Since the early weeks of the war, which has so far resulted in the deaths of more than 72,000 Palestinians according to official estimates, Michigan's campus has been the site of continued acts of civil disobedience from student activists that have been met with harsh disciplinary action by the school and aggressive crackdowns by state police.
During a commencement address on Saturday, Professor Derek R. Peterson—a University of Michigan historian and the outgoing chair of the Faculty Senate—acknowledged these students as part of a speech that commemorated the school's long history of social activism, including the struggle led by suffragette Sarah Burger for the school to open its doors to women in the mid-1800s.
"The freedoms that we all enjoy were hard won. They weren't handed to us by a generous and far-seeing administration," Peterson said. "So the next time you sing 'Hail to the Victors,' our fight song, sing for Sarah Burger."
"Sing for the thousands of other students who have dedicated themselves to the pursuit of social justice over the course of centuries," he said.
He encouraged students to “sing for Moritz Levy, the first Jewish professor at the University of Michigan,” who helped turn it into “a safe haven from the antisemitism of East Coast universities” and for “the students of the Black Action Movement, whose members demanded a curriculum that would reflect the experience and identity of black people in this country.”
Then he said to "sing for the pro-Palestinian student activists, who have over these past two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel's war in Gaza."
A cheer erupted from the crowd. But Peterson said the comments caused “a furor on social media” from supporters of Israel, who called it a “political rant,” a shoutout to “terrorist sympathizers,” and “grounds for termination.”
Sarah Hubbard, a Republican who is currently serving as a regent at the university, wrote on social media that while she was not in attendance, she found Peterson's remark "troubling and disappointing." She added that there should be "meaningful consequences" for his statements that should "set the tone" for the conduct of other faculty.
Leo Terrell, the chair of the Department of Justice’s Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, which was created by President Donald Trump as part of an effort to crack down on pro-Palestinian speech on college campuses, said, “Shame on the University of Michigan,” and issued what appeared to be a threat for retaliation over social media: “We’ll see you soon. You can bet the house on it.”
Domenico Grasso, president of the University of Michigan, responded to the uproar on Saturday by issuing an apology for Peterson's remark.
He called the comments "hurtful and insensitive to many members of our community" and said, "We regret the pain this has caused on a day devoted to celebration and accomplishment."
Grasso accused Peterson of having "deviated" from the remarks he'd shared before the ceremony, and said his statements "were inappropriate and do not represent our institutional position" or "the diversity of views across our entire faculty."
He added that Peterson's remarks "were expected to be congratulatory, not a platform for personal or political expression" and said the school would "review and refine" future commencement programming to prevent speech that does not "align with the purpose of the occasion." The university has removed Peterson's commencement video from its public channels.
The University of Michigan has had sitting members of Congress and other political leaders serve as commencement speakers for decades.
President Lyndon B. Johnson famously used the ceremony in 1964 to introduce Americans to his "Great Society" agenda, which he said would demand an "end to poverty and racial injustice." President George HW Bush used the forum to tout his foreign policy accomplishments and rail against "political correctness" on university campuses.
Just last year, Sen. Elissa Slotkin (D-Mich.) served as commencement speaker and warned that public discourse was being “defined by fear” under the second Trump administration in part because of activists being punished for their political beliefs and speech.
In a statement to CBS News Detroit, Peterson responded to the backlash and the university's response.
"It should not be controversial to have one's 'heart opened to the inhumanity and injustice of Israel's war in Gaza', which is what I credited activists with doing," he said. "Having an open heart to other people's suffering is a fundamental human virtue. It is a quality that I hope we teach our students, whatever their political posture might be."
Peterson said he was "mystified" by the response to his speech. "I have—like many of us here in Michigan—been convicted by the evidence of human suffering in Gaza; and I credit my awareness of that to pro-Palestinian activists... On a day meant to honor students for their accomplishments, I thought it important that we would honor the student activists who have, over the course of time, pushed the institution toward justice."
"The idea that graduations should be apolitical is ridiculous," Peterson added. "Michigan is not a finishing school for polite young men and women. Our students are not wilting flowers. They have just finished their degrees at the foremost public university in the country. They can handle controversy."
Just as Peterson's comments sparked a backlash, the university's reaction to his speech has been met with familiar criticism that it is silencing political speech at the behest of Israel's supporters.
"The entire 'speak-no-criticism-of-Israel' industry is erupting in outrage and demanding retribution for a history professor’s speech at the UMich graduation," said Lara Friedman, the president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, who added that those seeking to discipline Peterson were effectively making a "demand for a complete Israel-exception to free speech."
Israel has been condemned for human rights violations in Gaza by United Nations experts and numerous nations around the world, while several human rights organizations, including Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Israeli organization B'Tselem, among many others, have used the term "genocide" to describe its campaign of destruction and displacement in Gaza.
Dean Baker, a senior economist at the Center for Economic Policy and Research, noted Grasso's claim that Peterson's statements ran counter to the school's "institutional position."
He said sardonically that it was “pretty neat to see a University of Michigan president say the school is opposed to human rights.”
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Exposing the University of Michigan’s Violence Against Chinese Scholars
UM research Dr. Danhao Wan reportedly committed suicide after being questioned by federal authorities, revealing a broader pattern of political discrimination.
Apr 26, 2026
On April 17, CODEPINK and the local University of Michigan community gathered to hold a vigil in honor of UM researcher Dr. Danhao Wan on the one-month anniversary of his death. According to reports, Dr. Wang died after jumping from an upper floor of the G.G. Brown Building on North Campus, shortly after being targeted and questioned by federal authorities.
Over 30 members of the local community attended the vigil, bringing candles and flowers. They joined in a traditional Chinese bowing ceremony. During the vigil, CODEPINK and US Peace Council member Bob McMurray spoke to the crowd: “Tonight, I want us to remember there is a Mom and Dad mourning the loss of their son; there are people here in the university research community feeling his absence every day; and we, as the human family, have lost a brother.”
For weeks, Dr. Wang’s death went uncovered by the media. By the time it hit the news, the Chinese Consulate in Chicago had already confirmed the incident as a suicide and demanded an investigation of the “unwarranted interrogations and harassment of Chinese students and scholars.”
This is not the first time a Chinese scholar has been targeted at the University of Michigan; it is part of a broader pattern of political discrimination. In the last year, five Chinese scholars have been accused of various crimes, detained for months on end, and ultimately deported after the quiet dismissal of their cases due to a lack of evidence.
When individuals like Dr. Wang are targeted, it is not only their livelihoods that are threatened, but the very purpose and meaning they have built their lives around.
This discrimination is not new. In 2018, the Trump administration launched the China Initiative, a deeply flawed and racially biased program that targeted Chinese and Chinese Americans for “suspected espionage.” More often than not, federal authorities targeted individuals with no evidence of wrongdoing—simply for their identity. As a result, a new climate of suspicion and fear took root across academia. Though few convictions were made, many Chinese scholars suffered permanent professional and personal harm. They began to self-censor, withdraw from collaborations, or leave the United States entirely. For them, the US was no longer safe.
Although the China Initiative was formally ended under the Biden administration due to widespread criticism of its racial bias, its underlying logic has not disappeared. Instead, it has evolved into a broader atmosphere of suspicion directed at Chinese scholars, particularly in fields tied to advanced technology and science. At the University of Michigan, this pattern is especially visible.
Take the case of Dr. Chengxuan Han, a Chinese PhD student who was arrested for mailing roundworms commonly used in biological research. In most academic contexts, such an error would result in a minor administrative penalty. Instead, she was jailed for months and subjected to a full criminal prosecution. This outcome was wildly disproportionate to the alleged offense and one that effectively ended her academic trajectory.
Another scholar, Dr. Yunqing Jian, was accused of "agricultural terrorism” for breaking protocol and shipping materials to the US without the proper paperwork. Renowned biologists refuted this claim, saying it was impossible to use Fusarium graminearum, the fungus Dr. Jian studied, as a bioterrorist weapon. In the world of research deadlines and red tape, scholars say it's typical to try to streamline research by acquiring your own materials, even if that means skipping some paperwork. Dr. Jian has spent years researching how to mitigate the harm caused to crops by Fusarium graminearum, which is native to North America. While she did break protocol, it is absurd to accuse her of weaponizing the fungus, especially without any evidence.
Similarly, the cases of UM scholars Xu Bai, Fengfan Zhang, and Zhiyong Zhang demonstrate how ordinary research practices were reframed as criminal acts merely because of the identity of the scholars. Even though charges against them were dropped and the cases dismissed, the damage had already been done.
The three scholars had spent months in jail awaiting their trial. In a letter, Zhiyong Zhang spoke of his confusion over the situation:
I like the research atmosphere in the University. I like the people here. They are kind and polite. I am living a happy life here. However, unfortunately and apparently, some people don't like us. They want to connect us with politics. But what is politics? I didn't know what politics is when I was 13 years old, at which age I decided to study biology. Now I am also confused about what politics is. It's so abstract. We didn't hurt anyone, and we don't want to hurt anyone, either. We just want to do research and find something that can benefit humanity. That makes me feel my life is meaningful, although I can not make much money.
Zhang decided to study biology because his grandfather and father were both diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in their mid-30s: “I thought I could change to study neuroscience to cure the disease of my family and all the people who are suffering the pain from the disease… So this is what I am doing here.” At 32, he worries he will soon suffer the same fate.
Originally, the three scholars were informed by the University of Michigan that they had 30 days to pack and leave. Since they’d spent all their free time in the laboratory, they decided to use their last few weeks to visit the Grand Canyon. While there, the UM administration backtracked on their words, informing the scholars they had to leave immediately. At the airport, while attempting to return home, they were intercepted by Immigration and Customs Enforcement and arrested.
This was no coincidence. The UM administration not only provided the wrong information, but they also had terminated their SEVIS status, which gave them permission to live and study in the US, making them vulnerable to federal authorities at passport control.
The repeated pattern points to a system in which Chinese researchers are treated as potential threats merely on the basis of their identity—which is all a part of the larger campaign to paint China as an enemy of the United States.
Dr. Danhao Wang’s life and work stand in stark contrast to this narrative. An assistant research scientist in the University of Michigan’s College of Engineering, Dr. Wang dedicated his career to advancing semiconductor technology. His research focused on gallium nitride, a material critical to modern electronics and essential for improving the speed, efficiency, and energy consumption of devices ranging from smartphones to renewable technology systems.
He made significant contributions to understanding how these materials behave at the atomic level, correcting long-standing assumptions and helping to unlock new possibilities for high-performance electronics. His work also explored how next-generation semiconductors could remain stable under extreme electrical conditions, paving the way for more efficient energy systems and emerging technologies.
We must put increased pressure on the University of Michigan and other universities to do more to protect their international students.
The repercussions of this research are vast. Semiconductors with such high performance potential could potentially make the data center industry obsolete by enabling a smaller device to do what normally takes an entire facility. For the US, gallium nitride semiconductors are the key to significantly improving its high-power weapons systems, and China’s current dominance over the material is considered a looming threat. This is all part of the US preparation for war against China, and the ongoing arms race around strategic resources and technology.
It’s reported that Dr. Wang was planning to return to China in May and already had a job set up. This raises even more questions over the circumstances of his death, and many Michigan locals have begun calling for an independent investigation.
Like most scientists, Dr. Wang’s research stemmed from deep intellectual commitment and passion. Years of specialized training, long hours in the lab, and a singular focus on discovery defined his life’s work. When individuals like Dr. Wang are targeted, it is not only their livelihoods that are threatened, but the very purpose and meaning they have built their lives around.
His death is a profound tragedy. And while the full circumstances remain unclear, it occurred within an environment where Chinese scholars have repeatedly been subjected to intense surveillance and unfair targeting.
The broader political climate cannot be ignored. Increasingly, US policy and rhetoric have framed China as a primary geopolitical adversary, particularly in areas like technology and national security. This framing has filtered down into academic spaces, where international collaboration between the US and China is now essentially criminalized.
The Chinese Consulate in Chicago has criticized the US for “overstretching the concept of national security” and has called for a full investigation and accountability. These demands should not be dismissed.
There must be transparency around the circumstances leading to Dr. Wang’s death. There must also be concrete safeguards to prevent discriminatory investigations targeting international scholars. This includes stronger legal protections, clearer institutional accountability, and accessible mental health support for those under investigation.
Universities, in particular, have a responsibility to protect their students and researchers. The University of Michigan is clearly doing the opposite. They are not protecting their students; they are instead actively targeting them by aiding these discriminatory investigations, putting all international students at risk.
We must put increased pressure on the University of Michigan and other universities to do more to protect their international students, to preserve the integrity of academic research, to protect international collaboration, and to ensure that scientific progress is not undermined by federal discrimination. If institutions fail to act, the cost will not only be measured in lost careers but in lost knowledge, lost innovation, and lost lives.
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'More Perfect University': A Progressive Alternative to Turning Point USA on College Campuses
"Only by coming together and flexing our collective power as students, workers, tenants, and community members will we build a world for the 99%."
Apr 15, 2026
Gen Z's rightward shift in the 2024 election and the influence of Turning Point USA, the right-wing college organization co-founded by assassinated activist Charlie Kirk, have garnered considerable attention in the press—but a new project launched Wednesday by the labor-focused media group More Perfect Union makes the case that young voters across the country want an opportunity to strengthen "our collective power as the 99%."
While Turning Point USA has cast itself as an antidote to liberal viewpoints and "wokeness" on college campuses, Elise Joshi, who is leading the More Perfect University initiative, emphasized in The New York Times that Turning Point has demonstrated a steadfast “refusal to champion working-class issues.”
More Perfect University aims to mobilize young people in a movement centered on economic populism—turning their attention to the outsized power of corporations and ultrarich political donors while Turning Point USA is holding conventions where CEO Erika Kirk implores 20-something women to focus on finding a husband and condemns pro-immigration protesters as "demonic."
“The same corporations that are rigging the economy against young people are bankrolling the right’s campus operation,” Joshi told the Times.
In More Perfect University's launch video, released on Wednesday, Joshi said today's college students are "being robbed by Big... Everything."
From oil companies to private equity firms buying up housing, said Joshi, "elites have rigged the entire game. While they get billions in handouts, they squeeze us for profit, track our every move, and keep us too divided and exhausted to fight back."
NEW: More Perfect Union is opening up our newsroom, connecting with students everywhere, and equipping them with the tools needed to unrig our broken economic system. pic.twitter.com/oQT6sRqKC8
— MPUniversity (@MPUniversityUS) April 15, 2026
According to the group's website, More Perfect University will hold campus events that bring "all corners of campus life together" to build community and organize around efforts to fight for working people, offer virtual trainings where students can "connect with organizers already building power and winning," and open up More Perfect Union's newsroom to students, training them "to tell local stories that take on unchecked power."
"Mainstream media and establishment politicians are captured by corporate interests," said Joshi. "It's up to us to cover the issues our communities are facing and how everyday people are coming together to combat them.
The "student storytellers" with whom More Perfect University works, Joshi told the Times, will “understand our economy is not broken by accident.”
On April 20, US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) is set to co-host a virtual launch party for More Perfect University with journalist John Russell. The group is also planning an online event with former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan, an outspoken critic of corporate monopolies and corruption.
The initiative comes as young voters express growing dissatisfaction with President Donald Trump's administration, less than a year and a half after voters ages 18-29 voted for former Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris by only four percentage points, signifying a major shift to the right following the 2020 election. Former President Joe Biden won the demographic by a 25-point margin in 2020.
The Yale Youth Poll, released on Wednesday, found that the views of voters ages 18-34 are heavily impacting Trump's overall sinking approval ratings. Sixty-eight percent of voters ages 18-22 disapprove of the president, according to the poll, as well as 72% of 23- to 29-year-olds.
More Perfect University is also launching as the Trump administration wages attacks on academic freedom on college campuses. Last month the US Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Harvard University, alleging the school has "allowed antisemitism to flourish on campus."
Universities including Columbia and Northwestern have been criticized by students and faculty for capitulating to Trump, striking deals and agreeing to policy changes in order to restore federal funding that was cut.
"Mainstream media, politicians, and universities are capitulating to the 1%," reads More Perfect University's website. "The responsibility to tackle authoritarianism and corporate greed falls on us. We cannot do that scattered and isolated. Only by coming together and flexing our collective power as students, workers, tenants, and community members will we build a world for the 99%."
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Iran Confirms at Least 60 University Students and 10 Professors Killed by US-Israel Bombings
"The enemy does not want us to succeed or have development and progress, but all our universities are united now by these attacks," said the president of Tehran's prestigious Sharif University of Technology.
Apr 15, 2026
At least 60 students and 10 professors have been killed in US-Israeli attacks on universities, according to an Iranian government official, while other university officials report even higher death tolls.
Standing outside the bombed-out ruins of Iran's Aerospace Research Institute, which was targeted twice earlier this month, Minister of Science, Research, and Technology, Hossein Simaei, said on Wednesday that attacks on the facility and other universities were “scientific crimes."
“This was a center where researchers worked on civilian sectors, including biology, agriculture, and surveying,” Simaei said. “Unfortunately, it has fallen victim to the enemy’s brutal attacks.”
The institute was one of at least 32 universities and 857 schools that have been attacked by US and Israeli forces since the US and Israel launched the war at the end of February, according to a report by the Iranian Red Crescent on April 10.
Bijan Ranjbar, the president of the Islamic Azad University system—one of the largest in the world—has confirmed that at least 110 students at his institution have been killed and 21 university branches have been damaged.
On April 6, the Sharif University of Technology in Tehran, which has been described as the "MIT of Iran," was also bombed, severely damaging its High-Performance Computing Center, which serves more than 3,000 artificial intelligence and computer science researchers.
The Pasteur Institute, one of the oldest research and health institutes in Iran, was also hit earlier this month, rendering it "unable to continue delivering health services," according to the World Health Organization.
"The enemy does not want us to succeed or have development and progress, but all our universities are united now by these attacks," said Sharif University president Masoud Tajrishi.
Israel has justified attacking these institutions on the grounds that they are closely linked to the Iranian military, similar to its claim that universities in Gaza are used by Hamas.
But following promises by US President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to bomb Iran "back to the Stone Ages," attacks on civilian infrastructure have gone far beyond those with any discernible military purpose.
The WHO reported on April 8 that since the beginning of the war, at least 23 healthcare institutions were attacked by US and Israeli forces. Attacks have also been reported on several oil and energy facilities.
Though the US and Israel often frame these attacks as inseparable from their objective of weakening Iran militarily, Eskandar Sadeghi-Boroujerdi, an assistant professor of the international relations of the Middle East at the University of St. Andrews, argues that they function as attacks on the whole of Iranian society.
"Whatever role the state played in constructing refineries, pharmaceutical plants, and research institutions, it is Iranian workers, engineers, scientists, and patients who depend on them, who built their careers inside them, and who will suffer most from their destruction," he wrote in Jacobin earlier this week. "Bombing a country’s industrial and scientific base is an act of violence against its people, regardless of what one thinks of its government."
He said: “The systematic killing of scientists and engineers, the destruction of centrifuges and computer networks, the bombing of research universities and pharmaceutical facilities: All of it reflects a coherent strategic objective, which is to erase the embodied knowledge, the accumulated expertise, and the institutional memory that make Iranian technological development possible.”
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Standing Witness to University Complicity in Criminal Wars of Aggression
Military-related research at universities like NC State helps the imperialist state find ways to more effectively kill people around the world who resist US domination.
Apr 05, 2026
On February 28, 2026, the Trump administration ordered US military forces to launch a criminal war of aggression against Iran. In the first wave of bombing, a US Tomahawk missile struck a girls elementary school in Minab, collapsing the roof and killing over 100 children. Since the attacks began, over 1,900 people have been killed and 24,800 wounded, according to media reports. The casualty numbers are preliminary, but otherwise these are uncontroversial facts.
Here are a few more observations that should be uncontroversial.
Many, perhaps most, US research universities, public and private, function in part to abet the imperialist state. Military-related research at these universities helps the imperialist state find ways to more effectively kill people around the world who resist US domination. Today, plain talk about these activities is rare, as is protest against them. For the most part, university aid to the capitalist class' projects of imperial domination either goes unmentioned, is normalized as morally unproblematic, or is celebrated under the aspect of nationalism.
Finally, here's a report from the non-Ivy province of academia: On March 12, 2026, the vice chancellor of research and innovation at North Carolina State University (where I am professor emeritus), Krista Walton, sent a campus-wide email titled "Investing in Our Research Infrastructure's Future." NC State, the email said, ranked "steady at 6th place among our peers (public universities without a medical school) in research expenditures." This sounds innocuous enough. The usual sort of institutional cheerleading.
I am thus appalled when universities are suborned into service of an imperial state. To use universities in this way is a betrayal of the enlightenment values that make universities humane institutions.
But where did the money come from? And what will building the university's research infrastructure entail? Walton goes on to explain.
Among the major funding sources noted in the email are the Department of Defense (DOD), Department of Energy, and NASA. In DOD funding, Walton boasts, "NC State ranked second only to Duke University." As for building infrastructure, the email calls for "positioning the university to align with national priorities," and "build[in] on the great work our investigators are already doing in the defense and security sector." More specifically, building on this work will involve creation of a new "defense and security institute," for which faculty are invited to "help develop an aligned vision, mission, and goals."
Again, this email and the invitation to get on board—to help make the university more responsive to the needs of the imperial state—was sent less than two weeks after the criminal attack on Iran began, less than two weeks after the killing of more than 100 school children in Minab and the deaths of many more civilians in subsequent weeks. Though the email of course makes no mention of killing, it implicitly invites faculty, students, and staff to support the kind of reach-across-the-globe military violence that inevitably destroys innocent lives. To put it any other way amounts to moral self-deception.
Analysis is needed to explain how we've gotten to this point. I've done that sort of thing before. I've written about NC State's addiction to tobacco money, its multi-million-dollar deal with the National Security Administration, and its ties with criminal corporations. Administrators and their political backers putting the university's snout into the trough of military funding could be analyzed in the same ways: as the result of cuts in funding from general state revenues, of the nationalist ideologies in which Americans are steeped, of amoral careerism, of bureaucratic structures that let people separate intentions from consequences and thus join in causing great harms—holocausts, genocides, wars. A thorough analysis would consider all of these causes, and more.
But do we need more analysis right now, or are the results in? The facts are as I have stated them. No one should begrudge further good-faith interpretation of these facts and what they imply. Analysis, in this sense, has no end; it is the perpetual motion machine of academia. For now, however, I have reached a point where all I can do is stand as an appalled witness. I speak simply to profess—not to untangle any sociological mysteries but to make a public statement of conscience.
I believe universities should exist to freely create and transmit knowledge useful to all peoples; to promote peace based on rational discourse; and to develop understandings of our common humanity across the divisions created to foster elite domination. I am thus appalled when universities are suborned into service of an imperial state. To use universities in this way is a betrayal of the enlightenment values that make universities humane institutions. It is a revolting reduction of universities to instruments of nationalism and resource control, for the benefit of those who have captured the reins of the state.
I am further appalled at the violence this entails, and at how this violence is obscured or normalized. The NC State email from which I quoted earlier cheerfully asks us to align the university with "national priorities"—set by whom?—by building our research infrastructure in the areas of defense and security. And for what? To make the venal and powerful—the capitalist class or, as some have taken to calling it, the Epstein class—more powerful, if necessary by destroying the lives and infrastructure of others. To this, I object.
I object, too, to the hypocrisy of conducting this violence-abetting work behind the veil of liberal values, while the violence is perpetrated at a distance, so far away that it is hard to see the links between research done for the Department of Defense or military contractors, illegal wars of aggression, and dead schoolchildren. To refuse to see these links is not merely head-in-the-sand hypocrisy; it is rank dishonesty hidden inside an institutional shell that claims the pursuit of truth to be its distinctly virtuous mission.
North Carolina State University is just an example, and no special villain. The big leaguers at the military trough are MIT, Johns Hopkins, Cal Tech, Harvard, Columbia, UC Berkeley, Stanford, and Maryland. To the extent that these institutions claim greater prestige—based on touting humane values and scientific achievements—their hypocrisy is all the more rank. To the extent that these institutions help to legitimate war-making research at less prestigious institutions like NC State—pretending it is compatible with freedom, equality, and democracy—the damage they do is all the worse.
In The Mass Psychology of Fascism, Wilhelm Reich argues that the psychic force driving fascism is repressed sexuality. As a social psychologist trained in sociology, I never put much stock in this argument. Most of what conduces to participation in collective acts of destruction can be traced to culture and social organization. Yet I think Reich was right when he said, looking back at the 1930s, "While we presented the masses with superb historical analyses and economic treatises on the contradictions of imperialism, Hitler stirred the deepest roots of their emotional being." Critical intellectuals offer similar analyses today. But if at the end of analysis we can't connect to our own emotional being—the part of us that stands appalled and says, No, enough!—those analyses will wither without effect, as they too often have in the past.
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'No Safety in Appeasement': Law Firms That Fought Trump Vindicated as DOJ Drops Cases
"Another significant victory for the rule of law over Trump's reign of lawlessness," said Rep. Jamie Raskin.
Mar 03, 2026
Congressman Jamie Raskin said the US Department of Justice's decision Monday to abandon its legal cases against law firms that refused to capitulate to President Donald Trump should serve as "a reminder that those who fight back against authoritarianism are winning."
The DOJ asked the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia to dismiss its cases against law firms including Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Susman Godfrey, and Jenner & Block, which won legal challenges they filed last year after Trump issued executive orders saying they should lose government contracts and their employees should be blocked from government buildings.
Those executive orders were signed because the firms represented and employed high-profile Democrats and other opponents of Trump.
Other law firms, including Skadden Arps and Paul Weiss, angered lawyers within their ranks and the larger legal community when they signed deals with Trump; the latter firm agreed to end its internal diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives and provide $40 million in free legal work for the president and causes he supports.
The Trump administration's decision on Monday proved, said Raskin (D-Md.), that "there’s no safety in appeasement.”
“When the Trump administration tried to bully and silence law firms by banning them from federal buildings, courthouses and contracts, a handful—like Susman Godfrey, Perkins Coie, Jenner & Block, and WilmerHale—fought back," said Raskin. "Today, those firms forced Trump to back down and abandon his blatantly unconstitutional effort to punish lawyers, clients, and causes because Trump disagrees with their speech. Meanwhile, the firms that chose to roll over saddled their associates and partners with doing billions of dollars-worth of free legal work for Trump, his twisted administration and his MAGA allies."
While other firms caved to Trump's demands last year, the companies that didn't quickly won legal victories, with one federal judge saying the executive order targeting Jenner & Block was “doubly violative of the Constitution" because it targeted the clients it represents as well as a lawyer it once employed—Andrew Weissman, who was part of former special counsel Robert Mueller's team that investigated Trump.
“This order, like the others, seeks to chill legal representation the administration doesn’t like, thereby insulating the executive branch from the judicial check fundamental to the separation of powers," US District Judge John Bates wrote last May. "It thus violates the Constitution and the court will enjoin its operation in full.”
"This episode will be remembered as demonstrating the difference between institutions that had the ethical courage to uphold the Constitution and fight bullying and then won, and those that compromised their ethics and gained nothing."
Jenner & Block said Monday that "the government’s decision to withdraw its appeals makes permanent the rulings of four federal judges that the executive orders targeting law firms, including Jenner & Block, were unconstitutional."
"Our partnership is proud to have stood firm on behalf of its clients, and we look forward to continuing to serve them—guided by these bedrock values—for many decades to come," said the firm.
Brian Hauss, deputy director of the Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project at the ACLU, said the DOJ had finally admitted "what everyone knew on Day 1: There is no way to defend these unconstitutional executive orders."
“This shameful assault on the rule of law has failed, thanks to the brave lawyers who refused to compromise their integrity," said Hauss.
Vanita Gupta, former associate attorney general under the Biden administration, told NBC News that the law groups that struck deals with the White House had "undermined the rule of law and the legal profession in this country."
"This episode will be remembered as demonstrating the difference between institutions that had the ethical courage to uphold the Constitution and fight bullying and then won, and those that compromised their ethics and gained nothing," Gupta said. "Let’s hope that media companies, universities, and other organizations pay heed."
In addition to his attacks on law firms, the president has threatened universities with funding cuts and federal investigations into what the White House views as antisemitism and extremism on campus and the colleges' efforts to promote diversity and inclusion.
At least six universities have struck deals with Trump. The University of Pennsylvania agreed to ban transgender student athletes from participating on women's sports teams and Columbia University agreed to further crack down on campus protests like those that erupted in 2024 against US support for Israel's assault on Gaza—protests that both the Biden and Trump administrations claimed were antisemitic.
Harvard sued the administration over its decision to freeze $2.2 billion in research funding and was granted a restraining order last year to protect international students whom the White House had threatened with visa restrictions.
On Monday, Raskin said the DOJ's decision to back down from the attacks on law firms was "another significant victory for the rule of law over Trump's reign of lawlessness."
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Universities Didn't Fail, They Succeeded—That's Why They're Under Attack
Universities need to recognize that they are being targeted because of what they represent, not because of what they've failed to do, and resist accordingly.
Oct 14, 2025
I grew up watching my mother teach histories she was forbidden to teach, in a language that was illegal to speak. I know what authoritarianism looks like. And I'm watching American universities respond to this moment with the same dangerous pattern I witnessed then: accepting the narrative of their accusers, capitulating to illegal demands, destroying themselves from within.
At a time when blue cities become military zones, when citizens are arrested and abused on camera, when journalists are forced to transform from truth tellers to White House publicists, when the president accepts planes as gifts from foreign governments and then offers them military bases on US soil, it is not a moment for universities to ask, "What did we do wrong?" This is a moment to recognize: We are living through an authoritarian takeover, and universities are being targeted because of what they represent, not because of what they've failed to do.
The Trap of the "Universities Failed" Narrative
Across the country, university leaders are grappling with attacks on their institutions by asking: "How did we get here?" But without proper historical analysis, these questions lead directly into a trap set deliberately by those who seek to dismantle higher education as we know it.
The narrative is seductive: Universities became too focused on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI). They pushed "woke ideology." They marginalized conservative voices. They failed to serve their students properly. And now, this narrative suggests, they're reaping what they've sown.
When universities face these attacks, they have a choice: Resist in solidarity with the broader democratic struggle, or accept the framing of their accusers and try to appease them.
This is all a lie. More precisely, it's what political theorist Isaac Kamola calls a decade-long psychological operation, a well-funded, well-organized campaign of disinformation designed to make Americans believe that what's happening in universities is not what's actually happening.
The reality? American higher education has more women enrolled than ever before. More people of color than ever before. An educated populace is a civically engaged populace, a populace capable of critical thinking and democratic participation. Universities haven't failed. Universities have been succeeding. And that success threatens the wealth and power of those orchestrating these attacks.
Understanding the Authoritarian Playbook
We’ve seen this script before. Universities are always the first targets of authoritarian regimes. Look at Hungary, where Viktor Orbán seized control of higher education through a national system, banned gender studies programs, and forced the Open University to leave the country. Look at Turkey. After 2016, more than 6,000 academics were expelled in Turkey, hundreds prosecuted, and entire universities were closed. Many dismissed scholars were banned from public sector employment and from seeking academic work abroad due to travel bans, creating widespread precarity and self-censorship among remaining faculty. The pattern is unmistakable and deliberate.
When universities face these attacks, they have a choice: Resist in solidarity with the broader democratic struggle, or accept the framing of their accusers and try to appease them. History shows us that appeasement doesn't work. It only accelerates the destruction.
Look at Brown and Columbia. In both cases, Brown and Columbia accepted Trump administration demands largely to avoid funding cuts, yet both remain under sustained attack from the administration. Rather than fighting to preserve institutional independence and democratic principles in higher education they have accelerated the authoritarian takeover by capitulating.
We are watching universities and their leaders across America choose the second path. They're eliminating DEI programs, not because they believe these programs are wrong, but because they're afraid of losing funding. They're censoring faculty, not because academic freedom suddenly matters less, but because trustees are buckling under financial threats. They're accepting the premise that they somehow deserve what's happening to them.
They are playing into the tiny hands of authoritarians.
What's Really at Stake: Race, Rights, and Democracy
If we take a historical view, we can see more clearly what's actually driving these attacks: race. The legislative assault on curriculum, the attacks on critical race theory, the dismantling of DEI programs, all of this escalated in inverse proportion to the access that Black and brown people were gaining to higher education.
The bookeyman of DEI is a strategic tool for turning civil rights laws on their heads, for weaponizing the very protections meant to ensure equity. When White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller tells law enforcement they're "unleashed," when apartments on Chicago's South Side are raided and destroyed in the middle of the night and families, including citizens, are separated and detained for hours, when the National Guard is deployed to terrorize Democratic cities with large populations of Black and brown people, we're watching the same white supremacist project that universities are being punished for challenging.
Powerful interests have recognized how threatening an educated, diverse, critically thinking populace is to their accumulation of wealth and power.
Chris Rufo has been explicit about his counterrevolutionary agenda. He accuses universities of ideological capture and promotes a fiction: that radical leftists completed a "long march through the institutions" from the 1960s to today, turning universities into engines of woke ideology. His strategy has been devastatingly effective, tying federal funding to demands that colleges eliminate "race-based" programs and DEI initiatives, end political activism on campus, and enforce what he falsely calls "ideological neutrality." The bitter irony, of course, is that this neutrality means alignment with conservative values. Authoritarian regimes always claim neutrality while enforcing ideology.
The actual transformative change that generations of civil rights leaders have fought to achieve in higher education has been painfully, frustratingly slow. As Dr. King reminded us, the arc of the moral universe is long. Diversity, equity, and inclusion work had just begun when the backlash hit. As Isaac Kamola reminds us, we haven't gone too far, we've barely started. And that's precisely why the backlash is so fierce. Progress, however incremental, is intolerable to those who benefit from the status quo.
The Rapid Response Trap
Rapid response to individual attacks, while sometimes necessary, keeps universities perpetually defensive and reactive. Each response accepts the terms of the debate as set by those seeking to destroy higher education. Today, it's a demand to eliminate a DEI office. Tomorrow it's a threat to revoke accreditation. Next week, it's federal agents on campus or trustees forcing out presidents who won't comply. The exhausting onslaught of breaking news pushes institutions into pure survival mode, where they can only see the immediate threat in front of them. Meanwhile, the bigger picture, the systematic dismantling of democratic institutions, disappears from view.
This is how authoritarianism works. It overwhelms. It exhausts. It forces you to fight a hundred small battles so you cannot see the war.
And when universities respond by looking inward, by searching for their own failures, by implementing "reforms" that mirror the demands of their attackers—cutting DEI programs, restricting faculty speech, purging curricula of "controversial" content—they believe they're defending themselves. They're not. They're participating in their own destruction. Worse, they're legitimizing the authoritarian narrative: that universities deserved what's happening to them, that the attacks are a reasonable response to institutional failure rather than a calculated assault on democratic education itself.
This is precisely what authoritarians count on: that institutions will police themselves, that fear will accomplish what force alone cannot.
What Universities Must Do Instead
First, universities must stop accepting the false premise that they've failed. Higher education remains one of the most important engines of democratic participation, social mobility, and civic engagement in American society. The Truman Commission understood this in 1947: Higher education's core mission includes preparing citizens who can respond to social needs with intelligence and creativity.
That mission hasn't changed. What's changed is that powerful interests have recognized how threatening an educated, diverse, critically thinking populace is to their accumulation of wealth and power.
The question isn't "What did we do wrong?" The question is: "Will we defend democracy, or will we aid its destruction?"
Second, universities must understand themselves not as isolated institutions defending their own interests, but as part of a broader democratic movement under siege. The attacks on higher education are interconnected with attacks on blue cities, on journalism, on voting rights, on the rule of law itself. Universities cannot win this fight alone, and they cannot win it by trying to appease authoritarians.
Third, universities must reclaim the narrative. Higher education is not a commodity that consumers buy and sell. Universities are not corporations. They are communities, students, faculty, staff, administrators, and the broader public, engaged in the vital work of knowledge production, teaching, and the preparation of democratic citizens. That means the university belongs to all of us, and all of us have a stake in its defense.
Finally, universities, that is all those who create the university community, must act with courage. We’ve seen examples of this courage—boards (like that of MIT’s) standing behind presidents who refuse to capitulate, faculty senates (like that of the University of Texas at Austin) adopting new academic freedom principles, and institutions using the rule of law to protect their faculty and students. Courage, in this moment, is the super multiplier. It gives others permission to resist.
The Choice Before Us
Universities stand at a crossroads. They can continue to react defensively to each attack, to implement “reforms” demanded by those who seek their destruction, to accept the narrative that they've somehow failed and deserve what's happening. Or they can recognize this moment for what it is: an authoritarian assault on one of democracy's essential institutions.
I know from experience that once authoritarianism takes hold, it moves swiftly. The window for resistance narrows quickly. My mother made her choice, to keep teaching the truths she was forbidden to teach. Now universities must make theirs.
The question isn't "What did we do wrong?" The question is: "Will we defend democracy, or will we aid its destruction?"
The answer to that question will determine not only the future of higher education, but the future of American democracy itself.
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Our Universities Must Not Fold to Trump's Authoritarian Compact
This compact goes against every democratic principle our country and our schools should uphold, and we reject the Trump administration’s attempt to cajole universities into compliance through explicit bribery.
Oct 06, 2025
We are students at the nine universities most recently targeted by President Donald Trump. We've spent years demanding that our universities improve conditions for students, lower tuition, and create spaces for the free exchange of ideas. No one told us the way to influence our universities was simply to bribe them with millions of dollars of federal funding.
On October 1, the Trump administration sent our schools a 10-point memo titled "Compact for excellence in higher education." If adopted, the compact would limit international student enrollment, force universities to share student information with the federal government, enforce the adoption of a specific definition of gender and threaten affinity spaces, and take action against actors that “punish, belittle, and even spark violence against conservative ideas.” In return, our universities are promised increased access to federal funding opportunities. If they don't comply? Well, any school can “elect to forgo federal benefits.”
This compact goes against every democratic principle our country and our schools should uphold, and we reject the Trump administration’s attempt to cajole universities into compliance through explicit bribery. It should go without saying that extorting universities to comply with ideological demands and quell freedom of speech is antidemocratic, but here we are.
In a public statement, White House Official May Mailman claimed that our nine universities—Brown, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Arizona, Dartmouth, MIT, the University of Pennsylvania, Vanderbilt, the University of Virginia, and the University of Southern California—were chosen because they are "good actors." In other words, the Trump administration expects our universities to fold. And they expect to use our compliance as a green light to force universities across the country into similar agreements.
If any one of our universities agrees to this compact, it risks creating a chain reaction for the higher education system at-large to side with tyrants over students.
Here's the thing—we cannot deny that Trump's compact pointed out some very real issues in our higher education system. It is true that "too many young adults have become saddled with life-altering debt." It is true that "truth-seeking is a core function of institutions of higher education." For decades, young people have borne the brunt of our country's refusal to invest in education. As federal funding has fallen, administrator salaries have ballooned while faculty, staff, and graduate worker wages have stagnated and tuition prices have skyrocketed. Today, many of our schools are run more like hedge funds than like centers of learning. That's why we have continuously demanded that our government and our universities make higher education more accessible, and allow us to freely share our viewpoints on campus.
Trump's memo, however, does not actually sincerely seek to confront these issues. It is a thinly-veiled attempt to undermine fundamental principles of university independence and attack vulnerable students, and it is a clear instance of authoritarian overreach. Trump claims to value "truth-seeking," yet limits what "truth" can be sought. The compact places surveillance on what ideas can and cannot be present in the campus setting, requiring screening of international students for "anti-American" values. Under the guise of promoting campus discourse, it gives institutions the tools to gut departments that the Trump administration could frame as "belittling" conservative ideas. What counts as an "anti-American" value or "belittling" conservative ideas is malleable to the Trump administration's vantage point. The compact also effectively bans peaceful campus protest, a crucial part of civil discourse on our campuses.
To define a "free marketplace of ideas" by its adherence to a specific set of ideas and exclusion of a specific set of individuals is not creating a free marketplace at all: It's breeding authoritarianism.
This compact also asks our universities to commit to repression of LGBTQ+ students, including "biological" definitions of sex and gender, that would strip our queer students of protections and resources crucial to their right to a free and safe education. For LGBTQ+ students, this compact is not just a "political" attack; it is an immediate threat to our education and survival.
And this comes after a speech-chilling effect has already taken over our campuses. Students who dared to speak out in support of Palestine, especially, have faced extreme repression on campus, including police sweeps, expulsions, and attempted deportations. Over the summer, we watched as Brown University and the University of Pennsylvania signed agreements that sold students' personal information to the Department of Justice, excluded trans students from university life, and stripped them of their healthcare. We watched as the University of Virginia acquiesced to the Department of Justice's demands to dissolve diversity, equity, and inclusion offices against the wishes of the university community and forced President Jim Ryan to step down. We've watched our peers, Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Öztürk, taken for daring to speak against Israel's genocide, and we continue to watch as Immigraton and Customs Enforcement takes our community members on and near our campuses.
The founding principles of our universities—quality education free from censorship, workforce development, and shared governance of university structures—have been under attack for decades. The solution is not to take a bribe from a wannabe-dictator who wants to trojan-horse exclusionary policies under the guise of protecting American students. The solution is to listen to the students, faculty, and staff who actually make our schools run.
This memo was sent out during a government shutdown. While key government programs are stopped and unknown numbers of federal employees are furloughed, the Trump administration is seeking ways to expand its power. If any one of our universities agrees to this compact, it risks creating a chain reaction for the higher education system at-large to side with tyrants over students. We demand that our universities do not fold, and do not sign.
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How to Research Your Way to a Better World
In the midst of the torrent of lies and repressive practices emanating from Washington, the use of research to guide strategy and support organizing is more important than ever.
Sep 03, 2025
I have spent the bulk of my career—on and off since the late Carter administration—following the money that drives war and repression. What I have finally learned after so many decades of doing research on the war machine is that while research is critical, it must be in the service of a smart strategy backed by a lot of hard work by organizers from all walks of life.
My interest in using research to promote social change was sparked by my years at Columbia University in the 1970s, when I was a researcher and advocate in the divestment movement targeting the apartheid regime of South Africa and a participant in other social justice movements like the boycott in support of the United Farmworkers Union and the opposition to the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile.
Henry Kissinger’s justification for the US-backed coup in Chile that put Augusto Pinochet in power still sticks in my mind: “I don’t see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people.”
So much for the land of the free and the beacon of global democracy.
The US role in the coup was eventually recounted by many media outlets, but for me the first and most important was the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), which devoted several issues of its magazine, then called The Latin America and Empire Report, to the origins of the coup, including the role of US corporations. I was so impressed with their research and commitment that I applied to work at NACLA after graduating from Columbia in January 1978. They wisely demurred, since my background on Latin America was largely limited to what I had read in their own reports. Still, their skill in deploying detailed research to debunk the official lies that surrounded the coup stuck with me.
Research Against Apartheid
My real schooling in research, however, came in the anti-apartheid movement, starting with the divestment campaign at Columbia and expanding into my work with national anti-apartheid organizations like the American Committee on Africa (ACOA). Again, research was front and center. In order to make effective demands for divestment, we needed to know which companies were supporting the apartheid regime, and which of those companies our universities held stock in. ACOA was of great help in this, including through Richard Knight, who worked in a back room of their offices at 198 Broadway and had what may well have been the messiest desk in the history of progressive politics. But if my memory serves me correctly, he seemed to be able to remember exactly where he put a given document in one of the many piles of paper that obscured his desktop. The work he did, along with colleagues at ACOA, helped fuel the student divestment movement, along with research by students on campuses around the country.
Another key group at that time was Corporate Data Exchange (CDE). Tina Simcich, who worked at CDE and was also part of the New York Committee to Oppose Bank Loans to South Africa (COBLSA), did the definitive research on which banks were lending to the apartheid regime.
At Columbia, we made an interesting discovery that put the lie to the university’s position on divestment. In response to demands to divest from firms involved with the apartheid regime, university leaders argued that, if there were objections to the actions of companies they were invested in, they felt it would be more productive to support shareholder resolutions seeking to change their conduct than to divest from those companies’ stocks.
if there were not people organizing for change, my research would be little more than a peculiar hobby.
But after digging around in past Columbia University documents, we found a memo from a prior year in which the university had responded to a request to support a shareholder resolution on behalf of trade unionists in Chile, some of whom had been murdered by the Pinochet regime. The university’s position then proved to be precisely the opposite of what it said just a few years later when asked to divest from companies involved in South Africa: They didn’t think it was productive to engage in shareholder resolutions. If there was an ethical issue with one of their holdings, their preference was to divest from the stock of that company.
Although it was a small instance of hypocrisy, it was nonetheless revealing. At that point, the university had been determined to do absolutely nothing to hold companies that were complicit in repression accountable. Our divestment campaign of the mid-1970s did not succeed, but in 1985, another cohort of student activists did finally persuade Columbia to divest. The next year, in 1986, Congress passed comprehensive sanctions on South Africa, overriding a veto attempt by President Ronald Reagan.
Obviously, research was only partly responsible for our success. It was research in the service of organizing and sound strategy that won the day. The fact that the liberation movements in South Africa, including the African National Congress and the Black Consciousness Movement, were calling for divestment greatly strengthened our case. And inspiring organizers and speakers like the incomparable Prexy Nesbitt and the late Dumisani Kumalo, a South African exile who went on to be liberated South Africa’s first representative to the United Nations, played a huge role, as did thousands of campus activists, religious leaders, trade unionists, state and local officials, and heads of pension funds.
Eight years later, in 1994, Nelson Mandela was sworn in as the first president of a free South Africa. The vast bulk of the credit for that historic change goes to the people of South Africa, but the divestment campaign and the larger global boycott of the apartheid regime played an important supporting role, a role much appreciated by activists in South Africa.
As for me, my work in the anti-apartheid movement shaped my career. I worked for a while as part of the collective that put out Southern Africa magazine, an independent journal that supported the anti-apartheid movement and the liberation movements in Southern Africa. The original editor was Jennifer Davis, the brilliant exiled South African economist who went on to direct ACOA. I wrote articles about the divestment campaign, violations of the arms embargo on South Africa, and the role of US firms in propping up the apartheid regime. The skills and values I learned there were far more important to my career than my philosophy degree from Columbia, an institution whose leaders have now covered themselves in shame by cracking down on students speaking out against US-financed Israeli genocide in Gaza.
The Impact of ‘68
Our work against apartheid was inspired in part by the generation of 1968, whose research exposed the role of companies fueling the war in Vietnam, including Dow Chemical, which produced napalm that was used to kill and maim untold numbers of people. We were also influenced by publications like “Who Rules Columbia,” as well as a handy publication on how to research the corporate ties of one’s university, published by the ever-relevant and crucial NACLA. And groups like National Action Research on the Military-Industrial Complex (NARMIC) were invaluable for peace activists from the anti-Vietnam War period onward.
Other influences on me from that generation of researchers and analysts included Michael Klare, whose reports and books like Supplying Repression, War Without End: American Planning for the Next Vietnams, and Rogue States and Nuclear Outlaws: America’s Search for a New Foreign Policy were foundational in forming my understanding of US military spending and strategy. And my perspective on the domestic factors driving Pentagon spending began with The Iron Triangle, written by my friend and mentor Gordon Adams (now Abby Ross).
The Corporate Role in Fueling Genocide in Gaza
Activists pushing universities to divest from companies profiting from Israel’s war in Gaza have made connections with the earlier generation of researchers described above, from webinars with members of NARMIC to essays that link to documents like “Who Rules Columbia?”
A key organization in the middle of current efforts is Little Sis—a powerful research organization whose name is based on the idea that they are the opposite of Big Brother. They facilitate research and make connections on a wide range of issues, but at this moment one of their most important products is a webinar they did with Dissenters, a youth anti-militarism group based in Chicago, on how to research the corporate ties of universities. It’s a tutorial on researching university ties to war profiteers, going well beyond the issue of stock holdings in arms makers to look at the connections of trustees, financial institutions, and other relevant ties to weapons makers.
As the Trump administration stops collecting some kinds of data and destroys other kinds altogether, the job of research will be ever more difficult.
Groups of dedicated students within the ceasefire and anti-genocide movements on US campuses have done excellent work in researching the corporate ties of their own universities. I appeared on Santita Jackson’s radio show in February 2025 and connected with Bryce Greene, a student at the University of Indiana involved in the ceasefire-Gaza movement there. He and his fellow students were researching the military ties of the university, and they wanted me to review their research to see if they were missing anything. As it happened, they had dug up far more information than I would have, in part because of local connections. Their biggest find was related to the university’s ties to the Naval Surface Warfare Center (NSWC), Crane Division, which provides technical support for everything from missile defense systems to Special Operations Forces. University professors had gone back and forth between Crane and campus, and Crane had a direct presence at the school. Students then started a “keep Crane off campus” campaign.
Researchers focused specifically on Israel and Gaza include the American Friends Service Committee, which has a web page on “Companies Profiting from the Gaza Genocide,” and No Tech for Apartheid, which, among other things, reaches out to workers at Google and Amazon to encourage them to take a stand against technology from tech firms going to support the Israeli war effort. One of the most valuable current resources is the United Nations report, From the Economy of Occupation to the Economy of Genocide, produced under the supervision of Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese, which describes its purpose this way:
This report investigates the corporate machinery sustaining Israel’s settler-colonial project of displacement and replacement of the Palestinians in the occupied territory. While political leaders and governments shirk their obligations, far too many corporate entities have profited from Israel’s economy of illegal occupation, apartheid and now, genocide. The complicity exposed by this report is just the tip of the iceberg; ending it will not happen without holding the private sector accountable, including its executives.
Models of Research and Strategy
The most effective current model for using data to shape the debate on security issues is the Costs of War Project at Brown University. Their work on the costs of America’s post-9/11 wars ($8 trillion and counting), the number of overseas US counterterror missions, the cost of US military aid and military operations in support of Israel (over $22 billion in the first year of the war in Gaza) is routinely cited in the press and by political leaders, and provides fuel for activists in their writing and public education efforts.
The best current example of merging research, organizing, and strategy is the new Poor People’s Campaign, cochaired by Reverend William Barber of Repairers of the Breach and Reverend Liz Theoharis of the Kairos Center. Their campaign was inspired by the effort of the same name announced by Martin Luther King Jr. in November 1967. King was assassinated before his campaign came to fruition, but the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO) and other groups picked up the work of making its signature event, The Poor People’s March on Washington, happen.
One of the bedrock principles of the current Poor People’s Campaign is that the people most impacted by poverty should lead the movement. But cultivating such leadership, especially among those who have been excluded from the halls of power and influence for so long, requires an ongoing process of research, education, and training. Theoharis, director of the Kairos Center and cochair of the Poor People’s Campaign, underscores this point in her new book on the history of poor people’s organizing, coauthored with Noam Sandweiss-Back:
Without a continual process of learning, reflecting, and growing intellectually, our organizing is reduced to mobilizing, an exercise in moving bodies without supporting existing leaders and developing new ones... mobilizing people is important, but when it becomes our sole focus, we sacrifice long-term power for short-term action.
As Theoharis notes, King made a similar point in Where Do We Go From Here?:
Education without social action is a one-sided value because it has no true power potential. Social action without education is a weak expression of pure energy… Our policies should have the strength of deep analysis beneath them to be able to challenge the clever sophistries of our opponents.
In the midst of the torrent of lies and repressive practices emanating from Washington, the use of research to guide strategy and support organizing is more important than ever. But as the Trump administration stops collecting some kinds of data and destroys other kinds altogether, the job of research will be ever more difficult. That can be partially compensated for by drawing on the collective knowledge of researchers, organizers, and community members alike, taking our lead from people who are on the front lines of dealing with repressive policies.
Occasionally, when I am giving a talk on how to reduce the influence of the war machine, I point out that, if there were not people organizing for change, my research would be little more than a peculiar hobby. That is only a slight exaggeration. We need to bring together researchers, organizers, and strategists, taking our lead from members of impacted communities, to work in partnership against the challenges we now face on a daily, at times hourly, basis.
This means the content of our work may take different forms. Rather than reports and briefings, we may need to rely on music, storytelling, art, and ritual to share insights on the political terrain and tales of resistance and revival in these times of escalating crisis. This may become even more to the point as traditional forms of protest continue to be criminalized.
We have a rich history to guide and inspire us, but the task is ours.
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Expelling Brilliance: Trump’s Assault on International Students Imperils America
America will not be great again by closing its doors. It will flourish through welcoming the world’s best minds and taking pride in that.
Aug 18, 2025
Once, the United States truly was the land of opportunity, a place where young scholars arrived with suitcases full of hope, chasing the white picket fence version of the American Dream: studying in leafy college towns, dreaming of raising families under skies of limitless possibility.
But in early June 2025, US President Donald Trump delivered a shattering blow to that promise. With two sweeping proclamations, one banning all new visas for Harvard bound international students and the other reimposing travel restrictions on 19 countries, many of them Muslim majority, the Trump administration effectively expelled the very brilliance that makes America great.
These orders not only redirect visas, but they also overturn a national identity built on access, freedom, and merit. The administration justifies the actions under the guise of protecting against foreign influence, radicalism, and even campus antisemitism. But in truth, this is a punitive escalation, a direct response to elite universities like Harvard and Columbia resisting federal overreach in governance.
It sends a chilling message: that merit and dreams matter less than nationality or ideology. That the invitation once extended to the world’s best and brightest is now conditional. This is not a means to protect national infrastructure; it is a means to coerce institutional compliance with injustice.
We must fight for a country where politics do not gate opportunity and where the world’s brightest minds are not exiled but embraced.
International students earned nearly half of all STEM PhDs in the US in recent years and contributed nearly $44 billion to the US economy in 2023–24 alone. Breaking this pipeline will hollow out AI labs, biotech firms, and university research hubs.
Experts warn of a looming brain drain that will hand leadership in critical fields to other nations. This represents an ideological turn in presidential power, unchecked and unprecedented.
The Trump administration has already suspended Harvard’s Student and Exchange Visitor Program status; frozen billions in research funding; and implemented intrusive social media vetting for visa applicants.
Thousands of international students, many of whom simply expressed political views or joined peaceful protests, have seen their legal status revoked. Rather than investing in long-term domestic talent pipelines, the Trump administration is deliberately dismantling the systems that anchor America’s intellectual and innovation ecosystems.
The shrinking H‑1B visa access, reduced Optional Practical Training (OPT) retention, and ideological bans reflect a shortsighted, transactional worldview. And economic theory makes one thing clear: These restrictive moves will not fix the trade deficit—they will erode America’s competitive edge.
So what must be done?
Lawmakers and universities must ground policy in principle and pragmatism. They must codify protections that prohibit ideological or religious discrimination in visa decisions, ensuring no future administration can replicate Proclamation 10949. Visa policy should be amended to retain international STEM graduates, scaling OPT, and opening clear talent pipelines to citizenship.
Academic autonomy must be protected by rejecting funding threats tied to political compliance and affirming universities’ independence.
America’s strength has always come from being a place where merit and motivation, not birthplace or belief, determine opportunity. Expelling brilliance to score political points may win applause from a few, but globally, it signals surrender. America will not be great again by closing its doors. It will flourish through welcoming the world’s best minds and taking pride in that.
When brilliance, innovation, and the freedom to think, speak, and believe are driven out, we must be wary and active citizens; we cannot stay silent. We must fight for a country where politics do not gate opportunity and where the world’s brightest minds are not exiled but embraced. The future of America depends on it.
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