On January 29th, 2025, former President Donald Trump signed an Executive Order that poses a direct and dangerous threat to university students and academic workers across the country. This order targets those engaged in protests or speech critical of Israeli settler colonialism and genocide, falsely equating these critiques with antisemitism and threatening First Amendment and academic freedom rights. In response, the National Lawyers Guild, American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Palestine Legal, National Students for Justice in Palestine, CUNY 4 Palestine, U.S. Palestinian Community Network, Project South, the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective, National Faculty for Justice in Palestine, and dozens of other organizations have united to issue a call to action. These organizations demand that universities across the country stand firm in defense of academic freedom, free speech, migrant rights, and the right of students and workers to protest.
The order mandates that universities surveil non-citizen students, faculty, and staff based on vague and unconstitutional “security-related inadmissibility grounds,” including any “unlawful activity.” The Executive Order singles out those allegedly linked to “Hamas sympathizers” or “pro-jihad” rhetoric, vowing to track down and deport them under the guise of national security. This is nothing less than a gross attempt to intimidate and silence those who speak out for Palestinian liberation, and to create a climate of fear and suspicion on campuses exemplifying a new era of McCarthyism.
“This Executive Order is a naked attempt to silence anyone critical of Israeli settler colonial genocide and the U.S. government’s complicity in it. It threatens the core values of free speech and academic freedom in this country,” said Suzanne Adely with the National Lawyers Guild. “It’s an authoritarian move that will chill dissent and create a surveillance state on campuses where we are supposed to be encouraging open thought and activism.”
“We’ve seen this before in U.S. history—authoritarian repression and targeting dissenting voices. This Executive Order recalls the McCarthy-era witch hunts,” said Azadeh Shahshahani, Legal & Advocacy Director at Project South. “This is an attempt to silence those who stand against imperialism and settler colonialism. We must resist it.”
This order is part of a broader and calculated attack on Palestine solidarity and critical scholarship in the United States. From the 2003 Congressional investigations into Middle Eastern studies to the recent Congressional House Committee hearings equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism in 2023 and 2024, government efforts to suppress scholarship critical of Israel have grown increasingly brazen. Now, with Trump’s Executive Order, universities are being further weaponized as part of the state’s larger campaign to police political thought and speech.
“Universities have always been sites of struggle between capitalist-colonial forces on the one hand and those fighting for liberation on the other. Administrations have always sided with the ruling class at the expense of their working class, Black and Brown students and workers. Today, university administrations are increasingly becoming instruments of surveillance and repression,” said an organizer with CUNY for Palestine. “This is a direct attack on critical thought and our ability to teach about and organize for liberation on our campuses, and it will disproportionately impact Palestinian, Arab, Muslim, and Black and Brown students who have already been subjected to state violence and repression.”
“This Executive Order is not only an attack on Palestinians; it’s an attack on all who seek justice and liberation. It is a blatant attempt to silence those who challenge U.S. imperialism, settler colonialism, and racist state violence,” said Corinna Mullin from the Anti-Imperialist Scholars Collective “This is a deliberate effort to suppress a growing movement that refuses to be silenced.”
The organizers of the statement point out that the campaign to crush Palestinian solidarity activism and silence political dissent is not new. The U.S. government has a long history of using deportation, surveillance, and criminalization to target those organizing around justice demands and for liberation. From the Red Scare to the FBI’s COINTELPRO program, the government has repeatedly sought to silence those who challenge the status quo. Trump’s Executive Order is simply the latest chapter in this history of state repression.
The statement calls on universities to publicly declare themselves Sanctuary Universities, committed to protecting their students, faculty, and staff from state repression, surveillance, and political retaliation.
The statement concludes that “Just as the Black and Puerto Rican liberation, anti-racist, economic justice, anti-apartheid, and anti-war protesters resisted repression, we will resist this new McCarthyism.” It calls on “university administrations to do the right thing and to defend the right to dissent and ensure that campuses remain spaces of resistance, sanctuary, and solidarity.”
For further information or media inquiries, please contact:
Marco Galaviz Luna, National Lawyers Guild, press@nlg.org
Corinna Mullin, CUNY 4 Palestine, corinna.mullin@googlemail.com
Shelley Danzy, Project South, shelley@projectsouth.org
