'A political agenda aimed at reshaping higher education into an ideological stronghold'

Pro-Palestinian Jewish Americans gather outside the ICE headquarters at the emergency rally to release Palestinian Green Card holder and Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil and reject mass deportations of Trump Administration on Thursday evening, March 20, 2025, at Foley Square, New York City, United States

Pro-Palestinian Jewish Americans gather outside the ICE headquarters to demand the release of Columbia University graduate Mahmoud Khalil on March 20, 2025

(Image credit: Selcuk Acar / Anadolu / Getty Images)

By Anya Jaremko-Greenwold, The Week US

published March 24, 2025

'The targeting of Palestinian activism is merely an excuse'

Faisal Kutty at Al Jazeera

"The Trump administration's war on campus dissent" has hit Columbia hard, and the university "ultimately capitulated to the Trump administration's sweeping demands," says Faisal Kutty. "What started as speech restrictions and campus disciplinary actions has now evolved" into deportations and "outright interference in university affairs." The "endgame is not just suppressing pro-Palestinian activism but taking ideological control over higher education" in the U.S., Kutty adds. "The assault on universities is part of a broader right-wing effort to reshape academia."

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Anya Jaremko-Greenwold has worked as a story editor at The Week since 2024. She previously worked at FLOOD Magazine, Woman's World, First for Women, DGO Magazine and BOMB Magazine. Anya's culture writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Jezebel, Vice and the Los Angeles Review of Books, among others.