Professors Nationwide Defend Protesting Students as Politicians, Police Attack

Fireworks launched into a group of students. Mace. Vicious slurs and unabated assault. A pro-Israel mob enacted this and more upon the pro-Palestine encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles on Tuesday night, as the police stood by and let it happen.

The scenes inspired outrage across the country, and even California Gov. Gavin Newsom criticized the police for failing to respond to the attacks. Undeterred by the violence, the students stood their ground in the encampment, a show of solidarity with the people of Gaza. They were joined by university employees who raised a banner that read “We stand with our students.” The UCLA chapter of Faculty for Justice in Palestine called for a day of strike in solidarity with their students and in protest of the administration. By Wednesday night, the police finally responded: shooting rubber bullets and tear gas at the pro-Palestine students who had just been assaulted the day before.

The faculty intervention at UCLA is just one of the latest examples of college professors putting their bodies and livelihoods on the line in defense of their students who are protesting their tax and tuition dollars contributing to a plausible genocide. At schools across the country, faculty have locked arms to form a protective barrier in front of their students and have been arrested and brutalized themselves.

“This moment has actually brought faculty together in a way I’ve never experienced in 20 years on campus. I’ve found myself working closely with colleagues I’d never met before,” Columbia University history professor Nara Milanich told The Intercept. “People have dropped everything to support students and respond to this moment.”

The groundswell of faculty support has come amid demonstrations at over 154 university campuses nationwide. The student protesters have called on their schools to cut financial ties with Israel, whose war on Gaza has so far killed more than 34,000 people. University administrations — propelled by Republicans, who have maintained carnal hunger for more war, as well as moderate Democrats — have in response sicced riot police armed with tear gas, stun grenades, and even snipers onto America’s students. The militarized response reached an apex on Tuesday night, when police, with a megatruck in tow, invaded Columbia’s campus and removed students occupying Hamilton Hall, an action inspired by past protests against the Vietnam War, racism, and apartheid South Africa.

Milanich described the raid as “authoritarian political theater” and said it sickened her that administrators had not only invited the “charade,” but were also defending it. Since Tuesday, she noted, the entire main campus has been closed to faculty, staff, and students other than those who live on it.

“The only folks on campus are the police. This feels like as good a representation as any of the administration’s handling of the situation. Our campus no longer belongs to faculty, staff, and students; it has become an occupied zone ceded to the NYPD.”

For the faculty at Columbia, President Nemat Minouche Shafik’s testimony in front of the GOP-led House Committee on Education and Workforce on April 17 was a turning point. During the hearing Shafik and her colleagues David Schizer, Claire Shipman, and David Greenwald seldom advocated for their students and faculty, failing to challenge the hearing’s unproven premise that Columbia was plagued by rampant antisemitism and accepting the idea that they needed to crack down harder on students. “President Shafik had an opportunity to defend the basic values of the university and instead she totally capitulated to a group of congress people with their own agendas,” Milanich wrote in a message.

The police raid the next day, during which more than 100 students were arrested, only intensified the faculty’s fury. Theater professor Shayoni Mitra said faculty came together across ranks, schools, disciplines, and ideologies in outrage and collectivity in a way she hadn’t seen before: faculty walkouts, dissent from permanent law school professors, condemnation from scientists around the world, and even mass global academic boycotts against the school. “We do not stand behind this militarization of campus,” Mitra said. “We stand behind our students.”

Faculty and students alike have been especially troubled by the perception that their administrators are not only refusing to affirmatively defend them from external attacks, but are also actively welcoming them. For example, after getting bludgeoned by Republicans for allegedly overseeing a campus rife with antisemitism — and then inviting the mass arrest of pro-Palestinian protesters — Shafik then allowed Republicans House Speaker Mike Johnson, Virginia Foxx, Mike Lawler, Nicole Malliotakis, and Anthony D’Esposito to deliver a press conference at the center of Columbia’s campus. While being met by boos, the Republicans used their platform to condemn Shafik, and the students she oversees, and to call for her resignation.