Higher Education Workers Condemn College & University Crackdown on Peaceful Protestors

Higher Education Labor United (HELU) stands with many others in the U.S. labor movement in condemning the arrests and disciplinary actions recently taken by a growing list of college and university leaders at Cal Poly Humboldt, Columbia, Emerson, Emory, NYU, The Ohio State University, Yale, the Universities of Minnesota, Southern California, Texas at Austin, and many other institutions against students and workers who have called for an end to the war in Gaza. These students and workers are engaged in organizing, research, and nonviolent direct action on their campuses and have been met with unjustifiable administrative action. In many cases, this has included calling in armed police and conducting mass arrests of peaceful protestors. We remind our colleges and universities of the need to respect all campus members, including students, workers, and surrounding communities. Our institutions must uphold workers’ rights, both as they are written into law and as they are guaranteed under union contracts, including rights to concerted action and disciplinary procedures. 

A democratic higher education for the common good requires free speech and academic freedom, vigorous debate, and social inclusion. The current divisions on campuses highlight the erosion of these basic tenets of higher education.

We live in dangerous times. Reactionaries, including many in Congress, have seized on colleges and universities as sites of political struggle, targeting higher education workers in particular. Many in the leadership class of our institutions have chosen to play ball with this new McCarthyism by bowing to political pressure, violently disrupting peaceful demonstrations, and enacting harsh and undue disciplinary action against students and workers.

As higher education workers, we are keenly aware of the undue power of unelected, unaccountable administrations who prioritize political expediency and donors over our colleges’ and universities’ public service missions. Students, workers, and our allies are the last line of defense against this onslaught. Only together can we fight back against racism and sexism, Islamophobia and Antisemitism, and the deep inequalities that define not only our institutions but also our society more broadly. 

HELU exists because workers in higher education across all job categories are recognizing the need to come together to reclaim our colleges and universities as democratic institutions that work for students, workers, and the communities we are meant to serve.

Echoing our colleagues from across the nation, we demand that:

• Suspensions and other disciplinary actions against students and workers related to Palestine solidarity protests and speech be dismissed and that related charges be dropped and records cleared. 
• Student disciplinary systems not be used to enact one-sided suppression of political dissent or to silence and punish legitimate forms of speech, protest, and assembly. Any and all revisions to such policies and procedures must be democratically reviewed by faculty, staff, and students to protect the freedoms and due process rights of all. 
• The rights of faculty and students to peacefully protest be restored immediately and respected going forward.
• College and university administrations must cease the abhorrent practice of turning armed police on peaceful demonstrators. 

These events underscore the need to fundamentally reconsider how the U.S. supports higher education. It is time to democratize our institutions, to reinvest in them, and to put student, worker, and community voices in the lead. 

We must stand together in solidarity with one another: students, faculty, staff, alumni, and our communities. When we come together in peaceful dissent against injustice, we build solidarity, strength, power, and community. It is imperative that we support one another in this moment.

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