Oppose the assault on democratic rights on campuses! Stop the genocide in Gaza!

As the Socialist Equality Party’s candidate for president, I condemn in the strongest terms the attack on democratic rights launched by university administrations, backed by Democratic and Republican politicians, as students return to campuses across the country for the fall semester.

Last academic year witnessed massive protests against the genocide in Gaza, including on the campuses. University administrations and the state responded with police assaults on students, the banning of student groups, and reprisals against protesters. 

Now, universities are preparing for renewed opposition to the genocide and even more horrific crimes by implementing major restrictions on freedom of movement and the criminalization of protests.

Amid a massive wave of COVID infections, the University of California system has banned the use of face masks, which protesting students have used both to prevent doxxing and the spread of COVID-19. The University of California, Rutgers University and Columbia University, where police burst onto campus and beat students in the spring, have also banned encampments. Only individuals with university IDs will be able to enter campus at Columbia, in a move clearly aimed at isolating students from the working class.

The Socialist Equality Party specifically condemns the police assault and arrests at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor on August 28th in response to a “die-in” protest at the university’s quad. An army of police swarmed on the campus for hours and finally descended on the group of 50 protestors, physically assaulting them while ignoring Zionist counter-protestors.

The police crackdown came after the UM administration unveiled revisions to its conduct policies that allow the “university” to file a complaint against a student with practically no restrictions. This will provide legal cover to allow outside consulting firms to gather information and file complaints and sanctions against students on behalf of the university.

These policy revisions and earlier ones targeting free speech and democratic rights adopt intentionally vague language, allowing the administration to ban any protest, gathering, picket line or demonstration it deems disruptive, effectively banning all forms of protest on the campus. There can be little doubt that the university’s Board of Regents, which is packed with operatives of the Democratic and Republican parties, many of them millionaires, discussed these policies at the highest levels of the state and Democratic Party.

The boards of trustees at the prestigious universities where these repressive measures are being implemented are packed with billionaires and members of the political elite. For example, David Greenwald, co-chair at Columbia University, spent 20 years at Goldman Sachs before becoming chairman of the financial firm Fried Frank. Also on the board at Columbia is former Secretary of Homeland Security under Obama, Jeh Johnson. These are the interests driving policy decisions in the lucrative industry of higher education.

The Socialist Equality Party also denounces restrictions on academic freedom as manifested in the firing of faculty and staff for opposing the genocide and in the passage of laws in states such as Indiana and Florida limiting what and how professors are allowed to teach in the classroom. 

The assault on democratic rights, like the genocide in Gaza, is tied to the broader geopolitical aims of US imperialism. Institutions of higher education are being harnessed to the drive to world war, with academic resources being diverted to fund the research of ever deadlier weapons. Under these conditions, the ruling class can tolerate no expression of opposition.

Nothing can be resolved on the campuses alone. Divestment and protests based on appealing to a section of the capitalist political establishment and university administrations to change course have failed to stop a single bullet from reaching Israel.

This is because Israel is a military outpost of US imperialism, the system which both parties represent. The genocide in Gaza is itself only one part of an expanding global war, including the US-NATO war against Russia in Ukraine. The working class, on the other hand, has no interest in war and indeed will be forced to pay for it through cuts to jobs and living standards. 

The attack on democratic rights and the ongoing genocide in Gaza expose all the “lesser evil” arguments brought out to try to convince workers and young people to support the Democratic Party and, in these elections, the campaign of Kamala Harris. The Biden-Harris administration has blood on its hands that it can never wash clean.

Trump and the Republicans pose an enormous danger to democratic rights. The threat of fascism, however, cannot be opposed through support for the Democratic Party, a party of Wall Street and imperialism. As the attack on protesters demonstrates, the Democrats have no commitment to the defense of basic democratic rights. Their central priority is the escalation of war.

It is the immense social power of the international working class that must be mobilized to stop the genocide and defend democratic rights. The interests of the working class lie in the overthrow of the capitalist profit system, the root cause of imperialism and dictatorship.

The Socialist Equality Party is running in the presidential elections to build a socialist and revolutionary leadership in the working class. The SEP is on the ballot in Michigan. We call on all students to vote for Joseph Kishore and Jerry White for president and vice president, and to join and help build the Socialist Equality Party.