‘This is the job’: How some college professors are supporting student protesters

Hundreds of faculty members, many of them women and LGBTQ+, have been advocating for the students demonstrating against U.S. support for Israel’s war in Gaza. In recent weeks, student protests have intensified, leading to over 2,500 arrests .

There are more women on college campuses than men, and a number of women have been at the center of the movement. The suspensions and arrests last month of student protesters from Barnard College — the women’s liberal arts institution affiliated with Columbia University — drew national attention to the anti-war cause and inspired their peers at dozens of other colleges to organize protests of their own.

Students have occupied university buildings . They’ve staged “Gaza solidarity encampments,” groups of tents on school grounds, to spotlight how Palestinians in Gaza are displaced and starving after seven months of bombardment — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his government’s response to the Hamas attack that killed 1,200 Israelis on October 7. Over 34,000 Palestinians , disproportionately women and children, have been killed in the war, local health officials have reported. In response, students in the United States have been demanding that their universities divest from companies with ties to Israel.

Professors at multiple U.S. colleges have intervened when police have apprehended students or tried to clear away encampments, sometimes leading to their own confrontations with law enforcement. They have signed letters condemning administrators for overseeing the suspensions and arrests of students, with some voting “no confidence” in their university presidents . They’ve participated in work stoppages and vowed to boycott universities that criminalized or penalized student protesters .

The activism that faculty have taken up to defend students facing arrest, suspension and repression can make them vulnerable to retaliation, especially if they are adjuncts, junior faculty and faculty of color, roles in which women are overrepresented . The 19th spoke to several faculty who say they’re taking the risk because they believe in their students, the anti-war cause and the lessons they’ve taught students about structural oppression.

Sherene Razack, a professor and chair in women’s studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, (UCLA) walked out of classes with about 200 faculty members last week in solidarity with student protesters. She said that even faculty who disagree with the protesters believe in their free speech rights, a point the American Association of University Professors also made in a statement last week.

“Many faculty members support the students in their right to protest and are committed to trying to protect that right as much as possible,” Razack said.

Students against the war have faced physically aggressive counter-protesters, she said. On April 30, a group of pro-Israel men stormed the UCLA encampment , shooting fireworks into the enclosure, macing students and assaulting others . Hours passed before police dispersed them. By May 2, officers swept the encampment, made132 arrests and fired rubber bullets that, in some cases, drew blood.

“This is what’s super alarming about the situation because it’s hard to protect the students’ right to protest, it’s hard to protect them , in the wake of this kind of really aggressive situation,” Razack said. Students, teaching assistants and junior faculty also risk being doxxed (exposure of personal contact information to facilitate harassment), losing scholarships, grants and promotions for voicing their beliefs, she said.

UCLA Chancellor Gene Block plans to retire July 31, but some faculty want him to resign now , arguing the university did not protect students in the encampment. UCLA’s faculty-led Task Force on Anti-Palestinian, Anti-Muslim and Anti-Arab Racism sent a letter to Block on May 1 alleging he’s ignored marginalized students.

“Your failure to acknowledge the multiple documented incidents of racism, threat, and violence directed at Palestinians, Muslims, and Arabs, and indeed anyone seen as in support of them, including large numbers of Jewish students both inside and outside the encampment, is stunning in its disregard for large segments of the university community,” it stated.

After announcing the creation of an Office of Campus Safety and advisory group for UCLA’s safety and emergency operations on Sunday, Block said Monday night that university officials are working with the Los Angeles Police Department to find and hold accountable the individuals who attacked the pro-Palestinian camp at the school last week.

With a student body that’s 60 percent women and 1 percent nonbinary , UCLA’s anti-war activists include many women and LGBTQ+ people . Razack said these groups often possess feminist, anti-racist and anti-colonialist values, and are worried about democracy, egalitarianism and state violence.

David Turner, an assistant professor in the Department of Social Welfare at UCLA’s Luskin School of Public Affairs, has signed multiple letters to support student protesters. Those letters emphasize academic freedom, students’ right to protest, and resources needed for Muslim and Palestinian students, he said.

“I have also done work to support dialogue and conversation with our Jewish faculty, with Jewish students, with Jewish staff,” he said. “If we don’t dialogue about these issues, if we can’t do that at a university, where we’re supposed to have a robust exchange of ideas, where we’re supposed to be able to disagree in safety, build and work with one another, then we get situations like this.”

Turner said that he is more concerned about being a role model for his students than he is about the consequences he could face for advocating for them.

“Who would I be as a social movements professor and a community organizer to not support the students who are engaged in a social movement in real time, applying the things that we learned in class?” he asked.

He also supports students because he believes that they have pushed the nation forward for generations.

“The students were right when we divested from South Africa,” Turner said. “The students were right to protest against Vietnam. The students were right to be at the forefront of the civil rights movement to help to integrate the United States. …So it is important for us to remember that in this moment, the students are right about not being complicit in the genocidal campaign that has happened to the Palestinians.”

At Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, near Chicago, administrators reached a deal with the students pressuring them to divest from Israel. Evergreen State College , Brown University , Rutgers University, the University of Minnesota and the University of California, Riverside , also came to agreements with students last week, making them part of a growing list of universities to do so since Vanderbilt University initiated the encampment movement in March . Northwestern will relaunch its Advisory Committee on Investment Responsibility and answer questions from community members about its financial holdings, among other steps.

Before the agreement, some Northwestern faculty and staff took shifts to help students protect their encampment. That includes Steven Thrasher, an assistant professor of journalism, who locked hands with his colleagues to block university police from the tents. Getting shoved around then has not dissuaded him from putting his body on the line for students again.

“I feel like it’s incumbent upon me as a faculty member to stand between them and the university police department to make sure they do not put their hands on our students,” he said.

Thrasher, who is teaching a class called “ The Theater of Protest ,” not only stood guard but also told students how their activism overlaps with historical movements related to civil rights, LGBTQ+ rights and AIDS-related advocacy. He watched students learn about each other’s cultures — from folding keffiyehs to observing Passover. Students from multiple faiths sang Passover songs and enjoyed a Passover Seder, with those unfamiliar with the ceremonial meal discovering its significance, he said.

“It’s a lie to say that the Jewish and Muslim students don’t love and care about each other,” Thrasher said. “They’re showing up for one another in really caring ways.”

They discussed anti-Zionism versus antisemitism , which Thrasher was accused of years ago for backing the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement and for calling Israel an “ apartheid state .” Anti-war students have also been called antisemitic, often for chanting, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free!” Supporters of Israel in the United States say the phrase calls for the destruction of Israel ; pro-Palestinian students and activists say it is “ a call for peace and equality .”

Giving his keynote address for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Annual Days of Remembrance ceremony on Tuesday, President Joe Biden criticized the use of “antisemitic posters, slogans, calling for the annihilation of Israel, the world’s only Jewish state” during college protests.

Thrasher said that potential retaliation for supporting peaceful student protests won’t deter him.

“I teach about social justice and journalism, and I teach about LGBT issues,” Thrasher said. “So, to me, this is the job.”

Brittany Friedman, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Southern California (USC), is one of many faculty frustrated with the institution’s approach to protesters. The university called police in riot gear to campus on April 24 to clear the student encampment in Alumni Park. Officers apprehended 93 individuals for trespassing.

Arrests at other universities, especially the police takedown of Emory University Professor Caroline Fohlin , also upset Friedman. Others were shocked to see police topple 65-year-old Annelise Orleck , a professor of history at Dartmouth College and former chair of its Jewish studies department, during a campus protest.

Violent college arrests send students and staff a message about their worth, Friedman said.

“They show that this is how disposable you are to your institution, that your institution would unleash violence workers, aka the police, upon you as a result of you peacefully protesting and potentially threatening their corporate image,” she said.

USC faculty have also objected to the university’s decision April 15 to cancel the graduation speech of valedictorian, Asna Tabassum , after the group Trojans for Israel accused her of “antisemitic bigotry” because she once shared a social media link to a slideshow calling Zionism “a racist settler-colonial ideology.” Tabassum is an Indian-American Muslim whose studies include genocide.

“The administration should not have canceled the valedictorian speech,” Friedman said.

USC also announced in April that it was canceling its main commencement ceremony, a move that Columbia University announced on Monday . Critics of these decisions argue that they serve to silence students.

Faculty at USC last week marched to support the right of students to protest peacefully and to condemn the police force used against them. They demanded that USC drop charges against its student or faculty demonstrators. Early Sunday, the university once again called police to clear the encampment , which students rebuilt after the first sweep, but no one was arrested.

“USC faculty are organizing around this principle that we are, first and foremost, educators,” Friedman said. “We are researchers, and we’re some of the top researchers in our fields, not just in the country but in the world. How can we stand by and watch this happen to our campus?”