Author: Jyoti Rao

by Jyoti M. Rao

International experts have concluded that recent crackdowns on campus protests have created “a widespread hostile environment for the exercise of the rights to freedom of peaceful assembly and association” and recommended that universities find ways to respect and support their students. Still, student activists and their allies have seen escalating disciplinary actions taken against them for speaking out against the horrific human rights violations in Gaza as a result of military bombardment substantially underwritten by the U.S. government. These actions against students have included extensive surveillance, involvement of armed law enforcement, suspensions, threats to employment, and declarations of tenured faculty as personae non gratae for participating in protests. In the early months of 2025, escalation of this hostility has included withdrawal of federal funding from universities at which protests took place and an executive order targeting students and casting their political activity in propagandistic terms.

Continue reading “Attacks on Student Activism: A Psychoanalytic Perspective”