As the fall semester unfolds across American campuses, a new wave of student activism and administrative crackdowns is sweeping through universities, fueled by passionate opposition to the ongoing war in Gaza and mounting concerns over the state of free speech. According to recent reports from Al Jazeera and The Louisville Cardinal, students who protest against institutional ties to Israel or demand university divestment from pro-Israel companies are facing an increasingly hostile environment. This tension comes as the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) released its sixth annual College Free Speech Rankings, highlighting a troubling landscape for open discourse in higher education.
At the heart of the current unrest is the University of California, Berkeley, which, despite its historic role as the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, received a failing grade in FIRE’s rankings. The university has come under scrutiny for sharing information on more than 150 faculty members and students with the U.S. government, aiding a federal investigation into complaints of anti-Semitic incidents on college campuses. As reported by Berkeleyside and Al Jazeera, an anonymous graduate student said, “the names targeted seem to be Muslim and Arab individuals who expressed support for Palestine.”
Throughout August and September 2025, student protesters across the country have faced a barrage of institutional responses. Noise complaints, prolonged disciplinary hearings stemming from demonstrations in 2024, and lawsuits alleging free speech violations have become commonplace. Despite these obstacles, student organizers remain undeterred. On September 4, Temple University students in Philadelphia demanded that the university divest from pro-Israel companies and called on the school’s president to protect immigrant students. Less than a week later, on September 10, students at San José State University protested the presence of Lockheed Martin—a major weapons supplier in the Israeli arms chain—at the school’s career fair. The following day, University of Louisville students staged a protest outside their own career fair, drawing attention to the university’s partnerships with companies such as GE Aerospace, Raytheon, Gulfstream Aerospace, and Toyota, all of which have direct or indirect ties to Israel’s military operations, according to The Louisville Cardinal.
The recent People’s Conference for Palestine, held in Detroit from August 29 to 31, served as a rallying point for activists and scholars. Palestinian scholar and professor Dr. Hatem Bazian delivered a keynote address that resonated deeply with attendees. “Thank you to the student movement. Thank you for your parents. Thank you for putting up with the multiple layers of the complicity and co-production of genocide. You are on the correct side of history,” he said, urging students not to let discomfort over discussions of Gaza silence them. “Genocide should make you feel uncomfortable.” Dr. Bazian criticized universities for offering symbolic inclusion—such as halal food or prayer spaces—while remaining silent on the crisis in Gaza. “Don’t allow the university’s responsibility to provide you halal food or a place for wudu and prayer to be substituted for you to be silent on genocide,” he asserted.
Another keynote speaker, Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University student activist who was detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) from March 8 to June 20, described the student movement as “the moral compass of this country.” Reflecting on his detention, Khalil said, “When I got detained, I had few options. One, to remain silent and just wish that the system may vindicate me. Another option is to focus on my case, to focus on my family and appeal to the people’s emotions. And another is to focus and to connect my case to the larger case of oppression against Palestinians. I chose the latter. I chose that because I knew that I was targeted because I am Palestinian.” Khalil argued that the government’s efforts to intimidate activists are a testament to the movement’s growing influence: “The fact that I was targeted by the highest officials and levels of this country means that we are winning, means that we are succeeding in shifting the mainstream in this country for Palestine to be the mainstream.”
The conference also featured a session on the student movement in the wake of the 2024 encampments, which began as a small protest at Columbia University and quickly spread to campuses across North America, Europe, Australia, Cuba, the West Bank, and Lebanon. Panel moderator Roua Daas, a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University and organizer with the Palestinian Youth Movement, recalled, “What began as a small encampment at Columbia quickly turned into a chain series of escalations on college campuses throughout North American and European campuses with a clear goal. A clear demand, and that is to end our institutions’ support for the brutal, ongoing genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, to confront our administrations with a moral crisis and to prove to students and our society at large just how far entrenched our institutions of higher education are in protecting their financial interests as well as the status quo politics and agenda of the empire.”
Since those encampments, students have adopted increasingly bold tactics, including hunger strikes, and have faced escalating repression: arrests, suspensions, false criminal charges, ICE detentions, and even visa revocations. In Michigan, the FBI has targeted and raided students for protesting against the war. Internationally, the crackdown has been just as severe. In August, a student leader at Aligarh Muslim University in India and several others were arrested for demonstrating solidarity with Palestinians. An investigation revealed that University of Melbourne officials surveilled students and staff during a May 2024 protest, using the school’s Wi-Fi network to monitor pro-Palestine activity.
According to FIRE’s latest survey, the climate for free expression on campus is dire. The rankings, released on September 22, 2025, are based on responses from 68,510 students at 257 American colleges. Claremont McKenna College stood alone as the only institution to score better than a C, while most California schools languished in the failing range. Even more alarming, 34% of students polled said violence is at least occasionally acceptable to stop someone from speaking, and 72% felt that shouting down speakers is justified. A full quarter of students admitted to self-censoring on sensitive topics, and more than half said the Israeli war in Gaza is too sensitive to discuss. FIRE president Greg Lukianoff warned, “Rather than hearing out and then responding to an ideological opponent, both liberal and conservative college students are retreating from the encounter entirely. This will only harm students’ ability to think critically and create rifts between them. We must champion free speech on campus as a remedy to our culture’s deep polarization.”
The editorial board of the student-run Claremont Independent weighed in following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, emphasizing, “There can be no picking and choosing in the world of free expression. It’s free speech for all, or free speech for none.” Other institutions, such as Stanford and Chapman, received D- and F grades, respectively, underscoring the widespread challenges facing campus free speech.
With restrictive policies proliferating—designated protest areas, increased surveillance, and administrative crackdowns—students like Columbia University graduate Sueda Polat are urging their peers to build their own networks for support. “Have connections with labor unions which can provide access to mutual aid, which can remediate you if you’ve lost access to campus housing or jobs or things like this. The more that we depend on one another, the less we have to depend on the institution,” Polat advised.
Despite mounting repression, the student movement for Palestine shows no sign of slowing down. “The students have said that we will do whatever it takes to expose the truth,” said Roua Daas. “As Israel continues to target journalists, activists and anyone that dares to expose Zionism’s brutality, students will continue to rise and again and again, we will continue to reiterate that Gaza is our compass.”
In a moment defined by polarization and protest, the future of open dialogue on campus and the fate of student activism remain deeply intertwined, with each new confrontation shaping the next chapter of American higher education.
