US Sociology leaders rally in support of academia, urge protection of free inquiry and research

News Release 2-Apr-2025
American Sociological Association

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The American Sociological Association has led a coalition of leading sociological organizations to issue an open letter defending the vital role of sociology in universities and society while condemning recent federal actions that threaten academic inquiry and free speech. Signed by the presidents of ten major sociological associations, the letter calls on university leaders, policymakers, and the public to resist efforts that undermine the discipline and stifle research that benefits society. 

The signatories express their growing concerns over abruptly canceled federal contracts, looming job losses for sociologists in academia and the public sector, and a climate of fear preventing scholars from exercising their constitutionally protected rights. They warn that these threats harm individual researchers, diminish public knowledge, and weaken the institutions that fuel economic, social, and technological progress. 

“Sociology strengthens universities, the private sector, and public institutions,” the letter states. “Through empirical research, sociologists provide critical insights into pressing social issues—from the effects of immigration on crime rates to the benefits of family-friendly workplace policies. The suppression of this knowledge is a disservice to society.” 

The letter firmly opposes federal policies restricting academic freedom and research, emphasizing that universities serve as hubs of knowledge discovery, training the next generation of social scientists whose expertise informs sectors such as technology, healthcare, and government. The authors urge university leaders to oppose efforts to restrict sociological education and research, affirming that “dismantling academia doesn’t just hurt academics; it deprives everyone of trained specialists who contribute to critical industries.” 

Considering these challenges, the coalition calls on universities to actively support sociology departments, faculty, and students. “Now more than ever,” the letter concludes, “leaders in higher education, private industry, and the public sector must stand up for academia and affirm that sociology plays a crucial role in advancing knowledge and fostering a better society.” 

Read the full letter here: https://www.asanet.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/Open-Letter-in-Support-of-Academia.pdf 

Silence Isn’t a Strategy: Academic Leaders Must Resist Assault on Higher Ed

Capitulating to the assault on higher education will only bring more attacks.

By Michael H. Gavin , 

Truthout

March 31, 2025

Chapman University student Hailey Bunsold, 21, center, and about 200 students take part in a walkout and protest on March 17, 2025, against Trump's policies, including his executive orders to dismantle Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives.Mindy Schauer/Digital First Media/Orange County Register via Getty Images

Nearly five years ago, then-President Donald Trump released his first anti-diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) executive order. The executive order, intentionally erroneous in its claims that DEI practices violated civil rights laws, sent shock waves through the academic community. Despite its false claims and eventual overturning, the executive order provided a playbook for right-wing state legislators to develop bills and laws that were not so much anti-DEI as they were anti-civil rights.

Upon returning to office, the Trump administration issued four executive orders. It also issued a “dear colleague letter” — a non-binding communication clarifying direction for offices and sectors of government — and withheld over $1 billion from two higher education institutions as part of a ransom-type takeover of higher education.

Today, the higher education ecosystem remains shocked, but hardly surprised. And many institutions, University of Michigan being the latest, have self-imposed restrictions on academic freedom and DEI in hopes of preemptively removing themselves from any targets the right-wing apparatus sets on them. However, over 55 universities are listed for investigation and action by the Trump administration; the Department of Education has been downsized; and more executive orders are in the works.

In this context, higher education’s collective stasis invites a scaled assault on our sector that extends beyond what we have seen.

Moreover, self-imposed restrictions miscalculate the multidecade history, scale and intent of the assault we are facing. For being safe today does not mean safe tomorrow; and tomorrow’s attack will be more refined and scaled than today’s.

The movement assaulting higher education, what I call the new white nationalism, is well-networked and well-funded. The new white nationalism uses legal, social and cultural apparatuses to perform the same work of the traditional skin-headed or white-hooded white nationalism. It acts covertly so that what is presented to the mainstream may often seem benign when it is anything but.
Strategies and Tactics That Higher Education Unknowingly Supports

Much of academia and the mainstream media fall victim to misdirection when it comes to the strategy of the new white nationalism. Executive orders, dear colleague letters or egregious retraction of federal funding create explosive stories for the mainstream media and public consuming it. The language in Trump’s executive orders and dear colleague letters, however, intentionally pervert reality of what is happening on college campuses for the mainstream to make it seem that civil rights are being upheld when in fact they are being decimated.

Their true purpose is to provide a road map for state legislatures to follow as they impose anti-academic freedom, anti-institutional autonomy, anti-civil rights, and anti-educational restrictions on their own state’s public institutions. We know this because of how Florida and Texas used the first Trump executive order in 2020 as a road map to decimate the operations and mission-centric values of their DEI offices, curricula and outreach. To be sure, the most significant damage has been and continues to make its way through state-level anti-DEI legislation — most recently seen in Ohio, Kentucky and North Carolina.

As states follow the Trump administration’s road map in their own legislatures, they also learn from one another’s lessons learned in court. Ohio’s Senate Bill 1, for instance, refined what was Florida’s anti-DEI bill, which was delayed because it originally violated free speech laws. That refinement avoids such constitutional freedoms but provides even more control by the state regarding curriculum and academic freedom, and eliminates DEI even more radically than in Florida.

Because right-wing legislators learn from one another across states, these bills are becoming increasingly extreme. For instance, an unprecedented bill in North Carolina would subject educators to misdemeanor charges for engaging in DEI. The fear such legislation creates — and subsequent alteration of policies, procedures and individual behaviors — cannot be underestimated. For example, despite the fact that the bill has not yet become law, institutions in North Carolina are already making changes to their operations, especially those that focus on marginalized students’ success. Faculty and staff in many states, North Carolina included, are prohibited from even using the language of DEI in email or texts for fear of repercussions.

Legislated fear is violating free speech and civil rights.

In a snowballing fashion, extremism is being normalized.

We may hope to avoid the assault on education by pretending that silence is a strategy. We may believe that inaction will allow us to survive for the next four years.

But we are in the middle of a movement, not a moment. We are watching as the snowball rolls, and soon we will be hit with an avalanche if we fail to act now.
Civil Rights, Higher Education and the Inertia of Complacency

Decades ago, the leaders of the new white nationalism concluded that individuals and institutions that comprise the American public, even the most well-meaning, will rarely (if ever) mobilize against legislation or policy that impinges on others’ civil rights. Only when legislation or policy impinges on these individuals or institutions directly will a defense mount against the new white nationalism. But by that moment it is too late. As a result, inaction and silence are not strategies. They are capitulations to the right.

Watching as the right actively clamps down on the free speech of students protesting for Palestine, to include their arrests, is not stasis — it is choosing to comply with such actions.

In short, our political context has placed higher education in a new partisan realm that is dangerous and that weaponizes academic freedom, institutional autonomy and DEI against us. Still, as a sector, we have not been transparent with the public or with each other about who is attacking us, how and why because we fear partisan retaliation. But partisan attacks permeate the country no matter what posture academia takes. And if we remain silent about the truth of who is attacking us, we are supporting that attack.

A right-wing movement counts on our fear and subsequent stasis and silence. Let us not fool ourselves, either: Many of us falsely believe we are being strategic but are actually complying with an assault on civil rights and our institutional missions. For instance, many institutions engage in what Liliana Garces calls repressive legalism because the consequences threatened for doing work central to higher education’s missions are so extreme. When Trump’s administration threatened students’ federal Pell grants, higher education leaders were faced with impossible choices of continuing the work of democracy and education, or losing funding. They often complied with demands predicated on perversions of what DEI is in order to secure already promised funding. While the need to secure funding is understandable, the sector’s quiet and inactive stance has left the forthcoming generation of students without the support they need and the knowledge a curriculum that teaches truth provides. We are trading our purpose for our temporary comfort; our moral contract for a false belief that this assault is momentary and will not scale further than what we allow in the moment.

But the threats are often leading us to do the work of the new white nationalism for them. For instance, Trump’s February 14, 2025, dear colleague letter continuously referred to “illegal” DEI or DEI that “violates” civil rights as reason to withhold federal financial aid from students. The same dear colleague letter indicated that further direction would come two weeks after the letter was published. That clarification, issued on February 28, 2025, can be summarized as stating the obvious: Segregation is illegal — a fact all of us in higher education both knew and agree with. But the clarification went one step further: It promised that institutions would have due process should the administration believe they were out of compliance with civil rights law. As Steve Robinson aptly pointed out, there was no need for the corrections many institutions made between the dear colleague letter on February 14 and the guidance on February 28.

Finally, the due process promised would include investigation into whether an institution’s policies disproportionately impact certain people or races more than others (to be backed up by statistics demonstrating such patterns); and whether the school was aware of or could foresee the effect of said policy or decision on members of a particular race.

Ironically, these factors underpin nearly all equity-based practices and policies in higher education. Indeed, it could be fairly argued that any orders or laws that prohibit DEI are now in violation of civil rights as defined by this dear colleague letter’s guidance — an irony for a court to hash out if a brave institution decides to argue it.
A Strong Reimagination of Higher Education Is Necessary

The erosion of civil rights coupled with the questioning of higher education’s value are capitalized upon and leveraged by an orchestrated, well-funded network of activists who are clear about their singular goal of eradicating higher education of DEI. From Chris Rufo to the Heritage Foundation, from Turning Point USA to Edward Blum, these individuals and think tanks attack higher education’s curricula and accessibility goals because they know that reimagining the world inclusively manifests a future that reduces racialized oppression.

While the attack is horrifying, the potential to reimagine our world is reciprocally great. For higher education is one of the few sectors well-situated to assert how civil rights, citizenship, justice and humanity intersect. And it is at this intersection that higher education leaders must imagine and act with urgency.

We must imagine in a way that pushes beyond the public discourse that perverts critical race theory for racist ends; or the futile desire to build bridges with those who have, as of March 2025, introduced legislation to make it a criminal act to teach, practice in or consider DEI.

We must move beyond the game of whack-a-mole that creates chaos nationally and within our sphere of influence. We must understand each individual federal order or state bill that attacks higher education is part of a larger anti-educational, anti-diversity movement with the goal of further marginalizing those who have historically been marginalized. Understanding this motive better informs our decisions to react.

There is no doubt that situating our moment and the landscape in this fashion is rife with danger. But it is also dangerous not to. Indeed, we must challenge the notion that academia must be overly careful and not provoke retaliation — for that is the way we arrived at the moment we are in today.

We need to separate the constructs of “partisan” from “political.” We need to make clear that while higher education has remained nonpartisan, only one party is actively engaged in an effort to dismantle the very missions of our educational institutions and civil rights of our students, employees and communities.

We have heard the cliché that silence is complicity for years now. We have now seen that complicity and complacence are choices that accept the decimation of our sector, the deportation of our students and the reduction of entire populations we serve to second-class citizens. Our silence is not a strategy. Our inaction is not wise.

We also must recognize that the tools to navigate this moment can no longer be reduced to finding the right words, the right logic, the right promises so that the new white nationalism will understand us differently. These lines of inquiry have begun to dominate the talks that should be strategic. Proclamations such as “equity is about more than race” or “change language, not values” indicate that we have already entered into a debate and negotiation we have lost by engaging in what Paul Gorski calls racial detours — a practice that voids race from discourse and strategy “under the illusion of progress.” The racial detours of our moment perform the right’s goals from the jump.

We need a national strategy in which higher education administrators in “safer” states pick up the mantle for all of us to save our sector, and indeed our democracy.

We must acknowledge that higher education leaders are not necessarily experts in U.S. history, politics and critical race theory, which are lenses necessary to lead — not manage — against the attacks we are seeing. Hence, our sector also needs training among leaders that provides background on the new white nationalist movement that seeks to dismantle higher education. Such training can provide academic leaders with theoretical and practical lenses to look at their own institutions, but also tools to collaborate with each other.

There will be detractors from what I suggest here. Some will claim that I am calling out too many of us, or that my argument is not timely. I would remind us what Martin Luther King Jr. taught us about remaining complacent when civil rights are on the line, and how timeliness is an argument made by those who benefit from time passing by.

The time is now for academic leadership to learn about the movement against us and why it threatens democracy.

Likewise, now is the time for us to consider a new view of what higher education can be if it is seen as a right, not a privilege, for all. A group I have been leading, Education for All, continues to do this work.

We are no longer facing a movement that an election could help us avoid; the landscape has significantly changed in just a few months. The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil, the criminalizing of pedagogy, the yanking of federal grants and the threat of Pell dollars being voided all show we are in a dangerous moment. And while speaking out is important, a greater national strategy is even more so.


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.



Michael H. Gavin is the president of Delta College. He is the author of two books; the most recent, The New White Nationalism in Politics and Higher Education was released in 2020, and is in paperback as of spring 2023. He leads a national coalition of college presidents and higher education leaders in resisting anti-DEI legislation called Education for All. Known nationally for his administrative leadership that focuses on academic excellence and equity, Gavin has over 20 years of experience at large community colleges. Under his leadership, Delta College has closed racial and ethnic enrollment equity gaps and dramatically improved completion rates for students of color. Delta College was named the winner of Eduardo J. Padrón Award for Institutional Transformation under his leadership. Gavin earned his doctorate in American studies at University of Maryland and most recently completed an Aspen Fellowship in community college presidency. Whether serving on national or local boards, working on a committee, or through his scholarship, Gavin is committed to the notion that community colleges have the capacity to reshape the inequities in society through open access education and teaching excellence.

LOCK HIM UP!

Waltz Has Used Personal Email and 20 Other Signal Threads for Government Affairs

Reports of 20 Signal chats and Waltz’s Gmail mark at least four major security liabilities uncovered since Signalgate.

By Sharon Zhang , 

Truthout

April 2, 2025

National Security Advisor Mike Waltz listens at the U.S. military's Pituffik Space Base on March 28, 2025, in Pituffik, Greenland.

Jim Watson - Pool / Getty Images

President Donald Trump’s national security adviser Michael Waltz and his staff have used personal Gmail accounts to conduct government business, a new report released Tuesday reveals, in the latest instance of Waltz seemingly using methods of communication that are unsecured and vulnerable to breaches.

In at least one instance, a senior aide to Waltz used Gmail to discuss “sensitive military positions and powerful weapons systems relating to an ongoing conflict,” according to The Washington Post, which viewed the emails. In other instances, Waltz himself used his personal email to review documents and discuss matters like his work schedule.

Government officials have secure, encrypted services for communications that are less vulnerable to hacking and other cyber attacks. Gmail is not one of those services, and “the contents of a message can be intercepted and read at many points,” Electronic Frontier Foundation cybersecurity director Eva Galperin told The Washington Post.

The news comes after The Atlantic revealed in a bombshell report last week that Waltz had seemingly inadvertently added Jeffrey Goldberg, the publication’s editor in chief, to a group chat on the messaging app Signal that was dedicated to planning and discussing the Trump administration’s strikes in Yemen that killed dozens of civilians.

The news also adds to a growing picture of a seemingly blasé attitude toward secure communications within the office of a U.S. security official. These lax security practices leave the U.S. vulnerable to hacks, while also potentially breaking federal laws regarding archival of federal communications, experts have said.

On Wednesday, Politico reported that Waltz and his team “regularly” use Signal to coordinate issues relating to foreign affairs. This includes issues regarding Gaza, the Middle East, Ukraine, China, Africa, and other places — with sensitive information often shared. Citing four people who have been added to the chats, Politico said that there are at least 20 such chats.

Sources said that the use of Signal isn’t just common with Waltz and his office — it’s effectively standard practice.

“Waltz built the entire NSC communications process on Signal,” one source told Politico.

The Signal chats and Gmail use are just two of at least four other technological security liabilities discovered by journalists since The Atlantic originally broke the Signal story. Waltz and his team have denied wrongdoing.

Wired has reported that Waltz has also seemingly left his Venmo friends list open to the public, showing hundreds of Waltz’s associates — including numerous journalists, military officials and lobbyists, the report said. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has also left his Venmo profile public, The American Prospect reported in February.

Further, German news outlet Der Spiegel found that Waltz, Hegseth and Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard’s contact details and, in some cases, passwords have been exposed through hacked personal data that has been published online. Most of the numbers and email addresses linked to the officials are still in use on social media and communications platforms, the outlet found.

Democrats are reportedly drawing up articles of impeachment over the Signal chat for Hegseth, Waltz and CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who was also in the chat — as the White House is adamant about ensuring that Waltz and others stay in the administration, seemingly to save face.

“The one thing saving [Waltz’s] job is that Trump doesn’t want to give Jeff Goldberg a scalp,” an administration official told The Washington Post.

Trump advisor Waltz faces new pressure over Gmail usage

By AFP
April 1, 2025


US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz is facing more allegations he discussed military positions and weapons systems on non-governmental communications platforms - Copyright AFP/File ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS

US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz, who has faced calls to resign over his role in the recent Yemen chat group scandal, saw renewed scrutiny Tuesday after the Washington Post reported on his usage of Gmail for official work.

The newspaper also said that one of Waltz’s senior aides used Gmail to discuss military positions and weapons systems, reigniting questions over the handling of sensitive communications inside President Donald Trump’s administration.

Waltz had his schedule and other work documents sent to his account on the Google email service, the Washington Post reported.

The White House later confirmed that Waltz had “received emails and calendar invites from legacy contacts on his personal email,” but that he had “cc’d government accounts” since the start of the Trump administration to satisfy record retention laws.

Waltz “has never sent classified material over his personal email account or any unsecured platform,” said National Security Council spokesman Brian Hughes, who blasted the story as “the latest attempt to distract the American people from President Trump’s successful national security agenda.”

Hughes said he could not respond to the Washington Post report about Waltz’s aide, claiming the newspaper had not shared the sensitive information with the White House.

“Any correspondence containing classified material must only be sent through secure channels and all NSC staff are informed of this,” he said.

Waltz last month provoked an embarrassing saga for the Trump administration after he inadvertently added The Atlantic magazine’s editor-in-chief to a group chat on Signal, a commercially available messaging app, in which air strikes against Yemen’s Huthi rebels were discussed.

Officials including Waltz and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth used the chat to talk about details of the air strike timings and intelligence, unaware that the highly sensitive information was being simultaneously read by a member of the media.

Waltz told Fox News host Laura Ingraham last week that he took “full responsibility” for the breach, saying: “I built the group; my job is to make sure everything’s coordinated.”

Trump has rejected calls to sack Waltz or Hegseth and branded the scandal a “witch hunt.”

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt meanwhile told journalists on Tuesday that “the case is closed, and the president continues to have confidence in his national security advisor.”

But the Gmail revelations could add to pressure for Waltz’s removal from office.

With Detention of Beloved Farmworker Organizer, ICE Comes for the Labor Movement

“We believe he was targeted,” says the political director of the farmworker union that Alfredo Juarez helped to create.

By Derek Seidman , 

Truthout

April 1, 2025

Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez speaks to farmworkers about the H-2A guest worker program.

Edgar Franks

On the morning of March 25, farmworker organizer Alfredo “Lelo” Juarez was forcibly detained by Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who stopped his car while he was driving his wife to work in Skagit County, Washington. People to whom Juarez has spoken say he requested to see a warrant, and when he attempted to get his ID after being asked, the ICE agents smashed his car window and detained him.

Twenty-five-year-old Juarez helped found Familias Unidas Por La Justicia, an independent farmworker union in Washington State, in 2013, when he was just a young teenager. He has advocated around issues like overtime pay, heat protections for farmworkers and the exploitative nature of the H-2A guest worker program. Juarez is a beloved member of the Indigenous Mixteco farmworker community, and there’s been an outpouring of support for him across Washington State and the entire country.

Juarez is currently being imprisoned at the Northwest ICE Processing Center in Tacoma. His detention comes as the Trump administration escalates its assault against immigrants and workers. Union members and immigrant rights activists have been detained. The administration has also intensified its attacks on foreign-born students who have spoken up for Palestinian rights, such as Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk.

To learn more about Juarez’s situation, Truthout spoke with Edgar Franks, the political director of Familias Unidas, about the farmworker organizer and his detention, the outpouring of support for him, and more. Franks, who also spoke to Truthout last November about the challenges facing farmworkers after Trump’s reelection, has worked closely with Juarez — who goes by “Lelo” — for over a decade.

Derek Seidman: To start, what’s important for readers to know about Lelo?

Edgar Franks: The most important thing is how much he cares about farmworker issues and how much he has advocated for farmworkers, especially the Indigenous Mixteco farmworker community that he’s from. One reason he organizes is because there are so few organizers in the state that speak to the issues of Indigenous Mexicans from his community. He’s very committed to his community and all the issues that affect farmworkers and immigrants. He’s always available, anytime people call him, because he believes so much in the cause.

He was one of the main people who helped start our union. When we first began, it was hard to communicate with some of the workers who still used their native language and didn’t speak Spanish well. Alfredo was key to bridging that communication gap because he spoke English, Spanish and Mixteco. With him, we were able to really get information from the workers about what they wanted and help them organize.

He also helped us lobby for the overtime rules for farmworkers and the rules on climate around heat and smoke. All our recommendations came straight from workers that Alfredo spoke with. He was always talking to workers. He’s also been calling attention to how exploitative the H-2A guest worker program is and how growers use the H-2A program as a tool to take power away from farmworkers. He’s also been lobbying on issues like housing and rent stabilization.

He’s a member of our union who’s been around since the beginning. He’s sort of like a shop steward. Everything that the union has done has Alfredo’s fingerprints all over it.

How do you understand his detention? What’s your analysis of what happened?

ICE is harassing and intimidating people and not even showing warrants.

We believe his detention is politically motivated because of his organizing in the farmworker and immigrant community. We believe he was targeted. The way that ICE detained him was meant to intimidate. They hardly gave him any chance to defend himself or explain. He wasn’t resisting, and he just asked to see the warrant. They asked to see his ID, and right when he was reaching for it, they broke his car window. The ICE agents escalated really fast. From what we heard, it was less than a minute from the time he was pulled over to him being in handcuffs.

I think the intent was to strike fear and intimidate Alfredo, but also to send a message to others who are speaking out against ICE and for immigrant rights, that this is what happens when you try to fight back.

In past years, we’ve seen people getting pulled over and asked for their documents, but now it’s becoming more aggressive. ICE is harassing and intimidating people and not even showing warrants. It’s free rein for ICE to do whatever they want. When you have federal agents with no real oversight, it empowers them to be violent and coercive over everybody. The tone being set by the Trump administration gives ICE agents and Border Patrol the feeling that they’re unstoppable. That’s really concerning.

Can you talk about the outpouring of support for Lelo?

It’s been great to see the huge support for Alfredo. It speaks to how much of an impact he’s had in the state and all over the nation. It’s been really nice to see the solidarity from people that probably never even met him or knew anything about the farmworker struggle, but who know an injustice has happened.

There was a rally on March 27 organized by the Washington State Labor Council, which represents all the unions in Washington. They showed up at the detention center calling for Alfredo and another union member, Lewelyn Dixon, to be freed. For us as a union, it’s most important to see our labor family stepping up. During the presidential campaign we saw how workers and unions were being used by Trump, but now all of our labor folks are seeing what’s really happening here, which is that Trump is using immigrants to attack workers and unions. It’s been great to see labor really stepping up on the side of immigrant workers.

What affects everybody else affects immigrants. At the end of the day, we all want food and housing and good schools. Immigrants have nothing to do with the rising costs of housing, or gas or eggs. The difficulties that are really affecting people’s lives are not caused by immigrants. They’re caused by the system and by billionaires like Elon Musk. The frustrations that people feel are real, but their anger is being pointed at immigrants, and that’s not where the anger needs to go.

How is Lelo doing? What have you heard?

He’s obviously upset. He misses his family and friends. He’s also been very moved by all the actions that are happening. But when some of his supporters went to go see him last week, you know what his message was? To keep fighting and keep organizing. That gives us strength and confidence to move forward. Lelo wants us to fight, so we’ll fight. If he’s fighting on the inside, we’ll keep fighting for him on the outside.

He now has legal representation, which was also a big concern for us. We can fight as much as we want on the outside, but we really need fighters in the legal system to help Alfredo. We’ll be there for whatever the legal team needs to uplift his fight, including creating pressure in the streets.

Lelo’s detention is coming amid a larger crackdown in the U.S. Do you see connections?

Lelo is concerned about others who are being detained. Lewelyn Dixon is a University of Washington lab technician and a SEIU 925 member. She has a green card and has been living in the U.S. for 50 years. She’s at the Tacoma detention center.


From the beginning, we thought Project 2025 and its plan for mass deportations was meant to get rid of all the immigrant workers who are organizing and fighting back for better conditions, and to bring in a workforce that’s under the complete control of their employer.

There’s the case of immigrant rights activists Jeannette Vizguerra in Denver. There’s the case of Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia University and other students being detained who speak out about Palestine. It’s not a coincidence anymore. This is the trend now, and it’s really concerning. The U.S. talks a lot about repressive governments in Venezuela or Cuba, but we have political prisoners right now in the U.S.

Do you think Lelo’s detention is part of a larger plan to attack farmworker organizing?

From the beginning, we thought Project 2025 and its plan for mass deportations was meant to send a chill among farmworker organizations that had been gaining momentum. It was meant to silence the organizing, deport as many people as possible, and to bring in a captive workforce through the H-2A program.

We think that might be the ultimate plan: to get rid of all the immigrant workers who are organizing and fighting back for better conditions, and to bring in a workforce that’s under the complete control of their employer with basically no rights. It’ll make it even harder to organize with farmworkers if more H-2A workers come. It wouldn’t be impossible, but it’ll be more difficult. All the gains that have been made in the last couple of years for farmworkers are at risk.

What are you asking supporters to do?

Alfredo’s big on organizing. Wherever you are, there are similar struggles that are happening. Whether you’re in New York, Florida, Texas or California, there’s organizing for immigrant rights and workers that needs just as much support as he does. We should go into our local communities and support those organizing campaigns.

We should see Alfredo’s case as an example of how effective he is and how much that threatens the establishment. But at the same time, he wouldn’t want people to stop organizing because he’s detained. He would want people to organize even more.

You’ve worked closely with Lelo for over a decade. What are some memories that come to mind that tell us more about who he is?

When we first started organizing in 2013, he was only around 14 years old. A lot of farmworkers didn’t know how to speak English, and so these workers, who were grown adults, would ask Alfredo to present their case. He was just a young teenager, basically a kid, and he was given the responsibility to represent farmworkers at speaking engagements with hundreds of people. And when he went, he spoke eloquently for over an hour about the life of being a young farmworker and why farmworkers needed a union. The campaign was maybe two months old, but he had already captured the idea of why unions were important at such a young age.

I remember all this because I would have to drive him around since he was too young to drive! So I would take him to talk to churches, or unions, or other groups around the community. He was doing all this when he was 14 years old. I was amazed. I couldn’t speak for two minutes without getting nervous, but here was this 14-year-old who could talk for an hour!

He was also asked to go to the 2022 Labor Notes Conference to present on the work of the union, and I just remember how excited he was that Bernie Sanders was going to be there. He got the opportunity to give Bernie a letter about our campaign to oppose the Farm Workforce Modernization Act. He was so excited about meeting Bernie Sanders.

He’s still like a little kid (laughter). He likes Baby Yoda and likes to watch animated cartoons. He tries to enjoy being young. He’s really humble. He’s 25 now, so almost half of his life has been toward organizing. It’s amazing just how much he’s been able to accomplish even as just a young man.

Mahmoud Khalil’s Attorney: “This Is the McCarthy Era All Over Again”

The US government is weaponizing antisemitism as an excuse to kidnap and deport even lawful permanent residents.

By Marjorie Cohn ,

Truthout

April 1, 2025   

People hold signs as they participate in a protest in support of Columbia University student activist Mahmoud Khalil while a hearing takes place, outside the court in Newark, New Jersey, on March 28, 2025.Kena Betancur / AFP via Getty Images

A federal judge in New Jersey will soon issue a ruling on where the deportation case of Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student who led the student encampment at Columbia University last year, can be litigated. On March 8, Khalil was abducted in New York by agents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) who told him his lawful permanent residency status had been “revoked.” He is now languishing in a notorious Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) jail in Louisiana, more than 1,000 miles from his U.S. citizen wife who is over eight months pregnant, while U.S. District Judge Michael E. Farbiarz decides where his case will be heard. Khalil has been charged with no crime.

On March 9, Khalil was sent to New Jersey and then transported to Louisiana late that night into the next morning. On March 10, a New York federal judge blocked Khalil’s deportation while his legal challenge is pending.

On March 28, a hearing took place in New Jersey before Judge Farbiarz. Baher Azmy, legal director at the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) and one of Khalil’s attorneys, told the judge that his client’s detention was “Kafkaesque.”

Khalil’s lawyers argued to Judge Farbiarz that the case should remain in New Jersey where he filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus and that he should be released on bail. The Trump administration wants the case to proceed in a Louisiana district court so it will eventually come before the Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which is packed with Trump appointees. In January, the Fifth Circuit ruled against the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program. Judge Farbiaz said he would issue his jurisdictional ruling soon.

“Mahmoud Khalil must be freed,” Samah Sisay, staff attorney at CCR and another member of Khalil’s legal team, told me. “The government’s unlawful decision to arrest and transfer him to a remote immigration jail in Louisiana is a punitive and coercive tactic to quash his protected speech in support of Palestinian rights.”

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Khalil said in a statement, “My unjust detention is indicative of the anti-Palestinian racism that both the Biden and Trump administrations have demonstrated over the past 16 months as the U.S. has continued to supply Israel with weapons to kill Palestinians and prevented international intervention.”

As the number of Palestinians killed in Israel’s genocidal campaign since October 7, 2023, surpasses 50,000, the Trump administration is intensifying its repression against critics of the Israeli regime, branding anyone who supports the Palestinian people as “antisemitic” and a supporter of terrorism. Even U.S. lawful permanent residents are now in Trump’s crosshairs. His administration says the arrest of Khalil is a “blueprint” for investigations and deportations of prominent student activists.
Khalil Was Targeted Pursuant to Trump’s Executive Orders

Shortly after his inauguration on January 20, 2025, Donald Trump signed two executive orders aimed at pro-Palestine advocacy: Executive Order 14161, “Protecting the United States from Foreign Terrorists and other National Security and Public Safety Threats” and Executive Order 14188, “Additional Measures to Combat Anti-Semitism.”

Executive Order 14161 declares that it is U.S. policy to “protect its citizens” from noncitizens who “espouse hateful ideology.” It articulates the administration’s intention to target noncitizens who “advocate for, aid, or support designated foreign terrorists and other threats to our national security,” those who hold “hateful” views, and those who “bear hostile attitudes toward [America’s] citizens, culture, government, institutions, or founding principles.” The order’s broad framing of “hostile attitudes” towards the U.S. government could encompass any form of political dissent, including advocacy for Palestinian rights.

Executive Order 14188 says that the administration will target for investigation “post-October 7, 2023, campus anti-Semitism.” The order adopts a definition of antisemitism that includes constitutionally protected criticism of the Israeli government and its policies. In a fact sheet accompanying Executive Order 14188, the White House describes the measure as “forceful and unprecedented,” specifically targeting “leftist, anti-American colleges and universities.” It frames the order as a “promise” to “deport Hamas sympathizers and revoke student visas,” conveying a clear message to all “resident aliens who joined in pro-jihadist protests” that the federal government “will find you, and we will deport you.”


Khalil was abducted in New York by agents from the Department of Homeland Security who told him his lawful permanent residency status had been “revoked.”

The abduction of Khalil was carried out “in support of President Trump’s executive orders prohibiting anti-Semitism, and in coordination with the Department of State,” DHS wrote in a statement. It accused Khalil, with no evidence, of having “led activities aligned to Hamas, a designated terrorist organization” and asserted that both “ICE and the Department of State are committed to enforcing President Trump’s executive orders and to protecting U.S. national security.”

In a post on Truth Social, Trump described Khalil as a “Radical Foreign Pro-Hamas Student on the campus of Columbia University.” Trump declared that his administration would not tolerate “students at Columbia and other universities across the country who have engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American activity” and promised to “find, apprehend, and deport these terrorist sympathizers from our country.”

On March 13, when asked if “any criticism of the Israeli government [is] a deportable offense,” if “any criticism of the United States [is] a deportable offense,” if “any criticism of the government [is] a deportable offense,” and if “protesting [is] a deportable offense,” DHS Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar did not dispute any of those statements.
Marco Rubio Invokes the Foreign Policy Ground Against Khalil

Khalil is the first such lawful permanent resident to be arrested using a vague and rarely used provision of the Immigration and Nationality Act (“foreign policy ground”) with no due process, in violation of his First Amendment freedom of speech. Title 8 U.S.C. § 1227(a)(4)(C) provides that, “An alien [non-citizen] whose presence or activities in the United States the Secretary of State has reasonable ground to believe would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States is deportable.”

A Palestinian refugee with Algerian citizenship, Khalil played a prominent role in the protests at Columbia against Israel’s genocide. Last spring, while serving as a negotiator between student demonstrators and university officials, Khalil told CNN, “As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined and go hand-in-hand and you cannot achieve one without the other.” He characterized the movement as one “for social justice and freedom and equality for everyone,” adding, “There is, of course, no place for antisemitism. What we are witnessing is anti-Palestinian sentiment that’s taking different forms and antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism [are] some of these forms.”

Nevertheless, on March 9, Secretary of State Marco Rubio made a determination that Khalil’s “presence or activities in the United States would have serious adverse foreign policy consequences for the United States.”

On March 11, an administration spokesperson told The New York Times that “United States’ foreign policy includes combating antisemitism across the globe and that Mr. Khalil’s residency in the nation undermines that policy objective.”

The “foreign policy bar” expressly forbids the secretary of state from issuing a policy that would exclude or condition entry based on a noncitizen’s “past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or associations, if such beliefs, statements, or associations would be lawful within the United States,” unless the secretary personally certifies to Congress that admitting the individual would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest. But Rubio has not provided the chairpersons of the House Foreign Affairs, Senate Foreign Relations, and House and Senate Judiciary Committees with any such certification.

Moreover, in 1990, the 101st Congress expressed its intent to restrict the executive’s power to exclude noncitizen speakers by affirming that such exclusions should not be based solely on “the possible content of an alien’s speech in this country,” that the secretary of state’s authority to decide that entry would negatively impact foreign policy interests should be used “sparingly and not merely because there is a likelihood that an alien will make critical remarks about the United States or its policies,” and that the “compelling foreign policy interest” standard should be applied strictly.

Since the “foreign policy ground” was enacted by Congress as part of the Immigration and Nationality Act several decades ago, it has rarely been invoked and is used for cases involving high-ranking government officials or alleged terrorists who are removable on other grounds and subject to high-profile prosecutions in their country of origin. It does not appear to have ever been applied to any individual for engaging in First Amendment protected speech.

“What the Trump administration is attempting to do to Mahmoud is truly outrageous,” attorney Marc Van Der Hout told me. “The provision of law that the government is trying to use to deport Mahmoud, a legal permanent resident of this country, is virtually unprecedented in this context.”


Khalil has been charged with no crime.

Van Der Hout, along with other members of his firm, is representing Khalil in his immigration proceedings and they are co-counsel in the federal court challenge to his arrest, detention and prosecution by the government. “The government is going after Mahmoud for his completely protected First Amendment activities and speech which the immigration statute itself forbids absent exceptional circumstances. We are challenging this in federal court, and we will be challenging it in the immigration arena as well,” Van Der Hout added.
Rubio’s Determination and the Targeting of Khalil Violate the First and Fifth Amendments

In his amended petition for writ of habeas corpus, filed on March 13, Khalil asserts that the government has violated his First Amendment right to freedom of speech, the Fifth Amendment’s requirement of due process and the Administrative Procedure Act (APA).

By targeting, arresting, transferring and detaining Khalil, the administration violated the First Amendment by retaliating against and punishing him for his past protected speech; preventing him from speaking while in detention; attempting to chill (through past punishment and ongoing threat) or prevent (through eventual removal) his future speech in the U.S.; depriving audiences of his present and future speech on matters of public concern; and chilling other individuals from expressing views sympathetic to the Palestinians.

The “foreign policy ground” violates due process as it is unconstitutionally vague because ordinary people cannot understand what conduct is prohibited and it allows for arbitrary and discriminatory enforcement.

The government’s policy of targeting noncitizens for removal is arbitrary and capricious (as prohibited by the APA), constitutes an abuse of discretion, is contrary to the First Amendment, contrary to law, and was promulgated in excess of statutory jurisdiction.

Khalil’s arrest is having a chilling effect on political debate about a significant international issue. His lawyers wrote in their preliminary injunction motion that many noncitizens, including lawful permanent residents, “now live in fear that they will be next if their actual or imputed speech brings them into the crosshairs of this administration, and many are choosing to stay silent going forward.” Trump and Rubio could apply their policy “to any pro-Palestine speech by any noncitizen.”
Khalil’s Arrest Is “the First of Many to Come”

Nine days after Khalil’s abduction, in an attempt to bolster its case against him, the U.S. government came up with a new rationale to deport him. On March 17, DHS charged that Khalil had omitted from his application for permanent residency that he was a member of the United Nations Relief and Works for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA), that he was employed by the Syria Office of the British Embassy in Beirut, and that he was a member of the Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a coalition of student groups promoting the demands of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Khalil’s arrest is “the first of many to come,” Trump posted on Truth Social. Indeed, his repression against pro-Palestinian voices is proceeding apace.

Trump’s regime is rounding up students and faculty who are lawfully in the country, whether they have a green card or a visa.

Yunseo Chung, another lawful permanent resident and a third-year student at Columbia, has also been targeted by the Trump administration. Born in South Korea, Chung has resided in the U.S. since she was 7 years old. Although she has not made public statements to the press or assumed a high-profile role in pro-Palestine protests, Chung participated in a March 5 demonstration opposing the university’s excessive punishments for student protesters facing campus disciplinary proceedings.


Trump’s administration says the arrest of Khalil is a “blueprint” for deportations of prominent student activists.

Days later, the government launched a series of unlawful efforts to arrest, detain and remove Chung from the U.S., claiming it had “revoked” her lawful permanent residency status. Rubio invoked the same “foreign policy ground” against Chung that he rendered against Khalil. Chung has sued officials of the Trump administration to prevent them from detaining, transferring or removing her from the U.S.

Several students and professors lawfully present in the U.S. with visas have been detained and deported for their pro-Palestinian activism and many have filed legal challenges against the Trump administration. On March 27, Rubio declared that at least 300 foreign students have had their visas revoked.

The administration is apparently targeting noncitizen students for deportation just for “liking or sharing posts that highlighted ‘human rights violations’ in the war in Gaza,” signing “open letters related to the war,” and “call[ing] for ‘Palestinian liberation.’” The Israeli newspaper Haaretz asserted that ICE has “reportedly paused its human trafficking and drug smuggling investigations to have agents monitor social media for posts and likes from pro-Palestinian students.”

Trump’s witch hunt against pro-Palestinian voices harkens back to a dark time in our history.

“This is the McCarthy era all over again,” attorney Van Der Hout told me. “The government tried this 40 years ago against a group of Palestinians I represented in Los Angeles and, after 20 years, the case was thrown out for government misconduct. It was outrageous then, and it’s outrageous now. Mahmoud will be challenging this until his rights to speak out about what is happening in Palestine and anywhere else are vindicated.”

Attorney Sisay told me that, “As long as he remains in ICE custody, away from his pregnant wife and movement community, his ability to speak freely, and the ability of many other students speaking out against the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza, will continue to be chilled.”

Note: After this article went to press, Judge Farbiarz refused the Trump administration’s request to transfer Khalil’s legal challenge to Louisiana. The U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey ruled that the challenge to ICE’s unlawful detention of Khalil should continue in New Jersey. “I am relieved at the court’s decision today to keep my husband’s ongoing case in New Jersey. This is an important step towards securing Mahmoud’s freedom, but there is still a lot more to be done,” said Dr. Noor Abdalla, Khalil’s wife.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Marjorie Cohn is professor emerita at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, dean of the People’s Academy of International Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She sits on the national advisory boards of Veterans For Peace and Assange Defense, and is the U.S. representative to the continental advisory council of the Association of American Jurists. Her books include Drones and Targeted Killing: Legal, Moral and Geopolitical Issues.

California Ethnic Studies Bill Aims to Censor Palestine-Related Education

The proposed legislation is the newest front in a yearslong attack on ethnic studies in California.

By Marianne Dhenin , 

Truthout

April 2, 2025

University of Southern California students walk out of class in support of Palestinians and the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement on October 7, 2024, in Los Angeles, California.

Sarah Reingewirtz, Los Angeles Daily News / SCNG

Anew bill proposed in the California legislature threatens to undermine the rollout of ethnic studies classes in the state’s high schools. Assembly Bill (AB) 1468 is the latest installment in a series of legislation backed by pro-Israel organizations seeking to intervene in ethnic studies classrooms and silence Palestine-related speech in California schools.

“This latest bill is part of a continued effort by the [California] Legislative Jewish Caucus to impose ideological constraints upon ethnic studies as a field to disallow the critical teaching of Palestine within K-12 education in California,” Christine Hong, a professor of critical race and ethnic studies at the University of California (UC) Santa Cruz and co-chair of the UC Ethnic Studies Faculty Council (UCESFC) told Truthout.

The California Legislative Jewish Caucus is a pro-Israel group of lawmakers comprising over 16 percent of the State Assembly and 12.5 percent of the State Senate, enough to exercise leverage as a bloc of votes on the floor. Caucus members Sen. Josh Becker and Assemblymembers Dawn Addis and Rick Chavez Zbur introduced AB 1468 in February 2025.

While AB 1468’s authors are Democrats who have condemned the Trump administration’s attacks on public education, Lara Kiswani, executive director of the Arab Resource and Organizing Center (AROC), said the proposed bill would have similar effects as efforts in Republican-controlled states and on the federal level seeking to whitewash K-12 and college curricula and turn back the clock on civil rights progress.

“The Democrats and others who are championing these bills may not explicitly say themselves or even identify as part of the far right MAGA agenda, but it’s indisputable that what they are doing is in alignment with the broader attack on public education and the attack on anti-racist education, in particular,” Kiswani told Truthout.

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AB 1468’s lead sponsor is the Jewish Public Affairs Committee of California (JPAC), one pillar of whose policy framework is to “maintain a strong California-Israel relationship,” including through “combat[ing] campaigns to delegitimize and demonize Israel.” JPAC lists the Anti-Defamation League and other Zionist organizations among its members.

Last year, members of the California Legislative Jewish Caucus proposed a raft of bills meant to stifle Palestine-related speech in public schools and on college campuses. Among those was AB 2918, a predecessor to AB 1468. When a diverse coalition of educators and advocates mounted a pressure campaign and succeeded in having it shelved, sponsors vowed to reintroduce it this year. “AB 1468 is AB 2918, but on steroids,” Guadalupe Cardona, a high school educator and member of the Liberated Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum Consortium, told Truthout.

The new bill would require all ethnic studies curricula, instruction and instructional materials to undergo public hearings, be vetted by the state, and be posted on the Department of Education’s website. AB 1468 also outlines standards according to which ethnic studies materials should be reviewed, including mandating that instruction focus on “domestic experience and stories” and not cover “abstract ideological theories, causes, or pedagogies.”

In the proposed legislation, “there are so many layers of policing and surveillance that no other academic area has,” Tricia Gallagher-Geurtsen, co-chair of the San Diego Unified School District Ethnic Studies Advisory Committee and a lecturer in critical race and ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz, told Truthout. “It’s absolutely unprecedented overreach, and it’s an arm of the state trying to censor what our children are learning [and] censor the truth of our students’ realities.”

Under AB 1468, the body responsible for vetting ethnic studies materials would be the California State Board of Education’s Instructional Quality Commission, whose current members include Sen. Ben Allen and Anita Friedman. Friedman is a board trustee of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee and executive director of Jewish Family and Children’s Services, an organization known for its efforts to silence discussions of Palestine and anti-Zionism in schools.

“It’s absolutely unprecedented overreach, and it’s an arm of the state trying to censor what our children are learning [and] censor the truth of our students’ realities.”

The proposed legislation is the newest front in a yearslong attack on ethnic studies in California, which became the first state to mandate an ethnic studies graduation requirement for high school students with AB 101 in 2021. That law requires public high school students to take ethnic studies to graduate, beginning with the class of 2030. Starting this year, all schools must offer the subject.

As a field, ethnic studies emerged from the student and social justice movements of the 1960s. When students of color went on strike at San Francisco State College in 1968, they demanded that the school strengthen its Black Studies Department and establish a School of Ethnic Studies to teach the histories and cultures of groups that had historically been ignored or erased from curricula. The students recognized that erasure as “an integral part of the racism and hatred this country has perpetuated upon nonwhite peoples.”

From the start, the field linked racism in the U.S. to the nation’s acts of colonialism, imperialism and foreign militarism, making it a target of political reactionaries. “This powerful analysis of racism, white supremacy, [and] the consequences of U.S. foreign policy is something that will lead to social justice, social change, and social movements and activism — and that is something that, for many, really makes them quite uncomfortable,” Natalia Deeb-Sossa, a professor of Chicana/o/x studies at UC Davis, told Truthout.

But it has also been a boon to students. Research shows that students who take an ethnic studies class engage more in school and are more likely to graduate and attend college. The classes have also been shown to boost the attendance and academic performance of students at risk of dropping out.

Ashlyn Bautista, a fourth-year undergraduate student at UC San Diego, experienced what she described as the life-changing effects of ethnic studies coursework when she first encountered the subject in college. “Never before did I think that my classrooms could be spaces of liberation and finding myself and reclaiming my own identity,” Bautista told Truthout.

There are four core disciplines within ethnic studies, each corresponding to a racialized group in the U.S.: Black Americans, Indigenous Americans, Chicanx or Latinx Americans, and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, which is meant to include Arab Americans. However, the inclusion of Arab American and Palestinian American histories and experiences in California’s ethnic studies curricula has been challenged since before AB 101 was even signed into law. A 2019 draft of the state model curriculum garnered pushback from pro-Israel groups, which claimed its inclusion of Israeli persecution of Palestinians was one-sided and that the mention of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement was antisemitic. A final revised model curriculum was published in 2021 — scrubbed of any mention of Palestine.

This erasure is problematic not only because Arab American histories and communities are linked to Palestine, but Hong explained, “Settler colonialism is an absolutely key analytic of ethnic studies.” The framework can help students understand the power structures that perpetuate the repression of Indigenous peoples and cultures, including Native Americans.

While the inclusion of Palestine in ethnic studies has garnered pushback from the start, attacks on the field and its educators have ramped up since Israel invaded Gaza in 2023. “Because we have elements in the legislature who want to defend Israel, they are willing to go so far as to censor curriculum for California students and teachers in defense of a foreign country that is currently committing a genocide,” Sean Malloy, a professor of history and critical race and ethnic studies at UC Merced, told Truthout.

According to Gallagher-Geurtsen, the attacks are already chilling speech. “I’ve spoken with high school and middle school teachers who are teaching ethnic studies in San Diego Unified [School District], and they say they’re afraid to teach the truth in their classrooms because of all this pressure from Zionist groups [and] racist, white-supremacist groups,” she told Truthout.

Hong and other UCESFC members have also “been on the receiving end of a pretty much endless barrage of hate mail,” Hong told Truthout. Jennifer Mogannam, a professor of critical race and ethnic studies at UC Santa Cruz, and Dylan Rodríguez, a distinguished professor in the Department of Black Study and the Department of Media and Cultural Studies at UC Riverside, shared anonymous emails they had received, which threatened them or members of their families with harm and included racist slurs and disturbing images. “My experience with the reaction against advocacy for Arab American studies to be included in the ethnic studies curriculum has been nothing short of violent,” Rodríguez said. Mogannam told Truthout she is targeted both as a practitioner of ethnic studies and as a Palestinian American.

Other educators have been subject to doxxing campaigns and even lawsuits, including Cardona, who was a named defendant in a lawsuit filed in 2022 by the Deborah Project on behalf of teachers and parents who accused Cardona and other defendants of using antisemitic content in their classrooms. The case was dismissed in November 2024 in a ruling that criticized the plaintiff’s lack of evidence and unpersuasive arguments.

Whether or not AB 1468 becomes law, Cardona told Truthout that the atmosphere of surveillance and harassment to which it is contributing is already hurting students and the field. “To be constantly bombarded with these negative messages and attacks, it takes a huge toll,” she said, noting that she knows educators who have chosen to stop teaching ethnic studies to protect themselves. She said she has also heard from parents whose children are now afraid to major in ethnic studies in college. “This is having a chilling effect, even on the next generation of classroom educators.”


Whether or not AB 1468 becomes law, the atmosphere of surveillance and harassment to which it is contributing is already hurting students and the field.

Groups including AROC Action, UCESFC, the Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies and Jewish Voice for Peace California are anchoring the opposition to AB 1468, building on years of organizing that succeeded in having AB 2918 shelved last year. Still, the group faces an uphill battle. Kiswani, Hong and Cardona each told Truthout that legislators seem unwilling to listen to their perspectives and expertise. “The Zionist perspective on what ethnic studies should be is what keeps getting centered over and over and over again,” Cardona said. “They’re just not listening, and they won’t move even an inch.” Neither Assemblymember Addis nor Assemblymember Zbur responded before deadline to Truthout’s requests for comment.

Nonetheless, Kiswani told Truthout that the coalition remains committed to quashing AB 1468 and seeing ethnic studies implemented without draconian restrictions so it can continue to benefit California students. “Many young people tell us every day, ‘Ethnic studies saved my life. I began to see myself differently, understand my history and my potential as part of my community and social movements,’” Kiswani said. “That’s what ethnic studies offers us, [and] we need that now more than ever.”

Note: A correction has been made to change “California Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies” to simply “Coalition for Liberated Ethnic Studies.”


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Marianne Dhenin is an award-winning journalist and historian. Find their portfolio or contact them at mariannedhenin.com

Israel Bombs UN Clinic, Killing 22, Days After Gaza Medics Found in Mass Grave


Footage circulating in the aftermath of the attack showed a newborn who was decapitated by the bombing.

By Sharon Zhang , 

Truthout

April 2, 2025

A woman and child mourn next to the bodies of loved ones killed during an Israeli strike that targeted a UN clinic in the Jabalia camp for Palestinian refugees, at the Indonesian Hospital in Beit Lahia in the northern Gaza Strip on April 2, 2025.Omar Al-Qattaa / AFP via Getty Images

Israeli forces bombed a UN clinic in Gaza serving as a shelter for displaced Palestinians on Wednesday, killing at least 22 people just days after officials discovered 15 first responders who had been executed by Israeli soldiers and buried in a mass grave in Gaza.

The military bombed a UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees (UNRWA) clinic in Jabalia refugee camp, resulting in a horrific scene, witnesses said and videos of the attack showed. According to the Gaza Government Media Office, the strike killed at least nine children — including a 1-week-old baby.

Footage of the massacre shows a man holding the body of a baby who was decapitated in the attack, reportedly born just weeks ago. The strike ignited a massive fire.

“I was sitting with my family and suddenly a missile targeted us. The dust was all over the place. The martyrs were burned. We found human flesh. We found human bones,” one witness told Al Jazeera. “Innocent women and children were killed. Separated heads and different body parts were everywhere. It is something beyond logic and beyond imagination.”

Other video footage posted by Palestinians online shows a young girl distraught and mourning her father, who had been killed in the attack.

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“Targeting a medical clinic affiliated with a UN organization constitutes a full-fledged war crime that requires urgent international accountability,” the Gaza Government Media Office said.

As videos of the aftermath of the massacre circulated on social media, the Israeli military claimed that they were targeting Hamas and that the facility acted as a “terrorist command and control center.” Advocates for Palestinian rights said that this is an outright lie, and that the attack deliberately targeted civilians.

“I challenge the army to name the alleged target. In a few hours, they’ll dig up the name of a young man and falsely label him as Hamas,” said Euro-Med Human Rights Monitor Chairman Ramy Abdu. “Wake up, world — Israel is committing a full-scale genocide.”

The Government Media Office noted that Israeli forces have systematically targeted displaced Palestinians, striking at least 228 shelters for civilians amid the genocide. Israeli forces have also repeatedly targeted UNRWA facilities and staff, killing at least 284 UNRWA workers and damaging or destroying UNRWA buildings at least 650 times since October 7, 2023.

The attack comes just two days after the UN reported the discovery of a mass grave holding 15 paramedics in Gaza.

The group was made up of workers for Gaza’s civil defense agency, UNRWA and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society (PRCS). The workers were thought to be missing for days until the grave was found — nearby ambulances and a fire truck that had been destroyed and partially buried by Israeli forces. One PRCS medic is still missing, the group said.

Bashar Murad, PRCS’s health program director, told The Guardian that the bodies were buried in a way that showed that Israeli soldiers executed them with their hands tied.

“What is certain and very clear is that they were shot in the upper parts of their bodies, then gathered in a hole one on top of another, with sand thrown over them and buried,” Murad said.

Bread Lines, Empty Shelves, Bombed Farms — This Is How Starvation Feels in Gaza

In Gaza, many of us have come to fear the forced starvation that Israel is inflicting on us more than its bombs.

By Shahad Ali ,

Truthout

April 2, 2025

A boy loads a sack of flour provided by the Turkish disaster relief agency AFAD, received from a supply center affiliated with the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees in al-Tifah neighborhood of Gaza City on April 1, 2025.BASHAR TALEB / AFP via Getty Images


Did you know that Truthout is a nonprofit and independently funded by readers like you? If you value what we do, please support our work with a donation.

Israel resumed its bombing campaign in Gaza in mid-March, putting a definitive end to a ceasefire it had already violated countless times. But even before the deadly airstrikes, those of us in Gaza had already found ourselves once again trapped in an endless cycle of fear and uncertainty due to the suffocating closure of border crossings that prevent goods and humanitarian aid from entering. We know all too well what the end of a ceasefire means: the end of any semblance of life in Gaza. The thought of relentless bombardment, continuous displacement and daily killings becoming our reality once more is unbearable. And even more terrifying is the return of starvation.

After enduring 15 months of extreme hunger starting in December 2023, many of us have come to see starvation as even more brutal than the more explicitly violent horrors of war. The memory of days when we could not find even a single loaf of bread to silence our empty stomachs haunts us. This fear has driven people across Gaza to rush to the markets, desperately trying to buy and store whatever food they can.

My father and I also went out to buy supplies on March 19, 2025, the day after the ceasefire ended. We bought flour, rice and legumes — foods that are both affordable and rich in fiber, helping to keep us full for longer. The markets were packed with panicked shoppers, all fearing this might be the last time they would see food on the shelves. Many essential items had already disappeared, including fruit, eggs, vegetables and chicken. Even during the ceasefire, these foods were available only in small quantities and lasted just a few days, as they spoil quickly without reliable electricity or refrigeration.

Canned food, particularly lunch meat and tuna, is becoming increasingly scarce and expensive, with a single can now costing $10. Though many of us in Gaza have grown weary of relying on canned food, we have no choice but to buy it in small quantities due to its high cost. In a bid to make the best of the situation, we experiment with whatever ingredients we have on hand. We’ve turned canned chicken into makeshift shawarma, burgers and even schnitzel, spicing it heavily in a desperate attempt to recreate the flavors of meals we once treasured — meals we were lucky to enjoy, albeit briefly, during the ceasefire.

As markets continue to empty due to the ongoing blockade, rationing has become a necessity. Breakfast is reduced to a single thyme-stuffed sandwich per person. Lunch consists of a small portion of rice, sometimes accompanied by a simple salad of tomatoes and cucumbers — when they can be found. Some farmers in Beit Hanoun and Beit Lahiya had started to grow these crops again during the ceasefire, but the resumption of Israeli military operations has destroyed much of their farmland, making fresh produce even scarcer.

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Sometimes, to make our rice supply last as long as possible, we limit how often we eat it, relying instead on lentil soup or white beans cooked in tomato sauce. We cycle through the same few meals we survived on during the past months of starvation. Dinner is often skipped entirely to conserve food, with whatever little remains given to the children.

However, some families in Gaza can’t even afford food for their children, having lost their jobs due to the war and spent all their savings just trying to survive the past 17 months of war. My neighbor, Abu Mohamed, lost his job as a painter because of the war and used up all his savings on basic necessities — clothes, a tent and blankets — after being forced to evacuate to the south with nothing but a small bag on his back.

He said he relied entirely on humanitarian aid to feed his family, but since the recent closure of border crossings, the amount of aid reaching him has decreased significantly, and he has been struggling to get enough food. “I am living off the food my children can barely get from the few charity kitchens still operating,” he said. “If these kitchens stop working, my children and I will literally have nothing to eat.”

Some bakeries in Gaza had managed to keep producing bread, but only at a limited capacity. Getting bread became a grueling ordeal, with people standing in line for hours, hoping to secure a single bag. Every day at dawn, my brother Mohammed would head to the bakery, trying to be among the first 50 people in line. Sometimes, he waited more than five hours, only to return empty-handed when the bread ran out.

On April 1, the Bakery Owners Association announced that it had run out of flour and fuel, forcing bakeries across Gaza to close. This worsened the already severe food shortage.

The sight of people standing in long lines for bread is heartbreaking. At times, security struggled to keep the crowd in order, and things would quickly spiral out of control. I saw children being pushed and even kicked amid the chaos, crying as they fought to stay on their feet. Some collapsed from exhaustion — either from hours of waiting in the scorching heat or from the overwhelming pressure of the crowd.

For weeks, many people had rationed their remaining flour and firewood, relying on the bakeries for as long as they stayed open. However, on April 1, the Bakery Owners Association announced that it had run out of flour and fuel, forcing bakeries across Gaza to close. This worsened the already severe food shortage, leaving many without even basic food.

Knowing that our stored food won’t last much longer, the fear of having nothing left to eat becomes more real each day. If the border crossings remain closed, we will soon face a complete food shortage. Many are terrified that the next wave of starvation will be far worse than what we’ve already endured.

What makes this situation even more unbearable is that the ceasefire had briefly given us a taste of fresh, nutritious food — something we had been deprived of for so long. We began to believe that life might return to some semblance of normalcy, and that starvation would not return. But now, with Israel resuming the war, we find ourselves back in the same dire circumstances. Our bodies remain weak, still bearing the toll of 17 months of near-constant hunger. The brief reprieve we had during the ceasefire is fading, and with it, our hope for something better.

Access to food is a fundamental human right, yet we in Gaza are being deliberately deprived of it. The Israeli occupation has used starvation as a weapon of war, turning hunger into a tool to strangle life and break the resilience of an already exhausted people. This systematic deprivation is not a mere consequence of war but a deliberate policy aimed at crushing us. The world cannot turn a blind eye to this crime. Urgent action is needed to stop the cruel use of hunger as a means of oppression and to ensure that we have the basic right to survive, and live with dignity.

This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

Shahad Ali is an English literature student and writer from Gaza.

The dark side of psychiatry – how it has been used to control societies

Pictorial Press Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo

The Conversation

April 02, 2025


In his new book, No More Normal, psychiatrist Alastair Santhouse recalls an experience from the 1980s when he was a university student in the UK helping deliver supplies to “refuseniks” – Soviet citizens who were denied permission to leave the USSR. These people often faced harsh treatment, losing their jobs and becoming targets of harassment. Some were even diagnosed with a psychiatric condition called “sluggish schizophrenia”.

By the time Santhouse encountered this diagnostic category, sluggish schizophrenia had been kicking around psychiatry in the Soviet Union for some time. It first entered the diagnostic lexicon in the 1930s, coined to describe cases in which adults diagnosed with schizophrenia had displayed no symptoms of the disorder in childhood.

This notion of a symptomless disorder gave it tremendous value to Soviet officials in the 1970s and 80s, who wielded it ruthlessly against those who suddenly suffered from delusions of wanting a better society or hallucinatory desires to emigrate.

But they weren’t the only ones to wield psychiatry to repress and control. “Punitive” or “political” psychiatry has proven to be quite a useful tool in many parts of the world. One well-known case is that of Chinese political activist Wang Wanxing, who marked the third anniversary of the 1989 pro-democracy student protests in Tiananmen Square by unfurling his own pro-democracy banner on that same spot.

He was immediately arrested, jailed, and then diagnosed with “political monomania”: a “condition” characterised by the irrational failure to agree with the state. For treatment, he was confined for 13 years in a psychiatric hospital, part of the Ankang (“peace and health”) network of psychiatric institutions where dissidents like him were forcefully medicated and subjected to “treatments” such as electrified acupuncture.

More recent applications of punitive psychiatry pop up periodically in our news feeds and disappear just as quickly. Some women who removed their headscarves or cut their hair as part of anti-government protests in Iran in 2022 were diagnosed with antisocial behaviour, forcefully institutionalised and subjected to “re-education”.

Women in Iran who protested against wearing hijabs were sent for re-education.

Alexandros Michailidis/Shutterstock


In 2024, in Russia, an activist’s choice of T-shirt, bearing the slogan “I am against Putin”, was considered so problematic that it required the summoning of a “psychiatric emergency team”.

As in the Soviet Union, the advantages of punitive psychiatry were not a little Orwellian: diagnosing a citizen with a mental illness made it easier to isolate their ideas, cut them off physically and discourage similar behaviour.
Not just authoritarian regimes

While authoritarian regimes certainly seem to wield it with the most abandon, punitive psychiatry has not been absent in the west. Indeed, at the height of the civil rights movement in the US, black activists protesting generations of racial prejudice and injustice were subjected to much the same diagnostic regime.

One example was the pastor and activist Clennon W. King, Jr. who was arrested and confined to a mental institution in 1958 after he attempted to enrol at the all-white University of Mississippi for a summer course. It was an act so inconceivable that the state of Mississippi thought he must be insane.

And, according to his FBI record, the militant civil rights leader Malcolm X was a “pre-psychotic paranoid schizophrenic”: a diagnosis made based on his activism and protest speech. As Jonathan Metzl has shown, the descriptors used to “diagnose” Malcolm X were later enshrined in the American Psychiatric Association’s 1968 updated definition of schizophrenia. Dissent in the US was as potentially pathological as dissent anywhere else.

Though each of these cases undoubtedly constitutes a gross misuse of psychiatry, the practice of making distinctions between what constitutes normal and abnormal behaviour is fundamental to the discipline. And, as Metzl’s account of the shifting definition of schizophrenia implies, psychiatric disorders are especially sensitive to social change.

Unlike most physical illnesses, psychiatric illnesses often have few physiological signs. Whereas a broken bone on an X-ray can be declared unambiguously broken, psychiatric problems are diagnosed in terms of constellations of symptoms, written on but not in the body, and recounted by patients in conversation with their therapist, or via a listing of these symptoms on one of the many diagnostic questionnaires that make up the psychiatric diagnostic arsenal.
Psychiatry’s bible

These are then matched to symptom clusters listed in psychiatry’s bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM). Though in the everyday practice of mental health, there is much more to this process, in theory, the closeness of this match designates the absence or presence of disease.

That psychiatric diagnoses are unusually socially responsive is by and large unavoidable. Our mental health is itself socially specific, so much so that some have argued that something as apparently universal as depression, for example, is actually an illness specific to western or even just anglophone cultures.

Whether that hypothesis is true or not has no bearing on whether depression is in fact real. It only suggests what psychiatry intrinsically acknowledges already: that mental health has a critically significant social component.

As the use of psychiatry for these punitive purposes makes clear, this necessary malleability lends itself to abuse. The radical psychiatrists of the 1970s certainly believed so when they re-examined the very notion of normal, exposing its role in policing society and enforcing categories of exclusion. It’s how homosexuality ended up as a diagnosable psychiatric illness in the 1952 edition of the DSM – a pathology built by and for the norms of the American mainstream.

But it’s a malleability that can also lead to change in the opposite direction, where society – we, you and I – revisit and change these boundaries. Homosexuality was removed from the DSM in 1973, not because of any new scientific information, but because of a targeted gay rights activist campaign and, more indirectly, the slow shift over the intervening decades toward greater social inclusion.

In his book, Santhouse reflects on where we are now in psychiatry, at a time when there is, to quote his clever title, “no more normal”. Though the definition of normal is always in a state of flux, ours is a moment of diagnostic surfeit, in which mental health clinicians have had to cede space to a superabundance of resources that allow us – even encourage us – to diagnose ourselves.

And that makes this an interesting moment: one in which we explicitly see our vision of mental health being remapped onto the shifting politics of identity and inclusion that permeate now. Insofar as this forces us to reckon with the social aspects of our mental health in a more explicit way than we are used to, perhaps this is no bad thing.

Caitjan Gainty, Senior Lecturer in the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, King's College London

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.