The horrendous behavior by the Israeli government and military in Gaza, where the Palestinian people have been subjected to bombing on a massive scale as well as being attacked by ground troops, and are the targets of an embargo on aid that has resulted widespread famine and starvation, has led to a spate of protests on university campuses. In some of those campuses, university authorities have responded harshly, with presidents calling in riot police, breaking up encampments, and attacking and arresting protestors, even though in almost all cases the protests were peaceful. As a result, there have been a flurry of no-confidence votes brought by faculty against university presidents.

Ostensibly, university presidents are supposed to represent the interests of members of the university community, namely. faculty, students, and staff. If significant segments of those populations are opposed to them and their actions, whom do they represent?

To understand this, one must realize that the modern US university has succumbed to the same neoliberal ideology that sees everything in market terms. It is now best viewed as like a corporation. While technically most of them operate as non-profits, in practice they are as much concerned with raising revenue and cutting costs as any business, and the president is like a corporate CEO (and paid like one) and top administrators are like corporate officials. They move along a different non-academic track, moving from university to university as they rise through the ranks. Meanwhile the Faculty Senate that is made up of members of the faculty elected by their peers and which used to be thought of as the main academic decision-making body, has been steadily sidelined. Instead, the president kowtows to the Board of Trustees, who are made up largely of corporate and big-money types. It is the Board that ultimately has the decision-making powers, especially when it comes to the hiring and firing of high-level administrators and the faculty, but when the university is functioning smoothly and without turmoil, that control is not visible.

But when major issues arise that challenge powerful interests, the trustees are quite willing to ignore the faculty, students, and staff in order to meet the demands of the wealthy donor class.

Reportedly, some Columbia University trustees were surprised that so many faculty were upset at the initial police action to clear the student encampment there. In this framework, if that report is true, the trustees and faculty either had (i) different understandings of the level of disruption that the encampment was causing, (ii) different thresholds of disruption at which police action is justified, or (iii) both.

According to an astonishing report from the New York Times about protests on the UCLA campus on Tuesday, April 30th, police stood by while counter-protesters attacked the pro-Palestinian encampment, the counter-protesters dispersed, and then police arrested 200 or so protesters at the encampment and cleared it. If this report is accurate, following the schema above, police action was justified, but not the police action that occurred. They acted (i) at the wrong time and (ii) arrested the wrong people.

The attacks by counter-protesters and then responses by protesters – sometimes defensive and sometimes counter-attacking – clearly jeopardized safety (level 4 disruption). The Times reports that, “The videos showed counter-protesters attacking students in the pro-Palestinian encampment for several hours, including beating them with sticks, using chemical sprays and launching fireworks as weapons.” Notably, “none of the videos analyzed by theTimes show any clear instance of encampment protesters initiating confrontations with counter-protesters beyond defending the barricades.” So, if they could have done so successfully, the campus police and other security personnel should have intervened to quell the attacks and protect safety, primarily by subduing aggressive counter-protesters. But they did not, standing by for several hours. Furthermore, the Times reports that, “as of Friday, no arrests had been made in connection with the attack.”

David Pozen of Columbia University, which saw the worst crackdown on protests, provides a clear-eyed look at the modern university and its presidents.

Professors fortunate enough to have tenure may get the impression that they are pretty big deals on campus. They have extraordinary job security. They hold significant power over their students’ educations and career prospects. And the job description—publishing original research, applying for grants, giving lectures—doesn’t tend to select for or reward modesty. Within their classrooms and departments, full-time faculty exercise some meaningful agency and authority.

It therefore came as a rude awakening for many faculty members at Columbia to learn just how little decisional authority we collectively wield at the university level. When the senate executive committee opposed Shafik’s crackdown on the student encampment, she went ahead and did it anyway—and there was nothing, under the University Charter and Statutes, that the committee or its formidable chair Jeanine D’Armiento could do about it. The full senate then considered a censure resolution. Had it passed, this act of resistance likewise would have had only symbolic effect. President Shafik was hired by, serves on, and reports to the board of trustees, whose members are largely chosen by … the board of trustees. Faculty are on the outside looking in.

To simplify somewhat, we might say that professors are granted a number of basic rights within the university, including rights to free speech and due process and quasi-property rights in the job itself. Students and staff are granted a partially overlapping, though weaker, bundle of rights. What none of us have are governance rights against the trustees who really run the place. We enjoy various individual privileges and protections, but not the franchise.

Henry Giroux writes that these student protests have exposed the ugly reality of the modern university.

There can be little doubt that neoliberalism has undermined, if not crippled, the notion of higher education as a democratic public sphere — a protective and courageous space where students can speak, write and act from a position of agency and informed judgment. This should be a space where education does the bridging work of connecting schools to the wider society, connects the self to others, and addresses important social and political issues. It should also provide conditions for students to develop a heightened sense of social responsibility, coupled with a passion for equality, justice and freedom. Instead, as Chris Hedges notes, universities increasingly have become “a playground for corporate administrators [who] demand, like all who manage corporate systems of power, total obedience. Dissent. Freedom of expression. Critical thought. Moral outrage. These have no place in our corporate-indentured universities.” 
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University leaders now follow policies that resemble the suffocating profit-driven values of Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, rather than the democratic values of John Dewey. At the same time, billionaires such as Bill Ackman, Leslie Wexner, Jon Huntsman and Robert Kraft now exercise extraordinary influence over higher education policy, particularly at the elite universities. They wield accusations of antisemitism and leverage the power of their wealth to silence criticism of the right-wing Israeli government, call for the firing of professors deemed too critical and outspoken regarding genocidal crimes, and dox and punish students for their criticism of scorched-earth Israeli attacks on Palestinians in Gaza.

Furthermore, they advocate for silencing protests on campuses by calling in the police, effectively transforming higher education into a precinct of the police state. Certainly, Donald Trump echoes this authoritarian view, indicating his willingness to use military force to suppress student dissent if he is elected in 2024. He has referred to the protesters setting up encampments on college campuses as “radical-left lunatics” who must be vanquished, adding that “they’ve got to be stopped now.” 
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What has become clear is that elite universities value big-money donors over students and are more than willing to clamp down on free speech and academic freedom, and to summon the police to do the bidding of the billionaire class. This display of cowardice is breathtaking. It symbolizes the death of the university as a democratic public sphere, as well as the willingness of its hedge-fund administrators to clamp down on student protesters in order to stay employed.
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In an age when the landscape of tyranny casts a dark shadow across the globe, the weight of conscience carries both a burden and the potential for a profound moral and political awakening. This courageous generation of students exemplifies that when social responsibility is guided by the demands of moral witnessing, politics can effectively challenge the pervasive influence and grasp of an emerging authoritarianism. In such times, conscience emerges as an unwavering force, compelling individuals to stand firm and resist the rising tides of ultranationalism, racism, state violence and militarism. It urges them to resist the encroachment of oppression upon those individuals and groups who, in their struggle for freedom, are too often deemed disposable.   
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The campus protesters exemplify the courage and moral conscience needed in times of crisis. By doing so, they direct their politics toward an imagined future where democracy is truly in the hands of the people. Their resistance to the genocide taking place in Gaza showcases the power of critical thought and analysis, as well as a commitment not only to think critically but also to transform consciousness and existing power structures. This protest represents both a courageous call to resistance and a crucial claim for justice.

I worry about the state of the universities in the US. Once institutions like this start becoming corporatized, it is hard to go back.