Punishing pro-Palestine protests

New York, United States – It was December, and the end of the quarter was fast approaching at the University of Chicago.

Mamayan Jabateh, a fourth-year student, was working on a final paper about the politics of the "carceral state", inside a dorm on campus, when a knock came at the door.

Four Chicago police officers were standing on the other side. They presented Jabateh, who uses the pronoun "they", with a printed photograph. It showed them at a pro-Palestinian campus protest two months earlier, on October 11.

Jabateh was immediately handcuffed and hauled away. They were detained for 30 hours.

But the arrest was only the beginning: Jabateh was also indefinitely suspended and banned from campus.

Free-speech advocates are warning that, with attention on the protests waning and national politics in the United States swinging rightward, university punishments against pro-Palestinian protesters have grown harsher — something Jabateh knows firsthand.

"It’s a really extreme reaction," says Megan Porter, a lawyer who is supporting Jabateh during the disciplinary process on a pro bono basis. "But it seems to be a tactic that a lot of universities are starting to take."

Since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, thousands of students flooded onto campus lawns and other common areas to denounce Israel's actions and US support for them.

At the height of the protests, in April and May, tent encampments cropped up at many universities across the country, including the University of Chicago.

Amid political pressure and accusations of anti-Semitism, many university leaders responded by calling in the police.

Campus protesters were arrested en masse, sometimes more than 100 at a time. As many as 3,100 had been arrested by July.

But as the demonstrations have shrunk in number and size this academic year, advocates say universities have instead switched to targeting individual students with severe disciplinary actions, including months or in some cases years of suspension.

That was the case for Jabateh. In October, on the first anniversary of the Gaza war, Jabateh had taken part in the "Week of Rage", a series of protests planned by Students for Justice in Palestine, the country’s largest pro-Palestine student organisation.

Tensions simmered over on October 11, as the week drew to a close. Protesters tried to lock the gates to the campus. Police responded with pepper spray and batons. The campus newspaper, The Chicago Maroon, claimed that the protest "morphed into a brawl".

One photo from the protest appears to show Jabateh holding back the hand of a police officer who is swinging a baton. Another shows Jabateh pulling away from an officer who grabs their wrist.

Jabateh was ultimately charged with two felonies: for the aggravated battery of a peace officer and for resisting or obstructing a peace officer at the protest.

Citing the charges, which remain pending, the University of Chicago declared Jabateh a "threat" to campus safety and barred them from the school grounds.

That included Jabateh's dorm, where they had served as a resident adviser for university housing. Jabateh was also placed on "involuntary leave" — effectively an indefinite suspension. Such leaves can only be lifted at the discretion of the dean.

While university administrations had previously accused student protesters of being "disruptive", Porter says labelling students like Jabateh as a "threat" marked a significant escalation.

"They are just jumping to kicking someone off campus, and they're doing it with less and less evidence," Porter says.

"Instead of just being labelled as disruptive to campus life — which is also a problem — now they’re targeting Palestine speech as a threat. And adopting language like that justifies their ability to take more drastic action."

A total of two students were arrested and banned from campus in connection to the October protest, Jabateh included.

It is not clear whether the university has banned other students in the past after they were charged but before they were convicted of a crime. But for Porter, this represents a collapse of due process.

"The crackdown on pro-Palestine advocacy has gotten just more and more intense over the last year," Porter says. "And it seems like schools are taking more and more drastic action."

In response to questions from Al Jazeera, a spokesperson for The University of Chicago declined to comment on Jabateh's case, saying that the university "does not release information about individual student disciplinary matters, in keeping with federal privacy laws".

"As part of our commitment to free expression, the University of Chicago is fundamentally committed to upholding the rights of speakers and protesters to express a wide range of views," the spokesperson said.

"At the same time, University policies make it clear that protests and demonstrations cannot jeopardize public safety, disrupt the University’s operations, or involve unlawful activity."

Jabateh, a Black student organiser who hails from Chicago’s South Side neighbourhood, believes the university was "looking for targets" for disciplinary action.

"We're doing this for the safety of our students," Jabateh remembers university officials saying. Upon hearing that, Jabateh thought, "What about my safety?"

To Jabateh, the October protest was a perfect example of "what police brutality looks like".

"People think it's normal for the police to be beating up students at protests, for police to be pepper-spraying students at protests, for police to try to drive a car through a sea of students," Jabateh says. "And people look at that and think it's just normal."

The University of Chicago is not the only campus imposing harsh punishments on student protesters.

At the University of Minnesota, seven students face up to two-and-a-half years of suspension and $5,000 in alleged damages, months after being arrested during an October protest.

The students had occupied a campus building they renamed ​​"Halimy Hall", after a 19-year-old Palestinian TikTok personality killed in an Israeli strike in Gaza last year.

In January, 11 students at New York University were issued one-year suspensions after they staged a nonviolent sit-in at a library last December.

The university also declared two tenured faculty members "personae non gratae" for joining the sit-in, which prevents them from accessing certain school buildings.

The heavy-handed punishments have come as universities have rushed to pass stricter rules for campus protests following last year's encampments, including restrictions on the use of tents and time limits on demonstrations at some universities.

Rifqa Falaneh, a fellow at Palestine Legal, an advocacy group defending pro-Palestine speech, says the cumulative effect has been a silencing of the protests.

"There are so many people who are saying the protests have died down, but I would say students are reacting to what the university administrations have imposed on them," Falaneh says.

"We're seeing so many new policies put in place, so many different restrictions that limit the ability to speak on campuses."

But the pressure on the universities to tamp down campus protests has come from the highest levels of government.

In January, President Donald Trump, a Republican, was sworn in for a second term. Less than two weeks later, on January 29, he signed an executive order denouncing an "unprecedented wave of vile anti-Semitic discrimination, vandalism, and violence" on US campuses.

In an accompanying fact sheet, Trump pledged to take "immediate action" to "investigate and punish anti-Jewish racism in leftist, anti-American colleges and universities", including by cancelling student visas.

"Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you," Trump said, addressing the foreign students involved in the protests. "I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathisers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before."

Palestine Legal has begun to train lawyers volunteering to help students navigate the maze of university policies and procedures that have been implemented in recent months.

But Falaneh notes that the high stakes and heavy punishments already account for a muted response to Trump's policies, with few campus protests erupting against his immigration crackdown or his attacks on the US education system.

"Schools tried so hard to silence student advocacy for Palestine, and they've inadvertently also silenced student speech when it comes to vocalising opposition to Trump," Falaneh says. "It’s kind of biting them back."

Unable to return to class, Jabateh is not sure whether they will be able to graduate.

"This is a really big thing you are doing to me. You are restricting me from having my education," Jabateh remembers telling administrators in meetings about the ongoing disciplinary process.

"It’s been heartbreaking," Jabateh tells Al Jazeera. But they stress that the experience will not turn them off activism. "This is something that I'm long-term committed to. This is going to be my life’s work."

Other student activists said the disciplinary measures might impact their short-term ability to participate in protests, but the situation has ultimately made them more resolved to take action.

Rowan Lange was one of the seven students arrested at the University of Minnesota over the “Halimy Hall” occupation. They face charges of trespassing, property damage and rioting.

Though the charges remain pending, the university has threatened the seven protesters with suspensions ranging from one to five semesters.

Lange adds that the school also demanded they pay damages and write a five- to 10-page essay "about the difference between protesting and vandalism".

The students turned down the request, demanding instead a formal disciplinary hearing, scheduled for later this month. They have asked for the hearing be open to the public — a request the university refused.

"They don't want us to have an open trial. They didn't want us to record the meetings or anything like that," Lange tells Al Jazeera. "We want to basically put the university on trial as well."

A spokesperson for the University of Minnesota declined to comment on the individual students' cases, citing privacy laws, but pointed to a statement issued by the university's president, Rebecca Cunningham, after the incident.

"What happened in Morrill Hall yesterday was not a form of legitimate protest," Cunningham said in the statement. "Threatening behavior and destruction of property have absolutely no place within our community."

But Lange believes the university is seeking to use punishment to send a message to other students who may want to participate in future protests.

"I've definitely noticed a lot less people coming out to protests," Lange says, noting that some students are nonetheless continuing to organise pro-Palestine actions. "I think there are a lot of factors that are playing into this. I've definitely heard from a lot of my friends being fearful that they're going to get arrested or get suspended."

After being released from jail following the October protest, Lange quickly returned to protesting.

"It's definitely something I am going to keep doing."