As “Hands Off” Protests Come to Campus, Who Will Lead?

Opinion | Farrukh Abadi

On April 17, the Coalition for Action in Higher Ed organized a day of action in protest of “antidemocratic pressures in all their guises and on all educational levels” and in defense of “advancing the democratic mission of our colleges and universities.” Over 75 rallies took place on campuses across the country as the Trump administration along with university administrations carry out a combined attack on students and faculty, particularly aimed against the campus Palestine solidarity movement.

The rally comes less than two weeks after the nationwide liberal “Hands Off” rallies organized on April 5. Unlike those protests, the “National Day of Action for Higher Ed” saw much more pro-Palestine messaging, particularly in the context of the latest series of ICE abductions of mainly pro-Palestine activists on campuses. Nevertheless, much of the liberal messaging remained dominant at the events, including the vague and sanitized “Hands Off” slogan and the dirty striped rag of US imperialism.

At Columbia University, about 100 protesters rallied with campus organizers calling on students, faculty, and staff to take a “LAST STAND FOR DEMOCRACY”, citing that “Academic freedom is under attack, students are being detained, Palestine is being bombed”. While students correctly rebel against the restriction of democratic rights, especially around protesting a US-backed genocide, the illusion of saving democracy—both in terms of identifying with bourgeois democracy and incorrectly labeling Trump as an “autocrat” or fascist—ends up tailing after the equally genocidal Democratic Party and sinking into the swamp of electoral politics.

A faculty rally at Columbia days earlier with similar messaging saw attendees holding up a US flag at the head of the rally while chanting vague liberal slogans such as “When science is under attack, what do we do? Stand up, fight back!” But science for whom? The scientific process allows a deeper understanding of the world, but its direction and results belong to those who fund it and own the equipment for it, ultimately making it a question of class power. Science funded by imperialism—regardless if it is state monopoly capital or private monopoly capital—serves imperialism, and first and foremost its armed forces, the backbone of its class dictatorship.

While at Columbia, the university administration has more openly colluded with the Trump administration, other schools facing similar threats of financial cuts have put on a show of defiance, leading some to believe that their administrations can lead a way out.

At Yale, over 400 faculty, students, and community members protested on the day of action, also with a mix of pro-Palestine activists calling for divestment combined with faculty members and politicians aiming to rally behind the university administration against Trump. At Cornell, chants of “Free Palestine” quickly died out at a rally focused on the effects of federal cuts.

Two Lines in the Campus Mass Movement

The dual aspects of reactionary liberal messaging and genuine rebellion against the attacks of the Trump administration reflects the increased mobilization of more conservative, institutionally-tied elements into the mass movement and the ensuing struggle for leadership. The dividing line between right and left is a question of immense importance that determines how the mass movement on campuses will unfold.

The right seeks to rally the campus mass movement behind its university administrators—the representatives of the millionaire and billionaire Board of Trustees—to defend against Trump’s attacks, hoping that one set of billionaires will save them from another. They confuse the contention among the bourgeois representatives as primary over the fundamental collusion of billionaires aiming to protect their hegemony and try to direct the mass movement under the leadership of one faction against the other. Such a political program is embellished with vague liberal platitudes about freedom, science, and democracy that obscure their class nature, amounting to abdication to the ruling class.

This is what is put forward by the Coalition for Action in Higher Ed, whose demands do not differ from any so-called “progressive” Democrat. The Coalition takes as a starting point the “democratic mission of our colleges and universities”, but who have colleges and universities been democratic for? Students have for decades attempted the “democratic” process by voting in large majorities for divestment, whether from South Africa or Israel, only to be rebuffed by the Board of Trustees. The mission of colleges and universities is dictated by the highest bidder, making it a democracy for the rich. This is true of our political system as well; Trump does not represent autocracy against democracy, but rather the continuation of bourgeois democracy, which means dictatorship for the people.

Likewise, the Coalition promotes the lofty idea of “sustain[ing] higher education as a project that preserves and extends social equality and the common good”. In reality, universities under imperialism heighten social stratification while carrying out research largely for weapons industries and in general for the stability of the ruling class. At the same time, such research grants are another means of siphoning tax dollars into the pockets of the bourgeoisie. At Harvard for example, nearly 70% of federal funding goes to “overhead costs”, bolstering its investment portfolio.

The attacks of the ruling class on education must be resisted—not for the purpose of handing it over from one faction of monopolists to another, as the liberals intend to do, but to fundamentally transform it in the interests of the working class. Education cannot serve social equality or the common good as long as it is under the domination of a handful of parasitic exploiters.

The goal of the left must be to unite the various rebelling elements among all sections of campus—students, workers, faculty, staff—and organizationally consolidate this to lead the struggle against both the university administration and the attacks from the state. It must continue to emphasize its central demand of divestment from the criminal Zionist entity and its unwavering defense of Palestinian armed resistance while broadening the demands to unite the movement into one anti-imperialist torrent. Of particular importance is to carry out propaganda and agitation exposing the collusion between the university administration and the Trump administration, how their interests coincide, and criticizing the narrow opportunism of the right by highlighting how austerity and repression are inherent to imperialism rather than a policy of this or that representative.

Liberalism dreams of social progress without going “too far” within the confines of the old moral order—hence it pig pens social struggle into the most narrow reforms to mine votes. By contrast, revolutionary politics means thoroughness in change, casting aside illusions of bourgeois democracy and struggling for the conquest of power and the realization of socialism.

Socialism is democracy for the working class and dictatorship over the exploiting classes. It means democratic worker and student control over the university, something seen during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China in the 1970s when students, teachers, and workers formed administrative bodies in charge of schools. While liberalism offers the people the increasingly restricted freedom to “dissent”, socialism means freedom of the working class not only to express its views, but to transform it into a reality, to administer.

Bourgeois and petty-bourgeois lines at best offer crumbs in exchange for their putrid and regressive leadership, which seeks to swindle the masses by individualizing the struggle and concealing its class nature. Only proletarian leadership can provide the tactical and strategic orientation necessary to win the immediate demands as part of a protracted struggle for the working class conquest of power.

Photo: National Day of Action for Higher Ed march in NYC, April 17, 2025.

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