Attacks on universities aren’t about antisemitism. They’re about silencing dissent

Hello and happy Thursday. Today we’re starting with a quiz. Which American political leader said, “The professors are the enemy”?

That would be Richard Nixon, speaking to Henry Kissinger in the Oval Office in 1972.

His full quote is even more chilling: “Never forget, the press is the enemy. The establishment is the enemy; the professors are the enemy. Professors are the enemy. Write that on a blackboard 100 times and never forget it.”

That charming list of perceived villains might seem like a blast from the past, except that Vice President JD Vance ended a 2021 speech railing against American universities with that “professors” portion of the Nixon quote.

And it wasn’t just a one-off. For years, Vance, in lockstep with the Project 2025 folks, has been clear and vocal in his desire to destroy U.S. higher education, viewing it as a threat to conservative values — and conservative power.

Vance has said universities “train” people to hate their family and country.

“I actually think that we have to destroy the universities in this country,” the Yale law school graduate said in another interview. “They get too much money. They have too much power. I don’t think they do anything good.”

So while this week’s news is filled with the frighteningly authoritarian plight of Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia University graduate student and green card holder detained for his role in pro-Palestinian protests, there’s a bigger picture that we can’t lose sight of.

This isn’t wholly about fighting antisemitism (a worthy and important fight) or even entirely a free speech issue. This is about the Trump administration trying to destroy universities, by any means possible.

Brian Levin, a professor emeritus at Cal State San Bernardino and a member of the California Commission on the State of Hate, perhaps put it best: The government’s moves to crack down on dissent are “part of a one-two punch being targeted at some of the nation’s most elite universities, that if they don’t toe a government line with respect to viewpoint that they and the students that are most vulnerable to governmental sanction are at risk.”

That, Levin told me, “is something that a free society cannot tolerate.”

The case against Khalil is as thin as it is shocking, from what we know so far. Khalil served a leadership role in last year’s protests at Columbia, but has since graduated with a master’s degree. He is a permanent resident of the United States, raised in Syria, who is married to an American citizen (who happens to be pregnant).

On Saturday, Khalil was detained by ICE agents, including one honored personally by President Trump in 2019, and flown to an immigration detention center in Louisiana, according to Khalil’s attorney. Louisiana happens to be in the jurisdiction of the conservative 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, as opposed to the more liberal 2nd Circuit that covers New York. The government has claimed he is “pro-Hamas” but has offered no evidence.

The case had its first hearing Wednesday in a New York court, though Khalil was not present. His lawyers argued that the case should be moved back to New York, and said they had been unable to have confidential conversations with him. The court ordered that his lawyers be given that access, and gave the government time to file its argument as to why Louisiana is the proper venue.

Trump, for his part, said on social media that the Khalil detention was “the first arrest of many to come.”

For now, the case seems to be in the courts — instead of secret detention and deportation land — and maybe due process will have its way.

In the meantime, Khalil’s arrest has sparked numerous protests on college campuses, including in California. Which brings us to the part two of the one-two punch Levin sees.

Also a few days ago, the Trump administration pulled $400 million in funding from Columbia, charging that it had failed to protect Jewish students on campus.

The administration has also sent letters to 60 colleges informing them they are under investigation “relating to antisemitic harassment and discrimination.”

As my colleagues Jaweed Kaleem and Daniel Miller reported, that includes four University of California campuses — San Diego, Santa Barbara, Berkeley and Davis — as well as USC, Pomona College, Stanford, Chapman University, Santa Monica College and Sacramento State.

To be sure, there was antisemitism on some campuses last year, including in California, leaving Jewish students afraid and many watching from afar “who have found certain aspects of these protests to be thoroughly disgusting,” Levin said.

He added that “Columbia University’s own reports indicate the abject failure that took place with regard to the protection of Jewish students.”

But Levin also points out that free speech is all about protecting that which may be most offensive.

He points to a key case from 1946, where a conservative Catholic priest from Florida, Arthur Terminiello (later credibly accused of sexual abuse) gave an incendiary, racist and antisemitic speech in Chicago that got him arrested for breach of peace. In Terminiello vs. Chicago, the Supreme Court threw out his conviction, with Justice William O. Douglas writing:

Speech is often provocative and challenging. It may strike at prejudices and preconceptions and have profound unsettling effects as it presses for acceptance of an idea. That is why freedom of speech, though not absolute ... is nevertheless protected against censorship or punishment, unless shown likely to produce a clear and present danger of a serious substantive evil that rises far above public inconvenience, annoyance, or unrest.”

In our current context, that might mean saving space to be pro-Palestinian, or even just pro-no-killing, without being labeled pro-Hamas (a terrorist organization) or simply dangerous — at least without due process.

As the American Jewish Committee, one of the oldest and most respected Jewish organizations in America, said in a statement this week: “There is a difference between protected speech, even when deplorable, and statements and actions that justify deportation.”

Still, it may be that the new investigations of universities by the government could lead to a loss of funding similar to what Columbia has been hit with — much of which, for Columbia at least, was in the form of National Institutes of Health grants funding things such as cancer treatment research. That comes on the heels of other funding cuts due to other Trump grant freezes that have already left universities reeling.

“This will send a chilling effect, not only to the most nefarious of those who exploited protests, but also the finest among the protesters, whose desire was merely to stop the conflict,” Levin said.

So what is at stake is a gutting of funding for U.S. universities, in tandem with the creation of a culture of fear that quashes dissent — for both vulnerable students and administrations. Universities now have active protests and are going to be under close government scrutiny for how they handle those, facing a loss of money that could cripple them.

The moment goes beyond how much — literally — our universities are willing to pay to protect free speech (and also, how much our state Legislature is willing to risk).

If the goal is, as Vance has said, to destroy universities, maybe there is no price that can be sacrificed. Maybe we are left with begging for mercy, or readying for the fight.

What else you should be reading:

The must-read: Inside Trump’s Crackdown on Dissent: Obscure Laws, ICE Agents and Fear
The what happened: At Columbia, Tension Over Gaza Protests Hits Breaking Point Under Trump
The L.A. Times special: UCLA launches effort to fight antisemitism as Trump says more pro-Palestinian activist arrests ahead

Stay Golden,
Anita Chabria

P.S. How powerful is Donald Trump? Apparently, he gets to decide who is Jewish.

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