US campuses adopted tough rules to restrict criticism of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza with the beginning of the first fall semester, after pro-Palestinian protests gained momentum throughout universities across the US in the last academic year.
This has caused widespread outrage on social media from students and supporters who perceive these recent moves as efforts to stifle the pro-Palestine student movement.
In a post on X, the National Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) student group said that the Secure Community Network (SCN) has "held a roundtable with representatives from law enforcement agencies, including the FBI, to generate a list of ten security recommendations for universities to quell pro-Palestine protests in the fall."
The New York University (NYU) People’s Solidarity Coalition also said in a post on its Instagram account, “It is clear universities across the city are communicating, just as TNS (The New School) and NYU coordinated their sweeps of our encampments in May.”
“They are losing control of the narrative and have decided to crack down on our online presence in an attempt to smother us, rather than meet our demands.”
The latest development comes two days after Instagram banned the account of Columbia University’s Students for Justice in Palestine, in yet another form of censorship by the US-based technology conglomerate Meta Platforms.
The blocking of the group’s account was the latest in a battle on Columbia’s campus, and on campuses across the US, over free speech and Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.
The protesters, who demanded an end to the US-backed war which has so far killed 40,476 Palestinians, mostly women and children, and injured 93,647 others, were met with brutal police violence.
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