Last weekend, the federal government arrested, detained and threatened with deportation Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the U.S., not because he had committed any crime, but in retaliation for his peacefully speaking out on political issues while a student at Columbia University. The Trump administration has also cancelled over $400 million in already-allotted research funds to Columbia, essentially for failing to sufficiently repress peaceful student protests. The Department of Justice has launched investigations of 10 universities, with a threat to similarly slash federal funding, including several where UE represents graduate workers, and the Department of Education has sent threatening letters to an additional 60 schools. The clear intent of all these actions is to suppress dissent and the right to protest on campus.
These are serious attacks on our civil liberties, and will impact all working people if they are not vigorously resisted. The purpose of attacks on civil liberties is to instill fear, much like what bosses do during union organizing campaigns. People who are afraid to criticize the government will also be afraid to speak up at work. History has shown that a government that feels like it can get away with detaining or deporting legal residents for political speech will also be willing to arrest or deport union leaders who speak out about bad working conditions and low wages — especially a government of corporate billionaires like the one currently in office.
At the 78th UE Convention, in 2023, rank-and-file delegates from around the country declared, “The chilling effect of denials of our democratic freedoms curtails political debate within the U.S., limits the ability of all citizens to make democratic choices for the future of our country, and thereby undermines our livelihoods and living standards.”
In the late 1940s and 1950s, our country — and our union — faced a similar attempt to punish people for exercising their democratic and workplace freedoms: McCarthyism. The abduction and threatened deportation of Khalil, a green-card holder with the legal right to live and work in the U.S., is strongly reminiscent of the U.S. government’s attempt to deport founding UE Director of Organization James Matles in the 1950s, despite the fact that he was a naturalized citizen.
Today’s witch-hunt is no more about the purported “anti-Semitism” of campus protesters than the McCarthyist witch-hunts were about “communism.” In both cases, the point is to stifle dissent and make people afraid to criticize our government’s actions, to create a docile working class that is easier to exploit because people are afraid to speak up.
We are appalled by the outrageous extent to which university presidents and administrators are not only bowing to this effort to curb free speech and expression, but actively suppressing protest on their own campuses. The very purpose of a university is the free exchange of ideas, and we expect the leaders of those institutions to stand up for that principle. Instead, too many are doing the work of our increasingly authoritarian government of billionaires.
Civil liberties are not a luxury. Indeed, as the history of the labor movement has shown, they are essential to enable working people to fight for justice. As in previous generations, if the government will not respect our civil liberties, and if the leaders of institutions and political parties will not speak up for them, then we must defend them through mass mobilization and, if necessary, strikes.
Carl Rosen
General President
Andrew Dinkelaker
Secretary-Treasurer
Mark Meinster
Director of Organization