Students and faculty across California and the nation staged coordinated protests Thursday to collectively push back against what they view as the Trump administration’s attacks on higher education.
In the greater Bay Area, rallies protesting federal funding cuts and more took place at Stanford University, California State University — East Bay, UC Santa Cruz, UC Berkeley and San Jose State University.
“This is an issue that goes beyond issues of just academic freedom,” said Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor and current UC Berkeley public policy professor, at the university’s demonstration Thursday.” It goes to the core meaning of freedom in this country. It goes to the essence of what we all believe about America, because if the Trump regime can dictate to any university the terms on which its faculty or its students or its administrators or anybody in this community is going to function, then there are no limits to what that regime will do. You cannot appease a tyrant.”
The national day of action comes as the Trump administration has unveiled several executive orders and policies targeting higher education, ranging from revoking international student visas and cutting research funding to cracking down on transgender athlete participation and opening investigations into alleged antisemitism on campuses, including subpoenaing hundreds of faculty members at the University of California.
The administration has threatened to withhold elite universities’ funding if they don’t comply with demands – threats Trump officials have upheld in cutting $400 million in federal funding from Columbia University and most recently, freezing $2 billion at Harvard University after university officials refused to eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs, ban masks at campus protests and change admissions policies.
Hundreds gathered Thursday at UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza, the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement. Students and faculty held posters with the face of Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil, who was detained by immigration officers at his Columbia University-owned home last month over his role in protests against the Israel-Hamas war, and wore pins with the name of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, a Maryland man illegally deported to an El Salvadoran prison. An array of signs and banners reading “Education not censorship,” “Don’t cave, cuts kill,” and “Freedom to learn and protest” signaled what was motivating people to show up.
Caden Payne, a UC Berkeley junior studying data science, said he’s never been to a protest before but felt it was important to attend the demonstration.
“Threatening cuts to research for organizations fighting climate change affects people like me doing important work,” Payne said. “It’s important to have the power of the people coming together as a group. We may not be powerful individually but we are when we come together.”
For Tianna Paschel, a professor of African American studies with a focus on authoritarianism, Thursday’s demonstration was about experiencing community while standing up to what she said are attacks on African American studies, women’s rights, and the progress made under the Third World Liberation Front, a multi-ethnic movement started by student groups at San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley in the late 1960s.
“Everything I believe in is under assault,” said Paschel, who took her class out of the classroom and into Sproul Plaza to witness the demonstration. “What makes me feel hopeful and gives me energy is this is a place where you can find community in the courage. It’s a place where you won’t feel alone fighting back and it’s a place where there’s going to always be a sustained resistance of some kind. It feels good.”
At San Jose State University, more than 100 educators, students and local and state leaders gathered to stand up for academic freedom, free speech and diversity. California Faculty Association members also called on the state to provide additional funding for California universities in the wake of Trump’s funding cuts.
San Jose State lecturer Amanda Smith said Thursday served as an opportunity to “plant the seed” for students and faculty to feel empowered to speak out against Trump’s actions, while lecturer and poet Anne F. Walker said she felt it was important to protest for her colleagues who were unable to do so out of fears of deportation or arrest.
“I am a middle-aged American-born white woman at the end of a teaching career. I have more protections than many people,” Walker said. “For me to be out here is important…for the people who can’t. I don’t want to be in a situation where we can’t speak up anymore.”
Karen Reyes, a senior at San Jose State, said Thursday was the first time she protested since protesting Trump’s first-term win in 2016. She said she missed class to attend the rally because if she doesn’t fight for education, she worries she “won’t have an education.”
“Our current president wants us to be uneducated so that they can mold us into what they want us to be,” Reyes said.
San Jose Assemblymember Alex Lee called on Gov. Gavin Newsom to stand up to Trump’s “bullying,” praising Maine Gov. Janet Mills for her refusal to comply with an executive order barring transgender athletes from women’s sports. The Trump administration sued Maine for the move earlier this week. (In March, Newsom said on his podcast it was “deeply unfair” for transgender athletes to participate in girls’ sports.)
Despite Trump’s retaliatory actions against universities and leaders who refuse to comply with his demands, educators said they refused to be scared into silence.
“We are here because our whole entire society is under attack,” said Chris Cox, a sociology professor at San Jose State. “(Trump’s) real agenda is basically to create a society where people have no ability to fight back.”