Trump’s crackdown on university protests is casting a long shadow. Activists hope he’s also providing a spark

By Hanna Park, CNN

(CNN) — At Columbia University, which has long borne witness to protests and dissent, the atmosphere has shifted under a new regime of policy changes ostensibly aimed at heightening security, according to CNN interviews with more than a dozen students and faculty.

Students who spoke with CNN – most of whom requested to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals – described a tense mood on campus as the changes take hold.

The atmosphere is far from what Maria, a master’s student at Columbia whose name has been changed to protect her identity, imagined when she enrolled last spring.

“I put my money down for Columbia thinking that I would be going to a prestigious university known as a protest university, home of some of the largest human rights student movements in the country. But then two days later, the (pro-Palestinian protest) encampment started and NYPD came onto campus,” she told CNN.

The Manhattan campus has become the reluctant poster child for President Donald Trump’s actions aimed at higher education. The administration has wielded its immigration authority to cancel the visas of hundreds of international students and visitors in the US and used the power of the purse to push for sweeping policy changes on campuses. Federal officials argue the moves are meant to combat antisemitism and bolster national security.

Universities – especially elite institutions – have for decades billed themselves as champions of free speech, and for many students and faculty, the stakes of the current controversy extend far beyond partisan politics – it’s about safeguarding the core values of free expression and the right to dissent. Many of those who spoke with CNN expressed optimism that a new wave of activism to protect those values may be building in response to the atmosphere of fear created by the president’s crackdown.

Maria told CNN that, to her, the administration’s actions convey a clear message: “Dissent is not a viable form of social participation in our country.”

Columbia is not alone in coming under pressure. In just the past week, the Trump administration suspended $210 million in research grants to Princeton University and announced reviews of $510 million in funding for Brown University and $9 billion for Harvard University. In recent months, the administration said it was investigating 10 schools for their handling of reports of antisemitism since 2023 and more than 50 for their Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) programs.

“The Trump administration may have started by singling out Columbia, but we’re under no illusions that all universities – particularly elite universities – have targets on their backs,” said Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor of sociology and international affairs at Princeton.

‘A fortress with high walls’: The chilling effect on campus activism

Maria told CNN she no longer protests on campus. She said she’s afraid of repercussions, which to her seem more likely under the new security policies Columbia announced last month, after federal agencies canceled $400 million in research grants and contracts to the university.

The changes effectively ban protests inside and immediately outside academic buildings. Anyone who does protest is banned from wearing a mask or any face covering meant to conceal their identity. The university also hired three dozen new campus police officers specifically trained to deal with protests, and they have arrest powers. Student groups that violate the policies will be sanctioned, Columbia said.

“I’m staunchly aware of how militarized and surveilled our campus is now,” Maria said.

Other students who spoke with CNN said security officers can be seen around campus every day, which they say fosters a fearful and uncertain atmosphere on campus.

“Are they here to protect me or am I the suspect?” said one student, who didn’t want to give their name out of fear of retaliation. “Columbia is now a fortress with high walls. Some people are scared to even attend class.”

CNN reached out to Columbia for response to the students’ sentiments.

Allie Wong, a PhD student at Columbia, also described the atmosphere on campus as one of pervasive fear – one that’s especially palpable for her because she says she’s witnessed firsthand some of the consequences of the administration’s crackdown.

Last month Wong briefly went to Canada with a fellow Columbia PhD student who chose to leave the US after ICE agents repeatedly showed up at her door. Shortly after, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem posted video of the pair at the airport, referring to the fellow student as “one of the Columbia University terrorist sympathizers.” (The student’s lawyer calls Noem’s statements “absolutely false.”)

“That was a very scary experience for me,” Wong told CNN of being cast in the spotlight. A longtime advocate for international students through the Student Workers of Columbia, Wong said she was doxxed for being part of last April’s protests, something she worries about happening again, along with other legal repercussions.

While fear hangs over the campus for some, others – notably Jewish students – have found relief. David Jonah Lederer, who took part in counter-protests following the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel, said the policy reforms were long overdue.

“The reforms pushed by the Trump administration at Columbia are not new,” Lederer told CNN. “We have been pushing for a mask ban, public safety reform, discipline, time, place and manner protest regulations, viewpoint diversity and broader governance reforms for over a year.”

Still, critics argue that the measures set a troubling precedent that could stifle all forms of expression, regardless of the cause.

“Many of the people who might lose scholarship and research funding have expressed no opinion on Israel-Palestine. Many are doubtless Jewish, too. This tells us that combating anti-Semitism is merely a pretext for stifling free expression,” Michael Cooperson, a professor of Arabic at UCLA, told CNN over email.

Asked last week about freedom of speech concerns surrounding the Trump administration’s cancellation of hundreds of student visas, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said international students are “here to go to class. They’re not here to lead activist movements.”

A new era of activism?

Princeton’s Scheppele, who said she’s witnessed autocratic initiatives firsthand during her research on Russia and Hungary, argues the administration fails to recognize the vital role campus debate plays in democratic society by producing citizens who can think for themselves.

Scheppele predicts “serious clashes ahead” as universities are “put into impossible situations” and student activists “refuse to cave in to the political pressures.”

Gil Eyal, a sociology professor at Columbia for more than two decades, made a similiar prediction, telling CNN his university’s policy changes are simply likely to make student protesters change their methods.

“I suspect this is going to lead student activists to turn to other forms of protest – more covert, more radical,” Eyal said. He also questions whether the university can enforce all of its new security restrictions: “Suppose protesters appear wearing masks and claiming religious or health exemptions? What will the university do?”

Virginia Page Fortna, a professor of US foreign and security policy at Columbia, agrees. She told CNN she’s already seen public political activity on the Israel-Palestinian issue begin to quiet — but said that might not last.

“Cracking down on protest often has the opposite effect — galvanizing and even radicalizing people. And we could see widespread protest against the university’s approach to the current crisis. So we will have to wait to see how this plays out,” Fortna said.

Pushback over the protest crackdown is already starting to materialize at other universities.

On March 19, students and faculty at UC Berkeley rallied to protest the Trump administration’s actions aimed at universities, according to CNN affiliate KPIX. UC Berkeley has a long history of high-profile student activism. In the 1960s it was the birthplace of the Free Speech Movement, a prominent group of student activists who pushed for broad freedom of expression.

One UCLA student who asked to remain anonymous argues student protests will endure regardless of how unpopular activist movements may be in their own time. The student points to her own university’s history of cracking down on Vietnam War protesters and the controversial, on-campus deaths of two students who were members of the Black Panther Party in 1969.

“Student activists will continue fighting for justice regardless of their university and their university’s donors’ opinions,” she said.

Student and faculty unions have emerged at the forefront of new resistance to the Trump administration, both in the streets and in court.

Last week, labor unions representing professors and other educators sued the Department of Education, the Department of Homeland Security and several other government agencies over the revocation of $400 million in funding to Columbia. The lawsuit calls the Trump administration’s actions an “unlawful and unprecedented effort to overpower a university’s academic autonomy and control the thought, association, scholarship, and expression of its faculty and students.”

A week ago, a rally was held on the steps of the US Citizenship and Immigration Services Building in downtown Minneapolis to protest the detention of a University of Minnesota graduate student by ICE officers. The rally included union presidents who represent graduate workers at more than half a dozen universities, including Stanford and Northwestern, according to a statement from the union leaders.

The graduate workers’ unions argue that the “constitutional violations” taking place against international university students “are part of a larger plan to continue stripping our rights away from us…it will not stop there.” The rallygoers called for solidarity among institutions in higher education and condemned universities that comply with what they call the administration’s “illegal and unconstitutional orders.”

Sebastian Spitz, a PhD student and Harvard Law graduate, told CNN unions have a long history of mobilizing for change on campuses, pointing to wage increases he helped push for with Harvard’s Graduate Student Union.

The union used “strikes, disruption and negative media attention,” to pressure Harvard into realizing “that raising our wages was in its interests,” Spitz said. He believes activists should employ similar tactics now.

“Universities must speak out against these assaults. They must do so collectively, with other civic organizations,” he said, stressing the need to make the message accessible beyond the rarefied air of the Ivy League. “The vast majority of Americans did not go to Harvard and do not care what (Harvard University) President (Alan) Garber thinks.”

Scheppele also stressed the importance of appealing to all Americans and making sure the public understands “the importance of our work for a democratic society.”

“We have allowed for too long the extremists in this country to define us as a woke mob indoctrinating children,” Scheppele said.

Neil Fligstein, a sociology professor at UC Berkeley, is critical of the lack of unity among university presidents, particularly those leading top-tier institutions.

“As long as Trump picks on one university at a time…he puts their leaders in the position of having to sacrifice their organization or capitulate. So far, capitulate is winning,” he said.

For students like Maria, activism remains a blend of realism and optimism.

“The drive to achieve something bigger and better has always shaped my motives,” she said. Now, she believes it’s up to individuals to decide whether to defend the country’s basic rights and core values – or do nothing and risk them being stripped away.

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