\n<\/p>\n
Students, faculty and staff at more than 100 campuses across the US rallied against the Trump administration\u2019s assault on higher education on Friday \u2013 the first in a planned series of nationwide, coordinated protests that organizers hope will culminate in large-scale students\u2019 and workers\u2019 strikes next May Day and a nationwide general strike in May 2028.<\/p>\n
The day of action was organized under the banner of Students Rise Up, a network of students including both local groups and national organizations such as Sunrise Movement and Campus Climate Network. Students were joined by faculty and educational workers\u2019 unions like the American Association of University Professors and Higher Education Labor United.<\/p>\n
Protesters called on university administrators and elected officials to denounce the president\u2019s months-long effort to force US universities to abide by its ideological priorities and urged them to reject Trump\u2019s \u201ccompact\u201d, which would give universities preferential access to federal funding in exchange for a commitment to advance the administration\u2019s conservative agenda. Only one university, New College of Florida \u2013 a public school that state legislators have turned into a bastion of conservatism \u2013 has so far accepted it.<\/p>\n
\u201cUniversities should be a place of learning, not propaganda machines,\u201d Alicia Colomer, managing director at Campus Climate Network, said ahead of the protests. \u201cThat\u2019s why students, workers and alumni around the country are taking action.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the day unfolded, hundreds of students across the country walked out of classes, unfurled banners and rallied on campuses, often joined by faculty and other staff. In addition to denouncing the compact, they called for a more affordable education and for the protection of all students \u2013 from transgender to international ones.<\/p>\n
At the University of Kansas, about 70 students demanded administrations divest from weapons manufacturers and Israel, refuse to collaborate with ICE, safeguard gender-affirming housing and meet faculty\u2019s demands for fair contracts. At Duke University, in North Carolina, students and professors held signs demanding the university stand with immigrants, pay its workers a $25 hourly wage, and protect trans and international students. At Brown University in Rhode Island \u2013 one of the first institutions to reach a settlement with the Trump administration earlier this year \u2013 passersby were invited to endorse a banner listing a series of demands by dipping their hands in paint and leaving their print, while a group of faculty members nearby lectured about the history of autocracy.<\/p>\n
<\/span>Students protest the Trump administration at the University of Kansas in Lawrence, Kansas, on Friday.<\/span> Photograph: Alex Hesskamp<\/p>\n \u201cTrump came to our community thinking we could be bullied out of our freedom,\u201d said Simon Aron, a sophomore and co-president of Brown Rise Up. \u201cHe was wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n In New York City, students and faculty from multiple campuses gathered by the midtown headquarters of the investment firm Apollo Global Management to protest against its CEO, Marc Rowan, a billionaire Trump donor and key architect of the compact whom they say \u201chas no business making policy for higher education\u201d.<\/p>\n They cited Rowan\u2019s involvement with the online University of Phoenix, which they described as \u201cthe largest single producer of student debt in the country\u201d and his role in paving the way for the ongoing abuse of civil rights legislation to target universities over students and faculty\u2019s criticism of Israel.<\/p>\n A spokesperson for Apollo did not respond to a request for comment but the firm reportedly instructed staff to stay home on Friday in anticipation of the protest. In a recent New York Times op-ed, Rowan defended the compact, writing that American higher education was \u201cbroken\u201d and that \u201ccourse correction must come from the outside\u201d.<\/p>\n Amy Offner, a history professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Guardian that the campaign against Rowan is part of a broader effort to protect US higher education from the influence of ultra-wealthy individuals. \u201cBillionaires should not control what can be taught and studied in the United States,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n The protests marked the first time that students, faculty and staff have staged such a large-scale response. \u201cThere is only one way forward in saving higher education and democracy writ large and that is students, faculty, staff united,\u201d Todd Wolfson, the president of the AAUP, said on a call with protest organizers last week. \u201cWe have to become a new political force.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Students, faculty and staff at more than 100 campuses across the US rallied against the Trump administration\u2019s assault on higher education on Friday \u2013 the first in a planned series of nationwide, coordinated protests that organizers hope will culminate in large-scale students\u2019 and workers\u2019 strikes next May Day and a nationwide general strike in May<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":32596,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[57],"tags":[1839,3350,560,678,71,489],"class_list":{"0":"post-32595","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-education","8":"tag-attacks","9":"tag-faculty","10":"tag-protest","11":"tag-students","12":"tag-trumps","13":"tag-universities"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32595","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32595"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32595\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/32596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32595"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32595"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32595"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}