Most Americans seem to agree higher education is broken. A Pew poll from last fall found that as many as 70% of people believe the system is heading in the wrong direction. To be fair, there are plenty of reasons to be concerned — rising costs and increasingly divisive campus activism are just two. These are not new problems, and they have only become more central to our political dialogue.
Our adversaries abroad are not ignorant of this and have spent immense resources to continue dividing our campuses and turning meaningful concerns into destructive activism. The ongoing military campaign against the Islamic Republic presents a unique opportunity to improve and strengthen the work of restoring U.S. higher education. To truly begin the process of rebuilding these burned-out institutions, we need to put out the fires that the Islamic Republic and its proxies — most notably Hamas — constantly fan.
Over the last decade, groups associated with the Islamic Republic and its proxies have sought to encourage polarizing campus activism at any opportunity. After the horrific events of Oct. 7, 2023, dozens of student groups, following the lead of the National Students for Justice in Palestine, protested in a “Day of Resistance.” NJSP posted a toolkit to encourage and support these events.
This same report shows at least three Students for Justice in Palestine chapters referred leadership to Resistance News Network, an encrypted messaging service known for disseminating Hamas’ propaganda. NJSP and some local SJP chapters have been sponsored and supported by American Muslims for Palestine, a group with troubling ties to Hamas.
Often these protests led to overtly antisemitic encampments that sought to intimidate students and faculty striving for substantive dialogue on their campuses. These were the same protests encouraged by NJSP, and by extension, supported by AMP and its ties to Hamas. In other words, proxies of the Islamic Republic helped coordinate illegal activism that only served to chill speech, discourage the free exchange of ideas at our colleges and universities, and foster a racially discriminatory environment for Jewish students.
These encampments incurred massive costs beyond the destruction they caused to the culture and spirit of these schools. At UCLA alone, the encampment directly cost the school nearly $12 million. This figure does not include a $6 million settlement the school reached with Jewish students and professors for violations of their civil rights relating to antisemitic actions of protesters at the school’s encampment. On top of all of this, the federal government sued UCLA last week over the school’s failure to protect Jewish students and staff. Last summer, the federal government said it was seeking up to $1 billion.
UCLA is just one of more than a hundred colleges and universities that have had an encampment. Groups with ties to one of the Islamic Republic’s primary proxies encouraged activist lawlessness that, beyond intimidating and silencing real dialogue, cost our institutions millions, if not billions, of dollars. This is a problem on a massive scale.
PALESTINIAN PROPAGANDA HAS GLOBALIZED THE INTIFADA
Students for Justice in Palestine is just one of the groups both supported by the regime in Tehran and wreaking havoc on our campuses. Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, an organization currently coordinating protests against U.S. intervention in Iran, has documented ties to Hamas. Potentially even more worrisome are new reports that the Chinese Communist Party is financially supporting and promoting some of these groups. ANSWER, such as SJP, constantly traffics anti-American propaganda. The U.S.’s chief rival is merely taking a page from the Islamic Republic and its proxies: any chance to sow dissent and chill speech on campuses should not be passed up.
To restore a spirit of free inquiry, open dialogue, and racial equality on our campuses, we must halt the constant interference of our adversaries abroad. Our enemies see our institutions of higher learning as an easy target and have sought to foment division and illegal activism at every turn. Toppling the Islamic Republic, or even eradicating its ability to fund and support its proxies, would prove crucial in the work of restoring the U.S. university system.
Reagan Dugan is the Director of Higher Education Initiatives at Defending Education.