All across the US, students at colleges and universities have spent over a year organizing to protest the ongoing ethnic cleansing Israel is currently committing in Gaza. The killing and maiming of over 100,000 men, women, and children. The forced relocation of hundreds of thousands. The targeted attacks on schools and hospitals. The blockade of food, water, and medicine to civilians. To billions around the world, if it walks like a genocide, and talks like a genocide, then chances are, well, you get it. In light of this, students across the country have organized sit-ins, encampments, pressure campaigns, and more to try and get their respective institutions to stop any sort of direct or indirect support of the Israeli war machine.

In response to these student efforts, institutions such as Columbia, Harvard, Swarthmore, and Michigan have cracked down hard against anti-genocide protests. They’ve taken drastic measures like creating new rules to tighten students’ right to protest, banning students from libraries, suspending or expelling students, firing faculty, and calling in cops to make arrests. 

Here in Maine, we feel like we’re kept safely away from much of what happens nationally, but that is a myth we feed ourselves. At Bowdoin College in Brunswick, there has been a lively organizing effort to get the school to divest from arms companies and denounce the scholasticide taking place in Gaza. In May 2024, with a supermajority, students passed a referendum demanding the school take action. The administration refused to act. In February 2025, students organized an encampment on campus to pressure the administration to take the referendum results seriously. After five days, the encampment came to an end, with 40 students put on probation, 8 temporarily suspended, and the college’s SJP chapter banned.

All of this happened under the new Trump 2.0 administration, which has ramped up pressure on colleges and universities to crack down even harder on anti-genocide protestors. The administration has investigated and threatened to withhold funding from a number of schools deemed to be too soft on student organizers. And, in a move that has sent shockwaves across the civic and legal world, has sent in ICE to detain and attempt to deport a number of students here on Visas who have allegedly attended pro-Palestinian actions on campuses. 

On March 27, those efforts hit Maine when a congressional committee sent Bowdoin a letter announcing that they were looking into whether the college had adequately addressed “antisemitisim” on its campus, specifically referencing the recent encampment that called for an end to scholasticide in Gaza. They demanded to know what disciplinary actions had been taken against students who partook. That committee considers “antisemitism” not only as actions that target Jews and Judaism, but also absurdly extends it to anything that targets the nation-state of Israel and “Zionism”.

Although Bowdoin unjustly punished anti-genocide activists, and refuses to take any concrete measures to stop a genocide in which they admit they are financially invested, they have also not followed other institutions that have happily acquiesced to outside demands to viciously repress the college community. Moreover, Bowdoin’s president, Safa Zaki, signed onto a letter from the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) on April 22 openly challenging the Trump administration’s attempts to stifle academic freedom. 

And on May 2, the Bowdoin chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released a letter, signed by over 180 current and former Bowdoin faculty and staff, encouraging the college to continue standing up to threats to the community. Among other things, they pledged support to all efforts to challenge threats to higher education, refuse to comply with demands for names, affirm fundamental civil rights, and “reject cynical invocations of antisemitism that undermine democratic norms, stifle critical dialogue, and strip individuals of their rights.”

What comes next, no one is sure. We know that the Trump administration is not as strong as it seems, and that it is vulnerable to resistance. But we also know that it will not give up without a fight. The government is still committed to destroying higher education, and there’s always the risk that college leaders might succumb to the onslaught and throw their community under the bus – especially now that summer is coming and students and staff won’t be as present to hold the administration accountable.

Which is why Mainers and Bowdoin alumni need to keep making their voices heard. People can contact the Office of the President at Bowdoin to show support for her decision to sign onto the AAC&U’s letter. This is a time of great pressure on schools, and it’s important that we encourage administrators and presidents who have shown courage and pushed back against Trump’s efforts to silence educational institutions. We must call on them to continue the fight and keep our students and teachers safe and free from unjust and potentially illegal interference.