“What is at stake is the defense of our fundamental democratic rights and constitutional freedoms,” said one organizer.

Originally published at Common Dreams

With universities across the U.S. facing attacks from the Trump administration that “have been compared to the worst of McCarthyism,” as one professor said, students, staff, and faculty on more than 150 college campuses are planning to participate in a National Day of Action for Higher Education on Thursday (April 17).

“What is at stake is the defense of our fundamental democratic rights and constitutional freedoms,” said Blanca Missé, an associate professor at San Francisco State University.

The day of action is being sponsored by a number of groups that have been active in protests against Israel’s U.S.-backed war on Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank, including Faculty for Justice in Palestine, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Palestine Legal; as well as groups including the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and Higher Ed Labor United.

Staff and faculty unions at New York University and the City University of New York are organizing the largest action, planned for 4:00 pm in Foley Square in Manhattan, while other events are being organized from the universities of Alaska and Hawai’i to schools across the Deep South.

The events are being organized amid “accelerating attacks on academic freedom, shared governance, and higher education as a public good,” said the AAUP.

Student organizers and activists including Mohsen Mahdawi, Mahmoud Khalil, and Rumeysa Ozturk have been detained by immigration agents in recent weeks for their pro-Palestinian advocacy, while the Trump administration has threatened universities with billions of dollars in funding cuts.

After Harvard University announced it would not comply with President Donald Trump’s demands for a crackdown on what he claims is “antisemitism” on college campuses, the White House said Tuesday it would freeze more than $2 billion in funding.

Columbia University, meanwhile, has collaborated with the Trump administration—reportedly handing over the names of students to the government and refusing to protect international students including Khalil and Mahdawi—prompting campus protests and condemnation from the school’s philosophy department.

“We are committed to beating back creeping fascism in higher ed, advancing worker control of campuses, and fighting for Palestinian liberation as part of the liberation of higher education,” said Bill Mullen, a member of the Coalition for Action in Higher Education and one of the co-organizers of the national day of action.

The day of action will include rallies, informational discussions, teach-ins, and marches like the one planned at American University.

Students and supporters plan to march to the university president’s on-campus house where they “will post a list of demands on his door.”

“These demands include protection of the most vulnerable, protection of academic freedom, and protection of our university’s core mission of teaching and scholarship,” said organizers.

The events come as a number of universities including Harvard have taken action to fight back against Trump’s attacks on First Amendment rights and academic freedom on campus. Representatives of Yale and Stanford expressed support for Harvard’s move on Tuesday, and the number of Big Ten Academic Alliance schools that have passed resolutions to defend campus communities has grown from one to four in recent weeks.

“As campus workers and citizens, educators and researchers, staff, students, and university community members, we exercise a powerful collective voice in advancing the democratic mission of our colleges and universities,” said organizers. “It is our labor and our ideas which sustain higher education as a project that preserves and extends social equality and the common good—as a project of social emancipation.”

“On April 17, 2025, we will hold a one-day action on and around our campuses to renew this vision of higher education as an autonomous public good,” they said, “and university workers as its most important resource.”