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‘A tremendous chilling effect’: Columbia students describe dystopian reality on campus amid Trump attacks

Police arrest protesters during pro-Palestinian demonstrations at The City College Of New York (CUNY) as the NYPD cracks down on protest camps at both Columbia University and CCNY on April 30, 2024 in New York City. Photo by Spencer Platt/Getty Images

One year ago, Columbia University became ground zero for the student-led Gaza solidarity encampment movement that spread to campuses across the country and around the world. Now, Columbia has become ground zero for the Trump administration’s authoritarian assault on higher education, academic freedom, and the right to free speech and free assembly—all under the McCarthyist guise of rooting out “anti-semitism.” From Trump’s threats to cancel $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia to the abduction of international students like Mahmoud Khalil by ICE agents, to the university’s firing and expulsion of Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers union president Grant Miner, “a tremendous chilling effect” has gripped Columbia’s campus community. In this urgent episode of Working People, we speak with: Caitlin Liss, a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University and a member of Student Workers of Columbia-UAW (SWC); and Allie Wong, a PhD student at the Columbia Journalism School and a SWC member who was arrested and beaten by police during the second raid on the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia on April 30, 2024.

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Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright. Welcome everyone to Working People, a podcast about the lives, jobs, dreams, and struggles of the working class today. Working People is a proud member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network and is brought to you in partnership within these Times Magazine and the Real News Network. This show is produced by Jules Taylor and made possible by the support of listeners like you. My name is Maximillian Alvarez and today we are continuing our urgent coverage of the Trump Administration’s all out assault on our institutions of higher education and the people who live, learn and work there. Today we are going deeper into the heart of authoritarian darkness that has gripped colleges and universities across the country and we’re talking with two graduate student workers at Columbia University. Columbia has become ground zero for the administration’s gangster government style moves to hold billions of dollars of federal funding hostage in order to bend universities to Donald Trump’s will to reshape the curricula culture and research infrastructure of American higher ed as such and to squash our constitutionally protected rights to free speech and free assembly, all under the McCarthy’s guise of rooting out supposed antisemitism, which the administration has recategorized to mean virtually any criticism of an opposition to the state of Israel.

The political ideology of Zionism and Israel’s US backed genocide in Gaza and ethnic cleansing of Palestinians just one year ago. Columbia University was also ground zero for the student-led Palestine solidarity protests and encampments that spread to campuses across the country and even around the world. It was exactly one year ago that the first Gaza solidarity encampment began at Columbia on April 17th, 2024 and that same month on more than one occasion, Columbia’s own president at the time minutia authorized the NYPD to descend on campus like an occupying force, beat an arrest protestors and dismantle the camps. Now fast forward to March of this year. On Friday, March 7th, the Trump administration announced that it was canceling $400 million in federal grants and contracts with Columbia claiming that the move was due to the school’s continued inaction in the face of persistent harassment of Jewish students. The very next day, March 8th Mahmud, Khalil was abducted by ICE agents at his New York City apartment building in front of his pregnant wife and disappeared to a Louisiana immigration jail.

Khalil, a Palestinian born legal resident with a green card had just completed his master’s program and was set to graduate in May. He had served as a key negotiator with the university administration and spokesperson for the student encampment last year. He’s not accused of breaking any laws during that time, but the Trump administration has weaponized a rarely used section of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952, invoking the Secretary of States power to deport non-citizens if they supposedly believed their presence in the country could negatively affect US foreign policy. Just days after Khalil’s abduction, the university also expelled grant minor president of the Student Workers of Columbia Union, a local of the United Auto Workers, and that was just one day before contract negotiations were set to open between the union and the university. On March 13th, I was expelled from Columbia University for participating in the protest movement against the ongoing genocide in Gaza, minor rights in an op-ed for the nation.

I was not the only one. He continues, 22 students, all of whom like me had been cleared of any criminal wrongdoing, were either expelled, suspended for years or had their hard earned degrees revoked on the same day all for allegedly occupying a building that has been occupied at least four times throughout Columbia’s history. And then there’s Y Sao Chung, a 21-year-old undergraduate and legal permanent resident who is suing the government after ICE moved to deport her, following her arrest on March 5th while protesting Columbia’s disciplinary actions against student protestors. I mean, this is just a small, terrifying snapshot of the broader Orwellian nightmare that has become all too real, all too quickly at Columbia University and it is increasingly becoming reality around the country and things got even darker last week with the latest development in Mahmood Khalil’s case as the American Civil Liberties Union stated on Friday in a decision that appeared to be pre-written, an immigration judge ruled immediately after a hearing today that Mahmud Khalil is removable under US immigration law. This comes less than 48 hours after the US government handed over the evidence they have on Mr. Khalil, which included nothing more than a letter from Secretary of State Marco Rubio that made clear Mr. Khalil had not committed a crime and was being targeted solely based on his speech. He’s not yet scheduled for deportation.

Listen, this isn’t just a redux of McCarthyism and the red scare. It has elements of that absolutely, but it is also monstrously terrifyingly new. I don’t know how far down this road we’re going to go. All I know is that whatever comes next will depend on what people of conscience do now or what they don’t do. Will other universities cave and capitulate to Trump as quickly as Columbia has? Will we see instead faculty, staff, students, grad students, parents, community members and others coming together on campuses across the country to fight this or will fear submission silence and self-censorship went out? What is it even like to be living, working and studying at Columbia University right now? Well, today you’ll hear all about that firsthand from our two guests. With all of this going on, I got to speak with Caitlin Liss, a PhD candidate in history at Columbia University and a member of Student workers of Columbia, and I also spoke with Alie Wong, a PhD student at the Columbia Journalism School, and a student workers of Columbia member who was arrested and beaten by police during the second raid on the Gaza solidarity protests at Columbia on April 30th, 2024.

Here’s my conversation with Caitlin and Allie recorded on Saturday April 12th. Well, Caitlin, Allie, thank you both so much for joining us today on the show. I really appreciate it, especially in the midst of everything going on right now. And I basically wanted to start there and ask if you could tell us from your own firsthand experience as student workers at Columbia, like what is the mood on campus and in your life right now, especially in light of the latest ruling on Mahmud Khalil’s case?

Caitlin Liss:

Okay. Yeah, so thank you for having us. I’m happy to be here. The mood on campus has been, you probably won’t be surprised to hear pretty bleak, pretty bad. We found out yesterday that Mahmood Kalila is not going to be released from jail in Louisiana. I think a lot of us were hoping that this ruling that was coming up was going to be in his favor and he would be released and be back home in time to be there for the birth of his baby. And it didn’t happen. And I think it’s just another horrible thing that has happened in a month, two months of just unrelenting bad news on campus. So stuff is feeling pretty bad. People are afraid, especially international students are afraid to leave their house. They’re afraid to speak up in class. I hear from people who are afraid to go to a union meeting and even those of us who are citizens feel afraid as well.

I mean, I wake up every day and I look at my phone to see if I’ve gotten a text message telling me that one of my friends has been abducted. It’s really scary. And on top of the sort of personal relationships with our friends and comrades who are at risk, there’s the sense that also our careers are industry are at risk. So, and many other members of student workers of Columbia have spent many years dedicated to getting a PhD and being in academia and it’s increasingly starting to feel like academia might not exist for that much longer. So it’s feeling pretty bleak.

Allie Wong:

Yeah, I would definitely agree. And again, thank you so much Max for having us here. It’s a real pleasure to be able to share our stories and have a platform to do that. Yeah, I would agree. I think that there is a tremendous chilling effect that’s sunk in across the campus. And on one hand it’s not terribly surprising considering that’s the strategy of the Trump administration on the other. It is really a defeating feeling to see the momentum that we had last year, the ways that we were not only telling the story but telling it across the world that all eyes were on Columbia and we had this really incredible momentum. And so to see not just that lack of momentum, but the actual fear that has saturated the entire campus that has indiscriminately permeated people’s attitudes, whether you’re an American citizen or not, whether you’re light-skinned or not, has been something that’s been incredibly harrowing.

I know that after Mahmood, I at least had the anticipation of quite a bit of activity, but between that ranjani the other students and Columbia’s capitulation, it actually has gone the opposite way in that while I expected there to be tons of masks on campus after Columbia agreed to have a total mask ban, there was no one when I expected to see different vigils or protests or the breakdown of silos that have emerged across the campus of different groups, whether they’re student groups or faculty groups, I’m just hoping to see some kind of solidarity there. It hasn’t, and I think it’s largely because of the chilling effect because that this is the strategy of the Trump administration and unfortunately it’s such a dire situation that I think it’s really squashed a lot of the fervor and a lot of the fearlessness that many of us had prior to this moment.

Maximillian Alvarez:

It feels like a ice pick to the heart to hear that, especially knowing not just what we saw on campuses across the country just a year ago, but also the long tradition of campus protests and universities and higher education being a place of free speech, free thought free debate and the right to protest and lead with a moral consciousness like movements that help direct the whole of society to see that this is what is happening here now in front of all of us. And since I have so much more, I want to ask about the past month for you both on campus, but while we’re on that subject that Allie just brought up about the expectation right now, which I have heard echoed a lot of places online and offline of why aren’t there mass protests across higher ed in every state in the country right now, you would think that the generation of the sixties would do just that if Nixon had tried such a thing. And a lot of folks have been asking us why aren’t we seeing that right now? And so I wanted to ask if y’all had any thoughts on that and also if that would in your mind change things like if you saw other campuses that weren’t being targeted as intently as Columbia is, if you saw students and faculty and others protesting on behalf of what’s happening to you, would that change the mood on campus you think?

Caitlin Liss:

I mean that there’s a few things going on. Part of it is, like Allie said, the chilling effect of what’s been happening is making a really large percentage of our members and people in our community afraid to publicly take action. International student workers make up a really big percentage of our membership, and a lot of those people are afraid to even sign their name to a petition. In my departments. We sent a joint letter to the departments about what was going on, and a bunch of students didn’t want their names appearing on this letter that was just being sent the chair of the departments. So the chilling effect is real and very strong, and I think that that’s preventing a lot of people from showing up in ways that they might have done otherwise. I think that another part of it is just the kind of unrelenting nature of what’s been happening.

It has been one horrible thing after another and trying to react to everything as it comes in is difficult, but I don’t think it’s the case that we’re not doing anything. We are doing quite a bit and really trying through many different avenues to use our power as a union to fight back against what’s happening. We are talking with other unions on campus, we talk to other higher ed unions across the country, and so I think that there is quite a lot going on, but it does sometimes feel like we can’t keep up with the pace of the things that are happening just because they are happening so quickly and accumulating so fast.

Allie Wong:

Yeah, I mean I would definitely agree. I think that it’s the fire hose strategy, which has proven to be effective not just on Columbia but across the nation with the dismantling of the federal government attack on institutions, the arts, the legal processes and legal entities. And so I think that again, that that’s part of the strategy is to just overwhelm people with the number of issues that would require attention. And I think that’s happening on Columbia’s campus as well. If we take even divestment as an example where it was a pretty straightforward ask last year, but now we’re seeing an issue on campus where it’s no longer about Palestine, Israel divestment, it’s about immigration reform and law enforcement. It’s about the American dream class consciousness. So many of these different things that are happening not just to the student body, but to faculty and the administration.

And so I think that in terms of trying to galvanize people, it’s a really difficult ask when you have so many different things that are coming apart at the seams. And that’s not to say it’s an insurmountable task. As Caitlin mentioned, we are moving forward, we are putting infrastructure in place and asks in place, but I think it’s difficult to mobilize people around so many different issues when everyone already feels not only powerless but cynical about the ability to change things when again, that momentum that we had last year has waned and the issues have broadened.

Caitlin Liss:

Just in terms of your question about support or solidarity from other campuses, I think that one of the things that has been most dispiriting about being at Columbia right now is that it’s clear that Columbia is essentially a test case for the Trump administration. We were the first school to be and are still in many ways kind of the center of attention, but it’s not just us, but it feels like the way that Columbia is reacting is kind of setting the tone for what other universities and colleges can do across the country. And what Columbia is doing is folding, so they are setting an example that is just rolling over and giving up in terms of what other colleges can do. I think we’re seeing other universities are reacting to these kinds of attacks in ways that are much better than Columbia has done. We just saw that Tufts, I think filed some legal documents in support of Ru Mesa Ozturk because she is a student there.

Columbia has done no such thing for Ranjani, for Uno, for Mahmood. They haven’t even mentioned them. And so we can see other universities are reacting in ways that are better. And I think that that gives us hope and not only gives us hope, but it gives us also something to point to when people at Columbia say, well, Columbia can’t do things any differently. It’s like, well, clearly it can because these other universities are doing something. Columbia doesn’t have to be doing this. It is making a choice to completely give in to everything that Trump is demanding.

Allie Wong:

And I would also add to that point, and going back to your question about Mahmood and sort of how either us individually or collectively are feeling about that, to Caitlin’s point, I think there’s so much that’s symbolic about Columbia, whether it has to do with Trump’s personal pettiness or the fact that it was kind of the epicenter of the encampments list last year. I think what happened with Mahmood is incredibly symbolic. If you look at particularly him and Ranjani, the first two that were targeted by the university, so much of their situations are almost comical in how they planned the ambiguity of policy and antisemitism where you look at Mahmud and he, it’s almost funny that he was the person who was targeted because he’s an incredibly calm, gentle person. He provided a sense of peace during the chaos of last year. He’s unequivocally condemned, Hamas, very publicly condemned terrorism, condemned antisemitism.

So if you were looking for someone who would be a great example, he’s not really one considering they don’t have any evidence on him. And the same thing for Ranjani who literally wasn’t even in the country when October 7th happened in that entire year, had never participated in the protests at most, had kind of engaged with social media by liking things, but two really good examples of people who don’t actually quite fit the bill in terms of trying to root out antisemitism. But in my mind it’s really strategic because it really communicates that nobody is safe. Whether you’ve participated in protests or not, you’re not safe, whether you’ve condemned antisemitism or not, you’re not safe. And I think that plays into the symbolic nature of Columbia as well, where Trump is trying to make an example out of Columbia and out of Columbia students. And we see that very clearly in the ruling yesterday with Mahmud.

Again, that’s not to say that it’s not an insurmountable thing, but it’s disappointing and it’s frankly embarrassing to be a part of an institution that brags about its long history of protests, its long history of social change through student movements. When you look at 1968 and Columbia called the NYPD on students arrested 700 students, and yet it kind of enshrines that moment in history as a place of pride, and I see that happening right now as well where 20, 30, 50 years from now, we’ll be looking at this moment and Columbia will be proud of it when really they’re the perpetrators of violence and hatred and bigotry and kind of turning the gun on their own students. So yeah, it’s a really precarious time to be a Columbia student and to be advocating for ourselves and our friends, our brothers and sisters who are experiencing this kind of oppression and persecution from our own country.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Allie, Caitlin, I want to ask if we could again take that step back to the beginning of March where things were this terrifying new reality was really ramping up with the Trump administration’s freezing and threatening of completely withholding $400 million in federal funds and grants to Columbia just one day before Mahmood Khalil was abducted by ice agents and disappeared to a jail in Louisiana thousands of miles away. So from that point to now, I wanted to ask, as self-identified student workers at Columbia University, how have you and others been feeling throughout all of this as it’s been unfolding and trying to get through your day-to-day work? What does that even look like? Teaching and researching under these terrifying circumstances?

Allie Wong:

For me, it has been incredibly scary. As you mentioned, I was someone who was arrested and beaten last year after the second Gaza solidarity encampment raid and have spoken quite publicly about it. I authored a number of pieces around that time and since then and have been pretty open about my involvement being okay serving as a lightning rod for a lot of that PR stuff. And so for me, coming into this iteration of students battles with the university, it’s been really scary to kind see how many of the students that I was arrested with, many of my friends and colleagues are now either being targeted because of their involvement or living in the fear of being targeted because there is an opacity around what those policies are and how they’re being enforced and implemented. So it really does feel quite McCarthys in the sense that you don’t really know what the dangers are, but you know that they’re there, you’re looking over your shoulder all the time.

I don’t leave my house without wearing a mask just because through this whole process, many students have been doxed. Both Caitlin and myself have been doxed quite heavily through Canary mission and other groups online, and many folks have experienced offline behavior that has been threatening or scary to their own physical emotional security. And so that’s been a big piece for me is just being aware of my surroundings, being mindful of when I leave the house. In many respects, it does feel like I am growing in paranoia, but at the same time I consider it a moral obligation to be on the front lines as a light-skinned US citizen to be serving as a literal and figurative shield for my international brothers and sisters. And so it’s an interesting place as particularly a US citizen to say, what is my responsibility to the people around me?

What’s my responsibility to myself and keeping myself and my home safe? What’s my responsibility for sticking up for those who are targeted as someone who has the privilege of being able to be a citizen? And so I think it’s kind of a confusing time for those of us on the ground wanting to do more, wanting to help, wanting to offer our assistance with the privileges that we have and everyone’s level of comfort is different, and so my expectation is not that other people would take the kinds of risks I’m taking, but everyone has a part to play and whether that’s a visual part or a non-visual part, being in the public, it doesn’t really matter. We all have a part to play. And so given what we talked about just about the strategy of the Trump administration and the objectives to make us fearful and make us not speak out, I think it’s more important now than ever for those of us who are able to have the covering of US citizenship, to be doing everything in our power with the resources we’ve been given to take those risks because it’s much more important now in this administration than it’s ever been.

Caitlin Liss:

And I think on top of the stuff allie’s talking about, we do still have to continue doing our jobs. So for me, that is teaching. I’m teaching a class this semester and that has been very challenging to do, having to continue going in and talking about the subject matter, which is stuff that is very interesting to me personally and that I’m very excited to be teaching about in the classroom, but at the same time, there’s so much going on campus, it just feels impossible to be turning our attention to Ana and I hear from my students are scared, so part of my job has become having to help my students through that. I have heard lots of people who are trying to move their classes off campus because students don’t want to be on campus right now.

ICE is crawling all over campus. The NYPD is all over the place. I don’t know if you saw this, but Columbia has agreed to hire these 36 quote peace officers who are going to be on campus and have arresting power. So now essentially we have cops on campus full time and then on top of all of that, you have to wait in these horrible security lines to even get onto campus so the environment on campus doesn’t feel safe, so my students don’t feel safe. I don’t think anyone’s students feel safe right now. My colleagues who are international students don’t feel safe. I had a friend ask me what to do because she was TAing for a class and she wasn’t allowed to move it off campus or onto Zoom, and she said, I don’t feel safe on campus because I’m an international student and what am I going to do if ice comes to the door?

I don’t know what I’m supposed to do in that situation. And so the students are scared, my colleagues are scared. I’ve even heard from a lot of professors who are feeling like they have to watch their words in the classroom because they don’t want to end up on Canary mission for having said something. So that’s quite difficult. Teaching in this environment is very difficult and I think that the students are having a really hard time. And then on top of that, I am in the sixth year of my PhD, so I’m supposed to be writing a dissertation right now, and that is also quite difficult to be keeping up with my research, which is supposed to be a big part of the PhD is producing research and it’s really hard to do right now because it feels like we have, my friends and my colleagues are at risk right now, so that’s quite difficult to maintain your attention in all those different places.

Allie Wong:

Just one more piece to add because I know that we’ve been pretty negative and it is a pretty negative situation, so I don’t want to silver line things. That being said, I do feel as though it’s been really beautiful to see people step up and really beautiful to see this kind of symbiotic relationship happening between US students and international students. I’m at the journalism school, which is overwhelmingly international, and I was really discouraged when there was a report that came out from the New York Times a couple of weeks ago about a closed town hall that we had where our dean, Jelani Cobb more or less said to students, we can’t protect you as much as I would love to be able to say here are the processes and protocols and the ways to keep yourself safe and the ways that we’re here to support you, but he just said we can’t.

And he got a lot of flack for that because that’s a pretty horrible thing for a dean to say. But I actually really appreciated it because it was the most honest and direct thing he could have said to students when the university itself was just sending us barrages of emails with these empty platitudes about values and a 270 year history of freethinking and all this nonsense. That being said, I think that it was a really difficult story to read, but at the same time it’s been really beautiful to see community gather around and clinging together when there are unknowns, people taking notes for each other when students don’t feel comfortable going to campus, students starting to host off campus happy hour groups and sit-ins together and things of that nature that have been really, again, amazing to see happen under such terrible circumstances and people just wanting to help each other out in the ways that they can.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Caitlyn, Allie, you were just giving us a pretty harrowing view of your day-to-day reality there as student workers of Columbia PhD working on your PhDs and dealing with all of this Orwellian madness that we’ve been talking about today. When I was listening to you both, I was hearing so many kind of resonances from my own experience, just one sort of decade back, right? I mean, because I remember being a PhD candidate at the University of Michigan during the first Trump administration and co-founding for full disclosure, I was a member of the grad union there. I was a co-founder of the campus anti-fascist network. I was doing a lot of public writing. I started this podcast in that sort of era, and there were so many things that y’all were talking about that sounded similar from the fear of websites like Canary Mission, putting people’s names out there and encouraging them to be doxed and disciplined and even deported.

That resonated with me because it just ate nine years ago. That was groups like Turning Point USA, they were the ones trying to film professors in class and then send it to Breitbart and hopefully get it into the Fox News outrage cycle. And I experienced some of that. But what I’m hearing also is just that the things we were dealing with during the first Trump administration are not what y’all are dealing with now. There is first and foremost a fully, the state is now part of it. The state is now sort of leading that. It’s not just the sort of far right groups and people online and that kind of thing, but also it feels like the mechanisms of surveillance and punishment are entirely different as well. I wanted to ask if y’all could speak a little more to that side of things. It’s not just the university administration that you’re contending with, you’re contending with a lot of different forces here that are converging on you and your rights at this very moment.

Caitlin Liss:

Yeah, I mean I think the one thing that has been coming up a lot for us, we’re used to fighting Columbia, the institution for our rights in the workplace for fair pay. And Columbia has always been a very stubborn adversary, very difficult to get anything out of them. Our first contract fight lasted for years, and now we’re looking at not just Columbia as someone to be fighting with, but at the federal government as a whole. And it’s quite scary. I think we talked about this a little bit, about international students being afraid to participate in protests, being afraid to go to union meetings. We’re hearing a lot of fear from people who aren’t citizens about to what extent participating in the union is safe for them right now. And on the one hand you want to say participating in a union is a protected activity.

There’s nothing illegal about it. You can’t get in trouble. In fact, it’s illegal to retaliate against you for being in a union. But on the other hand, it doesn’t necessarily feel like the law is being that protective right now. So it’s a very scary place to be in. And I think that from our point of view, the main tool we have in this moment is just our solidarity with one another and labor power as a union because the federal governments does not seem that interested in protecting our rights as a union. And so we have to rely on each other in order to fight for what we need and what will make our workplace safe.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, and I was wondering, Allie, if I could also toss it to you there, because this makes me think of something you said earlier about how the conditions at Columbia, the structure of Columbia, how Columbia’s run, have sort of made it vulnerable to what’s happening now or the ways that Columbia talks about itself versus what Columbia actually is, are quite stark here. And connecting that to what Caitlin just said, I think it should also be understood as someone who has covered grad student campaigns, contract campaigns at Columbia and elsewhere, that when these sorts of strikes are happening when graduate student workers are taking action against the administration, the first ones that are threatened by the administration with punitive measures including potentially the revocation of their visas are international students. They have always been the most vulnerable members of grad student unions that administrations have actually used as leverage to compel unions to bend to their demand. So I make that point speaking only for myself here as a journalist who has observed this in many other times, that this precedent of going after international students in the way the Trump administration is like didn’t just come out of nowhere.

Allie Wong:

Exactly. Yeah. So I mean I think if you even look at how Trump campaigned, he really doubled down on immigration policy. I mean, it’s the most obvious statement I can say, but the high hyperbole, the hatred, the racism, you see that as a direct map onto what’s happening right now. And I think that’s part of what maybe isn’t unique about Columbia, but as we’re starting to see other universities take a stand, Caitlin mentioned Tufts. I know Princeton also recently kind said that they would not capitulate. So there is precedent for something different from how Columbia has behaved, and I think you see them just playing exactly into Trump’s hands folding to his kind of proxy policy of wanting to make Colombian example. And it’s a really disappointing thing from a university that prides itself on its liberal values, prides itself on its diversity on protecting students.

When you actually see quite the opposite, not only is Columbia not just doing anything, it’s actively participating in what’s happening on campus, the fact that they have yet to even name the students who have very publicly been abducted or chased out of the country because of their complicity, the fact that they will send emails or make these statements about values, but actually not tell us anything that’s going to be helpful, like how policies will be implemented when they’re going to be implemented, what these ice agents look like, things of that nature that could be done to protect students. And also obviously not negotiating in good faith. The fact that Grant was expelled and fired the day before we had a collective bargaining meeting right before we were about to talk about protections for international students, just communicates that the university is not operating in good faith, they’re not interested in the wellbeing of their students or doing anything within their power, which is quite a tremendous power to say to the Trump administration, our students come first. Our students are an entity of us and we’re going to do whatever we can in our power to block you from demonizing and targeting international students who, as you said, are the most vulnerable people on our campus, but also those who bring so much diversity and brilliance and life to our university and our country.

Caitlin Liss:

And I think on the subject of international students, you, you’re right that they have always been in a more precarious position in higher ed unions. But on the other hand, I think that that shows us what power we do have as a union. I’m thinking. So we’ve been talking a lot about to what extent it’s safe for international workers to stay involved in the union, and our contract is expiring in June, which is why we’re having these bargaining sessions and we’re talking about going on strike next fall potentially. And there’s a lot of questions about to what extent can international students participate now because who knows what kind of protections they’re going to have? And I’ve been thinking about the last time we went on strike, it was a 10 week strike and we were striking through the end of the semester. It was the fall semester and we were still on strike when the semester ended.

And Columbia said that if we didn’t come off strike that they weren’t going to rehire the workers who were striking for the next semester. So anyone who was on strike wouldn’t get hired for a position in the spring semester and for international students that was going to affect their visa status. So it was very scary for them. And we of course said, that’s illegal. You can, that’s retaliation for us for going on strike. You can’t do that. And they said, it’s not illegal because we’re just not rehiring you. And it was this real moment of risk even though we felt much more confident in the legal protection because it felt like they could still do it and our recourse would have to be going to court and winning the case that this was illegal. So it was still very scary for international students, but we voted together to stay on strike and we held the line and Columbia did not in fact want to fire all of us who were on strike, and we won a contract anyway, even though there was this scary moment for international students even back then. And I have been telling people this story when we are thinking about protections for international students now, because I think that the moral of the story is that even under a situation where there’s a lot more legal security and legal protection, it’s still scary. And the way that you get over it being scary is by trusting that everyone coming together and standing together is what’s going to win and rather than whatever the legal protection might be.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Caitlin and Allie, I have so many more thoughts and questions, but I know that we only have about 10 minutes left here and I want to use the time that we have left with y’all to sort of tug on the thread that you were just pulling there. Caitlin, looking at this through the union’s perspective or through a labor perspective, can you frame these attacks on higher ed and the people who live, learn and work there through a labor and working workers’ rights perspective, and talk about what your message is to other union members and other people who listen to this show who are working people, union and non-union, why this is important, why they need to care and what people can do about it.

Caitlin Liss:

It’s very clear why it’s important and why other workers should care. The funding cuts to Columbia University and other universities really threaten not just the university, but the whole ecosystem of research. So these are people’s careers that are at risk and careers that not only they have an interest in having, but careers that benefit everyone in our society, people who do public health research, people who do medical research, people who do research about climate change. These are really important jobs that the opportunities to pursue them are vanishing. And so that obviously is important. And then when we’re looking at the attacks on international students, if m kil can be abducted for speaking out in support of Palestine and against the genocide and Gaza, then none of us are safe. No worker is safe if the governments can just abduct you and deport you for something like that.

On the one hand, even people who aren’t citizens are protected by the first amendments, but also it’s not clear that that’s where they’re going to stop. I think that this is a moment that we should all take very seriously. I mean, it’s very serious for the future of higher education as a whole. I feel like we are in sort of an existential fight here. And at the moment, Columbia is just completely welcoming this fascist takeover with open arms and it threatens higher ed as an institution. What kind of university is this? If the Middle Eastern studies department is being controlled by some outside force who says what they can and can’t teach, and now Trump is threatening to put all of Columbia under some consent decree, so we’re going to have to be beholden to whatever the Trump administration says we’re allowed to do on campus. So it is a major threat to higher education, but it’s also a threat I think, in a much larger sense to workers all over the country because it is sending the message that none of us are safe. No one is safe to express ourselves. We can’t expect to be safe in the workplace. And it’s really important that as a labor union that we take a stand here because it is not just destroying our workplaces, but sort of it’s threatening everyone’s workplace.

Allie Wong:

Exactly. That’s exactly what I was thinking too. I know it’s such an overused word at this point, but I think a huge aspect of this has to do with precedent and how, as we were mentioning, Columbia is so symbolic for a lot of reasons, including the fact that all eyes are on Columbia. And so when Columbia sets a precedent for what can and cannot not be done by University of Administration in caving to the federal government, I think that sets a precedent for not just academic institutions, but institutions writ large and the workers that work in those institutions. Because what happens here is happening across the federal government and will happen to institutions everywhere. And so I think it’s really critical that we bake trust back into our systems, both trust in administrations by having them prove that they do have our backs and they do care about student workers, but also that they trust student workers.

They trust us to do the really important research that keeps the heartbeat of this university alive. And I think that it’s going to crumble not just Columbia, but other academic institutions if really critical research gets defunded. Research that doesn’t just affect right now, but affects our country in perpetuity, in the kinds of opportunities that will be presented later in the future, the kinds of research that will be instrumental in making our society healthier and more equitable place in the future. And so this isn’t just a moment in time, but it’s one that absolutely will ripple out into history.

Caitlin Liss:

And we happen right now to be sort of fortunately bargaining a new contract as we speak. So like I said before, our contract is expiring in June. And so for us, obviously these kinds of issues are the top of mind when we’re thinking about what we can get in the contract. So in what way is this contract that we’re bargaining for going to be able to help us? So we’re fighting for Columbia to restore the funding cuts we’re fighting for them to instate a sanctuary campus and to reinstate grant minor, our president who was expelled, and Ronan who was enrolled, and everyone else who has been expelled or experienced sanctions because of their protests for Palestine. And so in a lot of ways, I think that the contract fight is a big part of what we’re concentrating on right now. But there’s also, there’s many unions on Columbia’s campus.

There’s the postdoc union, UAW 4,100, there’s the support staff and the Barnard contingent faculty who are UAW 2110. There’s building service employees, I think they’re 32 BJ and the maintenance staff is TW. So there’s many unions on campus. And I think about this a lot because I think what we’re seeing is we haven’t mentioned the trustees yet, I don’t think, but recently our interim president, Katrina Armstrong stepped down and was replaced by an acting president, was the former co-chair of the board of trustees Claire Shipman. And in many ways, I think what we’ve been seeing happening at Columbia is the result of the board of trustees not caving, but welcoming the things that Trump is demanding. I think that they’re complicit in this, but the board of trustees is like 21 people. There’s not very many of them. And there’s thousands of us at Columbia who actually are the people who make the university work, the students, the faculty, the staff, thousands of people in unions, thousands of non-unionized students and workers on campus as well.

And we outnumber the trustees by such a huge amount. And I think that thinking about the power we have when we all come together as the thousands of people who do the actual work of the university as opposed to these 21 people who are making decisions for us without consulting us that we don’t want, and that’s the way we have to think about reclaiming the university. I think we have to try and take back the power as workers, as students, as faculty from the board of trustees and start thinking about how we can make decisions that are in our interests.

Allie Wong:

One more thing that I wanted to call out, I’m not sure where this fits in. I think Caitlin talking about the board of trustees made me think of it is just the fact that I think that another big issue is the fact that there’s this very amorphous idea of antisemitism that all of this is being done under the banner of, and I think that it’s incredibly problematic because first of all, what is antisemitism? It’s this catchall phrase that is used to weaponize against dissent. And I think that when you look at the track record of these now three presidents that we’ve had in the past year, each of them has condemned antisemitism but has not condemned other forms of racism, including an especially Islamophobia that has permeated our campus. And because everything is done under the banner of antisemitism and you have folks like Claire Shipman who have been aligned with Zionist organizations, it also erodes the trust in of the student body, but then especially student workers, many of whom are Jewish and many of whom are having their research be threatened under the banner of antisemitism being done in their name. And yet it’s the thing that is stunting their ability to thrive at this university. And so I think that as we talk about the administration and board of trustees, just calling out the hypocrisy there of how they are behaving on campus, the ways that they’re capitulating and doing it under the guise of protecting Jewish students, but in the process of actually made Jewish students and faculty a target by not only withholding their funding but also saying that this is all to protect Jewish students but have created a more threatening environment than existed before.

Caitlin Liss:

Yeah, I mean, as a Jewish student personally, I’m about to go to my family’s Seder to talk about celebrating liberation from oppression while our friends and colleagues are sitting in jail. It’s quite depressing and quite horrific to see people saying that they’re doing this to protect Jews when it’s so clearly not the case.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Well, I wanted to ask in just this final two minutes that we got here, I want to bring it back down to that level to again remind folks listening that you both are student workers, you are working people just like everyone else that we talk to on this show. And I as a former graduate student worker can’t help but identify with the situation that y’all are in. But it makes me think about the conversations I had with my family when I was on the job market and I was trying to go from being a PhD student to a faculty member somewhere and hearing that maybe my political activism or my public writing would be like a mark against me in my quest to get that career that I had worked so many years for and just having that in the back of my mind. But that still seems so far away and so minuscule in comparison to what y’all are dealing with. And I just wanted to ask as act scholars, as people working on your careers as well, how are you talking to your families about this and what future in or outside of academia do you feel is still open to you and people, graduate student workers like yourselves in today’s higher ed?

Caitlin Liss:

I mean the job market for history, PhDs has been quite bad for a long time even before this. So I mean, when I started the PhD program, I think I knew that I might not get a job in academia. And it’s sad because I really love it. I love teaching especially, but at the end of the day, I don’t feel like it’s a choice to stop speaking up about what’s happening, to stop condemning what’s happening in Gaza, to stop condemning the fascist takeover of our government and the attacks on our colleagues. It’s just I can’t not say something about it. I can’t do nothing, and if it means I can’t get a job after this, that will be very sad. But I don’t think that that is a choice that I can or should make to do nothing or say nothing so that I can try and preserve my career if I have to. I’ll get another kind of job.

Allie Wong:

Yeah, I completely agree. How dare I try to protect some nice job that I could potentially have in the future when there are friends and students on campus who are running for their lives. It just is not something that’s even comparable. And so I just feel like it’s an argument a lot of folks have made that if in the future there’s a job that decides not to hire me based off of my advocacy, I don’t want that job. I want a job based off of my skills and qualifications and experience, not my opinions about a genocide that’s happening halfway across the world, that any person should feel strongly against the slaughtering of tens of thousands of children and innocent folks. If that’s an inhibitor of a potential job, then that’s not the kind of environment I want to work in anyway. And that’s a really privileged position to have. I recognize that. But I think it’s incredibly crucial to be able to couch that issue in the broader perspective of not just this horrific genocide that’s happening, but also the future of our democracy and how critical it is to be someone who is willing to take a risk for the future of this country and the future of our basic civil liberties and freedoms.

Maximillian Alvarez:

Alright, gang, that’s going to wrap things up for us this week. Once again, I want to thank our guests, Caitlin Liss and Allie Wong of Student Workers of Columbia, and I want to thank you for listening and I want to thank you for caring. We’ll see you Allall back here next week for another episode of Working People. And if you can’t wait that long, then go explore all the great work we’re doing at the Real News Network where we do grassroots journalism that lifts up the voices and stories from the front lines of struggle. And we need to hear those voices now more than ever. Sign up for the real new newsletter so you never miss a story. And help us do more work like this by going to the real news.com/donate and becoming a supporter today. I promise you it really makes a difference. I’m Maximilian Alvarez, take care of yourselves. Take care of each other, solidarity forever.


This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Maximillian Alvarez.