This story originally appeared in Baltimore Beat on June 12, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
At graduation ceremonies across Baltimore this spring, students turned their moments of celebration into protest — waving Palestinian flags, denouncing their schools’ complicity in Gaza’s devastation, and risking discipline from both their universities and the Trump administration.
“I can’t just walk across the stage and not say anything,” said August, a University of Maryland School of Social Work graduate and member of the Anti-Imperial Movement, who asked that their full name be withheld out of fear of harassment. “I can’t just sleep well knowing that my tuition money is complicit in this.”
August was among the students that marked their May 19 commencement ceremony by demanding their school cut ties with Israel. Over a dozen students wore keffiyehs, waved Palestinian flags, covered their hands in blood-red dyed water and signs reading, “Genocide is not a social work value” and “Disclose, Divest from Israel.”
Colleges across the country have cracked down on similar displays: days earlier, at George Washington University, Cecilia Culver was banned from campus after using her graduation speech to declare, “I am ashamed to know my tuition is being used to fund genocide.” At NYU, Logan Rozos’s diploma was withheld after denouncing the “genocide… paid for by our tax dollars and live-streamed to our phones.”
The goal was urgent: to speak out against institutional complicity in Gaza’s humanitarian catastrophe, where the official death toll nears 55,000, hundreds of thousands of people face starvation, and Israel has vowed to enact President Donald Trump’s ethnic cleansing plan for the survivors.
Protest has become a constant on college campuses since Hamas’s deadly attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s genocidal response. Over 19 months, students have staged walkouts, encampments, hunger strikes, and civil disobedience — even as administrators rewrite rules to ban and restrict protests and impose harsh discipline. More than 3,000 protesters across the country have been arrested, with hundreds suspended or expelled. Protestors are routinely accused of antisemitism, their calls for accountability dismissed as hatred rather than outrage over humanitarian law.
Resistance has grown since this March, when the U.S.-backed Israeli blockade choked off food, water, and medicine to Gaza — and public perception is starting to shift with it. An April Pew survey showed a majority of Americans now view Israel unfavorably for the first time in decades. That finding was confirmed by a May University of Maryland poll that also found more than a third of Americans, including a majority of Democrats, see Israel’s actions in Gaza as war crimes or “akin to genocide.”
“The only way forward is for everyday Americans — not just students or leftists — to speak up,” said August. “Sometimes it feels hopeless, but the data shows we’re not fringe. A lot of people are waking up to what’s happening in Gaza.”
“Sometimes it feels hopeless, but the data shows we’re not fringe. A lot of people are waking up to what’s happening in Gaza.”
August, a University of Maryland School of Social Work graduate
In conversations with more than a dozen local student activists, Baltimore Beat heard that they see their Pro-Palestine advocacy as part of a broader, generational fight against injustice.
As the crisis in Gaza has deepened, so too has the Trump administration’s crackdown on campus activism — framing student protest as antisemitism. Federal investigations are now underway at more than 60 universities, and hundreds of student visas have been revoked. At institutions like Johns Hopkins University, the administration has threatened to pull billions in federal funding unless university leaders suppress dissent. A federal antisemitism task force — backed by Republicans, key Democrats, and major Jewish organizations — has vowed to stamp out what it deems antisemitism at Hopkins and other campuses.
The administration has targeted prominent foreign-born student activists, claiming their advocacy constitutes support for Hamas and antisemitic incitement. In March, Mahmoud Khalil, a prominent organizer at Columbia University and a legal U.S. resident, was detained by ICE, had his green card revoked, and has languished in detention for several months. “As a Palestinian student, I believe that the liberation of the Palestinian people and the Jewish people are intertwined — you cannot achieve one without the other,” Khalil told CNN in 2024.
Pro-Palestinian protesters — including many Jewish students — emphasize that their opposition is to Israel’s occupation, not Judaism. They warn that equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism threatens free speech and undermines Jewish safety by turning antisemitism into a political weapon.
Avery Misterka, Jewish student at Towson University and lead organizer of the campus Pro-Palestine movement, has spoken out at multiple protests against Trump administration policies and in defense of targeted student activists.
“Trump isn’t serious about fighting antisemitism — it’s a weapon for his Christian nationalist project,” said Misterka. He heads the campus chapter of Jewish Voice for Peace, the nation’s largest anti-Zionist Jewish organization. Misterka noted that Trump has long-standing ties to antisemitic extremists, including several current White House officials.
“We’ve seen what happens when students speak out — they get punished. But we’re still showing up,” he added.
The protests have persisted even as university responses grow increasingly harsh. In the early hours of May 8, tents sprang up on the Keyser Quad at Johns Hopkins University. Students quickly established a small encampment, renaming it the Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya Liberated Zone, in honor of a Gazan pediatrician abducted by Israeli forces. While last year’s encampment at Hopkins lasted for two weeks, this time it was cleared immediately: more than 30 Hopkins armed private police force and Baltimore police officers swept onto the quad within the hour, tearing down tents and detaining students.
The crackdown at Hopkins — carried out by its newly empowered private police force — sparked swift criticism from students and faculty alike.
“Campuses have always been strongholds of dissent. Trump knows critical thinking lives here, and his agenda can’t survive it.”
Claude Guillemard, French Professor at Johns Hopkins University
“Campuses have always been strongholds of dissent. Trump knows critical thinking lives here, and his agenda can’t survive it,” said Claude Guillemard, a French professor at Johns Hopkins University, at a recent rally.
Both students and faculty have led calls for the Baltimore City Council to hold a hearing on the Hopkins Police Department, arguing that the force remains unaccountable to the communities it is supposed to serve. They argue that university leaders are capitulating to a pressure campaign designed to stifle dissent and academic freedom.
At Morgan State University, where student protest played a key role in the civil rights movement, professor Jared Ball sees the pattern repeating: “Faculty in Maryland can’t unionize, governance keeps shrinking, and corporate and military influence keeps growing. Private security is everywhere, yet students still say they don’t feel safe. Administrators confine protests to ‘designated spaces’ and punish anyone who strays — proof that the crackdown on dissent isn’t new, just more aggressive.”
At Towson University, the movement has only broadened. One year after passing a 12-1 divestment resolution, university leaders have rejected calls to divest from Israel as students built an even larger coalition.
Mina, vice president of Towson’s Muslim Student Association, withheld their last name due to ongoing Islamophobic harassment. Despite administrators rejecting their demands, Mina says they remain undeterred.
“We’ve been here since October 7, and we’re not going anywhere,” Mina said.
Even after meeting with the president, none of their demands have been met.
“I guess he thought if he met with us, we’d stop — but we haven’t.”
While protesters face arrest, suspension, and expulsion, no U.S. official has been held accountable for violating laws that prohibit aid to governments committing war crimes.
Organizing extends well beyond protests and marches. On a chilly Saturday in April, Red Emma’s became a marketplace of resistance for students’ political art.
At Morgan State University, where student protest played a key role in the civil rights movement, professor Jared Ball sees the pattern repeating: “Administrators confine protests to ‘designated spaces’ and punish anyone who strays — proof that the crackdown on dissent isn’t new, just more aggressive.”
Students from area schools shared food and strategies for continued action, including University of Maryland College Park, where in April, students voted to divest from Israel and other countries that fuel human rights abuses, joining Towson and University of Maryland Baltimore County, where student bodies approved divestment resolutions last year. The event, organized by Baltimore Artists Against Apartheid, raised more than $3,600 for Palestinian families.
“If we let the repression students face stand, artists will be next,” said organizer Nic Koski. “Defending students under attack is inseparable from defending Palestinian rights — and everyone’s rights.”
One of the participating artists was Qamar Hassan, a graduating senior at the Maryland Institute College of Art, who raised over $500 by selling pieces that had been removed from public spaces by campus administrators.
In May, Hassan also took part in a protest during their graduation. “We really wanted to highlight that [MICA was] still actively censoring students,” Hassan said. They coordinated with classmates to disrupt the ceremony with chants for Palestine, and a few walked the stage carrying Palestinian flags, determined to make their message visible even as most held back, fearing repercussions. The school president refused to shake their hand — a small gesture that captured the tension of the moment.
“We wanted to show that even if it’s just a handful of us, we’re not going to let our school go about with a land acknowledgment and then censor students who want to talk about Palestine,” Hassan reflected.
“It’s important to show others who are scared that you can do these things — and you’ll be okay. You have a voice, and you can use it.”
In a year defined by fear and repression, even a small act of defiance became an example for others — and a signal to Baltimore that the city’s students, and their movement, aren’t going away.
This content originally appeared on The Real News Network and was authored by Jaisal Noor.