IT is touted as a “Vietnam moment” and has taken on a resemblance and some of the sloganeering of the 1990s anti-apartheid movement: students across the country have been displaying solidarity with Palestine by demonstrating on their campuses with some establishing months-long encampments.
 
In response, universities are taking their students to court.
 
The University of London was granted an interim injunction in November last year, with three named defendants and Persons Unknown as the defendants. The specific mentioning of activities in relation to Boycott Divestment and Sanctions, the Soas Liberated Zone for Gaza and Democratise Education highlights the political specificity of the measure, while Persons Unknown allows for a broad ambit of applicability to who the order can apply. Whether a full injunction is to be granted is still to be determined.
 
Cambridge University had its injunction application heard on February 27 2025 where they sought a five-year injunction term against protesting “in connection with Cambridge for Palestine or otherwise for a purpose connected with the Palestine-Israel conflict.” Their claim was largely rejected by the court, which instead granted a “very narrow and limited court order.”
 
Notwithstanding the widely interpreted victory of the Cambridge case by Palestine campaigners, the politically targeted nature of the injunctions sought in both cases display a clear assault on solidarity with Palestine and in turn, freedom of assembly and freedom of expression.
 
On the very grounds of these supposed bastions of free thought designed to cultivate young minds, Liberty Investigates has published findings in the last week that at least 40 universities discussed Gaza protest activity with police forces or private intelligence organisations.
 
Further, it was found Oliver Curran, the chair of the Association of University Chief Security Officers, a professional body with members at more than 140 British universities, had written on Linkedin that he “looked forward to implementing the Americans’ ‘innovative strategies’ at home” regarding the handling of campus protests.
 
This is a concerning aspiration, with thousands of students in the States still navigating the fallout of the mass arrest programme that swept the country’s universities in response to campus protests last year.
 
We cannot allow the principles of freedom of expression and assembly to risk being suffocated under capitalist commodification schemes that see these rights as any other commodity to be bought and sold at security and arm’s fairs.
 
The Liberty report findings led the UN special rapporteur for freedom of peaceful assembly and of association, Gina Romero, to declare: “It is as if, overnight, many universities had become an absolutely hostile space for dissent and free expression, for the exercise of rights, and for learning.”
 
Universities are a battleground for political debate, we cannot allow the very arena to find itself in doubt.
 
Not only for the intellectual expression ideals that universities espouse, but they are particularly significant sites of protest when one considers the UN’s most recent estimate that more than 80 per cent of schools in Gaza have been damaged or destroyed since October 7 2023. The obliteration of education infrastructure that has taken place in Gaza cannot be overlooked; it has left children without education, it is scholasticide.
 
The quintessential establishment-backed vilification and belittlement of students speaking out against injustice is unsurprising. It can only be interpreted as a testament to the efficacy of the protests and their vital part in a mass movement.
 
The cheap smears to disregard this element of a mass movement are transparently brittle. The political consciousness-raising, the organising and solidarity developed is what remains. Such is the illogical nature of simultaneously arguing the protesters are wrongheaded, naive youngsters not to be taken seriously while seeking litigious means to dismantle their momentum.
 
As well as material gains negotiated by students — which saw divestments by the millions from arms companies and banks complicit in war and pioneering scholarship schemes devised for Palestinian students — the protests have cultivated the consciousness-raising of a generation.

Through teach-outs, debates and internal organisation, the protests have developed an authentic essence of what higher education institutes profess to uphold — the development of young minds and free thought.
 
The protesting does not end with students: they are but a part of a mass consciousness-raising taking place that opposes imperialism and war.
 
As such, the Establishment’s resistance to student protesters is part of a general governmental zeitgeist pursuing the suppression of the right to protest. The January 18 demonstration is a salient recent example which saw a pre-planned march route demoted to an over-policed static rally that descended into authoritarianism as dozens of peaceful protesters were violently arrested.
 
In recent years, we have seen a systematic de-clawing of protest rights. The Police Act 2022 notably imposed a noise trigger to disallow protests causing too much of what the police consider an auditory disruption and harsher sentencing for existing restrictions on protesting; the Public Order Act 2023 created new protest offences and expanded upon stop and search police powers; and the latest possible addition to this sinister series of clampdowns being the Crime and Policing Bill. The Bill aims to make provisions to criminalise anonymity at protests.
 
A broad clampdown on rights requires a broad mass movement to resist.
 
Soas and UCL UCU branches organised the event Palestine and Political Freedom on Campus on February 26 at UCL’s central campus, within the confines of our Prime Minister’s constituency.
 
Student speakers took the floor and spoke of their first interactions with activism being on picket lines for campus staff, who they now find protesting alongside them for a free Palestine, highlighting the importance of cross-issue working-class solidarity.
 
It is worth noting that this suppression from universities comes at a time of mass restructuring, with job insecurity looming over staff, amplifying the importance and necessity of trades councils and unions supporting campus protests and broad movement solidarity.
 
A united front movement that takes aim at capitalism and the war machine it breeds is unequivocally needed.
 
Andrew Feinstein closed the meeting on February 26 by quoting his ANC comrade Nelson Mandela: “It is only impossible until it’s done.”