College and university faculty, staff, researchers, and students are fed up. And for good reason: high-handed administrative and government attacks on curriculum, faculty governance, and tenure; the recent revocation of more than 1,700 previously authorized visas—hundreds of which have been restored—issued to international scholars and students; complicity between university policymakers and Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE); and restrictions on how race, gender, sexuality, and history can be taught.
In response to the Trump Administration’s assault on education, the second National Day of Action for Higher Education on April 17 brought tens of thousands of academic activists together to voice their opposition to the administration’s actions and affirm higher education as a public good.
The day’s events—a mix of in-person marches, rallies, teach-ins, film screenings, banner drops, discussions, multiple on-campus unionization drives, and online webinars—were sponsored by the Coalition for Action in Higher Education (CAHE), which formed in 2024 and includes partners such as the American Association of University Professors, Higher Education Labor United, Historians for Peace and Democracy, and Jewish Voice for Peace.
“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,” the CAHE website states. “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.”
Thomas Gokey, case worker and policy director at the Debt Collective, a debtor’s union founded in 2011 to push for the cancellation of medical, educational, housing, and carceral debt, spoke at one of the day’s many webinars. “Student debt reinforces social hierarchy,” he told participants. “The people with the most student debt are Black women.” He argued that high tuition limits student protest, as working full-time while taking a full load of classes restricts students’ ability to attend organizing meetings and participate in events. This, he concluded, is intentional.
Other webinars tackled subjects including the necessary work of sanctuary campuses to defend immigrants and undocumented students; building and maintaining ongoing support for the people of Gaza; organizing robust campus resistance to government defunding threats; establishing strong unions; and building alliances between the university and the communities in which they’re located.
A. Naomi Paik, a professor at the University of Illinois Chicago, spoke at a webinar called “Sanctuary Campuses Now,” where she said that many activists are feeling overwhelmed and confused by the magnitude and speed of MAGA’s assault on democracy. “We can’t use not knowing what to do to do nothing,” she told participants. “We have to try. If we fail, we try again.”
Paik also spoke of the importance of “centering the humanity of everyone, even the people we despise. Organizing is about relationships. We need to collaborate. We’re in uncharted terrain, but we need to start with what we know how to do: write letters, host teach-ins, and organize protests. It’s okay to start small.”
Throughout the Day of Action, developing the liberatory potential of universities was a near-constant theme as speaker after speaker spoke of the need for teachers, students, and staff to be bold, courageous, and visionary in their efforts to strengthen and expand access to higher education.
Historian Dayo Gore, professor of Black Studies at Georgetown University, argued that this requires challenging white supremacy and opposing university appeasement of demands to end diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives—even though it forces staff to “defend something that was doing so little in the first place.” In addition, she added, the current crisis forces scholars and university staff to think about who gets to attend college and provides an opportunity to challenge the elitism that is often woven into the fabric of academic life.
Moreover, Gore stressed the need to keep “freedom dreams” in frame; like Gokey, she reminded participants that at their best, universities can help “cure the cancer of social inequity.”
Davarian Baldwin of Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut, made this argument more concrete. He explained that universities have the opportunity to turn a troubling time into a time of opportunity, solidarity, and social benefit.
“These institutions are ours,” he said. “When [Donald] Trump, Chris Rufo of the Manhattan Institute, and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis attack higher education, the first things they go after are Black studies, Black queer studies, and Black feminist studies. But we are the power we’ve been waiting for. Last spring, Gaza encampments happened all over the country. I went to them and saw teach-ins, food giveaways, and solar-powered health tents. There were DJs and there was dancing. I realized that this is the university we’ve been waiting for. We need to be the mutual aid, the robust educators, the people who foster community-led projects. This is not predicated on the university bringing back DEI. We can provide support to international students and students who have DACA.”
Baldwin also called on universities to create well-marked and visible private areas of their campuses, areas that ICE cannot enter without a judicial warrant.
In addition to nearly a dozen webinars, in-person activities took place on nearly 200 campuses and in cities and towns across the country. Since Trump’s Inauguration, CAHE has participated in a variety of organized resistance, including Stand Up for Science; HANDS OFF!; Kill the Cuts; and anti-ICE rallies and marches. The National Day of Action for Higher Education marked a renewed commitment to organizing against oligarchy and fascism, growing campus unions, and supporting immigrants and the people of Gaza—and signaled a new chapter in renewed academic resistance
At a large outdoor rally in New York City’s Foley Square, Public Advocate Jumaane Williams addressed the need for courageous resistance.
“People are disappearing off our streets. To see institutions of higher learning, institutions that are supposed to study and read history, stand back, or worse, capitulate, is shameful,” he told the protesters. Their signs affirmed their agreement: “ICE Took Our Students. We Want Them Back” and “We Will Not Be Silent.”