The week of Nov. 11, the City University of New York (CUNY) sent two students, Khalil Vásquez and Tafadar Sourov, to jail after suspending them for their role in escalating political protests on campus. This occurred in the midst of a movement that has seen hundreds of CUNY students take to the streets and occupy buildings while facing brutal police repression.
It all started when an ad-hoc coalition of student groups was formed in September to tackle militarization at CUNY. The prime targets of the students’ protests were the appointment of U.S. general and notorious war criminal David Petraeus as an adjunct faculty to teach a class entitled, “Towards a North American Decade,” and the return of an Army Reserve Corps Training Center after a four-decade absence on CUNY campus. Their campaign is part of a wider struggle to oppose the tendency to reduce access to university to poor and racialized New Yorkers in favour of people from middle-class and higher social backgrounds.
The movement began attracting wide attention when students directly took on former CIA director Petraeus, infamously known for his responsibility in organizing paramilitary death squads, setting up torture centres across Iraq, and scaling up drone strikes that resulted in hundreds of civilian deaths in Afghanistan, amongst other crimes. CUNY students shouted him off on his way to his car after he gave his first class, and mounted a protest outside a conference he was giving. Some protesters were beaten up by police, and six of them were arrested and charged, leading to further escalation on campus.
CUNY administration eventually moved Petraeus’ class to a security-heavy building outside campus. The administration then started to ramp up repression, attempting to nip the growing movement in the bud. The only autonomous student center on campus, the Morales/Shakur Student Center – named after a Puerto Rica and a Black woman militant whose struggles in the 1970s still resonate among the working-class and racialized youth of New York – was illegally raided and shut down. Police were brought in to repress student attempts to take back the center, and the two student leaders were subsequently suspended and banned from campus at the end of October, on charges of “inciting a riot”.
The administration is going even further, attempting to enshrine limitations on political activity through a proposed Policy on Expressive Activity, which stated, “freedom of expression and assembly, however, are subject to the need to maintain safety and order.” Meanwhile, Khalil and Tafador have still not been allowed an open public hearing; having been told the week of Nov. 11 that their case would be transferred to New York police and that they would jailed on Nov. 18 for 24 hours before being officially prosecuted for criminal charges.
This situation is of primary importance for students to follow because it brings together trends that are developing across North American campuses. CUNY is a university of over 200,000 students that has historically opened its doors to New York’s poor communities, and today, tuition fees are being increased while the university lets in a major war criminal and army recruiters to promote the imperialist machinations of the U.S. government. The actions of the coalition against militarization at CUNY are at the forefront of the struggle students need to wage in order to stop this unprecedented offensive on the interests of the masses. The actions taken by the administration and police also shed light on how far the ruling class and its subordinates are ready to go to suppress dissent. If they win this battle against the student activists, their tactics will certainly be taken up by other university administrations keen to silence all those who don’t submit to their agendas.
There are important parallels to be drawn between what is going on at CUNY and in Canadian universities, including the University of Guelph. Our university is constantly increasing tuitions fees and denying access to higher education to people from marginalized backgrounds, all the while letting corporations like Kinross Gold and Monsanto use its name, its students, and all its research capabilities to further their narrow profit-seeking objectives that destroy the environment and disrupt human lives – and whole communities – on a world scale. We must look to the struggle being waged at CUNY as a model from which we can draw lessons and inspiration. At the very least, we must not let down those students who are putting their future on the line for their fellow sisters and brothers.