USC: The university of lockdown

Last spring, aft 93 protesters of conscience were arrested connected the University of Southern California’s campus, and students and module were threatened with civilian and world sanctions, USC President Carol Folt seemed to beryllium searching for a mode out.

“What we’re truly trying to bash present is de-escalate,” Folt told the USC Academic Senate successful May, arsenic module pressed her connected wherefore she called successful a heavy equipped Los Angeles constabulary unit to quell peaceful pupil protests and dismantle their encampment.

She besides claimed she would person “gone retired there” herself earlier the constabulary raid. The encampment was a two-minute locomotion from her office. Had she made the abbreviated stroll, she could person learned firsthand astir the quality of the encampment: a peaceful, interfaith gathering of students and module to carnivore witnesser to Israel’s genocidal battle connected Gaza. Regular encampment activities included yoga, meditation, teach-ins, Black-Palestinian solidarity sessions, and regular Seders during Passover.  But our president didn’t marque that walk. “I don’t cognize wherefore I didn’t,” she told the Academic Senate. “I regret that.”

USC’s actions since past bely Folt’s words. Like galore different universities nationwide successful the epoch of Gaza solidarity, our administrators are doubling down connected repressive measures.

After the protests past spring, USC security, sometimes accompanied by off-duty constabulary officers trained successful “crowd absorption operations”, maintained a choky ringing astir campus. This fall, they person “welcomed” caller students with metallic bars, information checkpoints, container checks and mandatory ID scans.

The assemblage medication has besides raised the unit connected students and module facing sanctions, sending threatening letters and calling them successful for disciplinary hearings. Students person been made to constitute “reflection papers” expressing their remorse and a connection of “what you’ve learned” earlier immoderate sanctions tin beryllium dropped.

“How did your actions impact different assemblage assemblage members and their scheduled activities successful the affected spaces?” asked 1 redacted missive from the Orwellian-sounding USC’s Office of Community Expectations. “Please stock however you mightiness marque antithetic decisions successful the aboriginal and grow connected your rationale.”

In a emblematic sunny USC fashion, the draconian restrictions – “fast lanes”, “welcome work tents” and further unfastened gates – person been sold arsenic conveniences. But marque nary mistake: our field is connected lockdown, “for the foreseeable future”, according to a campus-wide email. In different words: don’t expect a instrumentality to a much unfastened field immoderate clip soon – if ever. The reason? “Security connected field remains our apical priority.”

So overmuch for the olive branch.

USC is hardly the lone field faced with roiling decisions connected however to contend with protestation encampments and the passions of conflicting narratives connected Israel-Palestine. A few, like San Francisco State University, person listened to their protesters and decided to divest from companies that nett from weapons production. Others, like Wesleyan, person facilitated conversations betwixt pupil protesters and the university’s committee of trustees.  Most person cracked down.

George Washington University has suspended 2 pupil groups, Students for Justice successful Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace. Indiana University and the University of South Florida person banned tents connected field without anterior approval. The University of Pennsylvania has banned encampments. Columbia University present uses a colour-coded strategy to restrict field access.

Some 100 US assemblage campuses person implemented much restrictive rules governing protests connected campus. And the ambiance for escaped look is worse than ever, particularly astatine apical universities, according to a caller survey by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression. Of 251 universities surveyed, USC was 245th, with a “very poor” rating. Even worse, earning an “abysmal” label, were New York University, Columbia, and, dormant last, Harvard.

USC whitethorn not person “beat” Harvard successful suppressing escaped speech, but it has surpassed each its “competitors” successful turning the field into a fortress. Nothing could beryllium much antithetical to a assemblage field and its civilization of openness and inquiry.

Now, each time we locomotion onto campus, we are forced to contend with a disturbing securitised environment. “Fast lanes” and “welcome tents” don’t help. They lone summation the consciousness that we are nether surveillance; that each clip we spell to campus, it’s similar we’re astatine the airport, nether the watchful oculus of the Transportation Security Administration.

Just arsenic disturbing is the connection USC is sending to the surrounding assemblage of South LA. “Compared to the agelong past of USC, wherever we placed pridefulness successful our integration with the surrounding community, entree is severely constricted by the lines astatine the ‘welcome tents’, by the hesitation of guests to travel and visit, by the seemingly arbitrary secondary information screenings that those whom the ‘welcomers’ person profiled are past subjected to,” the USC section of the American Association of University Professors wrote to President Folt successful August.

This is to accidental thing of the effect the militarised beingness has connected students of colour, who whitethorn already consciousness marginalised successful a predominantly achromatic university. “They haven’t travel to recognize wherefore we were determination successful the archetypal place,” pupil León Prieto told Annenberg Media past month. “I don’t truly spot USC the same. I conscionable don’t consciousness similar I beryllium here.”

Over the years, the scandals that person plagued USC – a medical schoolhouse dean doing drugs successful edifice rooms with young companions, 1 of whom overdosed; a gynaecologist accused of intersexual misconduct against hundreds of USC women; the “Varsity Blues” fraud and money-laundering debacle; the university’s opaque, bunkered response to these scandals – person often made it hard to beryllium a arrogant Trojan.

But for me, thing exceeds the shame and revulsion I consciousness astir the events of the past 5 months: the convulsive apprehension of our ain students, consequent charges against them for trespassing connected their ain campus, harsh world sanctions, and the seemingly imperishable lockdown of our campus.

It is hard to flight the feeling that USC’s security-led administrators – and different assemblage presidents, for that substance – were waiting for a situation successful bid to administer their harsh tonic to our community. In her transformative book, The Shock Doctrine, societal professional Naomi Klein wrote that “once a situation has struck”, situation agents find it “crucial to enactment swiftly, to enforce accelerated and irreversible change”.

The translation of USC’s field is simply a microcosm of Klein’s sweeping doctrine: a benignant of a laboratory for what a privatised, hardened perimeter, fortified by extracurricular information agencies, tin look like.

You tin stake that different assemblage presidents are keeping a adjacent ticker connected USC’s experiment, to spot if this benignant of repression tin stand.

At the centre of USC’s security-first ethos is Erroll Southers, vice president for information and hazard assurance, a erstwhile FBI cause and president of the Los Angeles Police Commission. The Commission oversees the LAPD, the precise riot-ready unit trained by Israel that stormed our peaceful pupil encampments past spring.

Southers is besides the writer of the publication Homegrown Violent Extremism. In a study for USC’s Homelands Security Center, helium warned that extremist indicators see beardown recognition “with Muslims perceived arsenic being victimized (Palestinians, Iraqis…)” and harbouring “a grievance (such arsenic perceived injustice oregon victimization) and associated choler directed astatine the United States”.

This cleanable tempest shows however precocious the platform is stacked against students trying to rise consciousness against Israel’s slaughter of civilians successful Gaza. Simply put, our university’s information apparatus is pre-disposed to seeing them arsenic a threat.

If that weren’t atrocious enough, expect nary unit for betterment from USC’s affluent Board of Trustees. The committee includes developer and erstwhile mayoral campaigner Rick Caruso, the billionaire big of Los Angeles-based pro-Israel galas, who backed USC’s actions past spring, and far-right billionaire Miriam Adelson, an Israeli American who wants Israel to annex the West Bank.

In the look of universities’ organization wealthiness and power, it has fallen to assemblage module to support susceptible students, to punctual the USC enactment of the values of openness and enquiry it claims to represent, and to ask: How does USC quadrate its shuttered, hermetic, security-driven civilization with its proclamations of world state and “unifying values” to “stand up for what is right, careless of presumption oregon power”?

There’s inactive clip for President Folt – for assemblage presidents crossed the US – to locomotion each this back. Drop each sanctions against our students, support escaped expression, and unfastened our campuses again. It is not excessively precocious to spot the tremendous harm being done and reverse course. Not doing truthful would solidify the relation of universities arsenic repressive spaces wherever state of look and enquiry are unwelcome.

The views expressed successful this nonfiction are the author’s ain and bash not needfully bespeak Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.