Colgate University professors held a protest as part of the American Association of University Professors’ (AAUP) National Day of Action on Thursday, April 17. Professors demonstrated against the Trump administration for its policies affecting higher education, specifically citing the freedom to teach, the ability to do research and job and visa security.
On the steps of the Colgate Memorial Chapel, professors began by reminding the audience of Colgate’s mission statement: “To provide a demanding, expansive, educational experience to diverse, talented, intellectually sophisticated students who are capable of challenging themselves, their peers and their teachers in a setting that brings together living and learning.” Professors also recognized that those who lead are obligated to help those in need.
One by one, professors walked up the Chapel steps to stand alone with a microphone in front of a gathered crowd of faculty, staff, students and community members, speaking extemporaneously or from prepared notes. Different professors focused on the varying impacts of the Trump administration’s policies.
Associate Professor of English CJ Hauser spoke about the human impact of the Trump administration’s anti-transgender policies. References to Marsha P. Johnson and Sylvia Rivera, two transgender women whom Hauser noted played fundamental roles in the modern gay rights movement, were recently erased from the Stonewall National Monument website by the Trump administration. Hauser criticized these changes, affirming that transgender students at Colgate exist, and that transgender people everywhere are very much real. Hauser encouraged the crowd to reject the administration’s attempts to erase history and police their bodies.
Hauser connected this erasure of transgender people to changing political currents in higher education.
“A few weeks ago I was at a teacher’s conference, and at every panel on queer literature I attended, there were at least a few empty seats because trans writers from abroad were too scared to cross the borders and sit with us here in America,” Hauser said.
Associate Professor of History Noor-Aiman Khan, who also serves as director of Middle Eastern and Islamic studies, placed the Trump administration’s recent executive orders limiting campus speech within a broader historical context of efforts to silence or marginalize pro-Palestinian speech in the U.S. that predate Trump. Khan emphasized that these new policies actually represent the continuation of an American tradition of suppressing pro-Palestinian and anti-imperial voices, eliciting enthusiastic applause and cheers from the crowd.
“Empire comes home,” Khan said.
Junior Jessica Fathers attended the protest and expressed admiration for Khan’s speech.
“I particularly resonated with Professor Khan’s point – it wasn’t long ago that students and faculty gathered on Colgate’s campus to address the genocide in Palestine,” Fathers said. “Students and faculty members felt silenced then under a different presidential administration, just as they do now under Trump’s [administration]. The Trump administration’s more overt effort to silence discourse should call attention to this as a longstanding issue.”
The crowd was informed that of the 381 books recently removed from the library at the U.S. Naval Academy under an order by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, one was a book on the history of racial incarceration in Philadelphia by Associate Dean of the Faculty for Faculty Recruitment and Development Christian DuComb. While many of the books removed were about racism, queerness or the Holocaust — including Maya Angelou’s “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” — books like Adolf Hitler’s autobiographical manifesto “Mein Kampf” were allowed to remain, as was stated at the protest.
Associate Professor of English and Africana & Latin American Studies Kezia Page read aloud a statement of support from Colgate President Brian W. Casey, whom she noted could not attend the protest due to a Board of Trustees meeting in New York City. Casey highlighted the unity demonstrated by the Colgate community in navigating the complex new political challenges confronting higher education institutions today.
“We may be a small university, but we are fierce. You cannot climb these hills winter after winter and not become strong,” Page read from the statement.
Fathers echoed Casey’s sentiments about the hopeful and powerful nature of the protest.
“It was certainly empowering to see so many professors gathered in the face of academic suppression,” Fathers said. “It was definitely reassuring to see so many members of Colgate’s community standing for this issue, but I hope the momentum continues and that more students become involved as this issue affects everyone.”
