Colleges are supposed to be a place for free thinking, and they love to talk about civic engagement.
They like to plaster all sorts of democratic slogans on posters, flyers and social media. Professors lecture about being a good American citizen. Some even try to get people to register to vote in elections, but when students actually get their hands dirty on campus for political causes, though, suddenly being a good American citizen isn’t so great anymore.
This is exactly what was seen in the spring of 2025 and continued until three weeks ago at Columbia University. Students and activists set up a Gaza solidarity protest in Morningside Heights to demand that companies stop their support of the war in Gaza. It was very similar to the Vietnam War protests in the 1960s and 1970s. The encampment sparked a huge controversy across national and international news. When the student protesters refused to leave the base of their encampment, the university called in the New York Police Department, and over 100 students were arrested and multiple were suspended.
One of the biggest core examples was Mahmoud Khalil‘s case. Khalil was ruled, by a federal immigration judge, to be eligible for deportation. The university and police used his protests and political activities as justification for his deportation. Critics and some citizens argued that this set a terrible precedent for deportation for beliefs rather than actual crimes. This continued into places like San Diego, where some international students were deported and had their visas revoked entirely just because they participated in a political protest.
Some faculty members walked out in solidarity in support of the arrested students, and national free-speech sharks blasted the response as unethical. The message it gave to America was what sat with people most: We should support political participation, not just when it goes against us, gets too loud, or doesn’t support our values. This raised an important question: What happens when the First Amendment only exists on paper but isn’t followed by American Institutions? It set a double standard precedent for the rest of us that if you don’t support what we do, we will destroy you.
When colleges begin arresting or disciplining students for what they protest, it forces a serious question: How free is America if political beliefs can lead to punishment or deportation? Our Constitution guarantees freedom of speech and assembly, yet universities often decide which forms of expression are acceptable. Students should be asking why institutions promote civic engagement so loudly, only to abandon that “good citizen” message when activism becomes inconvenient.
Universities say they prepare students for a democratic country, but they seem to be uneducated on what actually democracy looks like—everyday people protesting injustice loudly and proudly. That’s what this country was built on, and if that freedom is conditional, then it’s not freedom at all. It’s just oppression disguised as freedom.
