As a professor at MIT, I find myself navigating strange waters these days. Last semester, I advised the thesis of a student who left the country because she did not feel welcome in the United States (and she is a citizen). I listened to exceptional students from around the world tell me that they will not be applying to MIT because they do not feel the United States is a safe place for them. I comforted students after federal agents visited their dorms and aggressively sought to interrogate their peers. I supported students, staff, and faculty who had been doxed by vigilante websites hostile to their political views. I advised students how to protect themselves from getting abducted off the street by masked men.

This last one sounds fictional, but it happened: Rümeysa Öztürk, a Tufts University doctoral student, was detained by federal agents in March while on her way to break her Ramadan fast. Like other student kidnappings and visa revocations around the country, Öztürk’s appears to be an “ideological deportation,” attempted because she cowrote an op-ed in her student newspaper urging Tufts University to publicly acknowledge the genocide in Palestine.

These are not normal times, and these are not my normal job duties. It is within the job description for a scholar and professor to try to name and describe precisely and truthfully the world that we encounter around us. For this reason, I want to offer a term from international relations to characterize Rümeysa Öztürk’s abduction and many other actions of the current administration: state terrorism.

Political scholar Ruth Blakeley writes that “state terrorism should be understood as a threat or act of violence by agents of the state that is designed to induce fear in a target audience, so that they are coerced into changing their behavior in some way.” What distinguishes state terrorism from other routine uses of force is that the violence is designed to “send a message”– to reverberate out into the population, to engender fear, and to shift behavior.

The US government’s detentions of students such as Öztürk constitute a burgeoning form of state terrorism, particularly when considered alongside other acts of political violence and coercion.

These include using taxpayer dollars for deporting undocumented workers – some while they were seeking food outside homeless shelters, dropping their kids off at daycare, or driving to their high school volleyball practice. Or consider the apparently random acts of extreme aggression against other people who pose no threat: the German green-card holder stripped naked and interrogated until he collapsed and the Canadian woman held for two weeks in a detention center because of an expired visa. These acts include a raft of executive orders that strip rights from and deny the very existence of the transgender community, attempts to blackmail universities into ideological submission, and partisan investigations of law firms who work with the administration’s political opponents.

These government actions constitute both threats of violence and actual violence. But they are not only (or, in some cases, at all) about the individuals and institutions involved. Öztürk’s abduction is not specifically about her or her actions. Rather, it was a premeditated viral news event intended to sow fear among all international students and convey the idea that none of them are safe. The Trump administration’s strategy conjoins specific instances of threats and violence with widely reported media representations in order to spread fear. This is what distinguishes the current violence of the state as terrorist. It is not only a judicial project but also a public relations project and a strategic communications project.

Moreover, the administration doesn’t only need to use their own propaganda networks to distribute information about such events. The left- and center-leaning media are doing an excellent job circulating the violence and boosting public feelings of vulnerability and helplessness (thanks, New York Times). This gives the appearance that state terrorism is working, and in certain ways that might be true. I would estimate that about a third of my own working hours – hours that professors should be using to advance science and innovation or educate and mentor students – are now consumed with combating the impacts of state terrorism on my university campus: widespread fear, self-censorship, capitulation, and silence.

But we can disrupt this cycle. Naming these actions as state terrorism enables us to analyze the current situation and survive political violence, as people who have come before us have survived.

How can US universities survive state terrorism?

If you are in university leadership, you can lead with courage and moral clarity. Such qualities are hard to come by these days, not least because our administrators in higher education are, quite understandably, not trained to combat terrorists. The political moment requires us to adapt. Faculty, students, and staff would like to see a muscular and coordinated defense of the core values and mission of higher education. This includes resisting political interference to adopt a particular definition of antisemitism, dissolve DEI programs, adopt scientifically incorrect definitions of gender, or rewrite history to teach a series of untruths about white male heroes. It includes the courage to use endowments and mobilize alumni networks to survive this period of assault. As basic playground logic tells us, you don’t fight bullies by sticking your head in the sand or politely waiting for them to stop punching your friend.

If you are a university professor, the most important action you can take is to leave your office and talk to your colleagues. Many are scared to speak out for fear of becoming a target, losing funding, or seeing their students deported. I understand this fear and feel it too. Yet there are simple things we can do in the course of our everyday professional lives that will help us support each other through this period: We can go to faculty meetings, share information with each other, join national advocacy organizations, and host gatherings where we laugh and cry about the absurdity of all of this. Once we start talking to each other, other courses of action magically become possible.

If you are in a community (as I hope all of us are), you can connect with mutual aid groups who are protecting their most vulnerable members. I have been deeply inspired by the work in my own town, where neighbors are rejecting dehumanization and scapegoating in favor of love and generosity. We are protecting neighbors from kidnappers, feeding people, comforting children, and supporting families. In contrast to the acts of state terrorism, these simple actions spread a different message: you belong here. These networks of mutual aid have sprung up in cities, across states, and throughout the entire country.

Surviving state terrorism will not be easy. During this period, we must remember that the current project is an elaborate exercise in political theater designed to spread fear, isolation, and division. Acts of radical care, everyday courage, and collective action are the most effective antidote to state terrorism.

*First published in the AAUP blog.

Back to top