When writing about the transformation of higher education centers in America (and much of the broader Pig Empire) into fascist indoctrination camps and functional arms of the reactionary police state, I have tended to focus on the fallout from this situation for students and society at large. At the same time however, I think it's important to remember that the war against free thought and moral activism being undertaken by administrators and government entities also extends into the intimidation, repression, and punishment of university faculty, especially teachers, who are trying to protect the democratic rights of their students or openly oppose the erasure of history, the militarization of campuses, and investment in genocidal colonial police states by the institutions they work at. As the following interview with the (now suspended) chair of social justice reporting at the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University, Steven Thrasher demonstrates, the forces of reaction are also working overtime to make an example of any professor or faculty member who isn't down with genocide, the brutalization of student protestors by police, or the installation of what commentators are calling "the National Security Campus" at American colleges and universities.

https://www.democracynow.org/2024/9/5/steven_thrasher

EXCLUSIVE: Northwestern Suspends Journalism Professor Steven Thrasher After Gaza Solidarity Protest

"And even though I have been — I have been physically beaten up by the police of my university, I’ve been interrogated in front of Congress, I’ve been threatened with jail, and now I am suspended with pay and not allowed to teach, this is the work that we need to do in these very difficult moments. This is a genocide. This is something that is having an enormous impact not just on many of us in the United States, but on 600,000 students who have lost their ability to get to school in Gaza, on 14,000 children who have been killed in Gaza."

For those unfamiliar with Thrasher, he's the professor who, along with several other faculty members at Northwestern, defended student protestors from police violence by locking arms and physically standing between the campus murderpigs and the protesting students. For his troubles, he was singled out in a Congressional hearing as "a goon" by GOP Congressman Jim Banks, who effectively demanded that Thrasher and other faculty members who, again, literally protected student protestors from police violence with their bodies, be fired. Thrasher was also charged with allegedly obstructing police trying to break up the encampment at Northwestern, but crucially those charges were dropped by prosecutors upon further investigation. Despite this, Northwestern (undoubtedly influenced by pressure from reactionary "goons" in Congress) has suspended Thrasher and denied his ability to teach classes this fall; offering up the excuse for this objectively retaliatory intimidation tactic that it's because they're conducting their own investigation into Thrasher's activities to defend protesting students and the campus anti-genocide encampment.

Look, a university caving to fascist political pressure to make an example of and punish a professor for defending students protesting a U.S. backed genocide by a client state, with his own physical body would be an alarming example of political repression, fascist fuckery, and the transformation of our universities into arms of a reactionary police state under any circumstances. But it's even more alarming when you find out that Thrasher is an exemplary professor who has been acknowledged as such by Northwestern itself, a published author, and the pioneering chair of the social justice in reporting department with a focus on the LGBTQ community. Ostensibly, Northwestern literally employs this man *because* of his conscience, and to help students learn about their own moral responsibility in journalism to oppose things like fascist repression, totalitarian police states, and a literal fucking genocide being conducted in Gaza, by Israel, with full backing of the American government. Indeed, the university has applauded his commitment to this worthy cause on multiple occasions in the past, but as Thrasher notes the difference this time is that he's calling into question the moral fiber and activity of Northwestern itself:

"What they don’t like is that I am now applying the same social justice journalism principles that I’ve applied to race and that I’ve applied to LGBTQ people, to COVID and HIV, that I was now applying those to Palestine. And so, they don’t like that. And that the Congress is putting pressure on them to put pressure on me, they’re aiding that."

Mark my words, appeasing fascists, intimidating faulty and transforming campuses into militarized security states will not have good outcomes for Pig Empire society. This is how it happens here.