Trump and Project Esther Seek to Dismantle Campus Advocacy for Palestinian Rights
IMEU Policy Project Memo #19
BACKGROUND
Following years of failed bipartisan attempts in Congress to pass legislation falsely equating criticism of Israel and support for Palestinian rights with antisemitism, the Trump administration is now taking unilateral, drastic, unprecedented, and unconstitutional steps in an attempt to dismantle campus advocacy for Palestinian rights.
This illegal effort to restrict free speech for Palestinian rights is part of a broader effort by the MAGA movement to attack institutions of higher education, to dismantle diversity, inclusion, and equity (DEI) initiatives, and to engage in mass deportations, steps which are clearly spelled out both in Project 2025 and its Palestine-focused corollary Project Esther.
DETAILS
What is Project Esther?
This crackdown on student organizing for Palestinian rights is following the playbook of the Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther, which aims to “dismantle” and “extirpate” the Palestinian rights movement within the first 12 to 24 months of the Trump administration through a “public–private partnership.”
While a major aim of Project Esther is to dismantle campus advocacy for Palestinian rights, which would be “eradicated from the U.S. education system at all levels,” the plan also seeks to strip away the First Amendment-protected rights to freedom of speech, press, assembly, and petition of all Americans.
Project Esther seeks to do so by:
Prohibiting the dissemination of information supportive of Palestinian rights, safety, and freedom
Preventing organizations supportive of Palestinian rights, safety, and freedom from accessing their elected representatives in Congress
Subjecting organizations supportive of Palestinian rights, safety, and freedom to criminal prosecutions
Disrupting the ability of organizations supportive of Palestinian rights, safety, and freedom from communicating and organizing protests
While Project Esther and the Trump administration are starting to implement their plans by targeting students, the clear intent of this plan is to eventually prevent all Americans from exercising their First Amendment rights to speak out on behalf of Palestinian rights and protest against US bombs going to Israel to kill entire families, destroy people’s homes, and deny people food and water.
Project Esther cynically tries to conceal its anti-Palestinian racist agenda under the guise of fighting antisemitism. Let’s be clear: antisemitism, like all hatreds of ethnic or religious groups, is abhorrent and is a very real and problematic phenomenon in the US today. Yet Project Esther has not one word to say about fighting the source of the overwhelming amount of antisemitism: racist white nationalism. If Project Esther were serious about fighting antisemitism then it would take seriously the fact that the president has praised neo-Nazis and that Elon Musk gives Nazi salutes.
Project Esther is the Palestine-specific corollary to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, which seeks to abolish DEI initiatives, and, in the words of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, aims to “terrorize immigrant communities” through mass deportations and the eliminations of specific visa categories.
The Trump administration’s efforts to pressure universities to prohibit campus speech and assembly for Palestinian rights and its threat to engage in mass deportations of foreign students who participate in First Amendment-protected speech and assembly on campus should be seen as steps to fulfill the objectives of both Project 2025 and Project Esther.
Anti-Palestinian organizations have advanced the private segment of the “public-private partnership” called for in Project Esther to dismantle the Palestinian rights movement. For example, the extremist organization Betar US, which has ideological links to alleged war criminal Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud Party, reportedly gave the Trump administration a list with hundreds of names of foreign students whom it wants deported for their advocacy of Palestinian rights.
What steps has the Trump administration already taken?
The Trump administration has avidly taken up the public segment of this “public-private partnership” through the following acts:
On January 29, President Trump issued a controversial Executive Order to revoke the visas of and deport foreign students who participate in First Amendment-protected speech and assembly for Palestinian rights. In its accompanying fact sheet, the White House implies that any type of campus protest for Palestinian rights could trigger visa revocation and deportation.
On February 3, the Department of Justice announced a task force to implement the Executive Order, and on February 28, the Department of Justice announced it would visit ten campuses to investigate.
On March 4, Trump declared on social media that “All Federal Funding will STOP for any College, School, or University” that permits protests to take place, which the president wrongly deemed to be “illegal”. He further threatened that “Agitators will be imprisoned/or permanently sent back to the country from which they came.”
On March 6, Axios revealed that the State Department will implement the Executive Order through an AI-powered sweep of social media accounts–a program called “Catch and Revoke.” The program will scour tens of thousands of social media accounts of foreign students studying in the US under student visas and could result in them being deported for social media posts which “appear” to express sympathy for groups designated as foreign terrorist organizations, leaving this vague term open to broad and sweeping interpretations.
On March 7, the Trump administration revoked $400 million in federal grants to Columbia University because students on campus have continued to protest and advocate for Palestinian rights.
On March 8, ICE agents detained and disappeared Mahmoud Khalil, a permanent legal resident of the US and a recent graduate of Columbia University, who was abducted from his Columbia University apartment in the presence of his wife, a US citizen, who is 8-months pregnant.
The Trump administration has not charged Khalil with a crime and admits that no crime has been committed; instead, it is seeking to deport him and other students for exercising their First Amendment right to freedom of speech and assembly.
14 Representatives wrote DHS Secretary Kristi Noem calling for Khalil’s immediate release and stating that Khalil’s abduction “is an attempt to criminalize political protest and is a direct assault on the freedom of speech of everyone in this country. Khalil’s arrest is an act of anti-Palestinian racism intended to silence the Palestine solidarity movement in this country.”
On March 10, the Department of Education announced that it had sent letters to 60 universities, threatening them with “potential enforcement actions” should they continue to allow students to protest for Palestinian rights.
These draconian and undemocratic measures by the Trump administration to intimidate universities into prohibiting First Amendment-protected speech and assembly for Palestinian rights, and to abduct, disappear, and deport foreign-born students who engage in campus protest for Palestinian rights are unsurprising in light of the steps advocated for by the Heritage Foundation in Project 2025 and Project Esther.
Yet, at the same time, these measures are also terrifying, signifying the Trump administration’s utter disregard for the First Amendment, its crackdown on political dissent, and its proclivity toward authoritarianism.
And let’s be clear: Trump’s crackdown on dissent may be beginning with Palestine, but it won’t end there. If he is allowed to get away with stripping First Amendment-protected rights from those who advocate for Palestinian rights and freedom, then he will proceed to do the same against anyone who dissents from his agenda.
Photo: Ringo Chiu, via Shutterstock
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