Community members hold “emergency rally” amid attacks on higher education

More than 100 people, including students, faculty, and local Princeton residents, gathered outside the School of Public and International Affairs (SPIA) on Wednesday, March 19 for an “emergency rally” protesting the Trump administration’s recent actions targeting higher education, among other issues.

Although members of Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest (PIAD), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), and the Princeton University Postdocs and Scholars-United Auto Workers (PUPS-UAW) union spoke to the crowd, the rally was not organized by any single group.

Speakers addressed various challenges facing higher education, including the detention of Palestinian activist and Columbia University graduate student Mahmoud Khalil, calls for the University to divest from Israeli weapons manufacturers, and the targeting of federal research funding.

“This just came out of the sense that a lot of people were feeling a lot about what’s happening, and really wanted a space to express that and come together,” Jessica Ng, a postdoc who spoke at the rally, told the ‘Prince.’ “I’m glad that people showed up — a lot of people were willing to either speak or have their words be shared by someone else.”

The protest follows a series of actions from the Trump administration that have unsettled higher education, including the cancellation of $400 million in funding to Columbia University and the freezing of $175 million to the University of Pennsylvania, threats to federal research grants, and investigations by the Office of Civil Rights into diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and allegations of antisemitism on college campuses.

At Princeton, most faculty and staff hiring was frozen in an announcement on Wednesday morning. In an essay published earlier that morning, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 described Trump’s actions against Columbia as “the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.”

However, protestors questioned how far Eisgruber would go in backing his call for universities and their leaders to “speak up and litigate forcefully to protect their rights,” as he wrote in the essay.

“In the coming weeks, we need to pay very, very close attention to whether Princeton is actually going to live up to these very decent-sounding words,” a member of the PUPS-UAW union said to the crowd. “We need to be extremely vigilant about whether President Eisgruber will not only talk the talk, but actually walk the walk. Frankly, I don’t have high hopes.”

Signs included “No $ 4 Genocide” and “Don’t be on the wrong side of history.” Following the rally, a smaller group of community members marched from Washington Road to Palmer Square, chanting, “Free Free Palestine,” while Public Safety officers watched from a distance.

Looking forward, speakers emphasized the importance of protecting community members and shared plans to picket in front of Nassau Hall.

Ng said she believes that the high turnout of the rally relative to other campus protests held this semester “really speaks to the very broad and deeply felt sense of anxiety that people are feeling, and also a desire to do something — not just to be isolated and afraid.”

Sena Chang is a senior News writer for the ‘Prince’ from Tokyo, Japan. She typically covers campus and community activism, the state of higher education, and alumni news.