Keffiyehs and neon safety vests blew in the wind on a dozen or so students from San Francisco State University’s General Union of Palestine Students who organized an emergency joint rally on Thursday alongside four Northern California campuses’ Students for Justice in Palestine chapters. Dozens more students and fellow protesters showed up for the rally, held in Malcolm X Plaza, with over 100 people in attendance.

GUPS partnered with several other on-campus organizations for the rally alongside SJP chapters from UC Berkeley, UC Davis, California State University, Sacramento and Stanford University, all four of which are named on the Trump administration’s new list of universities under investigation for antisemitic discrimination and harassment. SFSU is not among the 60 schools on Trump’s list.

That list and SFSU’s rally come in the wake of Immigration and Customs Enforcement under the Department of Homeland Security revoking over 300 international students’ visas and removing them from the country through arrests, detentions and deportations. In the months since Trump took office for his second term, ICE has arrested and detained student protesters explicitly for their outspoken pro-Palestinian activism. These myriad arrests prompted GUPS to organize the rally and speak out for students’ rights. 

Mahmoud Khalil, a graduate student at Columbia University and lawful permanent resident, was arrested and detained by ICE on March 8 for his advocacy for Palestinian rights and is being detained in Louisiana. Rümeysa Öztürk, a Turkish citizen with a student visa at Tufts University as a doctoral candidate, was arrested by DHS agents in plain clothes who flanked and arrested her before throwing her into an unmarked SUV. Yunseo Chung is a legal permanent resident of the U.S. and a junior student at Columbia. Immigration and deportation officials attempted to arrest her on the grounds that she presented a danger to the nation for participating in pro-Palestinian protests. These are only three students of many sought by the Trump administration for their exercise of the First Amendment.

As Malcolm X Plaza filled with students, more checkered Keffiyeh patterns and the green, red and black of Palestinian flags lined the Quad. The crowd was abuzz with groups of people socializing as they shared protest flyers and QR codes for upcoming events with each other, all waiting for the rally to start.

James A., a representative of GUPS, took to the stage and delivered an impassioned speech advocating for the continuation of student protests before introducing the spokespeople for the aforementioned colleges. As they all spoke, the running themes between speeches emphasized not capitulating to fears the Trump administration sows through the detention of students like Khalil and Öztürk, and continuing to speak up for Palestinians and against Israel’s continued occupation and bombardment of Palestine even after a ceasefire was agreed upon.

SFSU’s chapter of GUPS organized most of the rally. Max Flynt, a member of GUPS, helped coordinate the emergency event after hearing about students’ arrests across the nation.

“In this Northern California region, the schools around us, we need to work together, especially because UC Davis, UC Berkeley, Stanford and Sacramento State University are all on Trump’s new list through the Department of Education in which they’re sending task forces to assess antisemitism on campuses,” Flynt said. “We know that that antisemitism smear comes to delegitimize the pro-Palestine movement on our campus, but also everywhere else, on every campus in America because they don’t have an argument. You can’t make an argument for apartheid or genocide. You have to smear a movement when you’re fighting against things like that.”

When speakers from the four universities took to the stage, they remained nameless. In anonymity, they each spoke to the current state of their universities’ responses to the crackdown on pro-Palestinian students. One student speaker from Sacramento State, who wished to remain anonymous, spoke of their faculty’s response to a student-held fundraiser for Palestine.

“It was a night of Palestinian hospitality and a chance to put a real hand towards power. The following night, we were informed that eight faculty members from Sacramento State reported our fundraiser alleging that we are supporting terrorism,” the speaker said. “The crime of Palestinians will always be their lives. It won’t be what they say or what they do, what they wear or where they live. We see now that the only crime when accused by Israel, its supporters and even on American soil is being Palestinian.”

Gopal Dayaneni, a faculty lecturer in SFSU’s race and resistance department, attended the rally and spoke about this moment in free speech repression.

“The students at SF State and the students all across the country are saying, ‘No, we won’t be silenced. We won’t be made afraid,” Dayaneni said. “From my perspective, if the university is worried about anything, they should be worried about the fact that no matter what they do, they will never be able to appease this authoritarian regime, and instead they should be standing with their students because that’s the best defense.”

Student encampments at SFSU were erected during the Spring 2024 semester in solidarity with similar encampments around the country, which drew attention when their demands were met by the university. When Students for Gaza organizers demanded that SFSU divest from weapons manufacturers, the university agreed. These steps came as a result of a groundswell of student activism and protests — an expression of the First Amendment. Almost a year later, students elsewhere are being arrested and detained en masse for that very expression. 

Ziniab I., a member of GUPS, put focus on that reality.

“This has been happening for decades,” Ziniab said. “Palestinians and Arabs have been targeted by presidential administrations and their university administrations. In a time where that’s even more heightened, we won’t stand idly by while four schools in Northern California are also on this list that will put them on as targets.”

NorCal students continue to exercise their First Amendment-protected right to free speech and protest. Rights that remain protected, citizen or not. Next week, Palestinian awareness week will take place throughout SFSU, with daily events in the afternoons. Announcements will follow as GUPS rolls them out.

Editor’s Note: This story was updated to add diacritics to a name, to correct a photo caption and to correct what SFSU agreed to divest from.