New York, United States – It was December, and the end of the quarter was fast approaching at the University of Chicago.
Mamayan Jabateh, a fourth-year student, was working on a final paper about the politics of the “carceral state”, inside a dorm on campus, when a knock came at the door.
Four Chicago police officers were standing on the other side. They presented Jabateh, who uses the pronoun “they”, with a printed photograph. It showed them at a pro-Palestinian campus protest two months earlier, on October 11.
Jabateh was immediately handcuffed and hauled away. They were detained for 30 hours.
But the arrest was only the beginning: Jabateh was also indefinitely suspended and banned from campus.
Free-speech advocates are warning that, with attention on the protests waning and national politics in the United States swinging rightward, university punishments against pro-Palestinian protesters have grown harsher — something Jabateh knows firsthand.
“It’s a really extreme reaction,” says Megan Porter, a lawyer who is supporting Jabateh during the disciplinary process on a pro bono basis. “But it seems to be a tactic that a lot of universities are starting to take.”