In a chilling development, the Trump administration has unleashed a full-scale witch hunt targeting nearly 900 faculty members within the University of California system. Their “crime” is signing open letters on the Israeli assault on Gaza and calling for the protection of Jewish and Palestinian students alike.

In a textbook act of McCarthyite authoritarianism, federal officials are interrogating professors—interviews that serve no other purpose than to criminalize dissent and enforce ideological conformity.

The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), under orders from the Trump administration, issued a subpoena for faculty members’ private information, including names, emails, phone numbers, job positions and more. This information was surrendered by the University of California in March, after which Department of Justice (DOJ) officials began reaching out to faculty, not to uncover acts of harassment but to fish for ideological “enemies.”

This development is a page pulled directly from the playbook of Joseph McCarthy’s House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Constance Penley, president of the Council of UC Faculty Associations, warned that the goal is to “strip away the autonomy of the university” and fracture academic solidarity.

The campaign cynically uses the EEOC, an agency ostensibly meant to protect workers from discrimination, to punish scholars for holding dissenting views on US foreign policy.

The very faculty members who openly opposed genuine antisemitism on their campuses are now being painted as suspects in an inquisition designed to enforce fascist ideology. Meanwhile, true cases of hate and harassment, especially those committed by the Trump administration itself, go un-investigated so long as they align with the political narrative of the oligarchy.

Equally damning is the utter failure of the Democratic Party to confront this fascist campaign. The Biden administration laid the groundwork for a crackdown on students and faculty opposing Israel’s actions in Gaza. Biden and the Democrats jointly directed police interventions on campuses with right-wing Republicans, resulting in mass arrests and suppression of protests.

The actions of the Democrats are compounded by the role of major academic unions, many of which have signaled a willingness to accommodate Trump’s nationalist crusade. Rather than taking bold action to protect the rank and file, the union leadership often retreats behind legalistic language and procedural inertia.

Katie Rodger, president of the UC-AFT (University Council-American Federation of Teachers) union, stated: “This is not an attempt just to get information. This is where the EEOC and the Trump administration are asserting power over universities in an attempt to stifle academic freedom and free speech.”

But while the UC-AFT expresses formal opposition to the subpoenas, it has facilitated bipartisan efforts to suppress pro-Palestinian dissent by aligning with US imperialist policies. At its 2024 convention, the AFT leadership, under President Randi Weingarten, dismissed resolutions condemning Israel’s actions in Gaza and the repression of campus protests, instead promoting a narrative that minimized these issues as mere “conflicts.”

Weingarten’s support for the Biden administration, which backed Israel’s military actions and domestic crackdowns on dissent, exemplifies the AFT bureaucracy’s integration with both Democratic and Republican agendas that equate anti-Zionist activism with antisemitism. This stance has undermined genuine opposition within the rank and file and contributed to the broader suppression of academic freedom and political expression.

Instead of mobilizing the full power of their membership, the union apparatus tries to disarm the enormous opposition against Trump that was in full display in recent demonstrations across the US a week ago.

This is not an isolated incident. It is part of a wider authoritarian pattern that has swept across US campuses under Trump. Graduate students like Momodou Taal and Mahmoud Khalil have been kidnapped, smeared, suspended or pressured to deport themselves for statements opposing genocide or US complicity in war crimes.

International students, particularly those from Muslim-majority countries, are seeing their visas revoked without cause. At Columbia, federal funding was slashed by the Trump administration as retaliation for non-compliance with ideological demands—$400 million vanished and has yet to be restored.

Students protesting the Gaza genocide are vilified as antisemitic extremists. Administrators call in police to crush encampments, while politicians threaten to revoke degrees and deport international students.

This is not just censorship—it is the deliberate construction of a political apparatus to criminalize anti-war and left-wing views, whose final target is the entire working class.

But to meet this threat with protest alone is a fatal illusion. The ruling class is not intimidated by petitions or moral outrage. The machinery of the state—the courts, universities and so-called “civil rights” agencies—has already been mobilized to destroy the most basic freedoms. This campaign will not be reversed by timid appeals or symbolic resistance. It demands an organized political counteroffensive—one that does not beg for mercy but prepares to take power from the forces enforcing fascist rule.

The only way forward is through the independent mobilization of the working class. Teachers and students must turn not to the Democratic Party or union officials but to workers across all industries—railroad workers, autoworkers, nurses, Amazon and UPS employees. It is in the workplaces, not the ballot box, that the real power to shut down the capitalist machine lies.

This means building rank-and-file committees—democratically organized and controlled by workers themselves—to coordinate resistance, share information, and prepare for mass action. The strategy must be nothing less than the preparation for a general strike: a nationwide shutdown that rejects every compromise with the forces of reaction.