US universities are the new battlegrounds for wider societal conflicts

Recently, I was in Maine, the northern New England state known for its rugged independence and civic tradition. Politically, it is idiosyncratic as it balances progressivism with a more conservative trend in the interior and the far northern reaches bordering Canada.

I stayed with friends, and we had several discussions about US President Donald Trump’s executive order to prosecute the burning of the American flag. Recently in the US, besides regarding Gaza, police brutality, and other political flashpoints, including the shooting of the right-wing commentator Charlie Kirk, there have been incidents of flag burning.

Mr Trump and his administration see this as dissent, threatening that those convicted of flag desecration could face a year in prison. My Mainer friends saw this as an extreme violation of civil liberties – infringing on freedom of expression. Legally, the US Supreme Court has ruled twice, in 1989 and 1990, that flag burning is an act of free speech, protected under the First Amendment.

Mr Trump, however, has pushed back. The US justice department is investigating how to revive a ban and override these precedent-setting cases. Is flag burning disrespectful, especially to veterans, or is it a pure form of political protest?

“If people are imprisoned for burning the flag, we are one step closer to North Korea,” my friend, a social worker, argued. This is a wild exaggeration, and I disagreed. North Korea is one of the most restrictive societies, with limits on expression, movement and religion.

However, the point my friends were trying to make is that North Korea has one-party rule, a police state with surveillance and informants. As Mr Trump sends in the National Guard to Washington and Baltimore, people are increasingly afraid they can be arrested on any pretext.

This worries me, but what I am most concerned about is academic freedom. On campuses across America, academics are also frightened. Universities have become new battlegrounds for broader societal conflicts.

In a private meeting last March, the Dean of Columbia Journalism School, Jelani Cobb, told a group of international students: “Nobody can protect you.” Later, he clarified by saying: "These are, in fact, dangerous times. They require as much caution as they do courage."

Everyone is vulnerable, but the most endangered students on campus are international students, who are not protected under the First Amendment – which safeguards fundamental rights from government interference: freedom of religion, free speech, press, assembly and the right to petition the government for redress. They risk having their visas rescinded and being deported.

While Columbia and other universities bowed to the Trump administration over unfair accusations of anti-Semitism and failing to protect Jewish students on campus, Harvard University fought back. On September 3, a federal judge ruled that the Trump administration unlawfully terminated approximately $2.2 billion in research grants awarded to Harvard University.

Columbia, by contrast, settled with the government, agreeing to monitor professors, meetings and protests. This was a direct affront to the First Amendment and had a chilling effect on free speech on Columbia’s campus. “In other words, shut up or risk losing your job or your right to stay in the United States,” one professor told me. At Columbia, professors called it “institutionalised self-censorship”.

Columbia is a private university, so it did not legally violate the First Amendment. But let’s be frank, it ceded its academic independence under political pressure from the White House.

America is, however, meant to be a bastion of liberty and freedom – “land of the free and home of the brave,” the poignant lyrics of the “Star-Spangled Banner,” the national anthem of the US, written in 1814 during the Battle of Baltimore, when US forces defended Fort McHenry against a British naval bombardment. It is a song of resilience and freedom, often used by civil rights activists and protesters as both a patriotic song and a vehicle to disrupt.

This autumn, I am teaching Human Rights at Yale, one of the oldest and most prestigious universities in the US. My students are smart and challenging, and they give me hope even as it is undeniable that we are confronting dark times.

Every other week it seems Mr Trump issues a new executive order or sanctions institutions such as the International Criminal Court, which was set up in The Hague to hold people accountable for the gravest crimes. But our best defence is to understand the law and our own personal rights.

Flag burning may seem like a ridiculous argument, but it is part of a wider context, along with book bans and restrictions on campus protests. Is speech still protected? Flag burning highlights the divisions in America – over the question of Palestine and Israel, racism and state repression.

I am only on campus for one semester, and my home is in France. But I grew up in America, the daughter of an immigrant father who came here seeking liberty and freedom from fascism. He proudly became an American citizen at the height of the 1950s McCarthy era. That was another dark time in America when the fear of communism led to false accusations, blacklists, and widespread suppression of freedom of speech.

Flag burning is not about hatred of America, in the same way that criticising the policies of the Israeli government in Gaza is not anti-Semitism. It is, in a sense, a demand that the US live up to the ideals upon which it was founded.

What happened at Columbia and other campuses demonstrates how fear can stifle freedom of expression. The First Amendment was written precisely for times like these – to protect dissent and alternative voices. By stifling that, we are betraying the most beautiful of America’s ideals.