The MERIP Podcast Episode 22: Aslı Bâli and Darryl Li
Today's episode of the MERIP Podcast features an interview with two contributors to the spring issue of Middle East Report, “Campus Politics—Palestine and the New University Order.” Since the beginning of world-wide campus protests in the wake of October 7, 2023, there has been a tremendous upswell of organizing and support for Palestinian liberation and activism against US militarism. In response, a wave of repression against students, staff and faculty on campus began in 2023 and accelerated after Donald Trump took office. Our latest issue takes stock of these dynamics and the stakes of political action on campus in the United States, Europe and the Middle East.
To discuss campus politics in our present moment, MERIP’s executive director, James Ryan, was joined by Aslı Bâli and Darryl Li. Aslı Bâli is the Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of Law at Yale Law School and the former president of the Middle East Studies Association. Her article in this issue, “Fighting the Campus Crackdown–Why the Middle East Studies Association Took the Trump Administration to Court,” is a reflection on MESA’s lawsuit, with the American Association of University Professors and the Knight First Amendment Institute, against Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump Administration over the free speech rights of noncitizens, like Rümeysa Öztürk and others, who spoke up about Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Darryl Li is an associate professor of Anthropology and Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, and a contributor, along with Andrew Ross, Lara Deeb, Meera Shah and Lisa Hajjar to “The University is a Site of Struggle—A Roundtable with Faculty Organizers on Repression and Resistance on US Campuses.”
This interview was recorded on May 5, 2026.
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Further Reading:
Aslı Bâli, “Fighting the Campus Crackdown—Why the Middle East Studies Association Took the Trump Administration to Court” Middle East Report, no. 318 (Spring 2026).
Lisa Hajjar, Lara Deeb, Darryl Li, Andrew Ross and Meera Shah, “‘The University is a Site of Struggle—A Roundtable with Faculty Organizers on Repression and Resistance on US Campuses” Middle East Report, no. 318 (Spring 2026).
The MESA Academic Freedom Initiative
MESA and AAUP, “Discriminating Against Dissent: The Weaponization of Civil Rights Law to Repress Campus Speech on Palestine,” November 5, 2025.
The Knight First Amendment Institute
PEN America, “Expanding the Web of Control–America’s Censored Campuses 2025,” January 15, 2025.
Written by
James Ryan is the Executive Director of the Middle East Research and Information Project
Aslı Bâli is the Howard M. Holtzmann Professor of Law at Yale Law School.
Darryl Li is assistant professor of anthropology and associate member of the law school at the University of Chicago and author of The Universal Enemy: Jihad, Empire, and the Challenge of Solidarity. He was an editor of Middle East Report from 2011
