Campus Politics–Palestine and the New University Order
Spring 2026
MERIP’s Spring issue, Campus Politics—Palestine and the New University Order, comes two years after mass student mobilizations against Israel’s genocide in Palestine reached their peak with student encampments across the United States and Europe. The mobilizations of 2023–2024 invited new forms of repression and federal intervention in higher education, which have accelerated further under the second administration of US President Donald Trump. The issue takes stock of higher education following this inflection point, examining universities as a key site in which struggles over Palestine intersect with wider transformations in state power, knowledge production and the policing of dissent. Across cases from Germany, Turkey, Egypt and the United States, contributors reveal how universities function simultaneously as incubators of political consciousness and targets of institutional control. Despite differences across these contexts, student activism—especially around Palestine—emerges repeatedly as a catalyst for wider debates over academic freedom and the role of universities in society. In response, states and governing authorities deploy increasingly sophisticated mechanisms of control, from administrative sanctions and legal instruments to surveillance, narrative management and outright repression.