The Big Ten Rises Up Against Trump

Leftist activism at the Big Ten is still thriving. In February, student groups at the University of Washington—including none other than the campus chapter of SDS—mobilized to protest the presence of ICE on campus. At the University of Nebraska, student activists, who work with Planned Parenthood, distribute abortion care kits and contraception. Students across the Big Ten have protested against Israel’s war in Gaza. At the University of Minnesota, Tommy Schmidt, a co-chair of the Young Democratic Socialists of America, says the group’s campaigns have caught fire. “We’ve only done more organizing, more protests, more petitions, more campaigns,” Schmidt told a student newspaper in May. “It only drives us, it gives us a reason to keep organizing.”

SDS, which was partly revived in 2006 to protest the Iraq War, has been rebooted to meet the present moment. It has a nascent social-media presence and 40 chapters and affiliates, including at Big Ten Academic Alliance universities Rutgers, the University of Illinois-Chicago, and the University of Washington. In October, an SDS convention will be held at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Under its logo, the Black Panthers fist symbol, the poster says: “Together, We Can Fight and Beat Back Attacks From the Trump Administration.”

As MAGA figures like Stephen Miller and JD Vance continue to gun for academia’s destruction, then, the force required to safeguard it may turn out to be closer to hard power and no-justice-no-peace direct action than anything modern academics ever imagined having to deploy. At the very least, Big Ten faculties have been forced to put aside internecine rows, including the hottest ones over Israel, to protect elementary academic freedom. They’ve found they need a 360-degree strategic and even—in cases of protecting students from ICE—kinetic defense against Trump. The new SDS groups now promote ICE Watch, a neighborhood watch program that provides self-defense workshops in “blocking, moving, and striking.” One Big Ten professor told me he just purchased a shotgun.

The Scrimmage Line

In the late nineteenth century, Walter Camp, a Yale student who later became an executive at a clock company, invented American football. Camp played halfback at Yale from 1876 to 1881, in what was then called rugby football, and later became a winning coach at Yale and Stanford. Along the way, he created the snapback from center, the system of downs, the points system, the scrimmage line, and the 11-man team.