The monsters are many and strong, but so are we: Anti-genocide protests and the struggle against ideological capture at George Mason University

In 2024 and 2025, two long-term crises of hegemony in American higher education suddenly fused on the campus of George Mason University to produce two years of intense political struggle. This article examines this period of crisis at GMU through three interlinked stories. First, we detail how the ongoing neoliberalization of GMU—in short, the long-dominant project of running the university “like a business”—was suddenly overlaid with a state and federal campaign to impose on GMU more direct forms of ideological influence and control. The second story describes how, after the launch of Israel’s genocidal invasion of Gaza, a hitherto niche American Zionist movement–namely, the attempt to criminalize pro-Palestinian speech on college campuses–suddenly became central to the subordination of GMU under the Governor’s office and the federal Department of Justice. The final story describes how faculty activists at GMU sought to defend the integrity of GMU against those who would dismantle the university's independence and its commitment to free speech and open inquiry. The article concludes with a call for all faculty and students to defend the values of academic independence and freedom by multiplying points of political resistance across the American higher education landscape.