Portside

If we want to understand how we arrived in this authoritarian moment in 2025, we need to understand one of the central pathways that brought us here: McCarthyism.

On Wednesday, over 550 celebrities relaunched a group first organized during the post-World War II Red Scare: the Committee for the First Amendment. Their intent is to stand up in what they call a "defense of our constitutional rights,"

For refusing to sign a loyalty oath she was barred from practicing law, targeted by the FBI. Founder of Berkeley’s Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute, pioneered the field of “peace law,”wrote the resolution establishing Berkeley-a Human Rights City

Readers Comments: "Enemy From Within"; Trump-Netanyahu Colonization Plan; Lost Cause in the 21st Century - Charlie Kirk and Donald Trump; Committee for the First Amendment Relaunched; AI and the Future of Work; Cartoons and more....

The University of California, in a move with strong echoes of McCarthyism, has turned over to the Trump administration dossiers on 160 faculty, students and staff under investigation for antisemitism.

Not content to torment the Ivy League, Republicans are seeking authoritarian control over working-class public universities like the City University of New York. The latest salvo: allegedly firing four adjuncts for their support of Palestine.

Columbia University reached agreement with the Trump administration to pay $200 million for "violations;." also agreed to establish a $21 million fund to “compensate employees who may have experienced antisemitism." One professor asks for his share.

Readers Comments: Trump Screwing Country, World, Climate, Gaza, Now Ready to Make Deal with Sex Trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell; McCarthyism and Its Victims: Here We Go Again; Keep ICE Out of MLB Stadiums; Israelis Call for Crippling Sanctions on Israel

As an Australian who wrote about the demonstrations while on campus, I gave my phone a superficial clean before flying to the U.S. I underestimated what I was up against.