Nearly every student, professor and alumnus arrested at UTD’s Gaza Liberation Plaza encampment last spring now appears on the blacklist of Canary Mission, a controversial national organization that targets pro-Palestinian activists. The mass-profiling, combined with public comments from a UTD Hillel leader claiming credit for the encampment’s removal, exposes a direct link between the university’s internal crackdown and a national campaign to permanently damage the reputations and careers of dissenters.
The Retrograde’s analysis of Canary Mission’s database shows that on Nov. 17, 2025, profiles were created or updated for at least 20 of the 21 individuals arrested May 1, 2024. The only arrestee not listed on the site, Alliana Ann Howard, is unaffiliated with UTD. The list includes the three professors currently suing the university — Ben Wright, Rosemary Admiral and Ali Asgar Alibhai — alongside nine students and multiple alumni.
This coordinated digital shaming campaign represents a new phase in the ongoing punishment of the “UTD 21,” moving beyond local courtrooms and campus disciplinary hearings into a permanent, searchable national registry designed to haunt them in future employment, graduate school applications and background checks.
“A permanent record”
The connection between UTD’s administration and the external blacklisting effort was laid bare in the comments section of a Canary Mission Instagram post from January 2026. The post, which received over 18,000 likes, featured photos of the arrestees with the caption: “Exposed by Canary Mission: the faces behind the UT Dallas encampment takeover.”
In the post’s comment section, Jade Steinberg, president of UTD’s Hillel chapter, identified themself as “the main Jewish representative on campus” and detailed their role in the administration’s response.
“I played a key role in the quick teardown of the encampment at UTD,” Steinberg wrote. “I worked with university administration and helped get government pressure to have the encampment removed swiftly.”
When asked by another Instagram user about the consequences for the arrested, Steinberg stated: “All 21 arrested will have a permanent record of the arrest on any background checks.”
This public commentary provides a candid glimpse into the pressure pipeline The Retrograde first revealed in its reporting on the Spirit Rocks removal. Pressure was applied by specific student advocacy groups, the highest levels of university administration and government actors, resulting in punitive action.
“Steinberg’s comments confirm the collaborative, punitive intent we’ve seen in internal emails,” said a UTD faculty member familiar with the lawsuits, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of fear of retaliation. “It’s not enough to arrest them. The goal is to ensure they carry a stigma that can be easily found by anyone with an internet connection. Canary Mission provides that service.”
The Canary Mission playbook
Canary Mission, as detailed in a 2025 Vox investigation, operates on an “illiberal” principle: that pro-Palestinian advocacy should be treated as illegitimate and warrant severe professional consequences. The group maintains a searchable database of thousands of students and professors, many of whom are listed for attending pro-Palestine rallies, writing criticism of Israeli policy and signing on to anti-war petitions.
“Canary Mission represents a different, and more aggressive, strain of campus pro-Israel activism, one that aims not to debate pro-Palestinian students and scholars but to silence them,” the Vox report states.
The organization’s methodology mirrors the rhetorical shift employed by UTD administration during the Spirit Rocks controversy in 2023. Internal emails obtained by The Retrograde showed Dean of Students Amanda Smith initially stating that “Zionism = Nazism” messaging was protected speech, only for administration to later remove the rocks citing “extended political discourse” after pressure from Hillel of North Texas and donors.
Similarly, Canary Mission reframes protected political activity as dangerous extremism. Its profile for Ben Wright, for example, cites his arrest at a peaceful encampment as evidence of “infiltration,” “discrimination” and “antisemitism,” rather than documenting his actions as a professor distributing history books to students while attempting to de-escalate tensions between police and students.
Lila Corwin Berman, a historian of Jewish philanthropy, said that the Canary Mission’s modern approach took its cues almost directly from McCarthyism.
“By creating public lists of students and professors with political views that it finds beyond the pale, Canary Mission uses the tools of embarrassment and harassment to force people into silence,” Berman said. “Much like in the 1940s and early 1950s, social penalties often trigger economic and professional penalties. Canary Mission achieves this aim when institutions or employers rely on its list for the purposes of employment or disciplinary actions.”
Berman said Canary Mission had made one key change to its approach in recent years — it now targeted legal immigrants. Berman said that to her understanding this hadn’t happened in the past, but was becoming commonplace today. In late January, a federal judge ordered the Department of Homeland Security to unseal documents which recommended that five students legally in the U.S., including Mahmoud Khalil and Rumeysa Ozturk, be deported.
“Unfortunately, this fits the current administration’s pattern of selectively and instrumentally repressing people’s rights,” Berman said.
“Really bad at doxxing us”
In interviews with The Retrograde, student arrestees dismissed the long-term professional threat posed by their listing on Canary Mission, citing the site’s waning credibility and the minor nature of their legal outcomes. They described a blacklisting effort that appears increasingly impotent against shifting public opinion.
“I think especially with the Canary Mission in recent years, it’s lost a lot of its legitimacy,” said one arrested student, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “People don’t really reference it for whether or not someone is hirable.”
This sentiment was born out in their personal experience. The student described a job interview where they were asked about their criminal record.
“I mentioned, ‘Yeah, actually I have been charged with obstruction of a passageway because of a protest on my campus,’” the arrested student said. “And then the interviewer literally laughed and was like, ‘OK, we don’t really care. We want to know if it’s like a DUI or something actually serious.’”
The student also pointed to the group’s operational failings. “They’ve done a really bad job doxxing us. All they’ve been able to find for most people is just like their names, a LinkedIn account, and the general area that they live in,” the student said. “They couldn’t even get our current charges correct.”
The 14 indicted members of the UTD 21 are facing possible obstruction charges. Canary Mission reports that they are still facing their original criminal trespassing charges. The student also said they expected more from what had once been an influential doxxing group.
“The write-ups are giving really low quality high school essay energy,” the student said.
Their assessment underscores a central contradiction in the blacklisting campaign: while designed to impose a lifelong “permanent record,” the actual legal resolutions for most arrestees are far from permanent. Of the 14 students indicted, 12 entered a pretrial diversion program. “Once the program is completed, you expunge the charges from your record,” the student explained, directly contradicting public claims that the arrests would haunt them forever. The remaining two had their charges dismissed after completing community service hours.
The university’s internal discipline was also minimal. A collective student hearing resulted only in a “written warning,” with no impact on diplomas or class registration, though legal bond conditions restricting campus access for non-academic activities remain a lingering burden, particularly for students who live on campus.
For the arrested students, the focus has shifted from defending their records to continuing their advocacy. They see the national discourse moving in their favor.
“There has been a very severe shift globally of the opinion,” the student said, crediting campus movements and direct actions worldwide with exposing the “contradictions of the imperialist system of the U.S. in its strongest client state of Israel.”
The Canary Mission campaign, in their view, is a desperate and clumsy attempt to freeze a political reality that is already thawing.
“It’s been over a year and a half,” the student said, and the primary consequence has been a poorly maintained webpage.
As another student arrestee put it, “the effort seems to reflect not the power of the blacklisters, but their growing irrelevance in the face of a sustained and broadening movement for Palestinian rights.”