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Former Brandeis University president on Gaza protests: Schools must protect free expression on campus

Former Brandeis University president on Gaza protests: Schools must protect free expression on campus

  We look at how university administrators have responded to Palestine solidarity protests by students with Frederick Lawrence, former president of Brandeis University and now the CEO of the Phi Beta Kappa Society and a lecturer at Georgetown Law School. Brandeis was founded in 1948 by the American Jewish community in the wake of the Holocaust and named after the first Jewish Supreme Court justice, the celebrated free speech advocate Louis Brandeis. Lawrence says the nationwide university crackdown on student…

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As college campuses erupt in protest, some see a political transformation

As college campuses erupt in protest, some see a political transformation

Arun Kundnani writes: In the summer of 2020, millions of teenagers, outraged by the police killing of George Floyd, took to the streets of American towns and cities as part of the largest protests against police brutality in U.S. history. Though years have passed, that energy has not entirely dissipated. Many of the young people who protested in 2020 are now college students campaigning for the U.S. to withdraw its support for Israel’s war in Gaza. They constitute the cutting…

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I’m a UCLA professor. Why didn’t the administration stop last night’s egregious violence?

I’m a UCLA professor. Why didn’t the administration stop last night’s egregious violence?

David N. Myers writes: UCLA, the top-rated public university in the United States, experienced one of the darkest nights in its 105-year history on Tuesday. Over the course of my 33-year career at UCLA, I have never seen anything so terrifying take place. Around 11 p.m., a group of masked counter-demonstrators made their way to the Royce Quad in the heart of campus and began to attack the encampment set up last week by demonstrators opposing the war in Gaza….

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Why it took hours for police to quell attack by Zionist mob on pro-Palestinian camp at UCLA

Why it took hours for police to quell attack by Zionist mob on pro-Palestinian camp at UCLA

The Los Angeles Times reports: When dozens of counterprotesters swarmed UCLA late Tuesday night, attacking the Palestinian solidarity encampment at the center of campus, university authorities were quickly overwhelmed. Law enforcement sources told The Times there were only a few UCLA police officers on hand. They tried to stop the violence but were no match for the crowd and had to retreat, having been attacked themselves, the sources said. A group of unarmed private security guards was there as well….

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House passes antisemitism bill over complaints from First Amendment advocates

House passes antisemitism bill over complaints from First Amendment advocates

The Washington Post reports: House Republicans are seeking to unite their unruly majority around an evergreen conservative cause, devising a strict response to the wave of pro-Palestinian protests that have roiled college campuses across the country in recent weeks. GOP leaders this week announced plans for new oversight investigations of elite universities where — in the words of House Republican Whip Tom Emmer (Minn.) — “pro-terrorist anti-Semites [are] taking over.” And on Wednesday, they passed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which…

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Gen Z sees the Gaza protests as their 1968 moment: ‘We built this on their legacy’

Gen Z sees the Gaza protests as their 1968 moment: ‘We built this on their legacy’

Richard Hall writes: Historical comparisons between the mass protests of 1968 and today’s student demonstrations in solidarity with Gaza are both imperfect and hard to avoid. It’s been just 10 days since Columbia University students pitched the first tent on the campus lawns, and already the protests have galvanised a generation of college students much in the same way the Vietnam war did 56 years ago – spreading from coast to coast. It is not just the scale of the…

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Columbia University faculty stand up to defend students in Gaza Solidarity Encampment

Columbia University faculty stand up to defend students in Gaza Solidarity Encampment

NOW: Columbia University faculty link arms and form a wall in front of the entrance to the ‘Gaza Solidarity Encampment’ as hundreds of students encircle the both lawns Students remaining in the encampment were told they could face disciplinary action after 2PM pic.twitter.com/C1XRgHzs8b — katie smith (@probablyreadit) April 29, 2024 My office was right by the encampment, and I cannot understand how it interferes with exams. It’s that little red circle. Not a single notable the protest in the history…

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‘Kill all Arabs’: The feds are investigating UMass Amherst for anti-Palestinian bias

‘Kill all Arabs’: The feds are investigating UMass Amherst for anti-Palestinian bias

The Intercept reports: The Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation into the University of Massachusetts Amherst in response to a complaint that alleges that the school took months to address the harassment of Palestinian and Arab students. In the previously unreported civil rights complaint, 18 students said that they have “been the target of extreme anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab harassment and discrimination by fellow UMass students, including receiving racial slurs, death threats and in one instance,…

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With eyes on U.S. college campuses, students stress: ‘Gaza is why we’re here’

With eyes on U.S. college campuses, students stress: ‘Gaza is why we’re here’

Al Jazeera reports: Global attention has turned to universities across the United States, where students have erected encampments to demand action to end Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip. The growing protests have taken root on the campuses of some of the country’s top academic institutions, including Columbia and Harvard. And over the past weeks, they have spurred heated debates around freedom of speech, Palestinian solidarity activism in the US, and the use of force to disperse student protesters, among…

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The media should be celebrating college protesters instead of demonizing them

The media should be celebrating college protesters instead of demonizing them

Dan Froomkin writes: Mainstream-media reporters covering the growing wave of college protests against Israel’s war in Gaza have adopted an overwhelmingly negative tone about something they should be celebrating: the peaceful free expression of college students understandably devastated by the pulverizing of Gaza and the slaughter of over 34,000 Palestinians by the Israeli military. The root cause of this journalistic dysfunction is that too many reporters have embraced the toxic presumption that any anti-Gaza-war protest is inherently antisemitic, and that…

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We visited the solidarity encampment at Columbia University. Here’s what it’s really like

We visited the solidarity encampment at Columbia University. Here’s what it’s really like

New York City Council Members Tiffany Cabán, Alexa Avilés, Shahana Hanif, and Sandy Nurse write: If you only go by the recent statements from Mayor Eric Adams, Gov. Kathy Hochul, and President Joe Biden, you might conclude that a student protest against the mass killing in Gaza is worse than the killing itself. These official statements, and so many posts on social media, depict the Gaza Solidarity Encampment on the Columbia University campus as a cesspit of antisemitic hatred and…

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Pro-Palestinian encampments and protests spread on college campuses across the U.S.

Pro-Palestinian encampments and protests spread on college campuses across the U.S.

NPR reports: Tensions are growing on U.S. college campuses, as the pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have rocked New York-area schools in recent days — and the ensuing arrests of participants — spread from coast to coast. Students have launched protests and encampments at more than a dozen schools across the country, from Massachusetts to Michigan to California. They are calling for an end both to the Israel-Hamas war and their universities’ investment in companies that profit from it or, more broadly,…

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Protests at Columbia, Yale, and many other campuses across the U.S.

Protests at Columbia, Yale, and many other campuses across the U.S.

Bruce Robbins, the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities at Columbia, writes: When Minouche Shafik, the president of Columbia University, testified before the House of Representatives on 17 April, she didn’t fall into the traps set a few months earlier for the presidents of Penn, MIT and Harvard, two of whom are now gone. They had been asked whether they would permit genocidal talk against the Jews on their campuses – a dark discourse that lurked, according to the…

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How the Democratic party is hurting itself by betraying young voters and failing to defend free speech

How the Democratic party is hurting itself by betraying young voters and failing to defend free speech

The New York Times reports: It’s a nightmare scenario for Democrats: Protesters disrupt their convention this summer; they clash with the police; chaos seems to take hold. It may not be imaginary. As protests over Israel’s war in Gaza continue to intensify, especially on college campuses, activists are preparing to be in Chicago this summer for the Democratic National Convention. The very idea sends some Democrats right back to 1968, when their convention, also in Chicago, was overshadowed by infighting…

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Columbia University protests and the lessons of ‘Gym Crow’

Columbia University protests and the lessons of ‘Gym Crow’

Judd Legum writes: In the early morning hours of April 30, 1968, then-Columbia University President Grayson Kirk summoned the NYPD to arrest hundreds of student protestors. About 1,000 police officers arrived on campus and, wielding nightsticks, violently arrested about 700 students. Almost 150 protesters ended up in the hospital with lacerations, a few broken bones, and other injuries. The student protesters had occupied several university buildings, forcing the school to suspend classes, in protest of Columbia’s plans to build a…

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Columbia University faces full-blown crisis as rabbi calls for Jewish students to ‘return home’

Columbia University faces full-blown crisis as rabbi calls for Jewish students to ‘return home’

CNN reports: Columbia University is facing a full-blown crisis heading into Passover as a rabbi linked to the Ivy League school urged Jewish students to stay home and tense confrontations on campus sparked condemnation from the White House and New York officials. The atmosphere is so charged that Columbia officials announced students can attend classes and even possibly take exams virtually starting Monday – the first day of Passover, a major Jewish holiday set to begin in the evening. Tensions…

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