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Campus Movement

More Than Jobs At Stake In Attack On Pro-Palestinian Campus Speech

For months before U.S. President Donald Trump took office, nearly daily reports rolled in of students and professors on trial for their activism for Palestinian life. New York University suspended 11 students who were part of a peaceful flyer distribution and sit-in, including students who simply sat in the library lobby in solidarity. Eleven students at Swarthmore College faced expulsion on assault charges for using a bullhorn. Emerson College laid off 10 staff members, blaming protests for Palestine as a cause for low enrollment, and then using layoffs to target pro-Palestine employees.

NYU Imposes One-Year Suspensions On 11 Students

On Dec. 11, over a dozen NYU students and faculty dropped flyers and hung banners throughout the Bobst Library while 13 people sat in on the administrative floor of thelibrary. The actionists were demanding a meeting with administrators, who had, in the spring during the Gaza solidarity encampment movement at NYU, promised students to disclose the university’s endowment, including all its investments in weapons manufacturers and ties to Israel and companies that profit off its occupation of Palestine. The direct action was organized by student group Shut It Down NYU

The Chris Hedges Report: America’s Academic Gulag

“You can’t just sit there and build drones and not talk about who it’s serving and who does it help,” says Richard Solomon, PhD student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and member of the Coalition for Palestine at MIT. On this episode of The Chris Hedges Report, Solomon and fellow MIT PhD student Prahlad Iyengar detail their battle against the historic institution’s active participation in the genocide in Gaza. Their story exemplifies the repression students face across the country who dare question how their work and labor are used to advance the illegal and morally reprehensible goals of the Israeli military.

Despite Repression, Campus Movement For Palestine Remains Strong

This December and January, 50 protestors are facing arraignment for their May 15, 2024 arrests at a University of California Irvine (UCI) protest opposing the Gaza genocide. The hushed arraignments of student protestors and their supporters is just one node in the network of quiet repression spindling across university campuses this past fall, which includes banning students from campus and using punishments to chill student speech. One of those set to be arraigned is Dr. Tiffany Willoughby-Herard, who was arrested while supporting student protests, effectively nullifying her university-required de-escalation training by the violent force of her arrest.

No More Research For Genocide At MIT

On November 7th, we published an op-ed titled “Daniela Rus, The People Demand: No More Research for Genocide” in the MIT Tech. Our piece detailed how Prof. Daniela Rus, director of MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, uses Israeli Ministry of Defense money to develop algorithms with applications in “multirobot security defense and surveillance.” Rather than engage with these publicly verifiable facts, the Tech’s editorial board (under the guidance of Prof. Rus) retracted our op-ed. MIT sent several of us “no contact” and “no harassment” orders for Prof. Rus, disciplining one student for simply writing our Op-Ed’s title on a public chalkboard!

University Of Rochester Students Face Seven Years In Jail

Last month four students at the University of Rochester were charged with second-degree criminal mischief for their connection to “Wanted” posters that were put up around campus. The posters accused a small number of faculty members of enabling genocide and supporting the displacement of Palestinians in Gaza. Not all the faculty members identified are Jewish, but the university immediately sent out emails tagging the action as antisemitic. Pro-Israel campus groups condemned the posters, including the school’s Hillel chapter which claimed they “disproportionately singled out Jewish faculty and staff and used language that spreads harmful, antisemitic ideas about Jewish people.”

Universities Continue To Retaliate Against Staff For Gaza Protests

Clara C. began working at Columbia University one month after the start of the genocide in Gaza in October 2023. She was hired in the Germanic Languages Department as a Department Assistant. Like many incoming members of the Columbia community, she had high hopes for her time at the university. Seven months later, the illusion of Ivy League ambition and a rich intellectual environment vanished when she was suspended from her post, ostensibly because of her involvement in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment. By early summer, she was terminated.

Wisconsin Students Charge UW Board Of Regents With Genocide

Madison, WI – In a show of student power, nearly 50 protesters marched into the UW board of regents meeting Thursday, December 5, to put Palestine and divestment on the Finance Committee agenda. This latest militant action comes after a large-scale administration failure to uphold the Madison and Milwaukee encampment agreements on disclosure and divestment from apartheid Israel. Despite the freezing temperatures, the students opened with a rally outside the event hall. During the rally, SDS and Freedom Road Socialist Organization member Kayla Patterson told the crowd, “The simple truth is that the board of regents stands on the wrong side of history.

Private Israeli Security Firms Are Killing Free Speech On College Campuses

Following the unprecedented proliferation of student-led protests against Israel’s war on Gaza across U.S. and international college campuses, educational institutions have found themselves under immense pressure to crush the movement from private Israeli security firms. Following a surge of demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience in protests of Israel’s genocide in Gaza by students across U.S. college campuses, university administrations faced immense pressure to strengthen security measures and suppress the movement.

Berkeley Free Speech Movement Forged An Organizing Blueprint

U.S. universities have always been sites of contestation and political struggle. Today, their governing bodies are dominated by representatives of corporate power. Issues like the student debt crisis and military research are bound up with universities. The right wing, often joined by establishment Democrats, attacks college curricula and scapegoats students to score political points. Student activists today are challenging university ties to everything from fossil fuels to racist policing — and, of course, to the genocide in Palestine.

Massachusetts Institute Of Technology Targeting Pro-Palestine Activists

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has taken severe measures to suppress the voices of two prominent pro-Palestine activists on campus: PhD student Prahlad Iyengar and Dr. Michel DeGraff, a professor who has taught linguistics at the university for over 28 years. Iyengar has been banned from campus, which is also his place of work, without due process. He has also been denied union representation by MIT’s administration, despite himself being a union steward. He faces imminent threat of suspension as well as expulsion. MIT prohibited Dr. Degraff from teaching a course on Palestine, suspended his annual pay raise, and had his official status at the university changed from “Professor of Linguistics” to “Faculty-at-Large,” also without due process.

Week Of Action For Tulane Encampment Defendants

New Orleans, LA – Protesters gathered twice at New Orleans Municipal Court during the week of November 18, as six activists who were arrested during the student-led Popular University for Gaza encampment attended their first days of trial. They all face misdemeanor charges, ranging from trespassing to battery on an officer. The activists were all arrested by Tulane University Police Department in the first hours of the Encampment, which was held for two nights in April and May this year. Supporters of the defendants held a “phone zap” on Monday to flood the phone lines of the city attorney’s office.

Northwestern’s Campaign Against Palestine And Anti-Zionist Jews

On the first day of Sukkot, the Jewish harvest holiday, I joined my fellow members of Northwestern Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) in constructing a sukkah on our campus. Just hours later, Northwestern staff tore down our religious structure — allegedly, they claimed, in the name of fighting antisemitism — but really because it dared express solidarity with Palestinians. Sukkot honors the displacement of our ancestors and the temporary structures they inhabited while fleeing slavery, and erecting a sukkah, a temporary shelter in which we dwell for eight days, is an essential part of celebrating this holiday.

University Of California Community Members Launch People’s Tribunal

Faculty, staff, and students of the University of California and concerned community members launched the UC People’s Tribunal for Palestine to hold their leadership–UC President Michael Drake, the UC Regents, and Governor Gavin Newsom–accountable for complicity in the devastation and destruction of the Palestinian people. Beginning on November 11, 2024, members of the UC community will assemble to charge UC leaders with direct and indirect complicity in genocide and Nakba, the ongoing process of dislocation, fragmentation, and mass killing that seeks to complete the work of erasing the existence of the Palestinian people that began in 1948.

University Of Pennsylvania Police Raid Pro-Palestine Students’ Home

On Friday, October 18 at 6 am, 12 Penn Police officers and one Philadelphia Police officer raided the home of pro-Palestine Penn students organizers. After threatening to break down the door with a battering ram and pointing a gun at their neighbor, they stormed the house in full tactical gear. The police banged on each door as students were sleeping, pointing rifles and handguns at their heads as they exited their rooms with their hands raised. Officers refused to show a warrant to residents of the house, and refused to provide their names and badge numbers. While the students were corralled by police in a room, one student was separated and taken in for questioning.
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