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Higher Education

Strike Two: SJP Rutgers- New Brunswick Suspended (Again)

September 2, 2024 Students For Justice In Palestine At Rutgers - New Brunswick, Mondoweiss. , , , , , , , ,
On July 5th, 2024, Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) received a letter from the Office of Student Conduct and Conflict Resolution Services notifying us that we have been suspended until July 4th, 2025. Once again, we recognize this as an act of repression and anti-Palestinian racism, and therefore refuse to adhere to the guidelines of the suspension. The Rutgers Administration has deemed us responsible for the following: 1) Disruptive or Disorderly Conduct, 2) Failure to Comply with University or Civil Authority, and 3) Non-Compliance with Other University Policies. Disruptive Or Disorderly Conduct In regards to Rutgers’ first allegation, we understand that the Rutgers Administration is attempting to maintain the regular operations of the University despite its involvement in the current genocide being committed in Gaza.

Pro-Palestine Students March Against Political Neutrality Policy

September 2, 2024 Merlin Van Alstine and Staff, Fight Back! News!. , , , , , , ,
On August 30, 150 University of Minnesota students, staff, faculty and community members rallied and marched from Morrill Hall to McNamara Plaza in response to the Board of Regents vote that happened earlier this week. The Board voted on a resolution that would impose political and institutional neutrality on the university’s endowment fund. This vote was pushed by new University of Minnesota President Rebecca Cunningham. It effectively makes any sort of divestment from Israel, or weapon manufacturers and other entities complicit in war crimes and human rights violations, impossible. It takes away any accountability that administration has to its students, to its staff, or to its faculty.

Cornell Workers Strike For The First Time In Decades

August 30, 2024 José Pérez-Zetunem, Labor Notes. , , , ,
As students moved into campus, Cornell University’s 1,200 dining, custodial, and maintenance workers in Ithaca, New York, walked off the job August 18. “When you’re not getting paid a living wage in a place that certainly has the money to pay, it feels disrespectful,” said Josh Dexter, a cook. “It can burn out the flame for people.” The university emailed professors, administrative staff, and retirees, urging them to pick up scab shifts. Students reported a hectic start of classes and terrible dining hall food. Cornell also brought in scabs from temporary work agencies like Stafkings and Express Employment. Even Cornell President Michael Kotlikoff was spotted working the dining halls.

CUNY Workers And Students Will Write A New Chapter Of Class Struggle

August 29, 2024 Tatiana Cozzarelli, Left Voice. , , , , , ,
Another school year is starting at the City University of New York (CUNY). We’ll arrive on campuses that are dilapidated and falling apart. Broken elevators and escalators plague campuses across the city. Some departments are in a last-minute scramble to hire adjuncts for classes. It’s an affront to us as workers and to our students who deserve a quality education. Even though I’ve spent all week preparing for the semester, adjuncts and many others don’t get paid until two weeks into the semester. I have $30 in my bank account and I have to borrow money from friends again. Some adjuncts are on food stamps.

As Classes Start, Universities Begin A New Wave Of Repression

August 25, 2024 Maryam Alaniz, Left Voice. , , , ,
The University of California and the California State University system – which is the nation’s largest public university system – have both announced they will enforce a “zero tolerance” policy toward new encampments. Both Rutgers University and George Washington University have suspended Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at their campuses, with George Washington also suspending Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). Meanwhile, Columbia University, which was the epicenter of the student movement, maintains a near-total lockdown that has closed the campus off to the public and is considering granting campus police the power to arrest students.

Right-Wing Network Manufacturing The War Against Higher Education

July 4, 2024 Colleen Scerpella, Exposed CMD. , , ,
A recent white paper by Isaac Kamola, director of the Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, details the ongoing culture-war backlash against higher education in America, largely in response to the grassroots activism of Black Lives Matter in 2020 and increasing LGBTQ+ visibility. More than 150 bills seeking to undermine academic freedom and intervene in university governance were introduced in state legislatures across the country during 2021-2023. While these bills are typically interpreted as an “organic” consequence of increasing polarization among Americans, the current wave of legislation targeting higher education is a coordinated effort between wealthy elites, a network of right-wing and libertarian think tanks, and Republican politicians at the state level.

Detroit Wayne State U Faculty/Staff For Justice In Palestine Formed

June 26, 2024 Abayomi Azikiwe, Black Agenda Report. , , , ,
On June 4, hundreds of students, faculty, alumni and community members rallied on the campus of Wayne State University located in the Midtown District of Detroit. The purpose of the gathering was to send a clear message to the recently appointed President Kimberly Andrews Espy who ordered a Palestine solidarity encampment raided and destroyed by campus police on May 30. Metropolitan Detroit embodies the largest population of people of Arab and Middle Eastern descent in the United States. Consequently, many people within this community have direct familial and linguistic ties to the people most impacted by the settler-colonial regime occupying Palestine.

Why Is A Stanford Student Reporter Still Facing Felony Charges?

June 22, 2024 Kevin Gosztola, The Dissenter. , , , ,
A coalition of press freedom and First Amendment organizations have demanded that the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office abandon felony charges against a Stanford University student reporter.  Dilan Gohill, a freshman, covers student protests for the university’s newspaper known as The Daily. He was arrested on June 5, along with 12 demonstrators, after they engaged in an act of civil disobedience against the Stanford’s investments in companies “that provide material and logistical support to Israel’s current military campaign” in Gaza.  The letter [PDF] from the coalition to the local prosecutor indicates that police jailed Gohill for 15 hours. He could be charged with “felony burglary, vandalism, and conspiracy, according to his lawyers and the U.S. Press Freedom Tracker.”

Democratizing Universities Would Supercharge Pro-Palestine Divestment

June 12, 2024 Akin Olla, Waging Nonviolence. , , , , , ,
The pro-Palestinian divestment movement has erupted across the country, after over a decade of bubbling and stirring under the guidance of organizations like Students for Justice in Palestine. Students have built encampments, led walkouts and passed student government resolutions demanding that their universities cease investing their endowments in companies that uphold Israel’s genocidal apartheid system. Some student governments have even passed resolutions preventing their own budgets from being used to benefit Israel’s regime in any way. University of California Davis was the first to do so, blocking off its $20 million budget from genocide-supporting companies.

Announcing The Launch Of The Online Popular University For Gaza

June 7, 2024 Open Letter, Mondoweiss. , , , ,
As the death toll rises in the ongoing Israeli genocide in Gaza, San Francisco State University (SFSU) has once again decided to cancel its only Palestine course that Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi was scheduled to teach during this summer school. This abrupt and irrational decision seeks to criminalize the Palestine curriculum while dismissing and ignoring popular student demand to learn a critical Palestinian perspective that has been absent on U.S. college campuses. Over the last month, hundreds of students, academics, community leaders, and organizers called on SFSU administrators to urgently reverse their decision to cancel Dr. Abdulhadi’s popular and unique course.

Professor Says She Was Suspended Over Her Palestine Activism

June 6, 2024 Michael Arria, Mondoweiss. , , , , , ,
Last month Sang Hea Kil, a justice studies professor at the San Jose State University, was placed on a temporary suspension. The school claims that Kil violated Article 17 of the collective bargaining agreement between the school and the faculty union, but she believes she was suspended over her Palestine activism. Kil stepped down as co-chair of the Palestine, Arab, and Muslim Caucus of the California Faculty after the school placed her under an investigation for allegedly disruptive activities. “i am resigning now as co-chair and from all committees in pam. it was an honor to fight side by side with you all against the tragic and painful silence around the genocide we experienced at our campuses,” said Kil.

Columbia Law Review Website Put Offline To Censor Palestinian Scholar

June 5, 2024 News Desk, The Cradle. , , , , ,
The Columbia Law Review (CLR) board of directors has taken down the publication’s website in response to its editors publishing a lengthy article about the Nakba by a Palestinian legal scholar, The Intercept reported on 4 June. The CLR publishes scholarly articles, essays, and student notes and is edited by Columbia Law School students. Five months ago, editors of the CLR had reached out to Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah, asking him to contribute an article establishing the “Nakba” as a formal legal concept. Palestinians use the word, which means “catastrophe” in Arabic, to refer to the expulsion and dispossession of 750,000 Palestinians by Zionist militias in 1948.

Professor Resigns Over School’s Involvement In Palestine’s Genocide

June 5, 2024 Alex Binder, Unicorn Riot. , , , ,
My name is Z Williams. I am an alumni of the Sturm College of Law and currently a professor at the Graduate School of Social Work. Today, I am announcing my resignation from the University of Denver on the basis of the school’s ongoing involvement in the US-funded genocide against the Palestinian people. Israel is dropping 2000 pound bombs with surgical precision on refugees living in tents. We have seen their photos — charred bones, headless children, entire generations flattened. Those bombs are funded by US tax dollars, financed by US institutions, and manufactured less than a hundred miles away from Denver. The military and the government behind those bombs are funded by elite private institutions such as the University of Denver.

Open Letter By Gaza Academics And University Administrators

June 3, 2024 Gaza Academics and Administrators, Al Jazeera. , , , , , ,
We have come together as Palestinian academics and staff of Gaza universities to affirm our existence, the existence of our colleagues and our students, and the insistence on our future, in the face of all current attempts to erase us. The Israeli occupation forces have demolished our buildings but our universities live on. We reaffirm our collective determination to remain on our land and to resume teaching, study, and research in Gaza, at our own Palestinian universities, at the earliest opportunity. We call upon our friends and colleagues around the world to resist the ongoing campaign of scholasticide in occupied Palestine, to work alongside us in rebuilding our demolished universities, and to refuse all plans seeking to bypass, erase, or weaken the integrity of our academic institutions.

Congress Trains Academia To Deny Genocide

May 31, 2024 Corinna Barnard, Consortium News. , , , , , ,
“Do you think Israel’s government is genocidal?” That’s the question that Rep. Bob Good, a Republican of Virginia, fired at Jonathan Holloway, president of Rutgers, the state university of New Jersey, last week in a U.S. House committee hearing. Holloway, a scholar of African American history who has been steadily climbing the ladder of administrative positions at top-tier schools, looked stunned. “Um sir, I don’t … have an opinion on Israel’s um …in terms of that phrase.” Good: “You do not have an opinion as to whether Israel’s government is genocidal?” Holloway: “Uh, no sir, I think Israel has a right to exist and protect itself.” Good: “Do you think Israel’s government is genocidal?” Holloway: “I think Israel has a right to exist and protect itself, sir.”
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