Higher Education

Congress Trains Academia To Deny Genocide

May 31, 2024 Corinna Barnard, Consortium News. Educate! Congress, Gaza, Genocide, Higher Education, Israel, Palestine, Repression

“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.”

How Tens Of Thousands Of Graduate Workers Are Organizing

May 30, 2024 Valentina Luketa, Labor Notes. Organize! Graduate Students, Higher Education, Labor Movement, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

It’s the biggest organizing wave the U.S. labor movement has seen in decades. Graduate workers are unionizing in huge numbers, winning drive after drive with 90 percent support or more. What’s more, the workers are in the driver’s seat of these campaigns, with little help from union staff. Most union organizing these days relies on a staff-heavy approach that’s tough to scale up. But the grad worker upsurge offers a sketch of a worker-led model that could help reverse labor’s decline. The United Electrical Workers (UE) alone has organized close to 30,000 graduate workers over the past year and a half. We’ve won elections at eight major universities, including MIT and the University of Minnesota.

The ‘Blurred Lines’ Of Columbia’s Task Force On Anti-Semitism

May 29, 2024 James Schamus, Mondoweiss. Resist! Anti-Semitism, Campus Movement, Columbia University, Higher Education, Israel, Palestine, Repression, Zionism

On May 16, as Columbia University’s Spring semester ended, the school newspaper published an Op-Ed from the “Task Force on Anti-Semitism” appointed by President Minouche Shafik last November. The Task Force, made up of pro-Israel faculty, announced at its inception its goal of making “ambitious changes” to the University’s “policies, rules, and practices,” and has already released one report supporting increased restrictions on student protests. While it has made a point of refusing to define what it means by “antisemitism,” its latest communication indicates that Columbia faculty and students critical of Israel and Zionism may well be in real danger should the Task Force deliver on its currently-stated goals.

A Historic Ruling: NCAA Ordered To Pay Student Athletes

May 29, 2024 Otis Grotewohl, Workers' World. Create! Athletes, Higher Education, NCAA, Sports, Victory, Worker Rights

A historic working-class victory was achieved on May 23, when the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) bosses agreed to settle three federal antitrust cases that were filed by three student athletes. The agreement will allow schools to directly pay student players for the first time in history. In what is known as the “amateurism model,” college athletes have traditionally been excluded from receiving any compensation for their athletic talent, name recognition and labor. The recent settlement is expected to change that super-exploitative practice. The NCAA Board of Governors, as well as the parasitic leaders of its five “power conferences” — the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC), Big Ten, Big 12, Southeastern Conference (SEC) and Pac-12 — agreed to pay more than $2.8 billion in back pay and damages over the next 10 years to both past and current athletes.

US Undergrads Are Getting A Crash Course In Labor Organizing

May 20, 2024 James Anderson, Truthout. Organize! Higher Education, Student organizing, Student Workers, Unions, Worker Rights and Jobs

When Grinnell College wanted to begin compensating community advisors (CA), who work to provide students living in residence halls with programming and support for personal and academic issues, on an hourly basis, undergraduates at the private liberal arts school in Iowa took collective action. They went on strike at the end of the spring semester in 2023. Hannah Sweet, a third-year student at the school who works as a CA, opposed the change because it would have amounted to a substantial pay cut given the 24/7 nature of the job. “One of the main things we did was we performed ‘structure tests’ leading up to the strike date,” said Sweet, who’s now co-president of the Union of Grinnell Student Dining Workers (UGSDW), which now represents all undergrad labor on campus.

Universities As Tentacles Of The Police State

May 5, 2024 Michael Hudson, Orinoco Tribune. Educate! Campus Movement, Higher Education, New McCarthyism, Police State, Student Activism, Zionism

The recent Congressional hearings leading to a bloodbath of university presidents brings back memories from my teen-age years in the 1950s when everyone’s eyes were glued to the TV broadcast of the McCarthy hearings. And the student revolts incited by vicious college presidents trying to stifle academic freedom when it opposes foreign unjust wars awakens memories of the 1960s protests against the Vietnam War and the campus clampdowns confronting police violence. I was the junior member of the “Columbia three” alongside Seymour Melman and my mentor Terence McCarthy.

Administrators Are Trying To Strip Decision-Making Power From Faculty

April 27, 2024 By Bertin M. Louis Jr. and Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt , Truthout. Educate! Democracy, Faculty, Governance, Higher Education, Worker Rights

The 2023-2024 academic year has already been very challenging for institutions of higher learning. In the midst of college closures, the firing of tenured faculty members, politically motivated bans of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) offices and programs, academic program cuts at public universities, attacks on faculty and students protesting the war on Gaza, and attacks on Black faculty members for anonymous claims of plagiarism and research misconduct, there is an additional trend which is contributing to the erosion of higher education as we know it: reducing or eliminating shared governance.

Revolt In The Universities

April 26, 2024 Chris Hedges, Consortium News. Resist! Chris Hedges, Higher Education, Israel, Palestine, Student Activism

Achinthya Sivalingam, a graduate student in Public Affairs at Princeton University did not know when she woke up this morning that shortly after 7 a.m. she would join hundreds of students across the country who have been arrested, evicted and banned from campus for protesting the genocide in Gaza. She wears a blue sweatshirt, sometimes fighting back tears, when I speak to her. We are seated at a small table in the Small World Coffee shop on Witherspoon Street, half a block away from the university she can no longer enter, from the apartment she can no longer live in and from the campus where in a few weeks she was scheduled to graduate.

Colleges And Universities Collaborate With The State To Silence Protests

April 25, 2024 Jacqueline Luqman, Black Agenda Report. Educate! Higher Education, Israel, Palestine, Solidarity, State Repression

As we have seen over the past few months, colleges and universities across the United States have shown a dangerous willingness to punish their students for speaking out for Justice for Palestine on their campuses. The very institutions that claim to be the centers of intellectual rigor, freedom of thought and expression, and developers of critical thinking skills for America’s post-secondary school development, even claiming to be the groomers and shapers of America’s future generations of leaders, are today the institutions that call the police on student protesters.

Texas State Troopers In Riot Gear Crack Down On University Students

April 25, 2024 Julia Conley, Common Dreams. Resist! Higher Education, Israel, Palestine, Police, Student Activism, Texas

Civil rights advocates on Wednesday expressed alarm at a rapid escalation by Texas state troopers who descended on a student-led protest at University of Texas at Austin, which was organized in solidarity with Gaza and other U.S. college students taking part in a growing anti-war movement. UT students gathered on campus at midday and were promptly given two minutes to disperse by state troopers, who had already been called to the scene. The troopers were equipped with riot gear, with some carrying assault rifles and several stationed on horses.

Faculty At University Of Texas Austin Strike In Solidarity With Students

April 25, 2024 Olivia Wood, Left Voice. Resist! Higher Education, Israel, Palestine, Solidarity, State Repression, Student Activism, Texas

Faculty from universities across the country have begun to mobilize in solidarity with the student movement for Palestine. From NYU, where faculty linked arms to protect students from police; to Columbia University, where faculty engaged in a solidarity walkout with the Gaza Solidarity Encampment; to Barnard College, where faculty planned a sick-out in defense of their students — faculty are rising up in defense of their students. At the University of Texas Austin, faculty have announced a 24-hour work stoppage as part of the fight against student repression.

Argentine Student Movement Erupts Against Milei’s Adjustment

April 25, 2024 People's Dispatch. Resist! Argentina, Austerity, Buenos Aires, Higher Education, Javier Milei, Neoliberalism, Student Activism

“We do not want them to take away our dreams. Our future does not belong to them,” said the president of the Argentine University Federation (FUA), Piera Fernández de Piccolini, to an overflowing Plaza de Mayo during the march in defense of public universities on April 23. The protest organized by student groups and educators unions was also supported by labor unions and left parties. At the Plaza, hundreds of thousands chanted: “The country is not for sale!” “Education is a fundamental human right because it reduces inequality,” added Piccolini, who read the closing declaration of the mobilization.

Students Launch Encampments In Solidarity With Gaza Across The US

April 23, 2024 People's Dispatch. Resist! Columbia University, Gaza, Genocide, Higher Education, Israel, New York University, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, Police, Repression, Student Activism

Almost a week after Columbia students launched their Gaza Solidarity Encampment, students across the country have taken from their example and began encampments in public spaces in their own universities in solidarity with Palestine. In the early hours of the morning of April 22, students at New York University began an encampment on Gould Plaza, joining their New York City counterparts at the New School, which had launched an encampment the previous day. In the Greater Boston Area students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Emerson College, and Tufts University set up encampments at their own universities.

Protest Sends Anti-Genocide Message To Biden Campaign

April 23, 2024 Drake Myers, Fight Back News!. Resist! Genocide, Higher Education, Israel, Joe Biden, Minnesota, Palestine

Minneapolis, Minnesota – On Friday, April 15, the Free Palestine Coalition led a protest of around 100 people outside of Education Minnesota’s Representative Convention. Education Minnesota (EDMN) is a large state-level educators union that announced only the day before that they would be delaying their entire program to host the opening event of First Lady Dr .Jill Biden’s “Educators for Biden-Harris” national tour. Protesters outside the convention drew attention to the issues of recent attacks on academic freedom, with speakers like Dr Sima Shaksari from Educators for Justice in Palestine – UMN...

Long Live The Student Resistance

April 22, 2024 Nushrat Nur, Mondoweiss. Resist! Columbia University, Higher Education, Israel, Palestine, Palestine Solidarity, Student Activism

As Palestinians brave the occupation in Gaza, students everywhere continue to light the torch of Palestinian liberation on their college campuses. Institutionalized academia has long stood against the radical struggle of student activists, and the last 7 months have proven no different. Activism on college campuses has always been a stronghold for social justice and anti-war movements, but even more than that, it is a study of hope as a discipline. As despair eats at us and threatens hopelessness, students remind us that together, freedom is not only attainable, it is inevitable.

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