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Repression

Professor At Center Of Columbia University Deportation Scandal Is Former Israeli Spy

The professor at the center of the Columbia University deportation scandal is a former Israeli intelligence official, MintPress News can reveal. The professor at the center of the Columbia University deportation scandal is a former Israeli intelligence official, MintPress News can reveal. Mahmoud Khalil, a recent graduate of the university’s School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), was abducted by Immigration Customs Enforcement (ICE) Saturday for his role in organizing protests last year against Israel’s attack on Gaza. Khalil’s dean, Dr. Keren Yarhi-Milo, head of the School of International and Public Affairs, is a former Israeli military intelligence officer and official at Israel’s Mission to the United Nations.

How Pro-Palestine Student Activists Are Fighting Increasing Repression

The student movement for Palestine is once again in the news following reports that ICE detained Mahmoud Khalil, a leader of pro-Palestine organizing at Columbia University. The Trump administration appears to be delivering on its promise to go after foreign students who participate in the movement for Palestine. Trump has already passed several executive orders as part of this McCarthyist attack on universities. The outrage against Khalil’s detention is clear. In just over a day, a petition calling for Khalil’s release has been sent over 2.3 million times.

Columbia University’s Nazi Tradition

According to Columbia Magazine, published by Columbia University’s Office of Alumni and Development, but ultimately named for a brutal imperialist mercenary, in 1933 while Nazis in Germany were burning books by Jews, Columbia’s president — and future Nobel Peace Prize recipient — Nicholas Murray Butler “welcomed Hans Luther, the German ambassador to the United States, to Morningside Heights, insisting that he be accorded ‘the greatest courtesy and respect.'” Columbia’s Daily Spectator newspaper “denounced what it saw as Butler’s courtship of the German government and its universities.”

State Department To Use AI To Revoke Visas Of Students Who ‘Appear Pro-Hamas’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio is launching an AI-driven effort to revoke the visas of foreigners in the US who “appear pro-Hamas” in a crackdown targeting pro-Palestine protests on college campuses, Axios reported on Thursday. The report said the effort will involve AI-assisted reviews of social media accounts of tens of thousands of foreign students in the US on visas that will look for “evidence of alleged terrorist sympathies expressed after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.” The language in the report suggests that any foreign students who attend pro-Palestine demonstrations or express sympathy for Palestinians online could be swept up in the crackdown since opponents of the Israeli siege on Gaza or US military support for Israel are often labeled “pro-Hamas.”

Columbia University Cracks Down On Pro-Palestine Student Activists

Students at Columbia University who expressed opposition to the US–Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza are being investigated by a secretive disciplinary body known as the Office of Institutional Equity (OIE), which is targeting anyone involved in activities ranging from sharing social media posts supporting Palestinians to participating in “unauthorized” protests. Drop Site News reports that Columbia requires students under investigation for “discrimination based on their speech” to sign a non-disclosure agreement to access unredacted evidence against them, effectively blocking public discussion of the accusations and process.

Minnesota Movement For Divestment From Israel Resists Repression

Minneapolis, MN — On Saturday, March 1, more than 60 Twin Cities community members gathered to attend a “State Board of Divestment” speak-out event hosted by the Minnesota Anti-War Committee in a Minneapolis community center. Minnesota’s State Board of Investment (SBI), a large public fund managed by state officials Governor Tim Walz, Attorney General Keith Ellison, State Auditor Julie Blaha, and Secretary of State Steve Simon. It currently invests approximately $5.4 billion in apartheid Israel, Israeli companies, weapons manufacturers that sell to Israel’s military, and other companies that prop up Israel’s apartheid system.

Campus Police Using Israeli Spy Tech To Crack Down On Students

In the early days of his presidency, Donald Trump announced he would be “fighting anti-Semitism” on college campuses by prosecuting and revoking visas for certain students deemed to be “Hamas sympathizers.” In a fact sheet accompanying an executive order with “measures to combat anti-Semitism,” Trump threatens students: “Come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you.” The order itself states that the Department of Education will seek to familiarize institutions of higher education with these goals, so that universities may “monitor for and report activities by alien students and staff relevant to those grounds and for ensuring that such reports about aliens lead … to investigations and, if warranted, actions to remove such aliens.”

Yves Engler: ‘I’m Being Charged For Responding To Anti-Palestinian Hate’

Tomorrow, the Montreal police will arrest me for posting to social media against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Today, I received a phone call from a Montreal police officer by the last name of Crivello. She asked me to come to a downtown police station where I will be charged for harassment and indecent communication. Crivello said a complaint was submitted against me months ago by a legal firm on behalf of racist media personality Dahlia Kurtz. Crivello said I had described Kurtz as a “genocide” supporter and “fascist” on Twitter. Guilty as charged.

Princeton Students Go To Trial Nearly A Year After Gaza Encampment

Nearly one whole year after students at Princeton University held an encampment on their campus in solidarity with Gaza, 12 students and one postdoctoral fellow will head to trial. In a statement released by Princeton Israeli Apartheid Divest (PIAD) — the main organization behind Princeton’s Gaza solidarity encampment — organizers claim that the trial date “arose from a dangerous process of intimidation and coercion.” The trial is scheduled for April 14-16 and the students face charges of “defiant trespass” for briefly holding a building occupation at Clio Hall, home of the Princeton Graduate School’s administrative offices.

Chris Hedges Report: Arab Regimes And The Betrayal Of Palestine

Farah El-Sharif, writer, academic and Visiting Scholar at Stanford, is uncompromisingly blunt in her assessment of the Middle East. The decades of repression faced by an entire people have produced a fragmented society—culturally and through colonially imposed borders. To help understand why the Muslim world is so broken, corrupt and full of contradictions, El Sherif joins host Chris Hedges on this episode of The Chris Hedges Report. “The systemic repression that Muslim communities worldwide experience is inextricably linked to the interventionist, expansionist, supremacist American-Israeli Western project,” El Sharif says.

Columbia Students Sue University For Attacks On Pro-Palestine Activism

Three students from Columbia University filed a lawsuit on Monday morning against the school administration for their suspensions related to their pro-Palestine activism on campus. Among the claims in the complaint, the students state that the university violated its own policies during the disciplinary process, that the university targeted the students for their views, and that it violated New York’s landlord tenant laws when it evicted the students from university housing. “The university just pulled out all the roadblocks and threw out its rule book in an attempt to punish and silence the plaintiffs however they could,” James Carlson, an attorney representing the students, told Drop Site News.

The Encampment Movement Leads The Way Under Trump

On January 20, Donald Trump was sworn in for his second term as President of the United States. As the country reels from his inauguration and the sweeping executive orders of his first week in office, American progressives are left grappling with the implications of a new Trump Administration, and how our organizing projects might come under renewed assault by a hard right Republican trifecta that controls both houses of Congress and is well positioned to enact its legislative agenda. Many organizations are rightfully concerned about the repression and lawfare that Trump’s return to the White House threatens.

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.

Trump To Cancel Student Visas For Palestine Protesters

Donald Trump will sign an executive order to deport non-citizen university students who have participated in protests opposing the Gaza genocide. “To all the resident aliens who joined in the pro-jihadist protests, we put you on notice: come 2025, we will find you, and we will deport you,” said the President in a fact sheet. “I will also quickly cancel the student visas of all Hamas sympathizers on college campuses, which have been infested with radicalism like never before.” Although the order has not been issued yet, the White House has released materials in support of the order and unnamed White House officials have been quoted in the press saying the announcement can be expected as early as today.

I Was Suspended From Emory Over My Palestine Activism

When I interviewed for Emory’s medical school in 2018, I asked a senior admissions officer, in these exact words, “Will it be a problem that I am Palestinian, one who will be advocating for the liberation of Palestine?” And he replied, “No, of course not, it won’t be a problem.” Now, several years later, when I am holding true to the promise I delivered both in writing and in words, to be a physician who speaks out against structures of violence, I am being disciplined. I was transparent about my commitment to not just protect life on an individual level, but to tearing down systems that take life on a massive scale.