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Student Activism

Bowdoin Students Launch First Gaza Solidarity Encampment Of Trump Era

Activists at Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine have launched what is believed to be the first Palestine solidarity encampment since President Donald Trump took office, occupying the first floor of the liberal arts school's student union to protest the U.S. leader's proposal to take over the Gaza Strip and expel its native Palestinian population. Bowdoin Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) occupied the first floor of Smith Union on Thursday night and erected tents there, The Bowdoin Orient reported. They named the encampment after Sha'ban al-Dalou, a 19-year-old computer engineering student at al-Azhar University in Gaza who burned alive in a refugee tent encampment bombed by Israel last October.

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.

Hundreds Of Students Walk Out To Protest ICE Operations

San Jose, CA – Several hundred people protested in East San Jose on Monday, January 28, against recent arrests made by ICE in the predominantly Chicano neighborhood. The protest began when hundreds of students organized a walkout from Overfelt High School and marched to the King and Story Road intersection. King and Story is an historic location in the Chicano and immigrant rights movement, and was the starting place for past mega-marches. Protesters waved Mexican flags and held signs with slogans such as, “Legalization for all,” “No somos criminales” and “Immigrant rights are civil rights.”

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.

Higher Education Must Champion Democracy, Not Surrender To Fascism

For decades, neoliberalism has systematically attacked the welfare state, undermined public institutions and weakened the foundations of collective well-being. Shrouded in the alluring language of liberty, it transforms market principles into a dominant creed, insisting that every facet of life conform to the imperatives of profit and economic efficiency. But in reality, neoliberalism consolidates wealth in the hands of a financial elite, celebrates ruthless individualism, promotes staggering levels of inequality, perpetuates systemic injustices like racism and militarism, and commodifies everything, leaving nothing sacred or untouchable.

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.”

University Of Toronto Students Score A Win For The Climate

When the University of Toronto’s School of the Environment announced in October that it will no longer accept donations from the fossil fuel industry, the news sent waves through the growing movement to get coal, oil and gas companies off campuses. Among other things, that means banning fossil fuel corporations from financing academic research. “This victory shows students have the ability to enact institutional change,” said Erin Mackey, a leader of the group Climate Justice UofT, which pushed for the fossil fuel money ban. “That’s especially important when, at many universities, students who want to make change are having the door slammed in their faces.”

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.

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.

UCSF Health Professionals Charge Leadership With Complicity In Genocide

Almost a year ago, on October 31, 2023, faculty held a press conference in front of the Helen Diller Medical Center at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), in order to amplify the warnings of Palestinian colleagues at al-Ahli Hospital who predicted that Israel’s bombing of the hospital would be the first in a campaign that would decimate Gaza’s healthcare infrastructure. At the time, British-Palestinian surgeon Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, addressing the world while standing among the dead, stated that Israel’s targeting of al-Ahli Hospital signaled a decisive shift, marking the moment when its assault on Gaza “stopped being a war, and became a genocide.”

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Due to the attacks on our fiscal sponsor, we were unable to raise funds online for nearly two years.  As the bills pile up, your help is needed now to cover the monthly costs of operating Popular Resistance.

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