Israeli student filed lawsuit after suspension for spraying pro-Palestinian protesters with foul-smelling substance
Columbia University has reached a $395,000 settlement with a student who was suspended in January after spraying student protesters with a foul-smelling substance at one of several campus demonstrations in support of Palestine.
The Israeli student who received the payout had been suspended until May.
Continue reading...In Las Vegas summit speech, Republican candidate paints potential Harris presidency in cataclysmic terms for Israel
Donald Trump told Jewish donors on Thursday that they would be “abandoned” if Kamala Harris becomes president.
In his speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas, the Republican presidential candidate also said he would ban refugee resettlement from “terror-infested” areas such as Gaza and arrest “pro-Hamas thugs” who engage in vandalism, an apparent reference to the college student protesters.
Continue reading...Students, faculty and advocates warn of chilling effect on free speech as schools across US introduce restrictions
Universities across the US are planning tougher rules to restrict protests when students return from summer vacation, an effort to avoid the chaos of last semester when demonstrations against Israel’s war in Gaza led to police crackdowns on campuses nationwide.
Columbia University students, who were at the vanguard of the movement, may encounter the most changes. The university president, Minouche Shafik, resigned this week in the wake of criticism for her handling of the protests, but not before overseeing the installation of fencing around the lawns of the school’s quad – the heart of campus life and the site of large protest encampments.
Continue reading...The Guardian used public records and open source materials to identify Daniel Linden of the Shirion Collective
A prime mover behind the Shirion Collective, a conspiracy-minded, pro-Israel disinformation network seeking to shape public opinion about the Gaza conflict in the US, Australia and the UK, is a tech entrepreneur named Daniel Linden living in Florida who co-wrote a guidebook for OnlyFans users, the Guardian can reveal.
Shirion has harassed pro-Palestinian activists, including many Jews, offered bounties for the identity of pro-Palestinian protesters, spread conspiracy narratives centered on figures like George Soros, and boasted of an AI-surveillance platform but offered few concrete details of how the technology functions.
Continue reading...Manhattan prosecutors decline to pursue charges against dozens of students who occupied building in April protest
Dozens of pro-Palestinian student protesters arrested in April after occupying and barricading a building at Columbia University in New York City have had all criminal charges against them dropped, Manhattan prosecutors said at a court hearing.
The hearing at the Manhattan criminal courthouse came seven weeks after Columbia administrators called in hundreds of armed and heavily armored police officers to the university’s campus in a high-profile law-enforcement response that was broadcast live on national news channels.
Continue reading...Thousands of academic workers returned to the job after weeks-long strike and vowed more actions to come
Thousands of University of California academic workers who went on strike across six campuses protesting administrators’ response to pro-Palestinian protests returned to the job on Monday under court order, but their union vowed more protests to come.
An Orange county superior court judge late on Friday granted a temporary restraining order sought by the university, which asserted that the walkout stemmed from non-labor issues and that it violated the no-strike clause in the union’s contract.
Continue reading...Police arrest 13 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who staged occupation of office while roughly 50 others linked arms outside
Police at Stanford University arrested a group of pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had barricaded themselves inside the campus president’s office on Wednesday morning to demand that the school divest from Israel.
A group of about a dozen students staged an occupation of the office of Richard Saller, Stanford’s president, while roughly 50 others linked arms outside, the Stanford Daily reported. The group entered the building around 6am on Wednesday, the final day of classes for the spring quarter, and said they intended to stay until the university met its demands.
The Associated Press contributed
Continue reading...Omar Barghouti, who attended Columbia University in 80s, says student solidarity with Palestine has educated the world
The student-led protests demanding universities cut financial and academic ties to Israel have led to unprecedented support for the Palestinian liberation struggle, and have propelled the divestment debate into the mainstream, according to the co-founder of the Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement.
Omar Barghouti, a Palestinian human rights defender who helped launch the BDS movement almost 20 years ago, said the students’ solidarity had helped educate the world about the Israeli occupation and “apartheid” while exposing the hypocrisy – and repressive tendencies – of some of the world’s most prestigious universities with investments in corporations which put “profit before people and the planet”.
Continue reading...Pro-Palestinian students staged the walkout as school withheld degrees of four seniors pending disciplinary review over protests
Dozens of students protesting Israel’s ongoing military strikes in Gaza walked out of the University of Chicago’s commencement on Saturday as the school withheld the diplomas of four seniors over their involvement with a pro-Palestinian encampment.
The disruption to the rainy two-hour outdoor ceremony was brief, with shouts, boos and calls to “stop genocide”. A crowd of students walked out in between speeches and a demonstration followed the official ceremony. Some chanted as they held Palestinian flags while others donned traditional keffiyehs, black-and-white checkered scarves that represent Palestinian solidarity, over their robes.
Continue reading...Northwestern president becomes lightning rod in Republican-led committee hearing also featuring chiefs of Rutgers and UCLA
Members of a Republican-led congressional committee confronted another set of university heads on Thursday over their approach to pro-Palestinian protests in the latest hearings on Capitol Hill on a reported increase of campus antisemitism.
Republicans on the House of Representatives’ education and workforce committee repeatedly clashed fiercely with Michael Schill, president of Northwestern University in Illinois, over his decision to negotiate an end to a tented protest community rather than call in police, as has happened on other campuses.
Continue reading...Union says response of University of California to pro-Palestine demonstrations violates rights of advocates and workers
Academic workers at the University of California, Santa Cruz, took to the picket line on Monday morning as part of a rolling strike in protest against the university system’s response to pro-Palestine demonstrations.
The campus is the first in the University of California to do so as part of a systemwide protest against the public university, which union members argue violated the rights of pro-Palestinian advocates and workers.
Continue reading...Pro-Palestinian students were attempting to take over a university hall to protest school’s refusal to negotiate in ‘good faith’
More than a dozen pro-Palestinian activists, including six students at the University of Pennsylvania, were arrested after attempting to occupy a hall on the university campus late Friday.
The protesters were arrested around 9pm after trying to take over Fisher-Bennett Hall but had been met with a response from university and Philadelphia police, according to reports. The Daily Pennsylvanian reported that protesters caused the evacuation of an alumni event at the Penn Museum.
Continue reading...Small demonstrations held on Saturday, including at Virginia Commonwealth University and University of Wisconsin-Madison
Small pro-Palestinian protests popped up sporadically on Saturday as colleges and universities from North Carolina to California held commencement ceremonies, including dozens of graduating students at Virginia Commonwealth University who walked out on an address by Republican governor Glenn Youngkin.
While some of the estimated 100 students and family members who left during Youngkin’s speech showed support for Palestinians, others held signs signaling opposition to his policies on education, according to WRIC-TV.
Continue reading...Authorities moved in overnight to clear campuses from Arizona to Massachusetts of students demanding schools cut ties to Israel
Police moved in to disband several pro-Palestinian student encampments on US campuses on Friday morning as the foment over protests against academic ties with Israel over the war in Gaza continued to roil academia.
Tent encampments at the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the University of Arizona, Tucson, were all dismantled in early morning raids that saw cordons of police sweep in and clear the makeshift protest settlements. In Tucson teargas was used, and demonstrators responded by throwing bottles at officers.
Continue reading...The school’s student paper reported arrests as hundreds of Washington DC police dismantled the impromptu tent village
Hundreds of Washington DC police, some deploying pepper spray, cleared a pro-Palestinian encampment at George Washington University early on Wednesday, in the latest clash between law enforcement and protesting students to sweep the US.
The GW Hatchet student paper reported that at least a dozen people had been arrested as the impromptu tent village was dismantled in University Yard. The Metropolitan police department said the arrests had been made for “assault of a police officer” and “unlawful entry”.
Continue reading...Students link arms around tents on campus and block local thoroughfare as they call for end to killings in Gaza
Pro-Palestinian protesters who had been blocked by police from accessing an encampment at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday broke through fencing, linked arms and encircled tents that remained there, as Columbia University canceled its university-wide commencement ceremony following weeks of pro-Palestinian protests.
Sam Ihns, a graduate student at MIT studying mechanical engineering and a member of MIT Jews for a Ceasefire, said the group had been at the encampment for the past two weeks and that they were calling for an end to the killing of thousands of people in Gaza.
Continue reading...University and police denounced as masked group marched on campus and attacked pro-Palestinian demonstrators last week
The University of California, Los Angeles, said that it would create a new office dedicated to campus safety following mounting criticism of authorities’ slow response to a brutal attack on pro-Palestinian protesters by a mob of “instigators”.
The school’s chancellor, Gene Block, said on Sunday that urgent changes were needed to “better protect our community moving forward” and announced that a new office of campus safety would oversee the university police department and the UCLA office of emergency management, “effective immediately”.
Continue reading...Officers in riot gear raid encampment at dawn as university warns demonstrators that failure to leave could lead to arrest
Police have dismantled the student-led Palestinian solidarity encampment at the University of Southern California.
About 4am on Saturday, as many as 100 Los Angeles police officers in riot gear raided the encampment at dawn as anti-war student demonstrators slept in the tents. In a series of tweets during the raid, the university warned demonstrators to leave the area, adding that “people who don’t leave could be arrested”.
Continue reading...Republicans accuse president of weak response, but prominent Democrats claim he ‘has been very strong from the beginning’
Some Democrats rallied to the defense of Joe Biden on Sunday as the president came under increased criticism over his response to pro-Palestinian student protests and his handling of Israel’s war on Gaza.
Republicans have seized on Biden’s response to the protests, which have seen more than2,000 people arrested around the country, accusing him of a weak response. But prominent Democrats, including Biden re-election campaign co-chairperson Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans, claimed the president “has been very strong about this from the beginning”.
Continue reading...Pro-Palestine protesters hope encampments at universities will contribute to an ‘international student revolt’
Students across Britain have said they hope pro-Palestine protests will reach the same scale as those seen on US campuses as they call for universities to divest from companies supplying arms to Israel.
Protests have spread across university campuses in Sheffield, Bristol and Leeds, after a crackdown in the US on protests, which led to mass arrests of students and staff.
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