@TheConversationUS@academicchatter
East for you to say... did you spend 4 + years of your life and a hundred thousand to get a degree that barely gets you a job? People deserve to celebrate some parts of their short life on earth without political interference.
Seen the rubble, the buildings,
the mothers and the children
And all the men that you murdered,
and then we see how you spin it... https://yewtu.be/watch?v=fgDQyFeBBIo
@immibis@israel@palestine@plink@Double_Ogre no you don’t. Germany rejected an amendment by nutcases that would have tied a German passport to an “explicit affirmation” of Israel’s right to exist.
A new report found that 99% of pro-Palestine protests at US colleges have been peaceful, despite remarks from Biden characterizing such demonstrations as violent.
A brief from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project (ACLED), a NGO specializing in crisis mapping, said that the vast majority of protests have remained “vastly peaceful”.
From the report:
Student protests on university campuses around the US are the latest sign of public discontent with the Israel-Gaza conflict.
While some notable violent clashes have recently taken place, such as on the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) campus, where demonstrators and counter-demonstrators fought at a student encampment overnight on 30 April, the overwhelming majority — 99% — have remained peaceful.3
Chris Hayes just drew a nice contrast between schools like Brown that peacefully negotiated with protesters and those who responded to #CampusProtests with arrests and violence.
My faculty association's response to the university's recent letter to students:
"The Administration appears to believe that with the stroke of a pen it can transform freedom of expression from a fundamental right, the protection of which is the sine qua non of the University, into a privilege that the Administration may confer or deny at its pleasure. This cannot stand."
Wow, reading all these letters by NYU faculty to the office of the president is quite something. Do read them all. Highlighting one by History Professor Steven Hahn, as it encapsulates everything (in one screenshot). #Gaza#campusprotests
@pvonhellermannn Thanks for sharing. I think we professors in the US have to take a moment to realize what the power of tenure is and why the political right wants to take it away from universities. So many of my colleagues viscerally fear using it when university administrations become long arms of governments trying to eliminate #DEI funding, harassing certain research fields, or squelching protest. I am happy to see these sternly worded letters to university presidents, but there are bigger uses of tenure, like turning classes into teach-ins until situations are remedied, not teaching, etc. But to do it we need solidarity. That has been lacking due to fear.
Thanks for bringing up tenure. I am a full-time lecturer but not on a tenure track. At my age, I can't risk losing this job.
However, to some extent, every class can be a teach-in. For example, I teach game programming. So I ask my class what they would do about the industry being so unwelcoming. I teach digital media. So I tell my students about the infamous "Lena" picture, why it became pervasive, and that it still circulates.
It feels like the #campusprotests and their brutal oppression may really shift things. For one, they highlight so very clearly how militarised state power is always there, and will be used against anyone who dares to challenge the status quo.
@pvonhellermannn The tone of this article makes me think that many non-USA writers don't totally get the USA does not have a national police force or even a central controlling authority over the 12000 separate police organizations in the country. Which makes each individual over bearing responses by each local police force worse, since the there is no central authority to stop them, other than the courts.
There’s nothing groundbreaking about protesters’ tactics of taking over university buildings or erecting encampments on college lawns.
These students – knowingly or unknowingly – are part of a long history of radical student organizing. There are echoes of both the protests against the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 70s and more recently, of South African apartheid in the 1980s.
"#AntiwarProtests sweep across university campuses in the United States. The police response – the violence – has been shocking and so has some of the reporting from the US #MainstreamMedia."
With: Paula Chakravartty,
Noura Erakat, Adel Iskandar,
Elijah Kahlenberg
UAW Local 4811, which represents academic student workers at the University of California, authorized a strike vote in response to this morning's attack on the Gaza Solidarity Encampment at UCLA.
"At an emergency executive board meeting this morning, our union’s leadership voted to hold a strike authorization vote as early as next week to give the Executive Board authority to call a strike if circumstances justify: should the university decide to curtail the right to participate in protected, concerted activity; discriminate against union members or political viewpoints; and create or allow threats to members’ health and safety, among others, UAW 4811 members will take any and all actions necessary to enforce our rights."