As Timothy Burke notes, for the most part, those pressuring university administrators to crack down on student protesters "are going wholly undiscussed in the national news coverage." The media mantra is that the protests are causing "chaos." This ignores that the chaos is being created by administrators dragging in police to squelch peaceful protests.
"The pattern is clear. Not only have universities across the country resorted to student suspensions and violent arrests in recent weeks, but they have also been heavily repressing pro-Palestinian activism for months."
"Since Israel’s assault on Gaza began, there has been a systematic restriction and criminalization of pro-Palestine political action and speech, rendering transnational solidarity highly costly for many of those who wish to speak out against such injustices. In large part, this is because US universities—law schools included—have turned their backs on their claimed commitment to free speech."
Among many things, use of the word “#Zionist” sets off alarms for the many different people who hear it. Is it pure #antisemitism? Or is it an attack on the Israeli govt, whose snr leaders have expressed concern that the #ICC will issue arrest warrants for them? Is it an assault on the right of #Israel to exist? Or is it a demand that it not continue to exist w/in its current contours & constructs w/the #Palestinian people?
For some college presidents, there seems to be a belief that by ripping away the tents & clearing the courtyards, they are also expunging any #hate & hurt from their campus — as if #antisemitism lives in these makeshift shelters & not in the heart. They demand that the protests be polite, convenient & perfect, or in the words of Princeton’s president, that the protests adhere to “time, place & manner” regulations.
They call police to make arrests. They suspend students & declare them trespassers on their own campus. But the very meaning of a protest is to disrupt the status quo, to bring thoughtless momentum to a halt, to underscore precisely how imperfect the world really is.
On college campuses, the tents represent one of many truths. In addition to the savagery of #Hamas on #Oct7, along w/the cruel holding of #hostages, alongside the shames of #antisemitism & #Islamaphobia, Palestinian #civilians are being killed by the thousands.
As pro-Palestinian #protests continued to escalate across the country, ofcls & students at #BrownUniversity set a rare example on Tues: They made a deal.
Demonstrators agreed to dismantle their encampment at #Brown, which had been removed by Tues evening, & university leaders said they would discuss, & later vote on, divesting funds from companies connected to the #IDF campaign in #Gaza.
“We need to know who is going to stand up with us! And this choice is clear. Joe Biden bet on the American worker, while Donald Trump blamed the American worker”
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain
Although this clip is a few months old the sentiment is still true
If you truly are moral, if you truly care about the American worker then you must vote Joe Biden
@flexghost wasn't it Joe biden that told the rail workers they had to deal with it and
get back to work or else? The truth is he's pro-business, #antiunion. And on top of that he sends bullets to kill #palestinians. #genocidejoe has got to go. #eattherich
“Hundreds of people have been arrested in California, Massachusetts, Texas and other states during the tense [student] protests, following several rounds of arrests in New York in recent days.”
“Students at dozens of other colleges—including the University of Minnesota, the University of Pittsburgh, Berkeley, and Yale—have established similar encampments in a widening showdown over campus speech and the war in Gaza.”
"One of the most violent police crackdowns took place at Emory University in Atlanta on Thursday, when local and state police swept onto the campus just hours after students had set up tents on the quad in protest against Israel’s war on Gaza as well as the planned police training center known as Cop City."
Dave Karpf says that all university administrators had to do with students protesting in solidarity with Gaza was to ignore them. And university professors are good at ignoring students.
Instead, following Minouche Shafik's lead, they've chosen to crack down and call in police, and as a result, the protests are proliferating, as is the menacing pushback – snipers on the roofs of universities.
"Republican politicians gleefully egging it on, crowing about 'chaos on campus.' (Because the more this moment resembles 1968 on tv, the better.)"
Republicans are loving this, students protesting, university administrators calling in police. They think they can use it, as they pull the strings, to sweep to power in the 2024 elections.
"A lot of people forget that the Kent State shootings were popular. Antiwar protests were disapproved of by a supermajority of Americans polled until the waning days of the war itself, and really only rose in common estimation much later on."
"Can we be clear about a few things? Protesting this slaughter is not expressing antisemitism. It is not engaging in hate speech. It is not endangering Jewish students. It is doing what should be done on a college campus — taking a stand against a perceived wrong, at least provoking discussion and debate."
Remember when Biden said the US will build a pier in Gaza back in early March? To deliver food to be checked by ISR in Cyprus, then in Gaza. US military finally started pier construction off Gaza. May take 60 days to build. No rush. Just starving Gazans. @palestine@israel
"University administrators from Texas to California moved to clear protesters and prevent encampments from taking hold on their own campuses as they have at Columbia University, deploying police in tense new confrontations that already have led to dozens of arrests.
At the same time, new protests continued erupting in places like Pittsburgh and San Antonio."
"This week may end up marking the moment when Republicans and the far-right hijacked the campus protest movement and tried to turn it into the same bogeyman they made of Black Lives Matters protests in 2020.
Radical lefties needing to be taken down by force plays to the right’s pre-existing authoritarian tendencies, and is a handy election-year cudgel for Republicans."
"The protesters and many voters are upset about something more than a regular matter of foreign policy. Many believe that they are witnessing a genocide aided and abetted by an American president whom they supported. They feel personally implicated in a conflict in which the death toll continues to rise, with no end in sight. This is a moral issue for them, and their position won’t be easily altered."
"Hundreds of protesters were arrested in Brooklyn on Tuesday when Jewish New Yorkers and allies gathered for what they called a 'Seder in the Streets to Stop Arming Israel' on the second night of Passover."
"The demonstration, held one block away from the home of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, came just hours before the Senate overwhelmingly approved a $95 billion foreign aid package that includes about $17 billion in arms and security funding to Israel."
“'At the core of the Passover story is that we cannot be free until all people are free,' Beth Miller, the political director of Jewish Voice for Peace, told Democracy Now! 'The Israeli government and the United States government are carrying out a genocide of Palestinians in Gaza, over 34,000 people killed in six months in the name of Jewish safety, in the false name of Jewish freedom.'”
What I want to say to you this evening at this revolutionary and historic Seder in the Streets is that too many of our people are worshiping a false idol once again. They are enraptured by it. They are drunk on it. They are profaned by it. And that false idol is called Zionism."