Since the summer of 2022, PlayStation Plus has reinvented itself into a three-tiered membership. Similar to the likes of a streaming subscription; i.e Netflix, Disney+ etc, the higher the tier you subscribe to, the more benefits you acquire along the way.
But, what do each of the PS Plus tiers offer; and which one is right for you? That’s exactly what we aim to answer in this handy guide, alongside clear answers on how to upgrade memberships, overall costs, included games, and more.
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Best PS Plus Games (Extra & Premium Tiers)
PS Plus Essential vs Extra vs Premium
PS Plus Essential is the easiest to define, as it’s what PS Plus has always been. Essential provides access to online play, cloud saves, three free games a month, and discounts on the PS Store.
Moving up a tier, to PS Plus Extra, you’re getting new PS4 and PS5 games each month, alongside the slew of PlayStation content already available (around 400 games), and everything PS Plus Essential provides.
If you opt for the most expensive plan, PS Plus Premium, you’re gaining additional access to PS1, PS2, PSP, and PS3 titles, on top of everything else the Extra and Essential tiers provide.
In summary; interested in playing more PS4 and PS5 games? Aim for the Extra tier. Feeling nostalgic? Go all out on the Premium tier. Just want to play online? Go for Essential; it’s as simple as that. Here’s an additional breakdown as well to make it even easier to understand.
PS Plus Essential
Access online multiplayer
Cloud saves
Three rotating, downloadable games per month
PlayStation Store discounts
PS Plus Extra
All Essential tier benefits
Access and download a catalog of up to 400 PS4 and PS5 games
PS Plus Premium
All Extra and Essential tier benefits
Players can download or stream PS1, PS3 and PSP games
PS3 games are streaming-only
Players can stream these back catalog games to a PS4, PS5 or PC
Time-limited game trials
New to Premium: stream select PS5 titles from the PlayStation Plus catalog
If you’re interested in pure bang for your buck, you probably want to know what games you can access via a PS Plus subscription. For starters, PS Plus Essential members get a rotating three free games monthly, so keep an eye on updates to find out what games are up for grabs each month.
But, when it comes to PS Plus Extra and Premium, there’s a whole slew of games to get stuck into. Some highlights include Returnal, God of War, Death Stranding, Ratchet & Clank, Spider-Man Miles Morales, Bloodborne, Red Dead Redemption 2, Demon’s Souls, and plenty more as well. For a complete breakdown of what’s available, feel free to browse the Extra and Premium collections on IGN Playlist.
How Much Does PlayStation Plus Cost? (As Of January 2024)
How to Upgrade PS Plus Tiers: Essential, Extra, and Premium
If you’re already a PS Plus Essential member, you may be wondering, can I upgrade to a different tier? Yes, yes you can. It’s easy to do, simply navigate to the PS Plus page on your PlayStation console, or dedicated webpage, and select which tier you’d like to upgrade to; PS Plus Extra, or PS Plus Premium.
When you upgrade, you’ll be charged a fee to bring your current account in line with the cost of Extra or Premium. So, for example, if you’ve paid for a full year of PS Plus Essential already ($79.99), that will be discounted from the cost of upgrading to PS Plus Extra ($134.99) for a year. That means you’ll pay just $55 to upgrade your membership and so forth.
The same principles apply to upgrading to Premium as well from either the Essential or Extra tiers. Just remember you’ll then be on a new auto-renewal for your upgraded tier, so be sure to turn that off if you don’t want to be charged the full $100-$120 this time next year.
Robert Anderson is a deals expert and Commerce Editor for IGN. You can follow him @robertliam21 on Twitter.
Gadi Eizenkot’s comments come amid disagreement in the war cabinet about how to handle the war in Gaza.
A deal will be needed to ensure captives still held in the Gaza Strip are released alive, Israeli war cabinet minister and former military chief Gadi Eizenkot says, adding that a lightning raid would be extremely unlikely to succeed.
Eizenkot, whose youngest son was killed in fighting in Gaza last month, said the fate of the captives should take priority over other war aims, even if that means Israel missing out on an opportunity to take out the political header of Hamas.
Asked if the captives could be released in a rescue mission similar to the 1976 operation in which Israeli commandos freed about 100 hostages in Entebbe, Uganda, he said it was unlikely to happen.
“The hostages are scattered in such a way – even underground – that the likelihood [of such an operation] is extremely low,” Eizenkot told Israel’s Channel 12 programme Uvda late on Thursday.
“We are still making efforts and looking for every opportunity, but the likelihood is low and to say that this is how it will happen is to sow an illusion.”
Israel estimated that about 130 captives remain in Gaza and 27 have died in captivity. More than 100 captives seized during Hamas’s cross-border attack into southern Israel on October 7 were freed during a week-long November truce.
“I think it is necessary to say boldly that it is impossible to bring the hostages back alive in the near future without a deal,” Eizenkot said in the interview.
But he added that the broader war aims would “still be valid” after any temporary ceasefire.
At least 24,762 people have been killed in Israel’s air, ground and sea offensive in Gaza. The revised death toll in Israel from the October 7 Hamas attacks stands at 1,139.
Internal rifts
Eisenkot’s comments were the latest sign of disagreement among Israel’s political and military leaders over the direction of the offensive in Gaza, now in its fourth month.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant have said the fighting will continue until Hamas is crushed and argued that only military action can win the captives’ release.
Hamas seeks an end to the war before discussing releases and has demanded thousands of Palestinians imprisoned by Israel be released in exchange for those held captive in Gaza.
Eisenkot is one of four members of the war cabinet along with Netanyahu, Gallant and former Defence Minister Benny Gantz.
In his interview, he also said he had convinced officials in the group to hold off on any attack on Hezbollah in Lebanon in the days after the Hamas attacks, confirming that a preemptive strike was called off at the last minute during the early days of the war.
He described himself as being among those arguing against such a strike in an October 11 cabinet meeting that left him hoarse from shouting. “I think our presence there prevented Israel from making a grave strategic mistake,” he said.
Both Israel and Hezbollah have signalled they want to avoid war, but both said they are ready to fight if necessary.
Eizenkot also dismissed suggestions that the military has delivered a decisive blow against Hamas.
Gallant said Israeli forces have disabled the Hamas command structure in northern Gaza, from where significant numbers of soldiers were withdrawn this week, and that Israel’s focus is now on the southern half of the territory.
But Hamas has continued to fight back across Gaza, even in the most devastated areas, and launched rockets into Israel.
“We haven’t yet reached a strategic achievement, or rather only partially,” Eisenkot said. “We did not bring down Hamas.”
Palworld, aka ‘Pokémon with guns’, is out now and already shooting to the top of Steam’s most-played games list. It’s early days of course but already it seems safe to declare the game a hit. And it’s going down well with players, too. On Steam, Palworld has a ‘very positive’ user review rating.
But some Pokémon fans are less than impressed, and that’s because of the clear and obvious similarities between Palworld and Nintendo’s all-conquering, family friendly gotta catch ‘em all franchise. Are Palworld’s Pals too similar to Pokémon? Are we in “rip-off” territory here?
As Palworld trends across social media, one vociferous debate cutting through the din revolves around this very question. For some Pokémon fans, Palworld is a shameless clone, and they’re letting the internet know it.
On the topic of Palworld monster designs: No, heavily referencing and copying from Pokémon designs won’t harm the Pokémon Company. I don’t think people are arguing that.
What it does is come off as incredibly shady and lazy. Make something original.
People told me that there are hundreds of original designs and not everyone was a blatant copy of a Pokémon. Guess what? I’ve seen the rest and with no surprise, 90% of them are definitely a copy of existing Pokémon, with some of them literally having parts of their models. Damn. https://t.co/2109NvZy6c
As for developer Pocketpair, it has distanced the game from comparisons to Pokémon, highlighting the survival aspects that are reminiscent of games like Ark: Survival Evolved.
It seems unlikely complaints about Palworld from Pokémon fans will dampen its success, with concurrents increasing by the hour. However, it’s worth noting the Xbox version lags behind the Steam version in terms of functionality.
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
Double those congratulatory messages because Kailyn Lowry just give birth to twins.
The Teen Mom 2 star is officially a mom of seven after welcoming a baby boy and a baby girl with boyfriend Elijah Scott.
“I’m in my girl mom era,” she said on the Jan. 19 episode of her podcast Barely Famous about the arrival of her first daughter. “We had the twins.”
The little ones join Kailyn’s sons Isaac, 14, with ex Jo Rivera; Lincoln, 10, with ex Javi Marroquin; Lux, 6, and Creed, 3, with ex Chris Lopez; and baby Rio, who she welcomed with Elijah.
In fact, the reality star announced she was expecting twins months after hinting that she’d privately given birth to Rio at the end of 2022. As for how Kailyn felt about her three youngest being so close in age?
“I actually felt like Creed and Rio were so close together because all my kids age gaps are three and a half, four years,” she explained on a November episode of her podcast Barely Famous. “So I felt like Creed and Rio were really close together, but nothing could’ve prepared me for Rio and then twins being so close together. ‘Cause Rio won’t be one when the twins are born. But they don’t call us Kail and the chaos for nothing.”
I learned so many intriguing things about Nightingale during my visit to Inflexion Games that it’d be impossible to unpack everything in one succinct article – so I won’t, but I will hopefully shed some light on its development process, setting, and gameplay loop. Nightingale isn’t necessarily the game you’d expect from seasoned ex-Bioware devs, but the years of experience behind its ideation is evident in what I saw in more than six hours of gameplay: a stylish take on a shared-world survival crafting game.
The world of Nightingale is similar to ours in the “best of Victorian times,” as Inflexion CEO Aaryn Flynn put it, in the late 1800s. However, in this alternate reality, the Fae appeared in the 1500s to share their knowledge of magic with humans, altering the path of history and spurring the birth of the home of magical studies, the city of Nightingale. Alongside magic, the Fae also introduce humanity to the existence of small Fae Realms and the portal system that connects them.
Nightingale features characters from history, literature, and folklore – from Puck, a Fae inspired by Shakespeare; to Ada Lovelace, an English woman considered the first computer programmer – they’re fun little easter eggs for history and literature buffs. This combination of Fae, magic, and Victorian influences cements Nightingale’s genre as a gaslamp fantasy – think the fantastical, magical side of the sci-fi-inclined steampunk genre.
Why this setting? Simply because Flynn and art director Neil Thompson have done medieval fantasy (Dragon Age) and sci-fi (Mass Effect) already, so they wanted to create something unique. And Nightingale certainly takes its style seriously.
Nightingale begins with a short prologue introducing the world and setting the stage for the opening moments. A mysterious phenomenon known only as “the Pale” has foggily swept over the entirety of Earth, putting everything it touches into a state of suspended animation. The only human city left is Nightingale, but the magical portals to get there have malfunctioned, cutting off access. Actually, the entire system of portals and Fae realms have been thrown into chaos, tossing the human Realm Walkers, including you, around with it.
A Hope Echo you can find in the world.
The story and setting loosely glue your overarching objectives together, but as inconsequential as the story seems to be in the grand scheme of things – Nightingale is a survival crafting game, not a narratively-driven RPG ala Bioware, after all – it still serves as a curious jumping-off point into the world and gameplay of Nightingale. It certainly provides more of an intriguing premise than washing up on a shore with nothing but your underwear, which by now is a common survival trope. And if story is what you’re after, Hope Echoes can be found scattered throughout the realms that add narrative context for those who want even more world-building and story. These are, of course, dropped by Realm Walkers who came before you.
Alongside you on your journey back to Nightingale is Puck, who explains much of the way of the world to you as you progress, accomplishing small quests he presents to you. It seems he’s helping you, but if you know much about folklore, you know the Fae aren’t always to be trusted – providing a curious seed that piqued my suspicions. Perhaps unwarrantedly.
Questing Your Way
New Nightingale Screenshots – January 2024
Nightingale has been in development at Inflexion Games for nearly five years, and though it’s kept the same setting inspiration, it’s gone through an evolution from MMO to the more compact experience it is now, with up to six players able to play in a shared world at a time rather than countless.
For early access, Nightingale will have about 30 hours of content if you race through the main objectives, and this “early” game seems to have been fine-tuned to be as fun as possible. Rather than being developed in a vacuum, Nightingale has had dozens of playtests, tweaking the experience in both big and small ways. You can read more about Nightingale’s development process here.
Personally, I look for games that instill a sense of intrinsic motivation in the player. If the only objective is clear, I know I can do it, and the only reward is external, like another task and story beat, well, I can get bored. Instead of assigning small tasks one after the other over and over again to serve a story, Nightingale allows the player freedom and space to grow curious enough to ideate their own goals. It’s a not-so-uncommon trait among survival crafting games, which might be why I vibe so well with them, and it’s just one reason why Nightingale is so appealing to me.
“That was definitely a challenge: to construct a game that inspired players to go and achieve their own goals.”
“That was definitely a challenge: to construct a game that inspired players to go and achieve their own goals instead of just dictating to them what they had to go do. And that was a real mindset shift for us at the studio,” Flynn explained.
In the beginning, players need more short-term, explicit goals to help them get going as a sort of tutorial. Puck dishes out these little quests to teach you what’s what. As you follow him from realm to realm after fleeing the Pale, he instructs you to do very basic survival crafting trope tasks: Build a campfire, cook a meal, build a shelter, fight off the interdimensional horrific creatures called the Bound sicced on you by the malevolent Winter Court Fae. You know, run-of-the-mill quests you must complete to progress.
The fae Puck.
And yes, even though there is magic, the developers wanted to keep magic more grounded – you can’t just conjure stuff, like a campfire, out of thin air. Magic exists for humans in a system of enchantments. Collect materials and craft to be able to perform magic, but only while wielding the weapon with the enchantment. It’s a less whimsy sorcerer, more academic approach, inspired by the novel Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.
Fairly early on, the gameplay diverges from that model of “one quest, two quest,” and gives players more and more inspiration to go and do things on their own accord. There were even UI changes to remove the reminder of quests from the main screen, so as not to pressure anyone.
After putting down your first “cairn” to stake out a home base, you’ll find a “Site of Power” if you look around. These mini-dungeons of sorts are only unlocked if you meet the gear and hope requirements, of which you can achieve by a variety of means.
“And so the idea there was rather than have a straight narrative set of quests that just were do this and then do this, and then do this, and then do this (a game model we’re all very familiar with at the studio), we put the sites of power in to inspire players to say, ‘Oh, well, I wonder what’s in there. I’m curious about that,’” Flynn explained.
Production lead Leah Summers emphasized it’s not meant to be a massive grind, or something you need to push through.
“We’re hoping that people will take their time and just enjoy what’s there rather than rushing the progression.”
“It’s really, all these realms are now yours to keep and enjoy. Fish in them, bring them back, craft different clothes…It’s really quite neat,” Summers explained. “We’re hoping that people will take their time and just enjoy what’s there rather than rushing the progression.”
Card Games
Our reward for meeting the requirements and conquering the Site of Power included a crafting recipe for a new Realm Card.
Realm Cards, basically, are used to open portals to new realms. There are three kinds of cards:
A Biome Realm Card and a Major Realm Card is needed, while the Minor Realm Card is optional. The Biome dictates the environment–Forest, Swamp, and Desert, for now; the Major Card generally dictates the difficulty of that realm; and the Minor Realm Card will affect minor things (who woulda thought), like weather or creature behavior. I’m especially looking forward to discovering what silly Minor Cards will be available at launch. One of them lets players have super-powered jumps for a limited amount of time, for example. The Minor Cards can even be deactivated and switched out at will, leading to so many creative possibilities.
The realm that’s created once you apply the cards to the portal is completely procedurally generated and uniquely yours: no one else will have the same layout for their Abeyance Forest realm. Once you’ve generated a realm, that will be the layout for that realm permanently, so once you figure out where to go to collect the resources you need, you’ll be able to return to find them easily.
You collect recipes for Major Cards from the various Sites of Power you’ll find, and Minor Cards from different subterranean mini-dungeons, too.
This is your main goal and basic progression: Unlock card recipes to unlock more difficult realms, with the goal of getting stronger and eventually reaching Nightingale. Nightingale isn’t available just yet in Early Access, but in its stead is the multiplayer hub The Watch, Apex Hunts, and the difficult Vaults, the only content intended to be completed in multiplayer.
But there are plenty of other incentives and goals, too. Conquering these little dungeons with their puzzles and combat challenges can also reward you with crafting recipes for new building pieces, so you can make the house or settlement of your dreams. Unlocking new realms helps you toward that goal, too, as each realm combination has shops with different crafting recipes. Some might carry onwards to challenge the Nightingale’s difficult Apex Creatures and Vaults, others may do so to build the best settlements to hang out with their friends, and it’s fun we’ll be able to do that together in groups with both types of players.
In most survival crafting games, I generally leave the building and town organization to others – except farming, for some reason – and I see my aim being similar in Nightingale. The Apex Creature hunts and Vaults, inspired loosely by Destiny 2’s Strikes, promise to be challenging with worthwhile rewards.
Though I didn’t play these myself, I did get to be in the room while a group of players coordinated together to conquer these. First, the Apex Creature Humbaba, a colossal dragon. I loved hearing lead designer Bjorn Taylor yelling at his teammates to remember to eat for buffs before aggroing it. It reminded me of myself before Monster Hunter hunts.
Despite their best efforts to prepare, to eat, to don the optimal equipment, to lay down a nearby respawn spot, the hunt still turned into a bit of chaos, to my delight. One person accidentally aggroed the Humbaba.
“You have to press a button to shoot, how did you do that?” is something someone said with gleeful frustration.
Meanwhile, another player was unprepared and killed by a rare and especially powerful spider monster nearby, taking them out of the fight before they could lay on a lick of damage.
Despite the setbacks, they succeeded, but once they defeated the Humbaba, Swamp Giants showed up and started conjuring giant frogs to attack them before they could even finish looting their kill.
I couldn’t help but smile and laugh along with the team. It looked like a fun time with your friends that left you with a story to tell others who couldn’t make it to game night.
Watching them play through the Vault, the cooperative endgame content, was equally amusing. The team struggled to complete a puzzle. This kind of puzzle is found in many places in Nightingale, but the layout of this Vault made it especially difficult.
An Apex Creature, the Eoten.
To complete it, they needed to watch and listen for crystals to light up and make a sound, and then hit them in the same order. Doing it wrong causes a horde of the Bound to attack. The last crystal eluded them. Flynn hung his head in his hands and lamented as he watched.
To their credit, the Vaults are also procedurally generated, so their layout is never the same. Eventually, they succeeded, moved on, and tackled the Apex Creature at the end of the dungeon, an Apex Eoten.
All in all, the gameplay loops of Nightingale look flexible, engrossing, and fun
All in all, the gameplay loops of Nightingale look flexible, engrossing, and fun, though I am mildly worried about how much attention the base building can keep of my crafty friends. I’m unsure of what else there is to do or maintain once it’s built the way you like. Of course, I do suppose creatures can also come wreck things and force you to build anew. Ah, the joys of survival…
Nightingale will be released in Early Access on February 22.
Casey DeFreitas is the deputy editor of guides at IGN. Catch her on Twitter @ShinyCaseyD.
Former New York Giants star wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. has reached much fame and fortune in his 10-year NFL career.
He has had many highs, setting several league records making spectacular plays and even winning a Super Bowl ring while exhibiting flair, headlines, and eccentricity along the way.
Now a member of the AFC powerhouse Baltimore Ravens, the 31-year-old Beckham would like to have a do-over on some of those moments, however.
One such moment of note is the infamous ‘boat trip’ escapade the week before the Giants were to face the Green Bay Packers in the 2017 Wild Card round.
Beckham and his fellow Giants wide receivers (including Victor Cruz and Sterling Shepard) took a short vacation down to Florida and documented the trip with a sunny group portrait taken on a boat.
The Giants went on to get annihilated by the Packers in the Wild Card round, 38-13. Beckham was especially flat, catching four passes for a total of 28 yards.
“When the picture came out, the energy — I’m a huge energy person … everybody around me, even in my own self, I felt like we had lost,” Beckham said during an appearance on the Punch Line Podcast, hosted by his Ravens teammate Marlon Humphrey.
“I had the best week in practice, I didn’t let it bother me, tried to dance it off … but deep down inside something had felt wrong. The attention had been shifted from the New York Giants versus the Green Bay Packers to this boat story.
“My biggest regret about all of that is that incident allowed that to happen. Not that I went and had a good time on New Year’s. It’s that I put myself in a situation where this story could be used to create a distraction from what’s really going on.”
The Giants didn’t hold the incident against Beckham as the next summer, he was inked to a five-year, $95 million contract extension with a total of $65 million in guarantees ($41 million fully guaranteed).
OBJ was subsequently traded to the Cleveland Browns in 2019 for a package of players and picks and has been a hired gun (between injuries) ever since, winning a Super Bowl with the Rams and is aiming for another with the Ravens.
In crude material terms, Donald Trump’s presidency benefited the media, with subscriptions, ratings and clicks all soaring. It’s therefore not surprising that lots of people believe his return to the center of our politics will once again generate obsessive interest. “When Trump Wins, So Does the Media,” the center-left writer Matthew Yglesias wrote in October. The Washington Post’s Philip Bump recently predicted that because of Trump’s presidential campaign, “cable news channels may soon see a resurgence.” Even warnings about the manifold ways a second Trump presidency could damage a free press tend to assume that four more years of MAGA pandemonium would be lucrative. The business model behind our ailing industry, wrote George Packer in The Atlantic, “works better with Trump.”
I’m not so sure this is true anymore. A few overarching questions animated Trump’s first term: Can he really get away with this? When will Republicans break with him? Will the law ever catch up? In a second Trump presidency, those questions would be answered. (Yes, never and no.) The constant hope that Trump could be exposed and even ousted would be gone. Thus among liberals, I suspect, the anxious hypervigilance sparked by Trump’s first election would be replaced, at least initially, by depression. In 2019, Viv Groskop wrote in The New York Review of Books about how some in Vladimir Putin’s Russia had resurrected the Soviet idea of internal exile or internal emigration, a disillusioned retreat from politics into private life and aesthetic satisfactions. If Trump is re-elected, I’d expect to see a lot of Americans adopting a similar stance as an emotional survival strategy. If that happens, the danger won’t be just to bottom lines in the news business. Though Trump thrives on attention, he’d be even more destructive without the pressure of sustained public outrage.
The Atlantic writer Jennifer Senior recently described the twitchy psychic landscape of the Trump-era liberal news fanatic: “I’d spent nearly five years scanning the veld for threats, indulging in the most neurotic form of magical thinking, convinced that my monitoring of Twitter alone was what stood between Trump and national ruin.” Such compulsive news consumers were a huge factor in the Trump-era journalism boom. “The increase that news organizations saw in terms of audience engagement during the first Trump administration, a lot of that was driven by people who consume a lot of news. They were just consuming more and more and more of it,” said Benjamin Toff, a journalism professor and an author of the new book “Avoiding the News.” “But a lot of the rest of the public, I think, was pretty disengaged from it.”
Since then, the ranks of the disengaged have grown. Trump keeps doing appalling things: In just the past couple of days, he nearly got thrown out of the second defamation trial brought against him by a woman he sexually abused, according to a jury, and then claimed on social media that presidents should enjoy absolute immunity from criminal prosecution even when they “cross the line.” But his misdeeds have lost the capacity to shock, and they no longer drive conversations. That might change if he is once again president, but like a virus, he won’t generate as strong a reaction when he’s no longer novel.
These days one of the most talked-about news stories in the United States is the resignation of Harvard University President Claudine Gay.
As Harvard and its leadership are centred in the media, however, Palestinians continue to be killed by US-supplied bombs and buried under the rubble of their homes, schools, mosques and hospitals.
While Harvard Yard is filled with speculation about the career of a millionaire academic, two million Palestinians are displaced by carpet bombing intended to ethnically cleanse Gaza.
Amid the attempted distractions from an actualised genocide whose targets include families of students at Harvard, those of us in solidarity with Palestine remain subject to relentless attacks.
Indeed, while hundreds of intellectuals at the university mobilised to sign a letter to the Harvard Corporation in support of Gay – the very president who spent weeks denouncing students protesting in solidarity with the victims of the ongoing Nakba – we are barely afforded minimal support.
The letter, urging the Harvard Corporation “in the strongest possible terms to defend the independence of the university and to resist political pressures”, received ample attention from the national media.
In the end, however, this effort by Harvard faculty not only failed to save Gay’s job but also did not translate into any meaningful support for those of us in solidarity with Palestine who refuse to cower. As Palestinians in Gaza and the rest of the occupied territories are subject to unfathomable conditions, relentless killing and irreversible destruction, at Harvard condemnation remains wrongfully assigned to students organising for justice in Palestine. Leading faculty appears ready to back only Gay, who, despite failing to recite the exact script demanded by Zionists, still classifies our activities in support of liberation as “abhorrent”.
When solidarity is reserved for elite academics during an active genocide and there is only limited activity to demand Harvard end its complicity, or even just protect students standing with the oppressed, we have a problem. When a Trump endorsee’s rhetorical trap is left unchallenged and there is no rejection of the harmful premise that students calling for the end of an actual genocide are somehow calling for a hypothetical genocide, we have a problem. When some mobilise to preserve “free inquiry”, but avoid recognising the Palestine exception to free speech, we have a problem.
For years, many have asked Harvard to disclose and divest from its material complicity in what has been widely recognised as an apartheid regime. In the past few months of censorship and particularly egregious threats to largely Muslim, Arab, Black, and brown students, we have been subject to attacks on campus.
A student-compiled list of over 70 incidents include: a woman in hijab chased by someone wielding a knife; doxing via a billboard truck while targeted students face job losses, evictions, and academic sanctions; frivolous police reports against visibly Muslim students; and students being followed and harassed for wearing a keffiyeh (by the wife of a Harvard professor who signed the letter in support of Gay). During her limited tenure which held capacity for making various Zionist claims in public and private spheres, President Gay did not recognise a single one of these incidents; not even behind closed doors when rare opportunities for Muslims to express their hurt presented themselves.
Over the fall semester, victims of anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim racism found little support from the majority of faculty signatories on the letter to the Harvard Corporation. Only around 10 percent of the 764 signatories joined an open letter asking Gay to recognise the suffering of Palestinians and denounce the silencing of supporters of Palestinian liberation (which she has never done, not even in her post-resignation op-ed). Even the killing of over 100 family members of a single Palestinian student at Harvard Law School has not been enough to garner sympathy – let alone rage – from this institution.
Recognising pervasive anti-Black racism, speaking out against the bigotry motivating Gay’s ousting – even if her administration perpetuated its own modes of injustice against marginalised communities – is necessary. Also necessary is recognising that following an earlier smear campaign by a billionaire mogul against a Black student protester and a Muslim security marshal, Gay would succumb to this hateful campaign and release an email to notify the public that these students are under investigation by local police and the FBI.
While Gay is backed by hundreds of faculty in an attempt to save her elite position, Elom Tettey-Tamaklo was promptly robbed of his job as a residential assistant, with minimal outcry. The president of Harvard at the time even condemned the liberatory phrase “from the river to the sea” Palestine will be free, in communication to the entire Harvard community. While leading intellectuals attempted to rescue Gay under the claim of free speech, many caused disappointment by ignoring Harvard’s neglect of its students speaking for a free Palestine.
Focus ought to shift towards understanding why many stand by, as students showing solidarity with Palestine face smear campaigns ignored or supported by their universities, and others within these institutions mobilise only for a president who boasts about punishing these students. Some at Harvard shamefully rationalise away speaking against the Zionist genocidal campaign, refusing to use institutional privilege to pursue veritas in the most basic way. Even as the university attempts to restrict speech and censure voices for Palestine, hundreds of faculty, who happily signed an open letter in support of Gay, turn away from their students advocating for justice in Palestine.
As Palestinians are slaughtered, many of us at Harvard, many at Harvard, through rhetoric and actions, support their plight “from the river to the sea”. Yet elite academics and headlines only notify us of a defence for a president who credulously opened herself up to a frivolous congressional hearing.
As a grave injustice unfolds before our eyes, at the most basic level, Harvard – as one of the most influential institutions based in a nation that is the strongest ally to the Zionist project – must recognise Palestinian suffering.
It is high time for institutions like ours to end their material and moral complicity in this oppression. Let this be the time when people of influence in these spaces finally heed the calls to stand in solidarity with our movement for an end to the ongoing Nakba, before anything else.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
New York Giants center John Michael Schmitz had an up-and-down rookie campaign. There were moments he flashed and other moments he seemed entirely overwhelmed.
Toss in an injury that caused him to miss some time and Schmitz probably isn’t writing home about his first NFL season.
Still, at the center position, there weren’t many rookies who fared better. And for that reason, Bucky Brooks has named Schmitz to his 2023 NFL All-Rookie Team.
The scrappy pivot performed well as a first-year starter in the middle of the Giants’ line. Schmitz’s intelligence, athleticism and competitiveness showed up repeatedly as he held his own against the monstrous nose tackles opposite him.
Despite the praise from Brooks, Schmitz finished last among 37 qualifying centers with an overall Pro Football Focus grade of just 41.4. His pass blocking grade of 26.9 was also dead last among qualifying centers.
There were times throughout the season that Schmitz also appeared to lean heavily on guard Justin Pugh, who routinely tipped the snap.
Schmitz has a high ceiling and could be an anchor for the Giants in the future, but he’ll need to significantly improve in Year 2 if he wants to hang onto that job long-term.
The Saltburn star recently had the opportunity to sniff one of his Bathwater Candles—inspired by one of the most shocking moments in the Emerald Fennell film—on the Jan. 18 episode of The Tonight Show.
In the spirit of the unsettling thriller, the 26-year-old even went so far as to slurp the candle—an homage to Barry Keoghan‘s Oliver, who sucks up bathwater after Felix (Jacob) has masturbated in one of the film’s scenes.
“It smells like a washing room—like detergent,” he told host Jimmy Fallon. “His clothes are clean.”
And it wasn’t the first time Jacob was put on the spot about his bathwater-inspired candles. In fact, the actor added that his Priscilla costar, Cailee Spaeny, had also sent him videos of the merchandise.
“I want to know who’s making the money,” the Euphoria star joked. “Like, ‘Great, where’s my money?'”
As for the scene that inspired the candles? Jacob has spoken highly of that, too.
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