Tag: education

International students risk immigration status to engage in Gaza protests | Israel War on Gaza News

New York, New York – Israel’s war in Gaza is personal for Columbia University student Mahmoud Khalil.

A 29-year-old Palestinian refugee raised in Syria, Khalil wanted to get involved in the on-campus activism against the war, but he was nervous.

Khalil faced a dilemma common to international students: He was in the United States on a F-1 student visa. His ability to stay in the country hinged on his continued enrollment as a full-time student.

But participating in a protest — including the encampment that cropped up on Columbia’s lawn last month — meant risking suspension and other punishments that could endanger his enrollment status.

“Since the beginning, I decided to stay out of the public eye and away from media attention or high-risk activities,” Khalil said. “I considered the encampment to be ‘high risk’.”

He instead opted to be a lead negotiator for Columbia University Apartheid Divest, a student group pushing school administrators to sever ties with Israel and groups engaged in abuses against Palestinians.

“I’m one of the lucky ones who are able to advocate for the rights of Palestinians, the folks who are getting killed back in Palestine,” Khalil said, calling his advocacy work “literally the bare minimum I could do”.

Khalil explained he worked closely with the university to make sure that his activities would not get him in trouble. Based on his conversations with school leaders, he felt it was unlikely that he would face punishment.

Still, on April 30, Khalil received an email from Columbia administrators saying he had been suspended, citing his alleged participation in the encampment.

“I was shocked,” Khalil said. “It was ridiculous that they would suspend the negotiator.”

Columbia University student negotiator Mahmoud Khalil says he chose his role in the protests to avoid punishments that would endanger his immigration status [Ted Shaffrey/AP Photo]

However, a day later — before Khalil could even appeal the decision — the university sent him an email saying his suspension was dropped.

“After reviewing our records and reviewing evidence with Columbia University Public Safety, it has been determined to rescind your interim suspension,” the short, three-sentence email said.

Khalil said he even received a call from the Columbia University president’s office, apologising for the mistake.

But legal experts and civil rights advocates warn that even temporary suspensions could have severe consequences for students who depend on educational visas to stay in the country.

Naz Ahmad, co-founder of the Creating Law Enforcement Accountability & Responsibility project at CUNY School of Law, told Al Jazeera that when a student-visa holder is no longer enrolled full time, the university is obliged to report the student to the Department of Homeland Security within 21 days.

That department oversees immigration services for the US government. Students must then make plans to leave — or risk eventual deportation proceedings.

“If they don’t leave right away, they would begin to accrue unlawful presence,” Ahmad said. “And that can affect their ability to apply again in the future for other benefits.”

Students in face masks, standing behind a hedge, watch police disband an encampment at Columbia University
Students watch as police enter the Columbia University encampment in April [Isa Farfan/Al Jazeera]

Ann Block, a senior staff lawyer at the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, told Al Jazeera that most schools have a designated official to monitor the status of international students.

“They generally are international student advisers, and they’re the ones that help people get into the school, get their visas to come to the school from abroad initially and normally help advise them,” Block explained.

Even outside of an academic context, non-citizens face the possibility of heightened consequences should they choose to protest.

While non-citizens enjoy many of the same civil rights as US citizens — including the right to free speech — experts said that laws like the Patriot Act may limit how those protections apply.

Passed in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks, the Patriot Act includes broad language that could be used to interpret protests as “terrorist” activity, according to civil rights lawyer and New York University professor Elizabeth OuYang.

And the law empowers the government to restrict immigration to anyone engaged in such activity, she added.

“Section 411 of the Patriot Act bars entry to non-citizens who have used their ‘position of prominence with any within any country to endorse or espouse terrorist activity’,” OuYang said.

“And what constitutes terrorist activity? And that’s where the secretary of state of the United States has broad discretion to interpret that.”

Students at Columbia University were threatened with suspension for their participation in a campus encampment, designed to show solidarity with the people of Gaza [Isa Farfan/Al Jazeera]

Avoiding the front lines

The high level of scrutiny towards the campus protests has amplified fears that such consequences could be invoked.

Criticism of Israel, after all, is a sensitive subject in the US, the country’s longtime ally.

While a study released in May indicated that 97 percent of US campus protests were peaceful, politicians on both sides of the aisle have continued to raise fears of violence and anti-Semitic hate.

Just last week, Republican Representative Andy Ogles introduced a bill called the Study Abroad Act that would take away student visas “for rioting or unlawful protests, and for other purposes”.

He cited the recent wave of university protests as a motivation for sponsoring the legislation and compared the demonstrators to terrorists.

“Many elite American universities have damaged their hard-earned reputations by opening their doors to impressionable terrorist sympathisers,” Ogles told The Daily Caller, a right-wing site.

Some international students who spoke to Al Jazeera said the charged political atmosphere has forced them to avoid the protests altogether.

The student encampment at Columbia University in April inspired similar protests on campuses across the world [Isa Farfan/Al Jazeera]

“We cannot take the risk as international students to even be caught at the scene at all,” said one student journalist at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), who requested anonymity in order to speak freely.

Another student added that he does not even feel comfortable reporting live on the protests for UCLA Radio, the student-run station where he works.

Other students explained that they have pursued peripheral roles in the protests, offering supplies and services instead of manning encampments and clashing with police.

An undocumented student at Columbia University, originally from Mexico, said she joined a supplies “platoon” to help distribute materials and move tents. She asked to be identified only by her first initial, A.

“None of it means no risk,” she said. “I feel I could find my way out. But I’m not necessarily going to put myself in front of a cop.”

On April 29, student organisers at Columbia even warned their classmates over megaphones to leave the encampment if they were attending school on a visa, for fear of suspensions. A, the undocumented student, said her parents also encouraged her not to participate in the protest.

“It just is so hard to be a bystander when it would be going against my convictions,” she explained. “I cannot watch children die.”

Students at Columbia University’s encampment in April encouraged international classmates to leave before suspensions could be handed down [Isa Farfan/Al Jazeera]

A chilling effect

One Columbia student from South Africa, who asked for anonymity out of concern for her immigration status, said it was, in fact, the US tradition of campus activism that attracted her to the school.

“I came here knowing that there were protests against apartheid South Africa. There were protests in ‘68 about Vietnam, about Harlem,” she said.

But after facing disciplinary warnings for her activism this year, she explained she had to scale back.

“The combination of xenophobia and extreme surveillance make how I decide to participate in this movement different from if I were a citizen,” she said.

The police crackdowns on campus protests have also had a chilling effect, several international students told Al Jazeera.

Estimates put the number of campus protesters arrested over the last month north of 2,000. Just this Thursday, 47 people at the University of California, Irvine, were taken into custody, according to campus officials.

Olya, a Columbia undergraduate from Thailand, was among those who participated in the encampment at her school in its early days. She provided Al Jazeera with her first name only, also citing immigration concerns.

But when school administrators set a deadline for the protesters to disband or else face suspension, Olya decided she had reached her limit.

“That was when I stopped going to the encampment more frequently because it made me realize that you really don’t know what admin’s gonna do,” Olya said.

“I think that my fears of possibly getting arrested sort of overshadows my interest in advocacy and activism in general. Especially in this country.”

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

California university will heed student call to boycott Israel institutions | Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions News

Sonoma State University, a public school in northern California, has said that it will not enter partnerships with Israeli universities, heeding a call from pro-Palestine student groups pushing to boycott Israeli companies and institutions amid the war in Gaza.

The decision, announced on Tuesday, comes after a recent wave of campus protests spread across the United States, with encampments and demonstrations cropping up at schools like Columbia University and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

As part of their demands, student activists aimed to sever school ties with academic bodies and companies perceived as complicit in Israel’s war and decades-long occupation of the Palestinian territory.

In an email to students on Tuesday, Sonoma State’s president, Mike Lee, said the school had reached an agreement with the protesters, who set up an on-campus encampment three weeks ago.

Sonoma State would do more to disclose its contracts and seek “divestment strategies”, Lee wrote. It would also not pursue partnerships that are “sponsored by, or represent, the Israeli state academic and research institutions”.

In exchange for the concessions, student activists agreed to dismantle the cluster of tents on campus by Wednesday evening.

Many universities have responded to the demands of antiwar activists with police crackdowns on encampments. But those efforts have done little to dim calls for divestment, and campus activists have likened their efforts to historic student protests against the Vietnam War and apartheid South Africa.

Several pro-Palestine university encampments have disbanded after negotiations over divestment demands with administrators.

In late April, for instance, protesters took down their tents at Brown University in Rhode Island, after the Ivy League school’s board of governors agreed to consider divestment in a vote this October.

However, calls for divestment can be controversial in the US, where Israel enjoys strong political backing.

Israel receives $3.8bn in military aid from the US every year, and US lawmakers have, with the encouragement of pro-Israel groups, moved to penalise and even criminalise calls to boycott Israel.

In Texas, for instance, Republican Governor Greg Abbott responded to students’ divestment demands directly, saying earlier this month, “This will NEVER happen.” Under his leadership, the state passed a law that prohibits government entities from contracting with firms that boycott Israel.

Backlash to Sonoma State decision

Jewish groups and a handful of state politicians have likewise condemned Sonoma State’s decision, saying that it represents an attack on Israel and the Jewish community.

Some tied the university’s decision to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement (BDS), which seeks to pressure Israel into protecting Palestinian rights through nonviolent means. It also aims to draw attention to companies seen as complicit in rights abuses in the Palestinian territory.

BDS’s critics, however, consider the movement anti-Semitic for its targeting of Israeli companies and groups.

“Yesterday the President of Sonoma State University aligned the campus with BDS, a movement whose goal is the destruction of Israel, home to 7M Jews,” California state Senator Scott Wiener said in a social media post on Wednesday.

In another post, the Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area said the decision by Sonoma State was in “clear violation” of California’s 2016 anti-BDS law. It called on the chancellor of the California State University system — of which Sonoma State is a member — to “rectify” the situation.

However, free speech advocacy groups say that anti-BDS laws suppress criticism of Israel and conflate scrutiny over Israel’s alleged human rights abuses with anti-Semitism.

Protecting students and free speech

The campus protests like the one at Sonoma State have fuelled debate over the distinction between criticism of Israel and anti-Jewish hate.

It also has raised concerns about how to protect free speech rights on campus, while addressing the discomfort some students have expressed towards the protests.

Student protesters have sought to shine a light on the plight facing Palestinian civilians, particularly since the start of Israel’s war in Gaza on October 7.

More than 35,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s military offensive in the intervening months, with approximately 1.5 million people internally displaced.

The war has also pushed parts of the Palestinian territory into a state of “full-blown famine“. United Nations experts have warned of a “risk of genocide” in the enclave.

But even before the start of the current war, rights groups like Amnesty International have concluded that Israel’s actions in the occupied Palestinian territory constitute the crime of apartheid.

Still, while the vast majority of pro-Palestine campus protests have been peaceful, fears of anti-Semitism at universities have been running high.

Shortly after the war began in October, for instance, a report emerged that a 24-year-old Jewish student had been assaulted with a stick at the Columbia University campus in New York.

Columbia University’s president, Nemat Shafik, was called before a congressional committee last month to answer questions about the alleged instances of anti-Semitism on her campus, though several US representatives questioned the narrow focus of the hearing.

“Anti-Semitism is not the only form of hatred rising in our schools,” Representative Teresa Leger Fernandez, a Democrat, told the committee.

“Islamophobia and hate crimes against LGBTQ students have also recently spiked. They’ve led to deaths by suicide, harassment. But this committee has not held a single hearing on these issues.”

Indeed, advocates say pro-Palestine protesters have also been subject to a spike in harassment since the war began. At UCLA, for instance, counter-protesters attacked an antiwar encampment, and observers later reported that campus police waited to intervene.

The episode led critics to question which students were being protected — and why.



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

US university ties to weapons contractors under scrutiny amid war in Gaza | Israel War on Gaza News

Los Angeles, California – As the war in Gaza enters its eighth month, Israel’s military campaign, one of the most destructive in modern history, has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children.

The death toll, as well as the ongoing humanitarian crisis in Gaza, has many progressive and pro-Palestinian activists in the United States critical of their country’s role in the war.

The US has long been Israel’s closest ally, supplying the country with about $3.8bn each year in military aid. Critics have blasted that support, as well as the billions of dollars in additional assistance used to bolster the war since its start in October.

On US college campuses, though, the pushback is especially fierce, as students question their universities’ relationships with weapons manufacturers and other companies with ties to Israel’s military.

“These are supposedly social justice-oriented institutions, but their actions say entirely differently,” said Sinqi Chapman, a freshman at Pomona College, a liberal arts institution in Claremont, California.

Chapman was among the student protesters arrested last month for setting up a pro-Palestinian encampment on school grounds. The demonstration was part of an effort to force the college to sever its ties with Israel and any companies that support its military campaign in Gaza.

“Eventually we will look back on this and see that we were on the right side of history,” Chapman said.

“And the administration will have blood on their hands for waiting 209 days and counting into a genocide to respond to student, faculty and staff demands for divestment.”

Historically close ties

For decades, institutions of higher education in the United States have collaborated with the country’s defence and aerospace sectors, the largest such industries in the world.

Concerns about the implications have lingered for decades, too. In 1961, for instance, former President Dwight Eisenhower warned of the dangers of the “military-industrial complex” entering the academic sphere.

“Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity” in university research, he said in a speech.

Daniel Bessner, a professor of international studies at the University of Washington, told Al Jazeera that the Cold War set the stage for relationships between universities and military contractors to flourish.

When the Soviet Union launched the world’s first artificial satellite, Sputnik, in 1957, the event forced the US to confront the possibility it could fall behind its rivals’ technological achievements.

So the US Congress passed the National Defense Education Act in 1958, to put universities on a “war footing”. Lawmakers found that funding for higher education could win greater political support if it was promoted as enhancing the country’s military and technological prowess.

Bessner also notes that President Eisenhower signed the act into law, despite the misgivings he would later voice. Money from the Pentagon began pouring into universities and research institutions.

That entanglement between academics and the military became particularly prominent in California, a state known for its mild weather and its defence and aerospace sectors.

“Blue skies are good for two things: filming movies and flying planes,” Bessner said.

Clashes with campus activism

But California was also a hotbed for student activism, a tradition that continues to this day.

Chapman, the Pomona College freshman, said she drew inspiration from a long history of protests when she took a leadership role in her campus’s encampment.

In the past, for instance, students have organised against the war in Vietnam, US support for apartheid South Africa and the Iraq War.

“The only reason that students are protesting is because our institutions are aiding and abetting genocide in Gaza, in the same way that in the past they were funding apartheid in South Africa,” Chapman told Al Jazeera.

“We are following the courageous students before us who dared to challenge their school’s investments in war.”

Many student demonstrators have zeroed in on their schools’ multimillion-dollar endowment funds as a target for their activism.

Those financial endowments often use investments in a range of industries, including defence, to ensure the campus can fund its operations over the long term.

But while endowment funds are often at the centre of calls for divestment, activists say that collaborations between universities and defence companies can come in myriad forms.

Those ties are especially prevalent in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) departments, where activists say weapons and aerospace companies wield influence through research projects, recruitment, job fairs and school donations.

At Harvey Mudd College, a STEM-focused school in southern California, a participant in the student group Mudders Against Murder told Al Jazeera such influence is rarely linked directly to weapons production.

“A lot of it is masked as something more neutral-sounding, like aerospace. They aren’t advertising the fact that they make weapons,” said the participant, who declined to give their name due to concerns of retaliation.

“The school prides itself as producing ‘socially conscious scientists’, but you’re never encouraged to think about the role you’ll be playing if you go work at one of these companies.”

Calls to divest

Many schools still proudly market their ties with defence companies.

The engineering and sciences centre at the University of California at Santa Barbara (UCSB), for example, features ties with the defence contractor Raytheon as a “success story” on its website.

Weapons companies such as Raytheon, Northrop Grumman, Boeing and Lockheed Martin are also listed on a website of the university’s corporate affiliates programme. All but Lockheed Martin were included on a list of companies that cumulatively donated $1m to the university in the 2022-2023 fiscal year.

Raytheon did not respond to an inquiry from Al Jazeera about cooperation with US universities, but weapons contractors have defended such connections as mutually beneficial partnerships that offer students valuable experience while advancing scientific research.

Not everyone trusts those motivations, though, and schools across the country have faced calls to distance themselves from weapons manufacturers and government defence operations.

“A lot of graduate students were asking themselves what their response should be to the genocide in Palestine,” Isabel Kain, an astronomy graduate student at the University of California at Santa Cruz, told Al Jazeera.

She organises with the group Researchers Against War, which encourages graduate students to mobilise against ties between academic institutions and the military.

“The Palestinian Federation of Trade Unions issued a call for workers to disrupt weapons deliveries, including military funding and research, and we thought, as workers at these universities, this is something we can use our labour to disrupt.”

Kain added that the increased unionisation of graduate students has provided them with more power to exert their demands.

Starting on Monday, UAW 4811, a union representing about 48,000 graduate student workers in California, will vote to authorise a strike in response to university crackdowns on pro-Palestine protesters.

In recent weeks, police have been called in to break up protest encampments at schools like the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), leading to a harsh crackdown on demonstrators and dozens of arrests. The encampment was previously attacked by a pro-Israel crowd wielding metal pipes and mace as law enforcement largely stood by.

The union’s vote aims to send the message to school administrators that the law enforcement action violated students’ free speech rights and that universities should instead engage with the demands of the protesters.

“We’re in a very different moment, because graduate students are unionised to a much greater extent,” said Kain. “That gives us leverage that wasn’t previously available.”

Influencing the next generation

The tensions between students and campus military ties stand to go beyond the present-day war in Gaza, though.

Analysts say investments on college campuses can be seen as part of a larger effort by the military and related industries to embed themselves in academic, cultural, scientific and political institutions.

Access to universities, they explain, can buy companies access to young professionals who are set to enter any number of fields.

“Wherever you turn, you can see the influence of these companies, from think tanks and universities to video games and popular films,” said Benjamin Freeman, the director of the Democratizing Foreign Policy programme at the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a US-based think tank.

“These are enormous industries, and when it comes to college campuses, especially in STEM, it has a huge influence directing talent.”

Freeman questions how young students might be shaped by early professional encounters with defence and aerospace companies – and how those companies’ ideals might mould their contributions to society as a whole.

“Instead of a young, promising student going to work on green energy, for example, they’re being directed towards companies for whom weapons development is their largest source of revenue,” Freeman explained.

“To tell a young, idealistic college student that they can come work for you and do exciting research that will make a difference in the world when, in fact, they are more likely to be working on weapons – that’s a pretty nasty bait and switch.”



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Berkeley chancellor speaks out about ‘Gaza brutality’ at graduation | Gaza

NewsFeed

The chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley addressed the ‘brutality of the violence in Gaza’ in her graduation ceremony speech, as dozens of students wearing keffiyehs waved Palestinians flags and demanded the college divest from Israel. At least one graduate was filmed waving an Israeli flag.

Published On 12 May 2024

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Are US graduation ceremonies the latest battleground for Gaza protests? | Israel War on Gaza News

EXPLAINER

Here’s how pro-Palestine campus protests and encampments are affecting graduation ceremonies at US universities.

College graduates all over the United States this year are walking on stage to collect their degrees after donning Palestinian flags and keffiyehs with their caps and gowns.

Graduation ceremonies are taking place in May during protests and encampments in solidarity with the nearly 35,000 Palestinians killed since Israel’s war on Gaza began more than seven months ago.

Protesters who have set up encampments on campuses for the past several weeks are calling on their universities to cut academic and financial ties with Israel. Counterprotesters are making themselves heard as well with some carrying Israeli flags and displaying pro-Israel messages during commencement ceremonies.

While students at some institutions are using graduation to further their protests, some universities – including Columbia University in New York, where the first encampment appeared in April – have cancelled ceremonies. Other universities have changed venues and put security measures in place.

Which US universities have seen protests at graduations?

These demonstrations include those at:

  • University of Michigan: During the May 4 ceremony, some students held Palestinian flags and banners in protest. Police officers were present during the two-hour ceremony, which did not stop as a result of the protests. The protesters demanded that the university divest from companies associated with Israel. The institution has allowed students to set up an encampment on campus. However, during a dinner held for honorary degree recipients on the night of May 3, police assisted in breaking up a large gathering outside the dinner venue, and at least one person was arrested.
  • Northeastern University: The Boston college held its commencement on May 5 at Fenway Park. The ceremony was peaceful, and some students held Palestinian and Israeli flags. Undergraduate student speaker Rebecca Bamidele also called for peace in Gaza. Last month, police arrested about 100 protesters at Northeastern after breaking up an encampment on campus.
  • University of Illinois Chicago: Graduation speaker Aysha Affaneh used the occasion to speak about the killing of civilians, especially children and students, in Gaza. “I urge you all to acknowledge the class of 2024 of Gaza that no longer exists,” she said.
  • Indiana University: Hours before the institute in Bloomington held its commencement on May 4, an alternate ceremony was organised by protesters in Dunn Meadow, where the university’s encampment had reached its 10th day. Students and faculty, including political science Professor Abdulkader Sinno spoke at the alternate ceremony. Sinno was temporarily suspended in December after he was found to have misrepresented an event organised by the Palestine Solidarity Committee as an “academic event” on an official university form. Protesters also gathered outside the venue for the official ceremony. The Indiana Daily Student newspaper reported that two planes circled in the sky above the venue with banners reading “Let Gaza Live” and “Divest Now – Whitten Resign”, referring to Pamela Whitten, the university’s president.

Which universities have cancelled graduation?

While most US universities are pressing ahead with their ceremonies as scheduled or tightening security, some have cancelled commencements altogether:

  • Columbia University: On Monday, Columbia announced it had cancelled its main university-wide graduation, which had been scheduled for May 15. Instead, there will be smaller ceremonies for each school within the wider institution. Columbia became the epicentre for the pro-Palestine encampments after students pitched tents on April 17, faced a crackdown by police and reported events stage by stage from the ground via the student-run radio station.
  • University of Southern California (USC): Like Columbia, USC cancelled its main ceremony in favour of smaller events for different schools. More than 100 commencement events started on Wednesday and will continue until Saturday.
  • California State Polytechnic University: The campus in Humboldt, North Carolina, will host smaller ceremonies off campus. The institute called police onto the campus last week to arrest student protesters who were demanding divestment from Israel. The campus has been closed since then.

How else have protests affected graduations?

The US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, had been scheduled to speak at the University of Vermont’s commencement on May 19. However, the institute has announced that Thomas-Greenfield will no longer be speaking.

This followed a week of protesters at a student encampment demanding that she be removed as the speaker on the basis that she has, on behalf of the US, vetoed several UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire in Gaza.

Are US universities taking action against graduation protests?

While some universities have chosen not to try to clear the encampments during graduation, including Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, some universities have tightened security and put rules in place that prevent protests.

At the University of Pennsylvania, signs, posters, flags and artificial noisemakers will be prohibited at the May 20 graduation, the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper reported.

At USC, students are allowed to carry only clear bags at ceremonies. Umbrellas, banners, selfie sticks and machines that make noise such as whistles or air horns have been forbidden.

On Monday, the president of Emory University announced that its commencement a week later will take place off campus at an indoor complex called the Gas South District in Duluth, Georgia, due to “concerns about safety and security”.

A student wears a graduation cap with the flag of Israel on top during the University of Michigan’s spring commencement [Nic Antaya/Getty Images/AFP]

How has the US government responded to the graduation protests?

US President Joe Biden said he welcomed peaceful protests at commencements, according to White House spokesperson Karine Jean-Pierre.

“We have been very clear. We believe all Americans should have the right to peacefully protest,” she said on Tuesday. “What we don’t want to see is hate speech, violence.”

Biden is scheduled to deliver a graduation speech at Morehouse College in Atlanta on May 19.



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

US police break up Gaza protest encampment at George Washington University | Protests News

Police say arrests made in Washington, DC, as US-wide crackdown continues on student-led demonstrations in support of Palestinians in Gaza.

Police in the United States capital have broken up a student protest encampment at George Washington University, one of dozens of tent camps set up on campuses across the country in support of Palestinians in Gaza.

The Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, said in a statement that it “moved to disperse” demonstrators on Wednesday morning after “a gradual escalation in the volatility of the protest”. It did not elaborate on what exactly that means.

“During the course of the operation, arrests were made for Assault on a Police Officer and Unlawful Entry,” the department said, without specifying how many arrests were made.

Citing an unnamed police source, CNN reported that 30 to 40 people were arrested.

The Gaza encampment at George Washington University is one of dozens that have sprung up around the world since late April in protest of Israel’s war on the besieged Palestinian enclave.

Students across the US as well as in Canada, the United Kingdom, France and elsewhere are demanding an end to Israel’s military offensive, which has killed nearly 35,000 Palestinians since early October.

They are also calling on their universities to divest from any companies that are complicit in Israeli human rights abuses, among other demands.

The arrests at George Washington University are part of a wave of similar police crackdowns on US college campuses, including New York’s Columbia University, the University of Chicago and the University of California at Los Angeles.

University administrators have accused pro-Palestinian demonstrators of using anti-Semitic language and creating an unsafe environment on campus.

The students have rejected those claims, which they say aim to distract people from what is happening in the Gaza Strip.

“It’s meant to take the focus away from the genocide in Gaza, and it is meant to take the focus away from our demands,” Mariam, a Jewish student demonstrator at George Washington University, told Al Jazeera late last week.

US politicians – including President Joe Biden, a Democrat and staunch backer of Israel – have criticised the Gaza encampments.

Republican James Comer, chairman of the Committee on Oversight and Accountability in the House of Representatives, will hold a hearing on the response to the George Washington University encampment on Wednesday.

The mayor of Washington, DC, Muriel Bowser, and Police Chief Pamela Smith are to testify.



Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Activists say UCLA Palestine encampment assault followed days of harassment | Israel War on Gaza News

Los Angeles, California – At the entrance of the pro-Palestine encampment at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA) on Wednesday, events proceed in an orderly and quiet fashion, save for the constant buzz of a police helicopter hovering overhead.

Those wishing to enter formed a queue, and organisers instructed them on the ground rules: Don’t engage with police or journalists. Ignore the counter-protesters. Don’t litter. No smoking or drinking.

But despite the relative calm, tensions were high. Just hours earlier, during the night, a group of pro-Israel counter-protesters had attacked the encampment, tearing down barricades and assaulting protesters with metal pipes, mace and pepper spray. Fireworks were also fired into the encampment.

Classes at UCLA were cancelled on Wednesday, and the administration released a statement condemning the “horrific acts of violence” against the encampment, which was erected in protest of Israel’s war in Gaza.

Anna, a spokesperson for the encampment who declined to offer her last name, said dozens of pro-Palestine protesters were injured or pepper-sprayed in the attack, which lasted from late Tuesday night into the early hours of Wednesday morning.

She added that the attack partly took place under the gaze of police, who stepped in several hours after the violence began.

“The police did nothing,” she told Al Jazeera on Wednesday, noting that she still felt the lingering effects of being pepper-sprayed and punched by an attacker from the pro-Israel contingent. She explained she had spent hours assisting others who had been hurt.

“They were coming at us with metal pipes. Numerous people went to the hospital because of how badly they were injured. One person left in a wheelchair. Another had their hand completely smashed.”

By daylight on Wednesday, the space previously used by pro-Israel protesters was largely empty, with several large Israeli flags fluttering in the breeze. Reports of an increased police presence, however, led to suspicions that the pro-Palestinian encampment would be cleared later in the day.

Police march in the direction of a pro-Palestine encampment at UCLA in Los Angeles, California, on May 1 [Brian Osgood/Al Jazeera]

UCLA police and CSC Los Angeles, a security and event management company employed on campus, did not respond to questions from Al Jazeera by the time of publication.

Anna sees a contrast between the apathetic police response to last night’s violence and the way law enforcement has aggressively dismantled pro-Palestinian protests on campuses across the country.

In New York City, for instance, an estimated 282 protesters were arrested overnight as police cleared demonstrations at Columbia University and City College of New York.

As of Wednesday, there was a large police presence on the campus at UCLA, with about a dozen patrol cars facing the direction of the encampment.

Still, it was a sleepy scene: Demonstrators quietly listened to speeches, while officers were observed checking their phones. The occasional heckler dropped by, but they were largely ignored.

Anna told Al Jazeera that Tuesday night’s attack, though, was the culmination of several days of harassment.

Aggression from pro-Israel counter-protesters, she said, had grown with “increasing severity”. There had even been an effort one night prior to break into the encampment.

Anna said the counter-protesters also set up speakers at night to play a handful of songs over and over, in an apparent effort to deprive the demonstrators of sleep and disrupt their peace of mind. She likened their methods to those employed against Palestinian prisoners by Israeli forces.

But she emphasised the students in the encampment do not want the violence to detract from their message.

They prefer to keep the focus on Israel’s war in Gaza, which has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, most of them women and children, and displaced more than 90 percent of the enclave’s population.

Despite reports of rights abuses from Israeli forces, the US government has remained steadfast in its support of Israel’s military offensive.

Campus protesters like those at UCLA are demanding an end to university investments in companies seen to be complicit in Israel’s war and its occupation of Palestinian territories. They have also called for the termination of university relationships with Israeli institutions.

“Even though we faced this incredible violence last night, this isn’t about us as students,” Anna said. “This is about how we as students can bring attention to the plight of the Palestinians and to the genocide in Gaza. What has brought so many people to this camp is our love for Palestine, for the life and dignity of freedom of Palestinians.”

Political pressure

The attack on the encampment is one of the most violent manifestations yet of the rising tensions on college campuses across the United States.

Students from coast to coast have erected encampments, occupied buildings and carried out other acts of civil disobedience in opposition to US support for the war.

However, university administrators and elected officials, including President Joe Biden, have alleged the protests include instances of anti-Semitism, thereby creating an unsafe learning environment for Jewish students.

Protest organisers at UCLA and elsewhere reject that allegation, though. Jewish, Arab and Muslim communities have all reported upticks in harassment and discrimination since the war in Gaza began nearly seven months ago, on October 7.

Still, since December, two congressional hearings have been held to review the allegations of anti-Semitism on campus, with the presidents of four top universities called in for questioning. Two of those presidents have since resigned.

On Wednesday, the House of Representatives took further action to crack down on anti-Semitism on campus.

It passed a bill to adopt a definition of anti-Semitism into civil rights law that could potentially penalise criticism of Israel. While the bill has yet to be voted on in the Senate, critics fear any resulting law could be used to withhold funds from universities involved with pro-Palestinian activism.

Facing pressure from lawmakers to crack down on the protests, many universities have called in police to disperse the protesters, including at Columbia and Yale, two prestigious Ivy League institutions.

Police cars line up outside the pro-Palestinian encampment at UCLA on May 1 [Brian Osgood/Al Jazeera]

Nevertheless, after the overnight attack at UCLA, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass released a statement on Wednesday condemning the “detestable violence” and calling for an independent investigation.

California Governor Gavin Newsom also released a statement saying that those who engaged in illegal action “must be held accountable”, without specifying that pro-Palestine demonstrators were the group that came under attack.

Still, Anna urged politicians to do more to support the UCLA protesters and protect their rights to free speech.

“Overwhelmingly the support is from other students, community members and loved ones,” said Anna. “So far, I have not seen any high-profile politicians condemn how we were assaulted last night in the same way that they’ve condemned Jewish students feeling unsafe because of anti-Zionist activism on campuses.”

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Police use tear gas on anti-war protesters at Florida university | Gaza

NewsFeed

Police fired tear gas at protesters who’d set up a camp at the University of South Florida to condemn Israel’s war on Gaza. Several students were reportedly arrested as the camp was dismantled.

Published On 1 May 2024

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

New York City police enter Columbia campus as Gaza protest escalates | Protests News

Officers seen heading towards Hamilton Hall, which students began occupying on Tuesday morning.

Large numbers of New York City police officers have entered the campus of Columbia University in the latest escalation in the Gaza protests that have swept dozens of universities, mostly in the United States.

The New York Police Department received a notice from Columbia authorising officers to take action shortly before they entered the campus late on Tuesday night, a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Associated Press news agency.

Live television images showed police entering the campus in upper Manhattan, which has been the focal point of student protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, in which more than 34,535 Palestinians have been killed.

After entering the campus, some officers approached Hamilton Hall, the administration building that students began occupying early on Tuesday morning after the management said it had begun suspending students who had refused to meet a deadline to disperse on Monday.

They renamed the building “Hind’s Hall”, in memory of six-year-old Palestinian girl Hind Rajab who was killed in Gaza in February.

“We’re clearing it out,” police in a riot unit yelled as they marched up to the barricaded entrance to the building. Dozens more police marched to the protest encampment.

Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine said in a post on X that the police officers were “wearing riot gear” and that “multiple blocks have been barricaded off”.

Dozens of protesters barricaded the entrances of Hamilton Hall and unfurled a Palestinian flag from a window, after taking over the building on Tuesday.  A student organiser who spoke to Al Jazeera said that the occupation group was separate from the group that had established a camp on the campus lawn.

At an evening news briefing held a few hours before police entered the campus, Mayor Eric Adams and city police officials alleged the Hamilton Hall takeover had been instigated by “outside agitators” who lacked any affiliation with Columbia and were known to law enforcement for provoking lawlessness.

Adams suggested some of the student protesters were not fully aware of “external actors” in their midst.

“We cannot and will not allow what should be a peaceful gathering to turn into a violent spectacle that serves no purpose. We cannot wait until this situation becomes even more serious. This must end now,” the mayor said.

One of the student leaders of the protest, Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian student at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs, disputed the claims.

“They’re students,” he told the Reuters news agency.

The protesters are calling for the university to sell off any investments linked to Israel, be transparent about its financial ties to the country, and provide amnesty from any disciplinary measures to all students participating in the rallies.

Universities across the US are grappling with growing protests at the same time as they prepare for end-of-year graduation ceremonies.

On Tuesday, police also fired tear gas at students who set up a Gaza solidarity camp at the University of Southern Florida in Tampa, according to videos from journalists and witnesses verified by Al Jazeera.

The videos also show police forces arresting two people at the protest scene.

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

US advocacy groups back Palestine solidarity campus protests amid Gaza war | Israel War on Gaza News

Washington, DC – Dozens of faith, civil rights and progressive groups in the United States have expressed solidarity with university students protesting against US support for Israel amid the war on Gaza.

The groups – which include the Working Families Party, IfNotNow Movement, Sunrise Movement, Movement for Black Lives, and Gen-Z for Change – lauded the student protesters in a joint statement on Monday.

“We commend the students who are exercising their right to protest peacefully despite an overwhelming atmosphere of pressure, intimidation and retaliation, to raise awareness about Israel’s assault on Gaza – with US weapons and funding,” the organisations said.

“These students have come forth with clear demands that their universities divest from corporations profiting from Israeli occupation, and demanding safe environments for Palestinians across their campuses.”

The signatories also included the Arab American Institute, MPower Change Action Fund, Greenpeace USA and Justice Democrats.

The statement, backed by nearly 190 groups, highlights the growing progressive support for the campus protest movement as it enters its third week, despite crackdowns by university administrators and law enforcement agencies.

While students have been protesting the war on Gaza since its outbreak on October 7, the new wave of demonstrations – marked by protesters setting up encampments on their campuses – has gripped the country and made international headlines.

The students are calling for their universities to disclose their investments and end ties with firms involved with the Israeli military.

‘Violent response’

The protests started to gain momentum earlier in April at Columbia University in New York, where students continue to face arrests after the college administration called on police to clear their encampments.

Still, similar protests have sprung up across the US, as well as in other countries.

Hundreds of students have been arrested in the US so far with footage emerging of students, professors and journalists being violently detained by officers on various campuses.

“As we stand in solidarity with the students protesting in encampments across the country, we reaffirm our commitment to amplifying their voices, condemn the university administration officials’ violent response to their activism, and demand that universities remove the presence of police and other militarized forces from their campuses,” the advocacy groups said on Monday.

Earlier in the day, Columbia University President Minouche Shafik released a statement calling on the student protesters to “voluntarily disperse”.

“We are consulting with a broader group in our community to explore alternative internal options to end this crisis as soon as possible,” Shafik said.

She accused the encampment of creating an “unwelcoming environment” for Jewish students and faculty. But student protesters have rejected accusations of anti-Semitism, underscoring that many of the organisers engaged in the demonstrations are themselves Jewish.

“While the University will not divest from Israel, the University offered to develop an expedited timeline for review of new proposals from the students by the Advisory Committee for Socially Responsible Investing, the body that considers divestment matters,” Shafik added.

Her statement failed to mention Palestinians or the anti-Arab and Islamophobic bigotry that demonstrators have reported receiving from counterprotesters.

Columbia later issued a threat to suspend and take disciplinary actions against students if they do not clear the encampment by Monday afternoon. The university had set previous deadlines to end the protests, which the students appeared to ignore.

Political backlash

The crackdown on protesters and faculty members who support them has raised concerns about academic freedom and free speech on US campuses.

On Friday, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) issued an open letter to public and private universities, warning them against violating the rights of protesters. The First Amendment of the US Constitution guarantees freedom of assembly and speech.

“As you fashion responses to the activism of your students (and faculty and staff), it is essential that you not sacrifice principles of academic freedom and free speech that are core to the educational mission of your respected institution,” it read.

The ACLU also urged campus leaders to resist “pressures placed on them by politicians seeking to exploit campus tensions to advance their own notoriety or partisan agendas”.

Politicians from both major parties have condemned student demonstrators and accused them of anti-Semitism.

“I don’t care what your demands are. Get the hell out of our community and never come back. Those are my demands,” Republican Congressman Brandon Williams wrote in a social media post on Monday in response to protesters at Syracuse University in central New York state.  “And the clock is ticking.”

Last month, Williams introduced a bill titled “Respecting the First Amendment on Campus Act”.

‘They risk everything’

Amid this backlash, the dozens of progressive groups who voiced support for the students on Monday said the students’ “courage and determination in the face of adversity inspire us all to take action and speak out against injustice wherever it occurs”.

“As they risk everything right now, it is critical that all of us do everything we can to support them.”

Student organisers have stressed that their protests aim to spread awareness about the abuses in Gaza, where Israel has killed more than 34,400 people and imposed a severe blockade on the territory, bringing it to the verge of starvation.

They have warned that the politicians’ focus on them aims to distract from Israeli atrocities and US support for the war.

“Part of the reactionary response to this is to treat the campus protest itself as the problem, as the crisis – as opposed to as a response to a crisis that we should be paying attention to,” Eman Abdelhadi, a sociologist at the University of Chicago, told Al Jazeera last week.

“But I don’t think the movement itself is a distraction in the sense that the students themselves have been steadfast in turning the camera back towards Gaza.”

Check out our Latest News and Follow us at Facebook

Original Source

Exit mobile version