Columbia says it will throw students out of a building
The students of the pro-Israeli encampment at Columbia University have vowed to stay put. A news conference on the university campus in Manhattan
So far, at least, a core of student protesters has vowed to stay put. At a news conference, Sueda Polat, a student organizer with the encampment, said that the university had not made significant concessions to the protesters’ main demand: divestment from companies with links to the Israeli occupation of Gaza. Columbia had also stopped negotiating. As a result, she said, the students inside the encampment “will not be moved unless by force.”
It said that students would not be punished for their participation in the encampment if they signed a form promising not to break any university rules through the end of the next academic year. Students in the encampment who already faced discipline from previous violations may not be eligible for the same deal, the document stated.
“We called on N.Y.P.D. to clear an encampment once,” Nemat Shafik, Columbia’s president, wrote in a statement to the community last Friday co-signed by the co-chairs of Columbia’s board of trustees. It would be counter productive to bring the N.Y.P.D back at this point, with what we know about the situation on campus.
Police had begun arresting people at California State Polytechnic University, where they had been for more than a week. And at Portland State University in Oregon, students had taken over a library.
Tuesday promises to be another tense day at the Columbia campus in Manhattan, with students bracing for possible further action against the pro-Palestinian encampment on campus and administrators waiting to see if their decision to suspend demonstrators who remained at the site would blunt the protest.
The Portland State University protests against the occupation of a neoclassical building and Israel’s war against Israel: “Free Gaza” and “Free Palestine”
“Palestine will live forever.” Go away, yo. “Free, free Palestine.” It is free, free, free Palestine. It’s time to shut it down. “Palestine will be free.” Disclose, you will not stop, we will not rest.
Outside the neoclassical building, protesters, many wearing helmets, safety glasses, gloves and masks, barricaded the entrance. There are lots of chairs and tables at the entrance. A protester took a hammer to smash the glass part of a door. The protesters appeared to have free rein of the building.
In Portland demonstrators on Monday seized control of the library at Portland State University, where some had spray-painted words such as “Free Gaza,” a sign declared “Glory to Our Martyrs,” and activists called for the university to cut all ties with Boeing, which has supplied weaponry to Israel’s military.
The chief of the Portland Police Bureau estimated that there could be 50 to 75 protesters inside the building. The officials urged the protesters to leave the area, and warned them that they could be charged with a crime.
Just outside, about a dozen faculty in yellow and orange safety vests also stayed behind, with several saying that they planned to remain overnight to make sure their students’ right to protest was respected.
“We have begun suspending students as part of the next phase of our efforts to ensure the safety of our campus,” Ben Chang, a spokesman for the university, said.
She stated that they were asked to leave, but the students were against it. “We do not abide by university pressures. We act based on the will of the students.”
Elga Castro, 47, an adjunct professor in the Spanish department at Barnard College, Columbia’s sister school, was among the faculty and staff members guarding access to the tents. I have opinions on Gaza and Palestine but I am more interested in protecting my students.
“What I’ve Learned and Done About the Students, the Faculty, the Administrations, the Governors, and the Presidents” are not the “Wise”
“If you don’t follow it when it is needed, it doesn’t mean anything,” she says. “The first thing is going to have to be a rebuilding of trust. It will take a long time to build and repair that trust.
Faculty senates and academic councils are mechanisms that schools already have that allow both faculty and administrators to talk over what’s going on. She says that many schools are ignoring that structure.
The principle of shared governance, which is defined in the AAUP’s definition as the “joint responsibility of faculty, administrations, and governing boards to govern colleges and universities”, is important in helping campuses move forward, Mulvey says.
And faculty members at some schools — including Barnard, Emory, UT-Austin and Cal Poly Humboldt — are issuing votes and statements of no confidence in their presidents, over their response to campus protests.
“The use of policing, penalization and retribution to avoid protest or dialogue with students cannot stand, as this is no model for an educational institution,” the Yale professors wrote.
The professors at Northeastern University wrote a letter to the university leaders asking them to drop charges against protesters and apologize for false allegations of antisemitism. At least 144 Vanderbilt University professors signed a letter expressing support for student protesters and criticizing its “excessive and punitive” response.
“As a faculty expressly charged with teaching our students about these values in the pursuit of journalism and other expressions of public communication, we strongly dissent from these anti-democratic acts,” the Indiana professors wrote.
“At this season of my life my job is to protect the students and to protect … academic freedom. I can do that better than they can do that,” she said. “And I think that’s what we’re seeing with faculty all over, both wanting to protect the students and wanting to call out administrations that are actually putting the students at risk.”
Some are speaking up based on their subject matter expertise, like history professors at the University of Southern California and media school professors at Indiana University.
“As a faculty member who cares about freedom of speech — who sees freedom of speech as the bedrock of democracy and really as the foundation for a public education — I see it as my responsibility to speak up when I see harm being done to students and their rights being violated,” Phillips said. “And if my voice isn’t enough, then I’m going to have to speak up, so to say, for them in other ways.”
Some of her students were at the site of the campus protest completely peaceful, and when she arrived at the scene she saw heavily armed riot police. She began walking towards them.
“My instincts just kicked in,” she told NPR on Monday. I found myself handcuffed and taken to a bus that would take me to the jail, as students and other faculty waited on the other side.
The students were demonstrating at the site of a camping ground that the school administration banned in a last-minute change of policy.
A few days earlier, on Thursday, Indiana state and university police had arrested 33 people as they tried to disperse the crowd. Protesters regrouped, andPhillips was alarmed to hear on Saturday that the police were once again at the park.
She was arrested on the day of a pro-Palestinian campus protest along with four faculty members and 19 students.
In Indiana, protesters are calling for an end to both university investment in Israeli companies and their partnership with a nearby U.S. Navy installation as well as a cease-fire in Gaza.
Source: How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words
Campus Protests: Faculty Arrest Letters Are No-Confidence — How Some Faculty Members Are defending Student Protesters, in Action and in Words
Most of the people arrested on Saturday, including Phillips, were hit with the misdemeanor charge of criminal trespass. All were also handed slips of paper by university police banning them from school property for one year (with the exception of one organizer who was banned for five years).
The administration later said that students and faculty who were arrested can appeal their trespass warnings with university police, and will be allowed on campus to finish the semester while that process is underway.
Phillips plans to do so. She says that the last week of classes is crucial for professors in many ways, and that experience has already been disrupted. On Monday, her students presented their final projects on Zoom rather than in their classroom.
“I know we’re all being very careful to not violate the terms of that trespass ban, because we’ve been informed that, should we do so, that the consequences could ramp up and be even worse than they are right now,” she said.
Protests at Indiana have continued, with demonstrators now also calling for the university’s president and provost to step down. More than 800 current and emeritus faculty members from the school have also signed an open letter calling for their resignation or removal.
One of the reasons why it’s one of several schools where professors are getting arrested at demonstrations is due to the fact that they hold no-confidence votes in their administrations.
Faculty members in orange vests formed a human wall at the entrance of the students’ campsite at Columbia University on Monday as police arrived to break it up. Professors at Emory University staged a campus walkout that same day, chanting “hands off our students.”
“I feel like faculty are in triage mode right now,” said Irene Mulvey, president of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP). “They’re helping the students, putting their bodies on the line … they’re dealing with the administration with no-confidence votes, but also trying to deal with the administration directly to get them to back off and do the right thing.”
Source: How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words
Campus Protests Faculty Arrests Letters: “Why some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words”
Several officers slammed Steve to the ground as he was being arrested during a protest at Washington University.
A student read a statement from Tamari, who said he was “body slammed and crushed by the weight of several St. Louis County Police officers and then dragged across campus by the police.”
In one, economics professor Caroline Fohlin approaches several police officers as they wrestle a protester to the ground, asking “what are you doing?” and telling them to get away. One officer grabs her by the wrist as she nears, flipping her onto the sidewalk. Another person is going to help her zip-tie her hands behind her back.
Fohlin was later charged with battery against a police officer. Gregory Clement told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the arrest was misguided.
Clement denied that Fohlin was a protester on April 25. She emerged from her office and was concerned about the treatment of students.
While Nolle McAfee was in handcuffs, someone in the philosophy department recorded a video urging bystanders to let the police know about her arrest.
McAfee later told 11Alive News that she was passing through the area of the protest when she came across cops “pummeling” a young protester, and stood nearby asking them to stop. She didn’t leave when police told her to, and was charged with disorderly conduct.
Source: How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words
How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words: Steven Thrasher’s role of faculty support for the student encampment
Steven Thrasher, a journalism professor and chair of social justice in reporting at Northwestern University’s Medill School, has been acting in what he calls a role of faculty support for the student encampment on its Illinois campus.
When the encampment started last week, he and other members of the group Educators for Justice in Palestine mobilized to make sure there would be faculty members available for bail support, university negotiations and physically defending student protesters, including by signing up for four-hour shifts on site.
“We’re making sure that there’s always four of us who are there, that the students know that we’re there,” Thrasher told NPR on Friday. We didn’t expect to be in a human barricade position in the first 10 minutes.
At protests, Thrasher identifies himself as someone who is willing to be arrested. He feels committed to putting his body in that space if there is violence between students and the administration.
“I would think that if I saw students who disagreed with me politically … I would also intervene” on their behalf, he said. I am supporting them in something that I believe is very righteous and I am very proud of them.
Several faculty members have said in speeches and social media posts that they fear they will lose their jobs or face other repercussions for speaking out.
Most professors do not have it, since the long-term decline in tenure at American universities means that it is riskier for non-tenured ones to take a stand. She said those dynamics are damaging not only to higher education institutions but democracy itself.
Source: How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words
From Wall Street to Black Lives Matter: The Ups and Downs of the Pedagogical Spaces of Occupy Wall Street
Thrasher, who has reported on various Occupy Wall Street and Black Lives Matter protests over the years, says these sorts of encampments are “really amazing pedagogical spaces” where lots of valuable learning can happen, from interfaith prayers to lending libraries.
She says that the best thing to come out of this tumult is the deeper relationships within the community, as she has not been at the university in more than two decades.
“There’s definitely no more business as usual,” she says. “We have really come together in a way that has shown how fragile community can be, but also how important community is.”
“I believe the majority of faculty will bend over backwards to fulfill their academic obligations to the students,” she said.
Good morning. You’re reading the Up First newsletter. If you subscribe, you will get the Up First show for news that you need to start your day.
The Florida Abortion Ban Takes Effect: The New Voting Proposal to Reclassify Marijuana as a Schedule III Drug
Starting today, people in Florida can no longer access abortions after six weeks of pregnancy, except in rare circumstances. The restriction replaces a 15-week ban that has been in effect since the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. In November a proposal will appear on the ballot that will allow voters to change this restriction. The ban has significant consequences on pregnant people and abortion providers.
The Biden administration is moving to reclassify marijuana as a less dangerous drug. Currently, it’s classified as a Schedule I drug. Other Schedule I drugs include heroin, ecstasy and LSD. The proposal would reclassify marijuana as a lower-risk Schedule III drug — a category that includes ketamine, Tylenol with codeine, and anabolic steroids.
The next time you argue with your siblings, be thankful that your relationship isn’t as dire as it could be. Many birds have sibling relationships that are very serious. Some birds kill their siblings soon after hatching. Some people spend their lives with their siblings and others risk their lives to help each other.
Source: Florida abortion ban takes effect; NYPD breaks up Columbia protests
The National Trust for Historic Preservation’s list of 11 U.S. sites of historic interest: the hometown of a country singer, the all-Black Florida town, and the Alaskan Tlingit Clan
America’s most important historic sites have been listed by the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The hometown of a country singer, the all-Black Florida town memorialized by an American, and houses of the Alaskan Tlingit Clan are on this year’s list.
See photos of all 11 of the most endangered historic places in the U.S. and read about how the National Trust hopes the attention will help efforts to reinvigorate these sites.
A professor at Columbia University in the US has been arrested for supporting pro-Palestinian protesters at the campus in New York, according to reports. The professor was among 19 people arrested by police on Monday during the protest. According to reports, a total of 25 people were arrested in connection with the protest, including five professors and 18 students.