University of Palestine Students in the Morningside Campus vs. Columbia: “It’s a challenge for Israel and the United States,” Shafik said

Columbia appears to have decided to allow the protest to continue for a while rather than force it to stop, a move that administrators fear will inciting more protest. The university said it had identified some but not all of the students in the encampment. They are likely to be notified of their suspensions one by one via email.

Students began moving furniture to a balcony from Hamilton Hall after protesters climbed into the windows at John Jay Hall, according to the university radio station.

The officials were not available for comment immediately. Its public safety department was responding. In a statement, it urged people to avoid coming to the Morningside campus on Tuesday if they could.

The New York Police Department said at about 2:15 a.m. that it had officers stationed outside the university, but not on school grounds, in case the situation escalated. The number of officers in the area wasn’t specified.

Columbia set several deadlines to reach a solution with protesters, as they said it violates school policies and is a threat to campus safety and students trying to study and sleep.

Columbia President Minouche Shafik stated Monday that the academic leaders and student organizers put forward thoughtful and robust offers to reach common ground. We wish they had reached a different outcome, thanks to the long hours and careful efforts of them.

Some demonstrators in support of the Palestinians are calling on Columbia to stop investing in and doing business with Israeli companies.

Columbia said Monday it would not do that, but it did say the school’s Advisory Committee for Socially Responsible Investing will start reviewing new proposals from students. It is also pledging to make a list of its investments available to students, as well as provide resources toward health and education in Gaza.

The parties agreed that the protests will be halted until after reading day, exams, and graduation in case the class of 2024 isn’t able to have their high school graduation ceremonies in person.

After that, students will need to submit an application at least two days before having a protest, which will be held in designated areas, Shafik said.

Students, faculty and campus leaders in the midst of law enforcement confrontations: “I’m sorry to hear about a peaceful protest at a university, but I don’t want to be afraid of the police”

But she added the encampment has caused an “unwelcoming environment” and “hostile environment” for Jewish students, and violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which outlaws discrimination at schools that receive federal funding.

“Antisemitic language and actions are unacceptable and calls for violence are simply abhorrent,” she said. Many of our Jewish students, and other students as well have found the atmosphere intolerable in recent weeks. A number of people have left the campus. To those students and their families, I want to say to you clearly: You are a valued part of the Columbia community. This is the same campus as you.

She said she was committed to keeping community members safe and shielding them from discrimination, while allowing them to speak, which must mean respecting other people’s right to speak.

For the second time in a week, police arrested dozens of demonstrators at the University of Texas at Austin protesting Israel’s war against Hamas. Protesters said that they were being peaceful, and that the police should leave.

UT-Austin is not the only school in which law enforcement confrontations have gone up. Police used tasers and pepper balls to control unruly protesters at a university in Atlanta. Nationwide, there have been hundreds of arrests, including at Columbia University, the University of Southern California and at Virginia Commonwealth University.

Other universities have taken a more hands off approach. MIT’s president has urged an end to the demonstration, but a MIT spokesman tells NPR that it’s been peaceful.

The university has been trying to avoid calling back the police, whose intervention on April 18 at the request of Columbia administrators led to more than 100 student arrests and attracted a wave of angry protests outside the school’s gates, some of which included blatantly antisemitic rhetoric.

Many faculty members, disturbed by the forceful police response to protests, are increasingly standing up for students’ academic freedom — and pushing back against university leadership that they see as infringing on it.

Alex Morey, director of campus rights advocacy at the foundation for individual rights and expression, stated that responses vary in part because colleges have the power to regulate speech. They outline where students can post flyers, or what time of day protests need to end. Those rules are allowed, as long as they are applied to any student group, according to Morey.

“If the homeless on my campus were not causing any problems, you must allow them to be there and remove them, because they will cause more trouble by doing so.” They have the right to remove it if they so choose.

At the University of California, Berkeley, for instance, Assistant Vice Chancellor Dan Mogulof says their policy is to avoid police involvement unless it’s absolutely necessary.

“Every action has a reaction, and sometimes the reaction is antithetical to what your goals are. Law enforcement is an important resource, but it can also have unintended consequences,” he says.

Students, faculty, and community protests: Oakland, Washington, and other university campuses are facing an “untenable dilemma” as a result of Berkeley’s protests

Berkeley’s protests have been peaceful so far, says Mogulof. He says the school is committed to both free speech and to keeping the university safe and functioning.

He says there can be tension between the objectives. The right to freely express your perspective but also the right to pursue your academic interests is the trick.

At Northwestern University, officials negotiated an agreement with protesters, making a plan on where students can continue to protest while not breaking the university’s rules.

Washington University in St. Louis told NPR in a statement that the university protects free speech, but that right doesn’t include activities that disrupt the functions of the university. On Saturday, university officials made the call to arrest 100 people it said “did not have good intentions” and were mostly unaffiliated with the school, according to a statement.

A barrier was set up to separate pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli protesters at the University of California, Los Angeles. Campus police eventually separated the two groups.

At Northeastern University, campus police arrested around 100 people Saturday after an encampment was “infiltrated by professional organizers with no affiliation” to the school and who were using “virulent antisemitic slurs,” including “Kill the Jews,” officials told NPR in a statement.

“All of these factors left university leaders with no choice but to act,” Chancellor Ken Henderson and provost David Madigan wrote in a letter. Northeastern faced an “untenable dilemma” over the weekend.

Jewish students at universities have complained of being unsafe. A group of Jewish students at the University of Minnesota say they have seen “violent and hateful messages” on campus and no longer feel safe. The student groups at the other schools demanded stricter safety measures from officials.

Politicians and donors may have pressure on schools to respond harshly. The alumni signed a statement that demanded the school remove illegal campsites and discipline students who engage in threats and hate speech.

Toward the end of its semester, Columbia University switched to hybrid classes. The University of Michigan and the University of Southern California have both enlisted volunteers for protest and disruptionsresponse teams for their May ceremonies, and the USC has stopped its main graduation ceremony altogether.

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. It’s not possible to get the same deal for students in the encampment who’ve already faced discipline from previous violations.

“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 foolish to bring the N.Y.P.D. back at this time because it would cause more trouble on the campus.

After midnight, protesters took over Hamilton Hall at Columbia, chanting, “free Palestine.” Protesters took possession of Hamilton in just 20 minutes, after being at the center of campus protests for over 50 years. A spokesman for Columbia wasn’t immediately available.

Palestine will live forever. Go away, yo. Palestine is free, free. Free, free, free Palestine. Shut it down. “Palestine will be free.” Disclose, we will not allow anyone else to do so.

Activists in the building where the pro-palestinian encampment is located: A tense day at Columbia University

Protesters wearing helmets, safety glasses, gloves and masks barricaded the entrance to the building. There are chairs and tables inside the entrance. A protester took a hammer to smash the glass part of a door. The protesters seemed to have complete control of the building.

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.

Activists called on Portland State University to cut all ties with Boeing after taking control of the library, where some had spray-painted “Free Gaza” and a sign that said “Glory to Our Martyrs.”

Bob Day, the chief of the Portland Police Bureau, estimated on Monday night that perhaps 50 to 75 protesters were inside the building. The protesters were warned that they could face criminal charges.

Students in the encampment, along with hundreds of supporters, had spent a tense afternoon rallying around the site in a show of force meant to deter the removal of its tents. Most of the protesters had left by the end of the afternoon, leaving behind several dozen students and a number of tents inside a makeshift camp.

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.

Ben Chang, spokesman for the university, said that they had begun suspending students as part of the efforts to ensure the safety of the campus.

“We’ve been asked to disperse, but it is against the will of the students to disperse,” she said. We do not abide by the university’s demands. The students’ will determines what we act on.

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 my opinions on Gaza and Palestine, but I am mainly here to protect my students,” she said.

Students, faculty, and administrators: How do we stand up against the anti-democratic actions on campuses? A response to an anthropology professor at Yale University

“If you’re not upholding it when it’s needed, then it means nothing,” she says. “The first thing is going to have to be a rebuilding of trust. And that trust takes a long time to build and repair.”

She says most schools already have mechanisms — like faculty senates and academic councils — through which faculty members and administrators can engage with each other over what’s happening and how to respond. But at many schools, she says, administrations are currently ignoring that structure.

According to Mulvey, the principals of shared governance are key to helping campuses move forward.

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.

“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. “I think that’s what we’re finding with faculty all over, they’re trying to protect the students and calling out the administrations that are putting the students at risk.”

Some people are speaking up because of their expertise, like professors at the University of Southern California and 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.”

When Phillips, an anthropology professor at IU, arrived at the site of the campus protest she recognized some of her students, “completely peaceful,” standing face-to-face with what she described as heavily armed riot police. She began walking towards them.

“My instincts just kicked in,” she told NPR on Monday. “And a few moments later, I found myself on the ground, handcuffed and being marched with some students and other faculty to a bus that was ready to take us away to the local jail.”

The students were protesting at the site of an incursion that was banned by the school administration in a last-minute policy change.

A few days earlier, on Thursday, Indiana state and university police had arrested 33 people as they tried to disperse the crowd. Protesters quickly regrouped, andPhillips was concerned when he heard that police were gathering again at the park.

She was one of four faculty members and 19 students that day who were arrested at a pro-Palestinian campus protest.

Demonstrators at Indiana, as in many other states, are calling for a cease-fire in Gaza and an end to both university investment in Israeli-affiliated companies and its partnership with a nearby U.S. Navy installation.

Source: How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words

Campus protests against faculty arrests with no-confidence votes on Monday: How faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words

Most of the arrested on Saturday were charged with a single crime: criminal trespass. All were banned from school property for one year by the university police, with the exception of one 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. But, she says, this last week of classes is especially important for professors in terms of meeting with students and administering finals — 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.

Faculty members in orange vests formed a human wall at the entrance to students’ camp as police came to break it up on Monday. The professors at the university staged a protest of their own.

The president of the AAUP said faculty are in a “triage mode”. They are helping students with their schoolwork. 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 No Confidence Votes: Tim Tamari, 22, is charged with battery against a student protester

Steve Tamari, a history professor at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, was among the protesters arrested at a campus demonstration on Saturday at Washington University in St. Louis, with video showing several officers slamming him to the ground.

In a statement read by a student on Tuesday, Tamari 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,” and remains hospitalized with broken ribs and a broken hand.

Police arrested two professors and many other people at a school after they were called in to help deal with a protest. Both high-profile arrests were captured on bystander videos.

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. As she approaches, one officer grabs her and flips her onto the sidewalk. As she protests, another helps zip-tie her hands behind her back.

Fohlin was later charged with battery against a police officer. Clement told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution that the arrest was misguided.

Clement stated that Fohlin was not a protester on April 25. The student treatment on the quad is what she came to her office concerned about.

The other professor was captured on video urging the public to notify her department of her arrest, even as she is being led away in handcuffs.

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

Campus Protests Faculty Arrests Letters: Why Some Faculty Members Are Defending Student Protesters, in Action and in Words

The professor in charge of reporting at the Medill School of Journalism at the University of Illinois has been acting in ways that support the student protest at their campus.

When the protest started, he and other members of the group Educators for Justice in Palestine were so concerned about the safety of students that they signed up for four-hour shifts on site.

Thrasher told NPR that they were making sure the students were aware that they were there. “But … we did not expect to be in a human barricade position in the first 10 minutes, which is what happened [Thursday] morning.”

At protests, Thrasher identifies himself as willing to be arrested. He hopes that won’t happen but says if there is violence, he will put his body in that space.

I would think that if I saw students who disagreed with me politically. I would also intervene” on their behalf, he said. I’m proud of them because I believe they are very righteous and I’m supporting them in that.

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.

The long-term decline in tenure at American universities has made it riskier for non-tenured professors to take a stand. She said those dynamics are damaging to democracy and higher education in general.

Source: How some faculty members are defending student protesters, in actions and in words

Understanding the Religion of Demonstrations: A Case Study of Community-Inspired Disruption in Washington D.C. Thrasher

These sorts of demonstrations are “really amazing places for learning” because of the diversity of religions that can be found there, says Thrasher, who has reported on various protests.

She says the best thing to come from this turmoil is the depth of the solidarities within the community and she’s spent plenty of time with her colleagues in that time.

“There’s definitely no more business as usual,” she says. We have come together in a way that shows how important community is, but also how fragile it can be.

“My feeling is that a majority of faculty will bend over backwards to fulfill their academic responsibilities to the students, including extensions on projects or additional office hours,” she said.