BY ALAN SINGER On May 3, fifty-nine students and other protesters were arrested at New York University and The New School, a partner institution, who had created an encampment protesting against the continued Israeli assault on Gaza. According to New School president Donna Shalala, she asked the NYPD to arrest demonstrators because they were blocking…
BY RACHEL IDA BUFF University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee. I had a rough day at work on Friday for the usual reasons: administrative overreach, lack of support for the actual education work of the university. As on countless previous occasions, I left my office discouraged. But this day was different from a thousand other Fridays on campus.…
POSTED BY JENNIFER RUTH I asked permission to post the Jewish Voice for Peace-Portland chapter’s letter to Portland State University President Ann Cudd. It works through some points in a way that I find helpful. I hope you do, too. May 13, 2024 Dear President Cudd, Many campuses across this country, including PSU, have been…
BY HASSAN MELEHY “That flag will stand here as long as I’m chancellor,” Lee Roberts, chancellor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, proudly proclaimed on Tuesday, April 30, after restoring the American flag to the pole adorning Polk Place on the UNC campus in Chapel Hill. As the campus community and many…
BY JENNIFER RUTH Portland State University has no quads on which to pitch tents, but running between some of our major buildings, including the library, are park blocks owned by the city. When threatened with trespassing by Portland Police, the students moved their protest from the grass onto the steps of the library. From there,…
POSTED BY HANK REICHMAN Below is the May 10 “Statement of the AAUP-Penn Executive Committee on the Penn Administration’s Decision to Arrest Students and Faculty and the University’s Imposition of Mandatory Leaves of Absence on Six Students.” We condemn in the strongest possible terms the decision of the Penn administration to call in riot police…
BY ALAN SINGER Academic freedom is often paired with freedom of speech, enshrined in the Bill of Rights as part of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. But freedom of speech is not absolute, and neither is academic freedom. Academic freedom is bound by the same legal restraints as freedom of speech, but…
BY MICHAEL SCHWALBE We are now seeing how holocausts happen. We are seeing how people who dare to speak out against massive state violence—in this case, college students protesting Israel’s brutal assault on Gaza—are being beaten and arrested at the behest of university leaders, who in turn are acting as agents of the Israel-allied US…
BY ISAAC KAMOLA In February I gave a talk at Columbia University’s Committee on Global Thought, alongside colleagues discussing the question “Where is the University?” The panel was planned prior to Columbia’s then-shocking ban on Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voices for Peace. In January, we inquired about the status of the boycott…
BY JOHN K. WILSON Yesterday, Columbia threatened student protesters, “if you do not leave by 2 p.m., you will be suspended pending further investigation.” This interim suspension included banishment from campus, a prohibition on attending classes, and eviction from campus housing. All organizations committed to campus free expression should call for a total ban on…