US Students defend Civilization

With eyes on US college campuses, students stress: ‘Gaza is why we’re here’

Apr. 24, 2024

Global attention has turned to universities across the United States, where students have erected encampments to demand action to end Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.

The growing protests have taken root on the campuses of some of the country’s top academic institutions, including Columbia and Harvard.

And over the past weeks, they have spurred heated debates around freedom of speech, Palestinian solidarity activism in the US, and the use of force to disperse student protesters, among other issues.

But the students at the heart of the movement say the reason they began their demonstrations – the pressing need to end Israel’s deadly bombardment of Gaza – risks being lost amid a cacophony of voices and distractions.

“Gaza is why we’re here. Gaza is why we’re doing this,” said Rue, a student at The New School in New York City who asked to only be identified by her first name due to a fear of reprisals.

Continue reading at www.aljazeera.com

Pro-Palestinian students vow to ‘de-occupy’ Princeton after administration halts encampment

Apr. 25, 2024

Hours after administrators shut down a fledgling encampment at Princeton University on Thursday morning, hundreds of students took control of a central courtyard at the Ivy League institution, vowing to remain until the university divests from companies profiteering from the Israeli occupation of Palestinians.

Students, faculty and community members brought blankets, books, laptops, and blank canvasses to the lawns across the university’s chapel in the McCosh Courtyard on Thursday, setting up a “Popular University for Gaza” to push back at the university’s decision to shut down the anti-war encampment as their peers had already done in more than 30 other universities across the US over the past week.

Through the course of the morning, select faculty visited the lawn where the students had assembled, leading teach-ins and discussions.

Organisers said they were calling on the university to divest from companies that “profit from or engage in the State of Israel’s ongoing military campaign” in Gaza as well as for an academic and cultural boycott of Israeli institutions. Activists also demanded the university end all research on “weapons of war” funded by the US Department of Defense.

Continue reading at www.middleeasteye.net

Hundreds arrested and assaulted by US police as protests against Gaza genocide expand on college campuses

• Anti-war encampment grows at University of Pittsburgh: “Biden, Trump, Bush and Obama, all of them are committed to continuing war”
• Hundreds arrested and assaulted by US police as protests against Gaza genocide expand on college campuses
• “The right to protest is at stake,” Columbia student tells WSWS
• Hundreds of students rally against genocide in Washington, D.C.
• Boston police forcibly remove tent encampment at Emerson College
• Socialist Equality Party vice presidential candidate Jerry White denounces police rampage in Austin, Texas
• “I think that the real antisemitism is conflating the Israeli state with Jews,” Columbia faculty member tells WSWS
• Student protests against Gaza genocide, police repression, expand to Italy, France
• LAPD conducts mass arrest at University of Southern California campus 

Continue reading atwww.wsws.org

I Am a Jewish Student at Columbia. Don’t Believe What You’re Being Told About ‘Campus Antisemitism’

Apr. 24, 2024

“Reprehensible and dangerous.” “Terrorist sympathizers.” “It’s not 1938 Berlin. It’s 2024, Columbia University, NYC.”

The White House, Congressional Republicans, and cable news talking heads would have you believe that the Columbia University campus has devolved into a hotbed of antisemitic violence – but the reality on the ground is very different. As a Jewish student at Columbia, it depresses me that I have to correct the record and explain what the real risk to our safety looks like. I still can’t quite believe how the events on campus over the past few days have been so cynically and hysterically misrepresented by the media and by our elected representatives.

Last week, the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, representing more than 100 student organizations, including Jewish groups, organized the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, a peaceful campus protest in solidarity with Palestine. CUAD was reactivated after the university suspended Students for Justice in Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace in the fall. On Wednesday morning, hundreds of students camped out on Columbia’s South Lawn. They vowed to stay put until the university divests from companies that profit from their ties to Israel. Protesters prayed, chanted, ate pizza, and condemned the university’s complicity in Israel’s attacks on Gaza. Though counter-protesters waved Israeli flags near the encampment, the campus remained largely calm from my vantage point.

Continue reading at znetwork.org

The Crackdown on Campus Protests Is Happening Everywhere

Apr. 26, 2024

On April 17, students at Columbia University formed a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” on the campus’s East Butler Lawn calling for the school to divest from companies that profit from the occupation in Palestine. Their tents stood for two days before the administration suspended more than 100 participating students and asked the NYPD to dismantle the encampment. Unsurprisingly, the repression only increased the size and scope of the protest.

In short order, students at dozens of other colleges—including the University of Minnesota, the University of Pittsburgh, Berkeley, and Yale—have established similar encampments in a widening showdown over campus speech and the war in Gaza. Administrations are responding in different ways. On April 24, officers in riot gear at the University of Texas, Austin, blocked the path of protesters and arrested at least 34 people for refusing to disperse.

Since October, universities have suspended student groups, curbed academic speech, and called the police on peaceful protesters on campuses coast to coast. With calls for divestment only growing louder, we asked students nationwide to share how their schools have responded to protests calling for a cease-fire and in support of Palestine.

Continue reading at www.thenation.com

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US students revolt against the genocide of the Palestinians

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