Us campus protests

Documentary on Columbia unrest of April 2024, when students set up an outdoor camp, is fascinating but much has been superseded by the arrest of student organiser Mahmoud Khalil after the re-election of Trump The horror of Gaza is approached in this documentary via a story from the Joe Biden era – and it has arguably been overtaken by events. In 2024, students at New York’s Columbia University set up outdoor pro-Palestinian protest encampments, filling East Butler Lawn with tents; this was in the boisterous tradition of the 1960s anti-Vietnam-war campus demonstrations and the Occupy Wall Street movement, demanding an end to Columbia’s direct and indirect investment in Israel. The protests were led by the calm and personable figure of student Mahmoud Khalil and protesters were entitled to point out that Columbia had, after all, divested from Russia over Ukraine. The protests carried on and spread to other universities in the US, and Columbia president Minouche Shafik came under immense pressure. The encampment escalated to the occupation of a university building, which gave the university authorities the pretext they needed for sending in the NYPD, and the protest was violently, acrimoniously (but not completely) halted. Continue reading...

When future generations read about Gaza with horror and wonder how we allowed a livestreamed genocide to happen, what will you say? Now, when Israel is executing a “final solution” in Gaza, when it is far too late for dissent to make any difference, the tide is slowly starting to turn. Now that Gaza is flattened, turned into mass graves and rubble, people who have kept quiet for the past 19 months are slowly starting to speak up. Now that Israel and the US are not even trying to pretend that they aren’t intent on emptying Gaza and the West Bank of Palestinians, of “taking control” of all of the land, some criticism has started to trickle in. Over in the UK, they’ve pulled out the “e” word. After 19 months of genocidal violence and almost three months of a starvation campaign the UK has decided to describe the situation as egregious. The UK, along with France and Canada, has threatened – and I’m sure Israel’s leaders are quaking in their boots over this – that there might be a “concrete” response if the mass killing and starvation continues. Continue reading...

The administration has torn up the rule book as it seeks to implement a hardline agenda to expel people from the US Donald Trump retook the White House vowing to stage “the largest deportation operation in American history”. As previewed, the administration set about further militarizing the US-Mexico border and targeting people requesting asylum and refugees while conducting raids and deportations in undocumented communities, detaining and deporting immigrants and spreading fear. Critics are outraged, if not surprised. But few expected the new legal chapter that unfolded next: a multipronged crackdown on certain people seen as opponents of the US president’s ideological agenda. This extraordinary assault has come in the context of wider attacks on higher education, the courts and the constitution. Continue reading...

White House axed grants even as college agreed to demands including ceding control of Middle East studies department New York’s Columbia University is slated to cut 180 staffers whose work was supported by federal grants that have now been revoked by the Trump administration, the college’s acting president, Claire Shipman, announced on Tuesday. “We have had to make difficult choices and unfortunately, today, nearly 180 of our colleagues who have been working, in whole or in part, on impacted federal grants, will receive notices of non-renewal or termination,” Shipman said in a lengthy notice posted on Columbia’s website. Continue reading...

The Encampments tells the story of campus activism last year. But Palestinian films are facing intimidation campaigns Recently, The Encampments opened at the Angelika Film Center in New York to a record-setting box office for an independent film – along with a storm of controversy. For us, as the distributor, the atmosphere was far from celebratory. The theater was forced to hire additional security, notify police and prepare staff for harassment in response to protests and threats from people who hadn’t even seen the film. What is so dangerous about Palestinian films? Continue reading...

These are some of the people ensnared by the administration’s unprecedented measures to target people it believes oppose its agenda Donald Trump retook the White House vowing to stage “the largest deportation operation in American history”. As previewed, the administration has set about further militarizing the US-Mexico border and targeting asylum seekers and refugees while conducting raids and deportations in undocumented communities, detaining and deporting immigrants and spreading fear. Critics are outraged, if not surprised. But few expected the new legal chapter that unfolded next: a multipronged crackdown on certain people seen as opponents of the US president’s ideological agenda. This extraordinary assault has come in the context of wider attacks on higher education, the courts and the constitution. Continue reading...

Allegations of criminality have always been deployed to justify state violence but even ‘imperfect’ victims deserve basic rights US politics live – latest updates Last month, the Trump administration flew 238 Venezuelan immigrants to a brutal prison in El Salvador. Federal officials alleged that the detainees were members of the Tren de Aragua gang, calling them “heinous monsters” ,“criminal aliens”, “the worst of the worst”. The federal government has also revoked visas for a thousand international students over their alleged participation in protests against Israel’s genocide in Palestine. Some were abducted, like Mahmoud Khalil, who has spent more than a month incarcerated in one of the worst jails in the US. Officials alleged that Mahmoud “sided with terrorists … who have killed innocent men, women, and children”. Media reports quickly revealed that the Trump administration is lying about “innocent” people to justify abducting them. But this raises a more important question: if Trump’s victims weren’t “innocent”, does that make them disposable? I worry that emphasizing the innocence of victims creates a rhetorical trap. It’s like carefully digging a pit that the fascists can shove us into. Continue reading...

White House has claimed that Khalil’s ‘beliefs and associations’ are counter to US foreign policy interests Mahmoud Khalil case – live updates Mahmoud Khalil, the Columbia University graduate and Palestinian organizer, is eligible to be deported from the United States, an immigration judge ruled on Friday during a contentious hearing at a remote court in central Louisiana. The decision sides with the Trump administration’s claim that a short memo written by the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, which stated Khalil’s “current or expected beliefs, statements or associations” were counter to foreign policy interests, is sufficient evidence to remove a lawful permanent resident from the United States. The undated memo, the main piece of evidence submitted by the government, contained no allegations of criminal conduct. Continue reading...

Exclusive: Noor Abdalla attacks Columbia officials alongside Trump administration in letter to husband Read Noor Abdalla’s letter to Mahmoud Khalil here In a letter marking one month since his detention by immigration authorities, Noor Abdalla vowed to continue to fight for the release of her husband, Mahmoud Khalil, and for the right to speak up on behalf of Palestinian rights. “We will not be silenced,” she said. “We will persist, with even greater resolve, and we will pass that strength on to our children and our children’s children – until Palestine is free.” Continue reading...

These are the kinds of scenes we expect to see in the world’s most repressive regimes. And they won’t stop at foreign students The defining feature of American democracy, you could be forgiven for having thought, is that you can say what you think without having to fear that you will be arrested, locked up or deported for it. The United States isn’t unique in its commitment to this idea, but this country has taken it unusually seriously. No law has been repudiated as decisively by the US supreme court as the Sedition Act of 1798, which made it a crime to publish false or scandalous criticism of government officials. Continue reading...

Rumeysa Ozturk, Turkish national on a student visa, sent to Louisiana detention center over pro-Palestinian activism Judge orders Trump administration to explain Ice detention of Tufts student Footage has emerged of the moment US immigration officials, wearing masks and hoodies, detained a Tufts University doctoral student in Massachusetts in the street and bustled her into an unmarked car. Rumeysa Ozturk was detained on Tuesday by federal immigration agents, and on Wednesday was being held at the South Louisiana Ice processing center, according to the government’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) detainee locator page. Continue reading...

Columbia has long been run more as a business empire than as an educational institution. Now it’s acting like Vichy on the Hudson It was never about eliminating antisemitism. It was always about silencing Palestine. That is what the gagging of protesting students, and now the gagging of faculty, was always meant to lead to. While partisans of the Israeli-American mass slaughter in Gaza may have been offended by their protests, large numbers of the students whose rights of free speech have been infringed upon via draconian punishments were themselves Jewish. Many of those faculty members who are about to be deprived of academic freedom and faculty governance, and perhaps fired, are themselves Jewish, indeed some are Israelis. If it were ever really about discrimination, the university would have taken action against the ceaseless harassment of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim students and faculty, and their allies and supporters, instead of endorsing and enabling it. Rashid Khalidi is the Edward Said professor emeritus of modern Arab studies at Columbia University and author of The Hundred Years’ War on Palestine Continue reading...

Yunseo Chung, who partook in university’s pro-Palestinian protests, called government’s actions ‘shocking overreach’ A Columbia University student who took part in pro-Palestinian protests at the university is suing Donald Trump’s administration for attempting to deport her. Attorneys for Yunseo Chung, a 21-year-old who has legally resided in the US since childhood, filed a complaint on Monday describing the government’s actions as “shocking overreach” and an “unprecedented and unjustifiable assault” on her rights. Continue reading...

If university leaders allow themselves to be bullied, how do we expect any other institutions to stand up? University presidents need to be working together to speak up against Donald Trump. Across the country, higher education is facing a crisis that threatens the entire vision of independence: a direct federal government effort to destroy academic freedom by controlling ideas and acceptable areas of inquiry. University leaders should be standing in solidarity with those who have been attacked to defend academic freedom and free speech. So far, all but five have been silent. The US president has made no secret of his intent to control what is studied, thought and debated. His administration sent a letter to Columbia University demanding sweeping changes, including placing the Middle Eastern, South Asian and African studies department under “academic receivership” for five years, abolishing the university judicial board, and centralizing all disciplinary processes under the office of the president. Such unprecedented intervention is blatantly illegal and a wholesale attack on academic freedom and free speech. On Friday, Columbia capitulated. Zephyr Teachout is an American attorney, author, political candidate, and professor of law specializing in democracy and antitrust at Fordham University Continue reading...

The Columbia graduate and green-card holder, held in Louisiana by immigration agents, dictated this letter to family and friends My name is Mahmoud Khalil and I am a political prisoner. I am writing to you from a detention facility in Louisiana where I wake to cold mornings and spend long days bearing witness to the quiet injustices under way against a great many people precluded from the protections of the law. Who has the right to have rights? It is certainly not the humans crowded into the cells here. It isn’t the Senegalese man I met who has been deprived of his liberty for a year, his legal situation in limbo and his family an ocean away. It isn’t the 21-year-old detainee I met who stepped foot in this country at age nine, only to be deported without so much as a hearing. Continue reading...

The Columbia University graduate’s arrest is an attempt to destroy free thinking while murdering due process Forced disappearance, kidnapping, political imprisonment – take your pick. These terms all describe what has happened with the Trump administration’s first arrest for thought crimes, something that should never happen in a democracy. But it has, to Mahmoud Khalil, a recently graduated master’s student from Columbia University’s school of international and public affairs. And for each minute that Khalil is held in detention, every one of us should feel like our own individual rights in this country are being shredded. The arrest of Mahmoud Khalil is a barefaced attempt by the Trump administration to destroy free thinking while murdering due process and free speech along the way. This is an ominous development. Continue reading...

Civicus, an international non-profit, puts country alongside Democratic Republic of Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia The United States has been added to the Civicus Monitor Watchlist, which identifies countries that the global civil rights watchdog believes are currently experiencing a rapid decline in civic freedoms. Civicus, an international non-profit organization dedicated to “strengthening citizen action and civil society around the world”, announced the inclusion of the US on the non-profit’s first watchlist of 2025 on Monday, alongside the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Italy, Pakistan and Serbia. Continue reading...

Hunter College faculty and staff union condemns Kathy Hochul’s order to take down listing, calling it ‘overreach of authority’ The New York governor, Kathy Hochul ordered the City University of New York (Cuny) to immediately remove a job posting advertising a Palestinian studies professor role at the state university system’s Hunter College. In the job listing, Hunter College wrote that the institution is seeking “a historically grounded scholar who takes a critical lens to issues pertaining to Palestine including but not limited to: settler colonialism, genocide, human rights, apartheid, migration, climate and infrastructure devastation, health, race, gender, and sexuality”. Continue reading...

Critics say representatives Elise Stefanik and Virginia Foxx shield for-profit colleges from accountability As antisemitism hearings on college campuses ignited late last year, US representatives Elise Stefanik and Virginia Foxx seized the spotlight, relentlessly attacking Harvard, Columbia and other top universities, portraying them as unsafe and incompetent. “We must DEFUND the rot in America’s higher education,” Stefanik insisted in December, while co-authoring a bill that would withdraw federal funding from universities that do not participate in plans to curb campus protests. Foxx made similar calls. Continue reading...