University of Michigan announces restrictions to ‘limit disruptions’ at ceremonies
The university, where students have held pro-Palestine protests in recent days, says it is committed to “free speech” and will allow protests at upcoming ceremonies, including commencement, adding they must take place in “designated areas” to “limit disruptions”.
While the university said in a statement posted on its website that its officials “will generally be patient with lawful disruptions”, they will step in to “de-escalate” and address any interruptions that “significantly impede” ceremonies.
Flags and banners, it added, will not be permitted at the commencement events.
In addition to pro-Palestine rallies being held at the university, several dozen of its students have set up a tent encampment on campus to call on the institution to divest from pro-Israel companies.
They join students at dozens of US colleges and universities who have taken action over the Gaza war, including dozens arrested at Columbia University, New York University and Yale University.
This again, protest in designated areas, but quietly and no banners. So we can ignore it and go on with business as usual while more people get killed every hour. Sorry it's so inconvenient for you that some people have an issue with the USA and your university in enabling and funding genocide.
‘There are no universities left in Gaza’
US universities are doling out more heavy-handed discipline to pro-Palestininan protesters on campus, citing “safety concerns”, as some Jewish students say criticism of Israel has veered into anti-Semitism. Heated debates and exchanges of insults between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrators have occurred, particularly on the streets around Columbia University in New York City.
“There are no universities left in Gaza so we chose to reclaim our university for the people of Palestine,” said Soph Askanase, a Jewish student at Columbia who was arrested and suspended for protesting. “Anti-Semitism, Islamophobia and racism – in particular racism against Arabs and Palestinians – are all cut from the same cloth.”
Other students blamed university administrators for failing to protect their right to protest and stand up for human rights. “As a Palestinian student, I too did not feel safe for the past six months, and that was as a direct result of Columbia’s one-sided statements and inaction,” Mahmoud Khalil said.
Biden’s university graduation invitation is leading to backlash over Israeli war on Gaza
US President Joe Biden will be the commencement speaker for Georgia’s Morehouse College and at West Point next month. But his Morehouse appearance is drawing pushback from some faculty and alumni who oppose the president’s pro-Israel stance as it wages its war on Gaza.
Some Morehouse alumni want the school to rescind the invitation. They have been circulating an online letter that condemns the administration’s invitation to Biden and seeking signatures to pressure Morehouse President David Thomas to rescind it.
The letter, obtained by The Associated Press, claimed Biden’s approach to Israel effectively supports genocide in Gaza and runs counter to the pacifism that King expressed with his opposition to the Vietnam War.
“In inviting President Biden to campus, the college affirms a cruel standard that complicity in genocide merits no sanction from the institution that produced one of the towering advocates for nonviolence of the twentieth century,” the letter states, emphasising King’s stance that “war is a hell that diminishes” humanity as a whole.
“If the college cannot affirm this noble tradition of justice by rescinding its invitation to President Biden, then the college should reconsider its attachment to Dr. King.”
The administration has told faculty it will not withdraw its invitation, which was issued in September 2023, according to AP.
Columbia extends deadline to end Gaza war protest by 48 hours
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2024/4/24/columbia-pro-palestine-protesters-face-deadline-to-clear-out-whats-next
Columbia University has twice extended a deadline for students protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza to clear their campus encampments, citing progress in negotiations with them aimed at diffusing a tense standoff that has spread across US universities.
“We are making important progress with representatives of the student encampment on the West lawn,” Columbia said in a statement released just after 3am (07:00 GMT) on Wednesday.
The university had earlier given students a midnight deadline to dismantle tents if negotiations failed to deliver an agreement. That was initially extended to 8am (12:00 GMT) on Wednesday. University President Nemat “Minouche” Shafik had said the university “will have to consider alternative options for clearing” the area if talks did not yield an end to the encampments.
In its latest statement, the university again extended the deadline, this time by 48 hours into early on Friday, and said student protesters had agreed to four of the university’s top demands.
Many Columbia University faculty members ‘furious’ over arrest of student protesters
A lecturer at Columbia University, Professor Bassam Khawaja, says a number of faculty members are “really furious” over the arrest of more than 100 pro-Palestine protesters who gathered at the school’s campus in New York City.
Khawaja said that when the university president made the decision to call the police onto campus, despite the university senate’s objection, many faculty members were “furious”. “One hundred of us came to and stood on the steps to protest this decision, [and] 54 members of the law school’s permanent faculty wrote to the president objecting to it,” he told Al Jazeera.
“So, there’s quite a bit of anger among the faculty,” he said. “Anti-Semitism has no place on our campus … we need to be clear that advocating for Palestinian rights is not itself anti-Semitic,” he added.
