AMERICAN MYTH OF FREE SPEECH: Student Genocide Protesters Face Ongoing Harassment For Being On The Right Side Of History

Despite this, activists are planning a fresh wave of pro-Palestinian protests at US colleges this fall. Our job is to support and join them. See action to take below...

University protester in Oshkosh, Wisconsin last spring.
Photos by Mark Taylor, free to use.

US Students Arrested In Gaza Campus Protests Face Academic Harassment & Ongoing Legal Attacks

As classes restart, many of the 3,000 students detained are facing legal harassment and smears and threats by their universities.

By Erum Salam
The Guardian (8/30/24)

Hundreds of US students returning to college this fall will be focused on navigating academic suspensions and criminal charges instead of choosing their classes and decorating dorm rooms, following last semester’s Gaza solidarity encampment protests that swept campuses.

More than 3,000 students were arrested when tent protests and occupations from coast to coast, at public and private universities, were broken up by police. Many still face consequences from both their universities and the legal system.

Craig Birckhead-Morton, a recent Yale graduate and incoming Columbia graduate student, has been traveling between his new home in New York City and New Haven, Connecticut, to face criminal proceedings in superior court.

“I was able to get through the whole disciplinary process all right, so there are no disciplinary charges left or anything in terms of academic [punishments]. It’s just the legal charges, which we’re still having an issue with,” Birckhead-Morton, 21, said of fellow students and himself.

Months of US protests, since the 7 October Hamas-led attack on southern Israel and Israel’s devastating and ongoing retaliation in Gaza, evolved into spring encampments when Columbia University students pitched tents on the Ivy League school’s main lawn in New York City and then occupied a building.

This action and many others were met with police crackdowns, some violent, against scenes of campus dissent not seen since the Vietnam war.

Meanwhile, some university administrations have taken additional steps to handle the volume of disciplinary cases, such as hiring outside consultants and implementing new policies in an attempt to prevent protests of the same scale.

Not going away

Despite this, activists are planning a fresh wave of pro-Palestinian protests at US colleges this fall. Action is expected to be boosted by “summer school” online lessons over the break, created by student protest leaders to offer education and training on how to organize, with the aim of creating a more unified and better-prepared mass demonstration movement.

Birckhead-Morton said he remained determined to keep advocating for divestment.

“Obviously we want the charges to go away, but our movement, our organizing, our action around this issue isn’t going to go away, and we’re going to keep pushing against these institutions,” he said.

Columbia students who declined to share their names publicly, for fear of doxxing and retaliation, said that while their charges had been dropped by Manhattan prosecutors, they were still dealing with university administration disciplinary proceedings.

One student said she was being investigated by Grand River Solutions [see note on action to take further down in this post. — MT] , a third-party higher education consultancy group based in Saratoga, California, brought in to conduct investigatory interviews via Zoom with protesters.

“We’re in limbo for the most part. The university has chosen to waste time and money this summer doubling down on their efforts to be a world-renowned ‘cop university’,” she said, referring to multiple instances of New York police being called on to campus and arresting students en masse. Grand River Solutions did not respond to a request for comment.

A list of punitive actions Columbia’s leadership took under Minouche Shafik, the recently departed president, against student protesters, shared by the university with the congressional education and workforce committee in the Republican-controlled House, has been made public.

It reveals that most student protesters are currently listed as being in good standing with their institutions, meaning they can continue their educations, even though they may have received disciplinary probations or suspensions. Many investigations are ongoing.

“In the interim, we’ve been told until our case is resolved, if we are caught doing anything else against the rules, it will result in worse sanctions,” the student said.

The House committee has complained that schools are not doing enough to punish protesters and prevent alleged “antisemitic harassment, disruption, and violence”.

In a statement, the committee said: “We have been concerned to see empty discipline and a lack of enforcement, signified by the fact that many who were arrested on July 24th in Washington, DC, and across college campuses during the academic year, were released and saw charges dismissed.” July 24 refers to protests against the speech by the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, to Congress.

The committee predicted: “These disruptions are likely to return to campuses this fall and you must be prepared to act.”

At Princeton University, in New Jersey, 13 student protesters were arrested for occupying Clio Hall in late April.

Ariel, a Jewish graduate student and protester, who declined to share their last name publicly, said they were told to leave campus housing immediately, and lost access to the dining plan they had paid for.

“They gave me about five minutes to pack up my stuff,” they said.

Ariel and others were accused of violating student regulation 2.2.5, which is “disorderly and disrespectful conduct”.

Months later, he’s been allowed back on campus but remains on probation for four years.

While Ariel has been able to return to school conditionally, they remain anxious about separate proceedings in the criminal justice system. For those who have already graduated and face the same charges, it will be even more stressful, as many, like Birckhead-Morton, may have to travel back to their undergraduate college towns to appear before a judge.

University repression

Zia Mian, a Princeton faculty member who is also the school’s co-director of the program on science and global security, said: “It’s no surprise that institutions have become more repressive.

“When you look back at the last more than 100 years of broad-based, deep, fundamental social movements, whether it was the rights of women, whether it was to bring about equality for people of color or Indigenous peoples or LGBTQ people, all of them ended up with people being arrested. All of them ended up with people being beaten,” he added.

Mian had himself protested in support of Palestinians and held a vigil for “victims of Israeli aggression” back when he was a postdoctoral researcher at the school during troubles in 2000.

Now, he advocates for schools to de-escalate protests and have negotiations with student protesters to reach compromise agreements, such as those struck by Brown University or Rutgers University.

“It doesn’t have to be like this. And this is the key thing, that we saw universities with leaderships that said: ‘We can talk to our students about this. We can try and find a way to have these issues work through collectively.’”

Rutgers, Brown and the University of Minnesota are among the few schools that reached agreements with students in May to peacefully dismantle their Gaza solidarity encampment protests and potentially hold conversations about divestment.

But while the Corporation of Brown University agreed to hold a vote on a divestment measure in October, Princeton’s board of trustees have yet to sit down with student protesters to discuss divestment.

Meanwhile, as the new academic year begins at the University of California, Los Angeles, “students are also getting organized to spread education about divestment”, said Marie Salem, a PhD student and media liaison for a pro-Palestinian student protest coalition there.

But student efforts to protest against the war in Gaza may be hamstrung by legal and academic disciplinary charges still hanging over more than 200 students arrested when police cleared UCLA’s encampment in May. The majority of those arrests were on misdemeanor charges, which the Los Angeles city attorney’s office handles. A spokesperson for the office said that it had received five referrals on those cases. There is a one-year period in which charges can be filed.

The county district attorney’s office, which handles felony charges, did not respond to a request for comment from the Guardian, but told the Los Angeles Times in August that all UCLA cases “are currently under review”. At least 55 students who were arrested in May also received letters from the university threatening to place a hold on their academic records or withhold their degrees.

Legal repression

“These legal efforts of repression of specifically our movement set really dangerous precedents for the future,” said Agnes, a recent UCLA graduate and member of Jewish Voice for Peace, who preferred to use only her first name.

Members of UCLA’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine spent the summer connecting students with legal aid and supporting them as they made their first appearances in court, said Graeme Blair, a UCLA political science professor and member of the group. “These legal efforts of repression of specifically our movement set really dangerous precedents for the future,” said Agnes, a recent UCLA graduate and member of Jewish Voice for Peace, who preferred to use only her first name.

Members of UCLA’s Faculty for Justice in Palestine spent the summer connecting students with legal aid and supporting them as they made their first appearances in court, said Graeme Blair, a UCLA political science professor and member of the group. …

Read the rest

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TAKE ACTION! Who And What Does College Consultant Group ‘Grand River Solutions’ Really Represent?

By Mark Taylor
DeMOCKracy.ink (9/1/24)

As noted in the The Guardian story above, a company by the name of Grand River Solutions, a “third-party higher education consultancy group based in Saratoga, California” has been brought in by Columbia University to do some kind of remote Zoom call process of inquiries/interviews/investigations of student protesters. Since there were no details provided in the article, I called and left a voicemail message asking for someone from Grand River Solutions to give me call. Despite a voicemail assurance that my call was important and they were “very interested in speaking” with me and that someone would get back to me in a “few hours”, I got no reply.

So, just who and what is Grand River Solutions?

Who owns them? What exactly do they do on student free speech cases?

Are their Zoom call “investigations” respectful of academic freedom and the Constitutional right of the First Amendment? What kind of recommendations do they make and do the universities enact them? Who pays the cost of these investigations? Is Grand River Solutions a form of extrajudicial suppression? Are participants of their Zoom hearings held to non-disclosure agreements? Can students have lawyers present? Does the group have ties to Zionist funders?

What kind of “solutions” does Grand River come up with when it comes to on-campus free speech opposing an illegal genocide funded, armed and diplomatically excused by “our” government?

A visit to their website ( https://www.grandriversolutions.com/ ) suggests that much of the focus of Grand River Solutions is on Title IX — discrimination — issues. Are they being brought in because of trumped up, pretend accusations of antisemitism?

Here’s an action you can take

As we have seen with the Boycott, Divestment and Sanction (BDS) movement, pressure on corporate supporters of Israel works. The same kind of pressure needs to be brought against corporations that may be playing a role in suppression of free speech and political activity on college campuses. Is Grand River Solutions doing that? I don’t know.

Feel free to call Grand River Solutions yourself to find out what they do. Leave them a voicemail and let them know of your support for academic freedom and on-campus free speech and freedom of political activity. Let me know if you hear back from them.

You can reach Grand River Solutions — or at least their voicemail — at: (650) 383-4753

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New Protest Rules At UW-Madison: Keep It Quiet & Don't Block Commencement Photos

Editor’s Note: This article is only available to Wisconsin State Journal subscribers. This was sent to me by a reader as an email.

You’ll note the very specific limits on how loud protesters can be. I think protests should be no louder than the sound of a 2,000-pound American-supplied bomb being dropped on a Gaza school filled with refugees by the Israeli ‘Defense’ Force.

I mean, lets, keep it reasonable, folks.

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Kimberly Wethall
Wisconsin State Journal (8/30/24)

Just days before the start of a new school year — and with it the likely resumption of pro-Palestinian protests on campus — UW-Madison has revised its rules on student protests, including several new restrictions on where and how loud demonstrations can be.

Among the changes: Protesters are prohibited from using bullhorns during finals week and protesting in front of “commencement and other core commemorative photo locations,” notably the Abraham Lincoln statue on Bascom Hill.

Colleges across the country are anticipating new waves of anti-war demonstrations as the conflict in Gaza that prompted protests and encampments last spring rages on. Some protests have already resumed at colleges in Connecticut, Washington, D.C., Texas and North Carolina. Many other universities, including the University of Connecticut, have put in new restrictions on protesting.

UW-Madison’s policy, updated by the office of the vice chancellor for legal affairs on Tuesday, also requires all protests be 25 feet from building entrances and grants the UW-Madison police department the discretion to increase that distance, limits the size of signs to 3 feet by 3 feet and generally prohibits the use of amplified sound, defined as sound that measures 85 decibels in an indoor area 50 feet or more away.

UW-Madison has the sole right to approve the use of sound amplifiers when requested, and applicants must demonstrate why they are needed, the policy states.

And while state law already prohibits it, the new policy explicitly bans camping and erecting tents on university property. The chancellor retains the right to waive that policy, but Chancellor Jennifer Mnookin declined to do so during protests last spring, saying if she allowed it for one group she’d have to allow it for all.

In a statement, Mnookin said the policy is meant to satisfy free speech rights while ensuring students can continue to access their education without disruption. Allowing differing opinions and ideas to be expressed on campus is a key part of what a university does and is integral to UW-Madison’s mission of “sifting and winnowing,” she said.

“That means that we will often engage with ideas and perspectives that may be new to us, and that might, in some cases, cause us unease or discomfort,” Mnookin said. “My hope is that, as a Badger community, we approach our differences with open minds, a willingness to listen, respect for one another and a generosity of spirit.”

The UW-Madison chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which organized protests and a days-long encampment on Library Mall last spring, did not immediately return a request for comment. The protests were intended to pressure university officials to divest from companies with ties to Israel and to cut ties with Israeli universities and programs. They also took over the steps at the Memorial Library entrance and used bullhorns for announcements.

UW-Madison police removed most of the tents on May 1, the third day of the encampment, but even more tents quickly took their place and university officials spent the next week and a half before commencement trying to work with protesters toward a resolution.

Protesters eventually took down the tents on May 10, the day before spring commencement. Several protesters were arrested or cited the day police initially removed the encampment, and at least 30 students have been investigated for nonacademic misconduct, with four recommended for disciplinary probation, the Daily Cardinal reported.

UW-Madison also temporarily suspended some student organizations, including UW-Madison’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine and Mecha de UW-Madison, which has since disaffiliated from the university to become Mecha de Teejop.

While the protesters largely congregated on Library Mall during the two-week encampment, reporters witnessed some sitting at the base of the Abraham Lincoln statue on Bascom Hill as graduates took pre-commencement photos. The updated policy bans protests there, as well as by the large graduation year numbers placed at the bottom of Bascom Hill. Protesters are not allowed to impede people from taking photos there the first week of school and in the weeks leading up to commencement.

Other long-standing protest rules remain. Protesters are not allowed to interrupt speakers who have been invited by university officials or campus-approved student organizations and are not allowed to carry signs on sticks indoors. Chalking is allowed, but only with water-soluble chalk. Chalked statements may be removed by the university if they are deemed to be offensive.

Note: Article is only available to Wisconsin State Journal subscribers. This was sent to me by a reader as an email.