Christina Chica’s Post

This is wrong! Students have previously engaged in vigorous protests on Princeton's campus that did not conform to convenient time and place policies and were directly instrumental to change on campus for justice. These peaceful protesters calling attention to genocide were intimidated before they even started their encampment. These encampments are a move to maintain solidarity in tactics. It looks like administrators are likewise maintaining solidarity in their disproportionately aggressive tactics that do not protect students and campus communities. How ridiculous to say that they could block movement when there are so many ways to move around campus. How ridiculous to say they could intimidate when there have been much more intimidating activities, speakers, and postures at the University. How ridiculous to suggest non-community participation at a school in a small town where almost every student lives (in all sense of the word, not just resides) on campus. The most intrusive, consistent outside presence on campus when I was a student was always the never-ending caravans of tourists (that didn't even include prospective students). More ridiculous is using police-state tactics to leverage disproportionate punishment on peaceful protesters while protecting all sorts of students actually doing harm (sexual assault among other things). This institution allows abusers to graduate without tainting their academic or legal records but is willing to put in danger the futures of justice-oriented students. For the nth time, protesting genocide, calling for divestment from war machines, and pointing out an apartheid colonial project is not antisemitism. How dare people taint the principled and moral stance that Jewish students have been taking around the country and globe (including at Princeton when I was an undergrad) to support Palestinians. When I was an undergrad, I spent time eating and attending events at the Center for Jewish Life. I attended seder dinners and shared space with a diversity of people there who wanted to share their cultural richness through inclusivity. I urge everyone, especially Jewish people who have been taught to conflate their beautiful traditions and freedom dreams with the state of Israel, to really search their hearts. The movement for Palestine is multiracial, multiethinic, cross-class, multi-religious background, multilingual, multi-gender and sexual orientation. Why? because what is happening in Palestine tugs at the heartstrings of our humanity and reminds us of the multiple oppressions we face globally for the greed, power, selfishness, and insecurity of the few. What separates Princeton from our contemporaries is that we more likely know each other. Will you speak out? To faculty and admin here who know me/ are my contacts, who do you serve? What will you do? #princeton https://lnkd.in/e9p9__FQ

ARE COLUMBIA STUDENTS THE REAL EXPRESSION OF THE CONSCIENCE OF THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES? THIS COLUMBIA PROFESSOR THINKS SO… “This is exactly backward. By peacefully protesting, the students at Columbia and on a growing number of other campuses are providing U.S. society and indeed the world with an education in democracy and citizenship. This has come home to me in encampment-side conversations with students from China and other countries who have marveled at the ability of Columbia’s students to push back through protest. Amid atrocity, they are saying enough, and almost always doing so peacefully. They are saying that standing up to horror requires more urgency than letter-writing campaigns to members of Congress or patiently waiting to vote in the next election. “Gaza is far from the only horror in the world, and we could all use more of these students’ moral urgency and civility. They are pushing where they most readily can, on the institutions for whom, as students, they form the very bedrock of community. If they can’t get the U.S. government to do something to stop the violence in Gaza and increasingly in the West Bank, which goes largely ignored, they can at least get their universities to stop supporting it. This is what the demand for divestment means: denying institutional support through investment in Israeli war efforts until there is peace. Many critics object that this is unrealistic and can never work. But what is the proper citizen response? Sitting on one’s hands in resignation?” “ But the threat to Zionism in today’s world doesn’t come from the students demonstrating on U.S. campuses. I would argue that the greatest threat to Zionism doesn’t even come from Hamas, whose attacks on Israelis are an abomination. No, the greatest threat stems from the blurring of any line between Zionism and the crushing of Palestinian lives and hope for the future. To the extent that the demonstrating students are sending this message, they are Israel’s friends.”

#universityendowments #transparency #collegecampuses #discloseanddivest #studentprotests #ProPalestiandemonstrators #BlackRock #Google #LockheedMartin #Airbnb #Harvard #Columbia #Yale #Brown #apartheid #southafrica #BDS #weaponsmakers #hungerstrike 'A cause celebre is ringing out across Harvard Yard, Columbia’s South Lawn, Yale’s Beinecke Plaza and UC Berkeley’s Sproul Plaza: Disclose and divest. And university students say they won’t stop protesting against Israel until that demand is met. "We’re willing to risk suspension, expulsion and arrest, and I think that that will put pressure,” said Malak Afaneh, a law student at University of California, Berkeley, and a protest organizer. She and her fellow pro-Palestinian demonstrators want universities to cut their investments in everything tied to Israel and weapons that fuel the war in Gaza. That means funds run by BlackRock, Google as well as Amazon’s cloud service, Lockheed Martin and even Airbnb. Harvard, which has the largest US endowment at almost $51 billion, made clear this month it “opposes calls for a policy of boycotting Israel and its academic institutions.” Brown refused to acknowledge BDS demands while students led an eight-day hunger strike. Yale this week wouldn’t even consider a proposal to divest from weapons makers and instead police rounded up protesters outside of the Schwarzman Center, arresting more than 40 students. BDS supporters take inspiration from the drive to isolate South Africa during the apartheid era — including actions taken at the time by Columbia, Michigan State and California universities — and recent pushes for colleges to address fossil fuel holdings.'

In RealClearPolitics, Hoover Institution, Stanford University senior fellow Peter Berkowitz critiques how American universities have handled the upsurge of antisemitism on campuses since Oct. 7, 2023. Berkowitz advocates for more robust federal intervention and accountability, discussing #Trump's proposed measures to safeguard Jewish students by ensuring that universities that receive federal funds adhere to civil rights laws and protect students from harassment and violence. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/er4aVJp3

WHEN OUR POLITCAL AND RELIGIOUS LEADERS FAIL IN THEIR MORAL DUTIES Whatever one may say about dysfunctional politics and established religion (church leaders) in the West, don’t pin that tag on college campus protest. It's global in scope = humanity. The Anti-Vietnam War protests throughout the late 1960s and in1970 (big protest at Kent State Univ), the South Africa anti-Apartheid protests in 1985, and now the wave of Pro-Palestine protests sweeping across America's colleges and universities, have the same refrain: justice and peace. Student protest is as American as American pie. When our elected leaders fail to make the right moral judgements and decisions, fail to act accordingly, students become the collective soul of the nation to step into the breach, as they have consistently done for over half a century and with great success. Without exception, these and other campus protests have made America and the world better, not worse, or less turbulent, whichever way you want to look at the wine glass. (McGill, my alma mater, is one of the foremost universities in Canada and the world with a global reputation for promoting justice).

The strategy of giving ultimatums to organized protest movements typically leads to unintentional consequences that impact the reputation of the university and the safety of the protestors. During the nine day Occupy Eugene encampment at the University of Oregon, I strongly advocated for a strategy that embraced the unique culture of the university. That culture included a historical recognition of civil disobedience as a means of expressing differing perspectives. We collectively engaged the movement by affording them a safe haven to peacefully conduct their civil discourse. This strategy included offering the encampment resources such as lighting, sanitation, security and water while allowing community support to occur. Through these actions, we successfully negotiated a relocation of the large encampment to an offsite location effectively ending the event. During the campus occupation we experienced cooperation from the movement, minimal criminal activity and nominal pushback from the greater community. These are incredibly difficult events to manage for university administrators. Being creative, strategic and thoughtful will lead to more productive outcomes that reinforce the value of the educational experience. I am hopeful during these tense times, cooler heads will prevail.

Congratulations to Columbia University. You have successfully chased Jewish students away from from your school because of safety concerns, and now pushed the school to remote learning. I hope you are proud of allowing terrorists to take over your campus. To Mayor Adams and Governor Hochul, you need to get NYPD, State Trropers and the National Guard in there to arrest these terrorist cells since they have threatened violence against Jewish students. To the Board of Trustees, you need to grow up and do your jobs. Remove your weak and ridiculous President and the members of your faculty who hide behind their lofty academic positions to vomit antisemitic rhetoric. Begin enforcing a mission to create a safe environment for all students for learning. For donors and employers, remember these actions. Do not write that check to Columbia. Do not hire that Columbia grad until they are fully vetted as to whether they participated in these antisemitic activities. To Jewish students, stay home or go home until the situation improves. Travel in groups. Make sure you feel safe or call police to escort you to a safe environment. Hopefully you won’t have to consider a transfer to a more friendly environment where students can feel safe. Be strong! Act strong! New Yorkers need to take back New York on Election Day. Antisemitism needs to stop! https://lnkd.in/ehYyW2WT

This is worth reading—on the question of whether colleges and universities will be part of the pro-democracy movement or, as we’re seeing increasingly across the country with the suppression of peaceful protest, the banning of DEI and related materials and teaching, etc., part of the pro-authoritarianism movement. “Universities are essential to a healthy democratic society because they offer competing sources of truth to government propaganda, encourage people to question authority rather than obey it automatically, and empower individuals to pursue their personal interests instead of deferring to the state. Government crackdowns on universities allow aspiring autocrats to beta test restrictions on civil liberties more broadly. The shocking, but regrettably unsurprising, arrests of over 100 Columbia University students is one of the most conspicuous manifestations of intensifying authoritarian tactics amid glimmers of an American Maidan on college campuses.” https://lnkd.in/eiVXiwkq

As reports come in this evening about protests and encampments at UK universities, the Union of Jewish Students has issued the statement below. Peaceful protest is a fundamental human right and central within functioning democracies. Protection from discrimination and against harassment and abuse of minorities is part of the fundamental human right to equality. Universities need to find a way to ensure that both sets of rights are upheld. UK Higher education institutions need to learn from what is happening in the USA and to provide clear safeguards for Jewish students on campus. Jews make up 0.5% of the UK population. Circa 280,000 of nearly 70million people. That is a tiny minority. Many universities will have few if any openly Jewish students. Protesters are occupying buildings and/or setting up encampments in universities including some known to have relatively sizeable Jewish societies, although even those are small compared with other student societies on those campuses. University senior leadership must provide clear statements about acceptable and unacceptable protest, including strong communications about zero tolerance for antisemitic hate chants, property damage, harassment, and violence. There needs to be clear messages about what happens if or when antisemitism is perpetrated. Institutions should ensure effective and safe reporting mechanisms, transparent and fair disciplinary processes, and security in place to protect Jewish students when needed on campus.