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      Even With No Speakers, Pro-Palestinian Activism Marks CUNY Law Ceremony

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      With speeches canceled, students at the CUNY School of Law ceremony chanted, carried signs and walked out.In some ways, a walkout by pro-Palestinian students at the City University of New York School of Law’s commencement on Thursday was part of the unique political moment that has marked the Class of 2024’s graduation season at so many universities.But CUNY law students were also carrying on something of a graduation tradition at their school.Students chanted pro-Palestinian messages, waved painted banners as they walked across the stage and turned their backs to the law school’s dean, Sudha Setty, during her remarks onstage at the Apollo Theater in Harlem. Then, after the last degrees had been conferred, dozens of students rose from their seats and walked out, joined by a handful of professors and guests.“It reminded me so much of why I came to CUNY Law,” Ale Humano, one of the graduates who walked out of the ceremony, said.The walkout on Thursday is not the first time that tensions over Israel have taken center stage during a commencement ceremony for the New York City public law school. The school, which is known for fostering public interest lawyers, has been a hot spot for pro-Palestinian activism for years, and its graduation ceremonies have recently become the site of conflict over politics related to Israel.For the past two years, law school commencement speakers have made support for Palestinians and opposition to Israel a focus of their speeches, eliciting criticism from public officials, who called the speeches antisemitic.In 2023, Fatima Mousa Mohammed, a Yemeni immigrant and an activist devoted to the Palestinian cause, denounced “Israeli settler colonialism” in her address. The speech set off furious coverage and a wave of public criticism, including from Mayor Eric Adams, who spoke at the same ceremony and condemned the speech’s “divisiveness.”We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Elise Stefanik Has Gained Widespread Attention in Antisemitism Hearings

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      Representative Elise Stefanik of New York may not be a committee chair, but perhaps no single Republican lawmaker has more forcefully clashed with elite university leaders over how they are handling antisemitism on campus.Her line of questioning at a December hearing helped push the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania out of their jobs. Last month, she put Columbia’s president in the uncomfortable position of negotiating faculty administrative decisions from the witness stand.If past patterns hold, Ms. Stefanik will now have a chance to question the leaders of a fresh batch of major universities.Ms. Stefanik, 39, was already a rising star within her party before the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war turbocharged concerns about antisemitic incidents in American education. A Harvard graduate herself, she is the top-ranking woman in Republican House leadership and is considered a potential presidential running mate.But her exchanges with the leaders of Harvard and Penn attracted enormous attention and won some rare plaudits from grudging liberals. In April, she was named one of Time’s 100 most influential people of 2024.Ms. Stefanik struggled to land a clear blow in a hearing with the president of Columbia, Nemat Shafik, in April. But she still elicited some of the most memorable testimony, demanding that Dr. Shafik remove from an academic leadership position a professor who used the word “awesome” when describing Hamas’s deadly Oct. 7 attack.Ms. Stefanik later called for Dr. Shafik to resign anyway.When Ms. Stefanik first won her seat in 2014, she was the youngest woman ever elected to the House. She beat a centrist Democrat, and in the early days of her career, she took on more moderate stances.These days, she describes herself as “ultra MAGA” and “proud of it.” Democrats particularly detest her close embrace of former President Donald J. Trump and his lies about the 2020 election. More

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      A Chicago 17-Year-Old Just Earned Her Doctorate. Now, She’ll Go to Prom.

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      Dorothy Jean Tillman II of Chicago made history as the youngest person to earn a doctoral degree in integrated behavioral health at Arizona State University.When Dorothy Jean Tillman II successfully defended her dissertation in November 2023 to earn her doctoral degree from Arizona State University, she couldn’t wait to share the news with her best friend.“It was a surreal moment,’’ Ms. Tillman said, “because it was crazy I was doing it in the first place.”Ms. Tillman, at only 17, became the youngest person to earn a doctoral degree in integrated behavioral health from Arizona State’s College of Health Solutions, all before she was eligible to vote. Earlier this month, Ms. Tillman, now 18, took part in Arizona State’s commencement ceremony and delivered remarks as the outstanding 2024 graduate at the College of Health Solution’s convocation.Lesley Manson, program director for the doctorate of behavioral health at Arizona State and Ms. Tillman’s doctoral chair, said Ms. Tillman displayed extraordinary perseverance, hard work and dedication for her young age, tackling every challenge head-on.“She can serve as a real role model,” Ms. Manson said.Ms. Tillman, called DJ by her family and friends, was an early bloomer. She grew up in Chicago and was home-schooled from a young age, first in a group setting through online classes, and then by her mother, Jimalita Tillman, a single parent with a background in community theater. Ms. Tillman was part of a gifted program before transitioning to home-schooling. Jimalita Tillman continued her daughter on an accelerated track: By the time she was 8, she was taking high school classes. While most 9-year-olds were learning math and reading, Ms. Tillman was starting college online.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Dartmouth President Sian Leah Beilock Is Censured by Faculty Over Protest Actions

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      The president, Sian Leah Beilock, called in the police just hours after a pro-Palestinian encampment went up on campus. A bystander and a professor were injured.The Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Dartmouth College voted on Monday to censure the university’s president, Sian Leah Beilock, over her decision to summon the police to remove a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus, calling her action harmful to the community and disruptive to the university’s educational mission.The censure motion was adopted by a vote of 183 to 163, according to Justin Anderson, a spokesman for Dartmouth.The close vote illustrated the division on campus over Dr. Beilock’s decision on May 1, made just hours after the encampment had been erected on the college green. At the meeting, Dr. Beilock defended her actions, saying that she believed there was a reasonable and credible threat of violence.Monday’s vote was believed to be the first censure vote against a president of Dartmouth in its 255-year history.In a statement, the university noted that a censure vote had no practical effect. And the chair of Dartmouth’s board, Liz Lempres, applauded Dr. Beilock for her “strong leadership” in nearly impossible circumstances. “The board unequivocally and unanimously supports President Beilock,” she said in a statement.Eighty-nine people were arrested, including two faculty members, as the police moved in to clear the encampment this month. One faculty member, Annelise Orleck, a labor historian, was knocked to the ground as she tried to grab her phone from a police officer.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Protesters at University of Chicago Take Over Institute of Politics Building

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      They confronted the institute’s director, the former senator Heidi Heitkamp. At the University of Pennsylvania, demonstrators also tried to occupy a building.Pro-Palestinian protesters stormed the Institute of Politics building at the University of Chicago on Friday afternoon, overturning furniture, damaging property and confronting the institute’s director, former Senator Heidi Heitkamp. She refused their demand that she leave her office, university officials said, adding that she was the only staff member in the building.The demonstration continued into the evening outside the institute, which is about two blocks from where the police removed a protest encampment last week.In a statement, the protest group on Friday said that it had occupied the building to protest the University of Chicago’s ties to Israel. Bystander video showed protesters climbing through second-floor windows to leave the building, as the crowd below cheered.After demonstrators were cleared from the building by the police, other protesters remained outside and in yards nearby, chanting, yelling and pounding drums.Jeremy Manier, a university spokesman, said in a statement that protesters had tried to block the entrance of the building, damaged property and ignored orders from law enforcement officials to leave.“The University of Chicago is fundamentally committed to upholding the rights of protesters to express a wide range of views,” he said. “At the same time, university policies make it clear that protests cannot jeopardize public safety, disrupt the university’s operations or involve the destruction of property.”Officials said that earlier in the day, the institute held a board meeting in the building that included David Axelrod, the organization’s founder who was a senior adviser to President Barack Obama.The Institute of Politics is two doors away from the University of Chicago Hillel and across the street from Rohr Chabad, where some students were having a Sabbath dinner when the demonstration began. As the protest continued, counterprotesters held Israeli flags within sight of the pro-Palestinian demonstrators. Rock music blasted from a nearby house, in what appeared to be an effort to drown out the protest chants.A sign identifying the Institute of Politics building was covered with a cardboard placard that read “permanent cease-fire now,” and a set of demands were hung from the building. Among the demands was “abolish the university.”A group of protesters at the University of Pennsylvania also tried on Friday evening to occupy a campus building. The university police and the Philadelphia police made several arrests and cleared the building, Fisher-Bennett Hall. The hall is across the street from College Green, the site of the encampment that was cleared last week by the police.Mattathias Schwartz More

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      U.C.L.A. Faculty Votes Against Rebuking University’s Chancellor

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      The votes came weeks after students at a pro-Palestinian encampment were attacked for hours by a large group of counterprotesters without police intervention.The Academic Senate at the University of California, Los Angeles, voted against two resolutions seeking to rebuke the school’s chancellor, Gene Block, largely over his handling of an attack on a pro-Palestinian encampment two weeks ago.The results of the votes, conducted after a three-hour meeting on Thursday, were released on Friday and showed that only 43 percent of voting members had backed a no-confidence motion. A motion to censure Dr. Block was evenly split, 88 for and 88 against, failing to achieve a simple majority of support.“It is clear that we are not united in how we view the major events of the past weeks and the campus response to them,” Andrea M. Kasko, the Senate chair, said in a statement. “I hope that we can try to find common ground as colleagues, and have the courage to listen with open minds and open hearts even when we do not agree.”Formal rebukes by faculty were unlikely to have practical implications for Dr. Block, 75, who is set to step down as chancellor in July, said William G. Tierney, a professor emeritus of higher education at the University of Southern California who has written about the response to campus protests across the nation.Dr. Tierney said he doubted that Michael V. Drake, the president of the University of California system, would require Dr. Block’s resignation “before that time.”But faculty members who backed the resolutions said they felt compelled to speak up on behalf of students and show resolve to Dr. Block’s successor.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Protesters Agreed to Leave. This Is What Some Colleges Promised in Return.

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      Several universities struck agreements with pro-Palestinian demonstrators to end disruptive encampments on their campuses. But some of those agreements are already under fire.At the University of California, Berkeley, student activists got their president to agree to support a cease-fire in Gaza. At Rutgers University, they won a promise of scholarships for 10 Palestinian students displaced by the war. Brown University pledged that its board of trustees would vote on divesting from Israel.As protests over Israel’s military campaign in Gaza have roiled college campuses across the country, dozens of universities have moved to shut down encampments and arrest demonstrators. But more than a dozen institutions have struck agreements with protesters over the past few weeks that effectively conceded to some of their demands.None of them offer outright pledges to end the billions of dollars that college endowments have invested in companies that are said to support Israel’s occupation, a key demand of most of the protesters; some offer little more than amnesty for students suspended as a result of the protests or vague pledges to widen the curriculum in Palestinian studies.But already, the agreements have come under criticism both from other student activists, who say that not enough concessions were extracted, and from conservatives and Jewish advocacy groups, who complain that they are rewarding students who disrupted campuses and violated university policies.The agreement at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, which included a call for a cease-fire in Gaza and a promise not to punish students involved with the encampment, “sets a dangerous precedent for future incidents on campus,” local Jewish advocacy groups said in a statement.One university president, Mike Lee, of Sonoma State University, even found himself in trouble with his bosses after he promised protesters on Tuesday an academic boycott of Israel, a concession that no other deal included. The next day, Mildred Garcia, the chancellor of the California State University, which Sonoma State is part of, called the agreement “insubordination” and announced that Mr. Lee was on leave. More

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      Columbia Professors Host Alternative Graduation for NYC Students

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      Approximately 550 students, professors and religious leaders gathered near the Columbia University campus in Manhattan on Thursday afternoon for what organizers called an alternative graduation ceremony, featuring speeches by pro-Palestinian activists and writers, and clergy from various faiths.The two-hour event, called “The People’s Graduation” and organized by Columbia faculty and staff, was held toward the end of a week of official graduation ceremonies, many of which the university moved to its athletic complex some 100 blocks north to avoid disruptions by protesters.“People are feeling very alienated from the college and the university and they wanted a space where they could celebrate their accomplishments and express themselves politically,” said Nara Milanich, a professor of history at Barnard College, who attended the event.Many students had expressed dismay when Columbia’s leadership canceled the university’s main commencement ceremony, and moved most events off campus. In the weeks leading up to graduation, the school’s administration had called the police twice to remove protesters from its Morningside Heights campus, where students established a pro-Palestinian encampment and occupied a building.In a letter to the New York Police Department in April, Columbia’s president, Nemat Shafik, requested that the police remain on campus until at least May 17 “to maintain order and ensure encampments are not reestablished.”Administrators said they were “deeply disappointed” at having to change plans for graduation, but said the security issues were “insurmountable.”During the alternative event on Thursday, held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, college students from across New York City attended, and many wore the powder blue caps and gowns of Columbia. Some speakers grew emotional as the Palestinian-American poet Fady Joudah read his poem “Dedication,” which he wrote during the first three months of the war in Gaza.Toward the end of the ceremony, organizers played a video message from Hind Khoudary, a Palestinian journalist in Gaza, who thanked the protesters for their actions.“We never imagined that anyone is gonna ever give us hope the way you guys did,” she said. “Hopefully I’ll see you one day soon when all of this ends.” More