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      University of California Workers Vote to Authorize Strike in Rebuke Over Protest Crackdowns

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      A union representing about 48,000 academic workers said that campus leaders mishandled pro-Palestinian demonstrations. The vote gives the union’s executive board the ability to call a strike at any time.Unions are known for fighting for higher pay and workplace conditions. But academic workers in the University of California system authorized their union on Wednesday to call for a strike over something else entirely: free speech.The union, U.A.W. 4811, represents about 48,000 graduate students and other academic workers at 10 University of California system campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Its members, incensed over the university system’s handling of campus protests, pushed their union to address grievances extending beyond the bread-and-butter issues of collective bargaining to concerns over protesting and speaking out in their workplace.The strike authorization vote, which passed with 79 percent support, comes two weeks after dozens of counterprotesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles, for several hours without police intervention, and without arrests. Officers in riot gear tore down the encampment the next day and arrested more than 200 people.The vote does not guarantee a strike but rather gives the executive board of the local union, which is part of the United Auto Workers, the ability to call a strike at any time. Eight of the 10 University of California campuses still have a month of instruction left before breaking for summer.The union said it had called the vote because the University of California unilaterally and unlawfully changed policies regarding free speech, discriminated against pro-Palestinian speech and created an unsafe work environment by allowing attacks on protesters, among other grievances.“People on the ground are extremely agitated because of the university’s unlawful behavior around the protests on campus,” said Rafael Jaime, the president of U.A.W. 4811. “We’re asking the university to de-escalate the situation and to do so by engaging in good faith with protesters on campus.”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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      On a Day of Graduations, Berkeley’s Protests Stand Out

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      At the University of California, Berkeley, hundreds of soon-to-be graduates rose from their seats in protest, chanting and disrupting their commencement. At Virginia Commonwealth University, about 60 graduates in caps and gowns walked out during Gov. Glenn Youngkin’s speech. At the University of Wisconsin, a handful of graduates stood with their backs to their chancellor as she spoke.After weeks of tumult on college campuses over pro-Palestinian protests, many administrators prepared themselves for disruptions at graduations on Saturday. And while there were demonstrations — most noisily, perhaps, at U.C. Berkeley — ceremonies at several universities unfolded without major incident. Many students who protested did so silently.Anticipating possible disruptions, university administrators had increased their security or taken various measures, including dismantling encampments, setting aside free speech zones, canceling student speeches and issuing admission tickets.Some administrators also tried to reach agreements with encampment organizers. The University of Wisconsin said it had reached a deal with protesters to clear the encampment in return for a meeting to discuss the university’s investments.Some students, too, were on edge about their big day — many missed their high school graduations four years ago because of the pandemic and did not want to repeat the experience.In 2020, David Emuze and his mother had watched his high school graduation “ceremony,” a parade of senior photos set to music on Zoom, from their living room in Springfield, Ill. This time, he and his classmates at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign heard that other schools, like the University of Southern California and Columbia University, had canceled their main-stage commencements altogether because of campus unrest.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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      The Harsh Crackdown on College Protests Is A Dangerous Mistake

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      Two police cars idled across the street from the protest rally I was attending in front of the State Capitol in Austin, Texas, their red and blue lights flashing but their sirens silent. The police seemed more bored than annoyed. It was the early 2000s, and I had recently moved from Turkey to study at the University of Texas.My fellow protesters were outraged. “This is what a police state looks like!” they started chanting.I turned around, bewildered. Turkey was still emerging from the long shadow of the 1980 coup. For years, protests were suppressed, sometimes with deadly force. Even a whiff of disruption could get Istanbul shut down, with armored vehicles blocking major roads. Trust me, I said, this is not what a police state looks like.When I told my friends back home that Americans thought it was outrageous for the police even to show up at a demonstration, it was considered yet more evidence that I had been recruited by the C.I.A.“The American police showed up to a protest and did nothing?” one of my friends scoffed. “Just watched? No arrests? No heads bashed in?” Yeah, right.In the two decades that have passed since then, American protests have changed a bit. America’s response to them has changed a great deal.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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      After Student Encampment Ends, New School Professors Set Up Their Own

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      Faculty members at The New School in Manhattan this week set up what may be the first professor-led pro-Palestinian encampment on a college campus since the Israel-Hamas war has prompted waves of protests at schools across the country.The New School’s urban campus in Greenwich Village lacks the open spaces and green lawns of other universities that have been the site of protest encampments, so the professors set up their camp inside the lobby of a university building on Fifth Avenue.On Thursday afternoon, eight tents were visible on the same spot where some of the school’s students had previously set up a lobby encampment for several days. The university called in the police last week to remove it and arrest the student protesters.One green-and-white tent had “faculty against genocide” written in red on it. A number of posters were affixed to the building’s windows, including one that read “All Eyes on Rafah,” an area of Gaza where many have taken refuge and where Israel has made incursions and is threatening a ground invasion.Professors pitched their tents inside a building lobby where students had set up an earlier encampment.Sarah Yenesel/EPA, via Shutterstock“We call on faculty across all universities to escalate and take risk in solidarity with the student movement, their demands, and the people of Palestine,” the protesting faculty wrote in a social media post. A spokesman for the group declined to comment further on Thursday.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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      Hillary Clinton Accuses Protesters of Ignorance of Mideast History

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      In an interview on the MSNBC show “Morning Joe,” on Thursday, Ms. Clinton criticized student protesters, saying many were ignorant of the history of the Middle East, the United States and the world.Hillary Clinton on Thursday criticized campus protesters, saying young people “don’t know very much” about the history of the Middle East.“I have had many conversations, as you have had, with a lot of young people over the last many months now,” she said on the MSNBC show “Morning Joe” on Thursday. “They don’t know very much at all about the history of the Middle East, or frankly about history, in many areas of the world, including in our own country.”Ms. Clinton then went on to imply that young people “don’t know” that had Yasir Arafat, the former leader of the Palestinian Authority, accepted a deal brokered by her husband, President Bill Clinton, the Palestinians would already have a state of their own. “It’s one of the great tragedies of history that he was unable to say yes,” she said.The comments, made in response to a sprawling question about radicalization on university campuses from the host, Joe Scarborough, were criticized on social media by those who said that Ms. Clinton, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, was underestimating students’ capacity.While some said they agreed with Ms. Clinton, others described her characterization of the failure of the Oslo peace process — a yearslong attempt to negotiate peace between Israel and Palestine that began in 1993 but ultimately failed — as an oversimplification.“For Clinton to say this is really disingenuous,” Osamah F. Khalil, a professor of history and Middle East expert at Syracuse University, said in an interview. He noted that in the lead-up to the summit at Camp David in 2000, where negotiations ultimately faltered, Mr. Arafat had warned former president Bill Clinton that “the two sides were not ready.” To lay blame squarely on the Palestinians was unfair, he added, noting that there had been other missed opportunities for a solution. “Diplomacy is not a one-time mattress sale,” Prof. Khalil said.Ms. Clinton’s comments about the students failed to give them, or the elite institutions at which many are protesting, due credit, he said.The comments come after students walked out of Ms. Clinton’s class in November to protest what they perceived as the school’s role in publicly shaming students who had signed a statement saying the Israeli government bore responsibility for the war. Last month, others disrupted Ms. Clinton’s visit to her alma mater, Wellesley College. More

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      Police Arrest M.I.T. Protesters After Suspensions Ramp Up Tension

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      Several protesters at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology were arrested on Thursday after blocking access to a parking garage on campus, a day after some students involved in the pro-Palestinian encampment there received notices of suspension from the university.University police arrested “fewer than 10” people, according to a statement posted Thursday night on M.I.T.’s emergency management website. It was unclear what charges they would face, and a university spokesperson declined to comment further.The university had set a Monday deadline for protesters to vacate the encampment on the Cambridge campus or face suspension. Since then, the M.I.T. administration has begun sending notices of suspension to students who it says defied the deadline. Administrators would not say how many students had been suspended.“This means you will be prohibited from participating in any academic activities — including classes, exams or research — for the remainder of the semester,” said a letter received by one student and viewed by a reporter. “You will also be prohibited from participating in commencement activities or any cocurricular or extracurricular activities.”The university had detailed the consequences of suspension in a letter to student protesters before the Monday deadline, making clear that those who had previously been disciplined “related to events since Oct. 7” would also be barred from university housing and dining halls.As an additional condition of suspension, some students also lost their eligibility to be employed by the university, a penalty that cut off the income of graduate student employees who were suspended.“I don’t know what comes next,” said Prahlad Iyengar, a first-year graduate student who said he had lost his income and housing as a result of his suspension. “I have friends and a community, and I can find a place, but there are people affected who are housing- and food-insecure, some with children.”M.I.T.’s president, Sally Kornbluth, was one of three university leaders who were harshly criticized last year for their testimony in a congressional hearing about campus antisemitism. The other two, Claudine Gay of Harvard and Elizabeth Magill of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned in the fallout.Although Ms. Kornbluth did not face the same level of criticism, hundreds of M.I.T. alumni signed a letter calling for the university to take stronger actions to combat campus antisemitism.In a letter to the campus on Monday, she wrote: “This prolonged use of M.I.T. property as a venue for protest, without permission, especially on an issue with such sharp disagreement, is no longer safely sustainable.” More

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      U.S.C. President Censured by Academic Senate After Weeks of Turmoil

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      Carol Folt had been under fire for canceling a valedictorian’s speech and calling in the police, who cleared an encampment arrested dozens of protesters.The University of Southern California’s academic senate voted on Wednesday to censure Carol Folt, the school’s president, after several tumultuous weeks in which the administration canceled the valedictory address of a Muslim student, cleared a protest encampment within hours and called in police last month to arrest dozens of protesters.The academic senate, which consists primarily of faculty members, also endorsed calls for an investigation into the administration’s actions. Its resolution, which passed by a wide margin after a several hourslong meeting on Wednesday afternoon, cited “widespread dissatisfaction and concern among the faculty” about the decision making of Dr. Folt and Andrew T. Guzman, the provost, who was also censured.The vote represented only a fraction of the university’s 4,700 faculty members, and the senate stopped short of taking a vote of no-confidence in the administrators, which would have been a harsher rebuke. Despite criticism, Dr. Folt has maintained considerable support from the university’s trustees, and some faculty members have quietly sympathized with her.Still, the vote was “significant” with “far-reaching implications,” said William G. Tierney, a professor emeritus of higher education at U.S.C., who has written about the response to campus protests across the nation.“The petition from the faculty was thoughtful and the discussion was serious,” said Dr. Tierney, a past president of the senate who has criticized Dr. Folt’s handling of the protest and who confirmed the vote. “No faculty wants to rebuke their president and provost. But this was warranted.”Christina Dunbar-Hester, the acting president of the university’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, who watched the meeting, said that faculty members have been particularly frustrated by a lack of communication from administrators and the speed with which the Los Angeles Police Department was called on protesters who were not violent.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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      Pro-Palestinian Protesters at MIT Resist Order to Clear Encampment

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      Tensions escalated on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on Monday, as pro-Palestinian student protesters resisted a 2:30 p.m. deadline set by the university to clear an encampment on the school’s grounds.Brief shoving matches broke out between the police and protesters, whose numbers swelled when hundreds of high school students showed up to offer their support.The protesters blocked a busy road past the Cambridge campus at rush hour on Monday, shutting it down for hours and snarling traffic, and tore down metal fencing that had been erected last week to separate pro-Palestinian protesters from a growing number of pro-Israel counterprotesters.The police were an increasing presence around the edges of the protest as evening fell, including state troopers with tactical gear and zip ties, which are commonly used in place of handcuffs during mass arrests. By 7 p.m., about 200 students filled the lawn, linking arms and writing phone numbers on their arms in case they were arrested.The uptick in activity followed a letter from the university’s president, Sally Kornbluth, on Monday warning students that they would face immediate academic suspension if they did not leave the encampment voluntarily.Administrators at Harvard sent a similar message on Monday, calling the right to free speech “vital” but “not unlimited.”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