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    President Macron Arrives in New Caledonia, French Territory on Brink of Civil War

    New Caledonia, a French territory in the Pacific, is on the brink of civil war as pro-independence activists protest a law that would expand voting rights.President Emmanuel Macron of France has a lot to manage. The European elections are fast approaching, and his party is predicted to lose. There are the frenzied preparations for the Olympic Games in Paris. A manhunt is underway for a convict whose brazen and deadly jailbreak shocked the country.The last place many expected Mr. Macron to be was on a plane to one of France’s territories in the Pacific, where riots have exploded all week. But there he was, arriving in New Caledonia on Thursday with three ministers in tow, on a mission to heal and listen in a territory where many hold him personally responsible for the unrest.“I come here with determination to work toward restoring peace, with lots of respect and humility,” he said when he arrived.The riots were set off by the prospect of a vote last week in the National Assembly in Paris to expand voting rights in the territory. Many in the local Indigenous population worry that the law would hamper the long process toward independence.Mr. Macron planned to meet with local officials and civil-society activists, to thank the police and start a round of dialogue before quickly hopping back on a plane and returning more than 10,000 miles to mainland France.The trip, in many ways, is classic Macron. He feels that any dispute, no matter how heated, can be resolved through personal dialogue with him. But given the local distrust of the government, many believe his trip is not just short, but shortsighted.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

    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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    NYPD Responded Aggressively to Protests After Promises to Change

    Violent responses to pro-Palestinian activists follow a sweeping agreement aimed at striking an equilibrium between preserving public safety and the rights of protesters.Last September, the New York Police Department signed a sweeping agreement in federal court that was meant to end overwhelming responses to protests that often led to violent clashes, large-scale arrests and expensive civil rights lawsuits.The sight of hundreds of officers in tactical gear moving in on pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, on Saturday suggested to civil libertarians that the department might not abide by the agreement when it is fully implemented. At least two officers wearing the white shirts of commanders were filmed punching three protesters who were prone in the middle of a crosswalk.And film clips of recent campus protests showed some officers pushing and dragging students, a handful of whom later said they had been injured by the police, though many officers appeared to show restraint during the arrests.“I think members of the public are very concerned that the police will be unwilling or unable to meet their end of the bargain,” said Jennvine Wong, a staff attorney with Legal Aid, which, along with the New York Civil Liberties Union, filed a lawsuit against the city over the department’s response to protests in 2020 after the killing of George Floyd.That lawsuit was later combined with a complaint filed by Letitia James, the state attorney general, over what she called widespread abuses during the Black Lives Matter protests. Last fall, police officials and Ms. James reached the agreement in federal court, intended to strike a new equilibrium between the department’s need to preserve public safety and the rights of protesters.The city, along with two major police unions, agreed to develop policies and training that would teach the department to respond gradually to demonstrations, rather than sending in large numbers of officers immediately, and to emphasize de-escalation over an immediate show of force. The implementation was expected to take three years.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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    Critics Fault ‘Aggressive’ N.Y.P.D. Response to Pro-Palestinian Rally

    Officers were filmed punching three demonstrators at the protest in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. The police said protesters were blocking the streets.Violent confrontations at a pro-Palestinian rally in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, on Saturday reflected what some local officials and protest organizers called an unexpectedly aggressive Police Department response, with officers flooding the neighborhood and using force against protesters.At the rally, which drew hundreds of demonstrators, at least two officers wearing the white shirts of commanders were filmed punching three protesters who were prone in the middle of a crosswalk. One officer had pinned a man to the ground and repeatedly punched him in the ribs, a 50-second video clip shows. Another officer punched the left side of a man’s face as he held his head to the asphalt.The police arrested around 40 people who were “unlawfully blocking roadways,” Kaz Daughtry, the department’s deputy commissioner of operations, said on social media on Sunday.Mr. Daughtry shared drone footage of one person who climbed on a city bus, “putting himself and others in danger.” The Police Department, he wrote, “proudly protects everyone’s right to protest, but lawlessness will never be tolerated.”Neither Mr. Daughtry nor the police commented on the use of force by officers. A spokeswoman for Mayor Eric Adams did not immediately respond to a request for comment about the police response. The Police Department’s patrol guide states that officers must use “only the reasonable force necessary to gain control or custody of a subject.”Bay Ridge has a significant Arab American population and hosts demonstrations in mid-May every year to commemorate what Palestinians call the Nakba, or “catastrophe” — when hundreds of thousands of Palestinians fled or were forced from their homes during the war that led to Israel’s founding in 1948.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

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

    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

    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

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

    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