Pro-Palestinian Campus Protests (2023- )

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      Shapiro’s College-Era Criticism of Palestinians Draws Fresh Scrutiny

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      Gov. Josh Shapiro, Democrat of Pennsylvania, wrote in his college newspaper three decades ago that Palestinians were “too battle-minded” to achieve a two-state solution in the Middle East, prompting criticism as Vice President Kamala Harris considers him to be her running mate.Mr. Shapiro, 51, has embraced his Jewish identity and been one of the Democratic Party’s staunchest defenders of Israel at a moment when the party is splintered over the war in Gaza.But he says his views have evolved since publishing an opinion essay as a college student at the University of Rochester in New York, when he wrote that Palestinians were incapable of establishing their own homeland and making it successful, even with help from Israel and the United States.“They are too battle-minded to be able to establish a peaceful homeland of their own,” he wrote in the essay, published in the Sept. 23, 1993, edition of The Campus Times, the student newspaper. “They will grow tired of fighting amongst themselves and will turn outside against Israel.”Mr. Shapiro, who was 20 at the time, noted in his essay that he had spent five months studying in Israel and had volunteered in the Israeli Army.“The only way the ‘peace plan’ will be successful is if the Palestinians do not ruin it,” Mr. Shapiro wrote, adding, “Palestinians will not coexist peacefully.”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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      A Wall Street Law Firm Wants to Define Consequences of Anti-Israel Protests

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      Sullivan & Cromwell is requiring job applicants to explain their participation in protests. Critics see the policy as a way to silence speech about the war.For as long as students at colleges across the United States have protested the war in Gaza, they’ve drawn the fury of some of the financial world’s mightiest figures — investors, lawyers and bankers — who have flexed their financial power over universities, toppling school leaders in the process.It didn’t stop the students. The protests intensified this year until campuses emptied out for the summer.Now, a prominent Wall Street law firm is taking a more direct approach with protesters. Sullivan & Cromwell, a 145-year-old firm that has counted Goldman Sachs and Amazon among its clients, says that, for job applicants, participation in an anti-Israel protest — on campus or off — could be a disqualifying factor.The firm is scrutinizing students’ behavior with the help of a background check company, looking at their involvement with pro-Palestinian student groups, scouring social media and reviewing news reports and footage from protests. It is looking for explicit instances of antisemitism as well as statements and slogans it has deemed to be “triggering” to Jews, said Joseph C. Shenker, a leader of Sullivan & Cromwell.Candidates could face scrutiny even if they weren’t using problematic language but were involved with a protest where others did. The protesters should be responsible for the behavior of those around them, Mr. Shenker said, or else they were embracing a “mob mentality.” Sullivan & Cromwell wouldn’t say if it had already dropped candidates because of the policy.“People are taking their outrage about what’s going on in Gaza and turning it into racist antisemitism,” Mr. Shenker said.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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      Columbia Removes Three Deans, Saying Texts Touched on ‘Antisemitic Tropes’

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      Nemat Shafik, the university president, called the sentiments in the text messages “unacceptable and deeply upsetting.”Three Columbia University administrators have been removed from their posts after sending text messages that “disturbingly touched on ancient antisemitic tropes” during a forum about Jewish issues in May, according to a letter sent by Columbia officials to the university community on Monday.The administrators are still employed by the university but have been placed on indefinite leave and will not return to their previous jobs.Nemat Shafik, the Columbia president, described the sentiments in the text messages as “unacceptable and deeply upsetting, conveying a lack of seriousness about the concerns and the experiences of members of our Jewish community.” She said the messages were “antithetical to our university’s values and the standards.”The announcement came about a month after a conservative website published photos that showed some of the text messages sent by the administrators.And it followed weeks of unrest at Columbia over the war in Gaza as the university emerged as the center of a nationwide protest movement. Pro-Palestinian demonstrations led Dr. Shafik to order the arrest of students on trespassing charges this spring. In late April, protesters occupied a campus building, leading to more arrests. In May, citing security concerns, the university canceled its main commencement ceremony.The three Columbia administrators involved in the text message exchanges are Cristen Kromm, formerly the dean of undergraduate student life; Matthew Patashnick, formerly the associate dean for student and family support; and Susan Chang-Kim, formerly the vice dean and chief administrative officer. They did not immediately respond to requests for comment.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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      Stanford Reports on Antisemitism and Anti-Muslim Bias Show Extent of Divide

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      One report documented antisemitic threats. The other, anti-Muslim threats. Both signaled that there may be little room for agreement.Stanford released on Thursday dueling reports on campus culture — one on antisemitism and the other on anti-Muslim bias — that revealed mirroring images of campus life in recent months that may be impossible to reconcile.One report found that antisemitism has been pervasive at the university in both overt and subtle ways, while the other stated that the school had stifled free speech among pro-Palestinian students and faculty. They were emblematic of the rift between Jewish and Muslim groups on campus, and showed that any kind of accord between the two groups and the university were distant.The reports are among the first outcomes of universities’s reckonings with their handling of the flurry of protests against Israel’s military campaign in Gaza, and pro-Israel counterprotests, over the past academic year. As students across the nation marched on campus, set up encampments and, in some cases, got arrested, universities were met with the difficult challenge of balancing students’ right to free speech and campus safety. At Stanford, 13 pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested a few weeks ago after barricading themselves in the president’s office. The report on antisemitism — by a university subcommittee on antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias, consisting of faculty, students and an alumnus — found that acts of antisemitism have ranged from an anonymous threat on social media against a student journalist who had written about antisemitism to what students said was intimidation in the classroom and residence halls.“Antisemitism exists today on the Stanford campus in ways that are widespread and pernicious,” the group wrote in the report. “We learned of instances where antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias reached a level of social injury that deeply affected people’s lives.”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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      University of California Workers Ordered to End Strike Over Protest Grievances

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      An Orange County judge halted the labor action by academic workers after the university system said the walkout was causing students “irreparable harm.”A strike by University of California academic workers over the treatment of pro-Palestinian demonstrators was temporarily halted by a Southern California judge on Friday after the university argued the walkout was causing students “irreparable harm.”The temporary restraining order, issued by Judge Randall J. Sherman of the Orange County Superior Court, came as tens of thousands of U.C. students were preparing for finals at the end of the spring quarter. The judge’s order came in response to the third attempt by the public university system to force thousands of unionized teaching assistants, tutors, researchers and other key workers back to work.Workers represented by United Auto Workers Local 4811 walked off the job May 20 at U.C. Santa Cruz and then extended the rolling strike to campuses at Davis, Los Angeles, Irvine, San Diego and Santa Barbara. The union represents about 48,000 graduate students and other academic workers across the U.C. system, which encompasses 10 universities and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.The academic workers have contended, among various charges, that the University of California’s response to demonstrations over the Israel-Hamas war has amounted to a unilateral change in free speech policies and has created an unsafe work environment.The university system has said that the strike is not about working conditions, but rather an attempt to force U.C. institutions to take a position on a political issue. University leaders have twice asked the state Public Employment Relations Board, which normally oversees public sector labor issues, to declare the union’s action unlawful. The board found both times that the university’s claims did not meet the legal threshold required to block the strike.The university asked for injunctive relief on Tuesday and sued the union for breach of contract, charging that the workers had violated no-strike clauses in their collective bargaining agreements. In a separate filing, the state labor board noted that it was already examining that issue and questioned whether the Orange County Superior Court — whose jurisdiction includes Irvine, the site of one of the walkouts — was the appropriate forum for the university to seek relief.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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      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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      NYPD Responded Aggressively to Protests After Promises to Change

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      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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      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