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      US public school officials push back in congressional hearing on antisemitism

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      Some of America’s top school districts rebuffed charges of failing to counteract a surge of antisemitism on Wednesday in combative exchanges with a congressional committee that has been at the centre of high-profile interrogations of elite university chiefs.Having previously grilled the presidents of some of the country’s most prestigious seats of higher learning in politically charged settings, the House of Representatives’ education and workforce subcommittee switched the spotlight to the heads of three predominantly liberal school districts with sizable Jewish populations.The hearing was presented as an investigation into how the authorities were safeguarding Jewish staff and students in an atmosphere of rising bigotry against the backdrop of Israel’s war in Gaza.Calling the need for the hearing “a travesty”, Republican member Aaron Bean from Florida said 246 “very vile” antisemitic acts had been reported in the three districts – in New York City, Montgomery county in Maryland and Berkeley in California – since last October’s attack by Hamas on Israel.“Antisemitism is repugnant in all its forms but the topic of today’s hearing is pretty troubling,” he said. “It’s hard to grasp how antisemitism has become such a force in our kindergarten-through-12 [high] schools.”He cited instances of students marching through corridors chanting “kill the Jews”, a pupil caught on a security camera imitating Hitler and performing the Nazi salute, and Jewish children being told to pick up pennies.The three districts insisted in response that they did not tolerate antisemitism in their schools. They said they had taken educational and disciplinary steps to combat antisemitism following the 7 October attack, which led to an Israeli military offensive in Gaza that has triggered a wave of demonstrations on university campuses and beyond.However, the districts gave divergent answers on whether teachers had been fired for actions deemed antisemitic. Each district has received complaints over their handling of post-7 October allegations of antisemitism.David Banks, the chancellor of the New York City school system, engaged in a testy exchange with Republicans over an episode at Hillcrest high school, whose principal had been removed following a protest against a pro-Israel teacher but had been reassigned to an administrative role rather than fired.The Republican representative, Elise Stefanik – noted for her pointed questioning of three university presidents over free speech at a previous hearing last December – sparred with Banks and accused the school leaders of paying “lip service”.Banks stood his ground and appeared to challenge the committee, saying: “This convening feels like the ultimate ‘gotcha’ moment. It doesn’t sound like people trying to solve for something we actually solve for.”He added: “We cannot simply discipline our way out of this problem. The true antidote to ignorance and bias is to teach.”Banks said his district had “terminated people” over antisemitism.Karla Silvestre, president of Montgomery county public schools in Maryland – which includes schools in suburbs near Washington – said no teacher had been fired, prompting Bean to retort: “So you allow them to continue to teach hate?”Enikia Ford Morthel, superintendent of the Berkeley unified school district in California, said her authority’s adherence to state and federal privacy laws precluded her from giving details on disciplinary measures taken against staff and students.“As a result, some believe we do nothing. This is not true,” she said.“Since October 7, our district has had formal complaints alleging antisemitism arising from nine incidents without our jurisdiction. However, antisemitism is not pervasive in Berkeley unified school district.”Echoing previous hearings that featured the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Columbia, Bean asked all three district heads whether they considered the slogan “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” antisemitic.Each said yes, although Silvestre and Morthel qualified this by saying their affirmation was dependent on whether it meant the elimination of the Jewish population in Israel – an interpretation disputed by many pro-Palestinian campaigners. Bean said tersely: “It does.”Responding to the three opening statements, Bean said: “Congratulations. You all have done a remarkable job testifying. But just like some college presidents before you that sat in the very same seat, they also in many instances said the right thing. They said they were protecting students when they were really not.”The subcommittee’s ranking Democrat, Suzanne Bonamici of Oregon, accused Republicans of being selective in their stance against antisemitism, singling out the notorious white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, whose participants chanted “Jews will not replace us”. The then president Donald Trump later said the rally included some “very fine people” .She described one of those who took part, Nick Fuentes, as a “vile antisemite … who denied the scope of the Holocaust”, but noted that Trump hosted him at his Mar-a-Lago retreat in Florida in November 2022.“I will offer my colleagues on the other side of the aisle the opportunity to condemn these previous comments,” Bonamici said. “ Does anyone have the courage to stand up against this?”When committee members remained silent, she said: “Let the record show that no one spoke at this time.” More

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      Biden warns against ‘surge of antisemitism’ at Holocaust event

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      Joe Biden warned against a “ferocious surge of antisemitism in America” at a Holocaust event Tuesday, as student protests against Israel’s military strikes on Gaza and the resulting humanitarian crisis continued to roil campuses across the US.Addressing a bipartisan Holocaust remembrance event at the US Capitol, the president reasserted his “ironclad” commitment to the “security of Israel and its right to exist as an independent Jewish state … even when we disagree”. Hatred towards Jews didn’t end with the Holocaust, he said – it was “brought to life on October 7 2023” when Hamas unleashed its attack on Israel killing 1,200 people.“Now here we are not 75 years later, but just seven-and-a-half months later, people are already forgetting that Hamas unleashed this terror … I have not forgotten, and we will not forget.”Biden’s forceful evocation of the shadows of the Holocaust and the scourge of antisemitism was made at a volatile moment when Israel’s retaliatory military operation in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, and brought 2.3 million people to the edge of starvation. Demonstrations against the war and calls for a ceasefire has led to turmoil at scores of US universities and colleges – and opened fissures within Biden’s Democratic party that could imperil his re-election hopes in November.The president, who has generally avoided commenting on the campus protests since they erupted at Columbia University in New York three weeks earlier, acknowledged that his remembrance speech fell “on difficult times”. He also said that he understood that “people have strong beliefs and deep convictions”, adding that the US respected free speech.But he went on to decry antisemitic posters and “slogans calling for the annihilation of Israel” on college campuses. “Jewish students [have been] blocked, harassed, attacked while walking to class,” Biden said.He concluded that there is “no place on any campus in America or any place in America for antisemitism or hate speech or threats of violence of any kind.“Violent attacks destroying property is not peaceful protest – it’s against the law,” he said.Student protesters strongly pushed back at the implication that hatred motivated the pro-Palestinian encampments. A group of more than 750 Jewish students from 140 campuses issued a joint letter on Tuesday calling for a ceasefire in Gaza and rejecting Biden’s equation of the protests with antisemitism.“As Jewish students, we wholeheartedly reject the claim that these encampments are antisemitic and that they are an inherent threat to Jewish student safety,” the letter said.Hours before the president delivered his speech, police in riot gear cleared a protest encampment at the University of Chicago. The action began at about 4.30am in the Quad where hundreds of students had been living in tents for more than a week.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe encampment was completely dismantled within about three hours, but about 400 protesters later reassembled outside the university’s administrative building. They chanted “Free, free, Palestine”, and they staged a standoff with police.In a statement, the university’s president, Paul Alivisatos, said that protesters had been given a chance to voluntarily dismantle the encampment, and he stressed there had been no arrests. But he said negotiations with encampment representatives had broken down because of the “intractable and inflexible aspects of their demands”.At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, protesters regained access to the encampment there after police had removed them and erected fencing around the area on Monday. Dozens of protesters remained at the site, the Associated Press reported, as they continued to press demands that MIT breaks its research ties to the Israeli military.Tensions are rising on campuses as institutions approach their traditional graduation ceremonies, with many school governments attempting to clear the encampments to make way for the celebrations. On Monday, Columbia University announced that it was cancelling its campus-wide commencement ceremony, following the example of the University of Southern California.At Harvard university, the interim president Alan Garber threatened those participating in the pro-Palestinian encampment with “involuntary leave”. He said such a move could jeopardize the students’ access to housing, campus buildings and exams. More

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      Democrats rally to Biden’s defense over response to pro-Palestinian student protests

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      Some Democrats rallied to the defense of Joe Biden on Sunday as the president came under increased criticism over his response to pro-Palestinian student protests and his handling of Israel’s war on Gaza.Republicans have seized on Biden’s response to the protests, which have seen more than2,000 people arrested around the country, accusing him of a weak response. But prominent Democrats, including Biden re-election campaign co-chairperson Mitch Landrieu, the former mayor of New Orleans, claimed the president “has been very strong about this from the beginning”.Their support came as campus protests have seen an increasingly aggressive police response. An encampment at the University of Southern California was cleared by police in riot gear on Sunday morning, and a similar effort at the University of California, Los Angeles was shut down by police who reportedly used rubber bullets on Thursday. Scores of protesters were arrested at Columbia University on Tuesday night – a move which New York City’s mayor defended in an interview on Sunday.Asked on CNN’s State of the Union if Biden could have reacted differently to the protests, which have seen clashes between pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protesters as well as dueling accusations of antisemitism and Islamophobia, Landrieu said: “The president’s been very clear about this. He’s also been very strong about the need to stamp out antisemitism and Islamophobia. It’s a very difficult time, [there are] very passionate opinions on both sides of this issue.“The president has been handling it I think very, very well and I think he will continue to do so.”Thousands of young people have protested at university campuses across the country in recent weeks, criticizing the Biden administration’s continued support of Israel. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, and 2 million displaced, since Israel attacked the enclosed strip in response to Hamas terrorist attacks which killed more than 1,100 Israelis.Speaking on NBC’s Meet the Press, Mark Kelly, the Arizona senator, added his voice to Democrats who have voiced approval for police crackdowns on campus sit-ins, saying it is “appropriate for police to step in” when protests turn into “unlawful acts”.“When they cross a line and when they commit crimes, they should be arrested,” Kelly said.“That’s the appropriate thing to do.”Kelly said some of the university protests had “become very violent, and students – especially Jewish students – have the right to feel safe on a campus, and they’ve gotten out of control”.“Everybody has the right to protest peacefully. But when it turns into unlawful acts – and we’ve seen this in a number of colleges and universities including here in Arizona – it’s appropriate for the police to step in,” he said.Biden had mostly stayed silent on the unrest at university campuses until he addressed the issue on Thursday.“Dissent is essential for democracy,” Biden said in an address at the White House. “But dissent must never lead to disorder.”Biden said some protesters had used “violent” methods.“Violent protests are not protected. Peaceful protest is,” he said. “There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.”The president added: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campus, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation … none of this is a peaceful protest.”On Sunday, Eric Adams, the mayor of New York, defended how the police have handled protests in the city. About 280 people were arrested at Columbia University and the City University of New York last week.“When those protests reach the point of violence, we have to ensure that we use a minimum amount of force to terminate what is perceived to be a threat,” Adams told ABC News This Week.John Fetterman, the Democratic Pennsylvania US senator who is a vocal supporter of Israel, said the protests were “working against peace in the Middle East” and reiterated his backing for the US sending aid to the country.“I will never support any kind of conditions on Israel during this. And again, I would, I am going to continue to center – Hamas is responsible for all of that again, then,” Fetterman said.“And now if you’re going to protest on these campuses, or now what, they’re going all across America as well, too. I really want to, can’t forget, that the situation right now could end right now, if Hamas just surrendered.”Hours after calling in state troopers to break up a quiet, rain-soaked encampment of anti-war protesters, the University of Virginia president, Jim Ryan, issued a public statement calling the episode “upsetting, frightening and sad”.Ryan had been noticeably absent from the episode itself. His public statement Saturday evening, his first on the matter, came well after the encampment had been raided and the 25 demonstrators who had pitched tents on the patch of grass by the university’s chapel were arrested.Ryan called it unfortunate that a small group had chosen to break university rules after receiving repeated warnings.“I sincerely wish it were otherwise, but this repeated and intentional refusal to comply with reasonable rules intended to secure the safety, operations, and rights of the entire university community left us with no other choice than to uphold the neutral application and enforcement of those rules,” he wrote.Nonetheless, the arrests were criticized by Jamaal Bowman, the New York progressive Democratic congressman who has been critical of Israel.“I am outraged by the level of police presence called upon nonviolent student protestors on Columbia and CCNY’s campuses. As an educator who has first hand experience with the over-policing of our schools, this is personal to me,” Bowman wrote on X.“The militarization of college campuses, extensive police presence, and arrest of hundreds of students are in direct opposition to the role of education as a cornerstone of our democracy.” More

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      Student encampments have the potential to strengthen US democracy | Jan-Werner Müller

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      Three things are certain: antisemitism is on the rise; hatred of Muslims is increasing; and everyone – but especially those at universities with time to reflect – should be very, very troubled by this. Without taking account of the hate waves, it is impossible to understand why the seemingly mundane act of pitching a tent on campus has become so high stakes: is it announcing a desire to annihilate Israel, or is it a perfectly legitimate way to protest against particular US (and university) policies?University administrations are not supposed to take a stance on the content of student activism, but many have declared encampments as such to be unsafe. If anything, though, student (and professor) safety seems to have been endangered by police brutally coming after peaceful protesters.To be sure, today’s encampments are not hippie festivals; people might show up with guitars, but next to the guitar is a Hezbollah flag. To understand that camps do not pose a peril as such – and in fact can enable democratic action – we need to recall the 2010s: squares from Cairo’s Tahrir to Madrid’s Puerta del Sol saw encampments that were peaceful, self-policing and pluralistic; inside them, very different citizens could develop solidarity, but also engage each other across divisions.Protesters coming together need to show what the sociologist Charles Tilly memorably called “WUNC”: worthiness, unity, numbers and commitment. These might be achieved with demonstrating, once described by Eric Hobsbawm as “next to sex, the activity combining bodily experience and intense emotion to the highest degree”. Encampments create further possibilities: they might foster community, and they mark a site where those with particular beliefs can be found and engaged. They also serve as laboratories of how people want to live together; as progressive philosophers put it, they “prefigure” a different future.The anthropologist David Graeber, one of the organizers of Occupy, always insisted that the point of what happened in Zuccotti Park had been to show the world how supposedly naive anarchist ideals of free cooperation among equals could be realized.One might find free libraries, improvised kitchens, drums, chants and all the other communitarian kitsch. But the encampments of the 2010s proved not only remarkably resilient; they also served, for protesters on Kyiv’s Maidan, as sites where a new social contract could be negotiated. The gatherings in Tahrir Square – where devout and secular citizens camped together peacefully – also held out this promise. Open and diverse camps markedly contrasted with the fortress-style constructions anti-globalization activists created at the time of World Trade Organization and G8 meetings: they were not located in city centers, remained closed even to journalists, and essentially provided staging grounds for confrontations with the police.The campus camps have largely followed the example of the “movements of the squares”. Anyone who has bothered to look will have seen that Columbia’s camp is not a site of “mob rule”; there are strict guidelines, including ones about alcohol and littering. Of course, no rules can entirely prevent bad actors appearing (by that logic, no demonstration should ever happen, since what Mike Johnson called “lawless agitators” might join). The question is whether organizers will insist on something like the Hezbollah flag disappearing right away (apparently they did) and use the moment to school young progressives that Iran, Hezbollah’s backer, might not be the greatest ally for anyone who cares about women, life and liberty. All the self-policing in the world, however, will not change the fact that a campus is different from a public square; universities have the right to keep outsiders out and to prohibit conduct that specifically endangers their educational mission.Ideally, an encampment – or multiple encampments – would allow for unexpected, productive encounters and have an educative effect (or even produce empathy). To be sure, such encounters may well feel unsafe at first; but being serious about addressing conflicts together means being willing to take such risks. By contrast, the more encamping appears like claiming exclusive territory, the more it will be experienced as coercion. The “community guideline” at Columbia that tells people not to engage with “Zionist counter-protesters” is problematic: if you simply want to show how many you are, march; but if you’re sitting in a place, the advantage is precisely that people can find you and try to engage you.Many university administrations’ responses have been heavy-handed; they have also not lived up to a basic feature of the rule of law: clear and consistent messages about what is allowed and what is not. Yet, no matter how harshly universities act, Republicans bent on instrumentalizing the antisemitism charge will never be satisfied even by presidents sending in cops in ostentatious riot gear (except that it produces TV images of “chaos” that work for the opposition in an election year). Centrists, instead of defending rights to protest, are performing seemingly reasonable even-handedness in condemning Trumpists while also delegitimizing students. One does not have to agree with the encampments’ agendas (I differ on crucial points), to see that the former are a threat to democracy, while the latter have the potential to strengthen it.
      Jan-Werner Müller is a professor of politics at Princeton University and a Guardian US columnist More

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      Trump trial update, terrifying Time interview and a Republican dog killer – podcast

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      This week, Donald Trump gave an interview to Time magazine confirming the fears many have about what he would do were he to win back the White House in November. He found time to lay out his vision of a Trump presidency 2.0 despite having to appear in a New York court for a case that this week cost the former president even more money.
      On top of that, a potential Trump vice-president admitted she killed her puppy, Republicans attempted to remove the party’s House speaker – again – and a wave of Gaza protests took place on US university campuses.
      Jonathan Freedland and Nikki McCann Ramirez of Rolling Stone magazine discuss what it all means for the 2024 election

      How to listen to podcasts: everything you need to know More

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      Biden defends right to protest but says ‘order must prevail’ amid college unrest

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      Joe Biden on Thursday defended the right to protest but insisted that “order must prevail” as college campuses across the US continued to face unrest amid pro-Palestine demonstrations against the war in Gaza and universities’ investments in companies that support Israel’s government.The US president has stayed mostly quiet about the current phase of intensified protests at dozens of colleges coast to coast, from the Ivy League to small public institutions in the last two weeks, which has prompted the use of outside police on some campuses in controversial crackdowns.“Dissent is essential for democracy,” Biden said at the White House. “But dissent must never lead to disorder.”Biden said he did not support calls to send in national guard troops, which prominent Republican lawmakers have demanded he do.He also said that the protests had not prompted him to reconsider his approach to the Israeli military offensive in Gaza aimed that followed the attack led by Hamas on southern Israel last 7 October but, since, has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians, the vast majority of them civilians. The Democratic president has occasionally criticized Israel’s conduct but continued to supply it with weapons.Biden admonished protesters using what he termed “violent” methods, which included a broad sweep.“Violent protests are not protected. Peaceful protest is,” he said, adding: “There’s the right to protest, but not the right to cause chaos.”And he said: “Vandalism, trespassing, breaking windows, shutting down campus, forcing the cancellation of classes and graduation … none of this is a peaceful protest.”He added, however, that the right to free speech must be protected in the US.“We are not an authoritarian nation where we silence people and squash dissent … but neither are we a lawless country,” he said.Biden’s previous public comment on the protests came more than a week ago, when he condemned “antisemitic protests” and “those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians”. Some dismayed at America’s vigorous support for Israel have warned they may not vote for Biden and experts also warned that many younger voters could sour on the Democrats, a little more than six months out from the presidential election.On 19 May Biden is scheduled to deliver the commencement address at Morehouse University in Atlanta, a historically Black college where the president’s imminent visit is causing controversy.The Associated Press contributed reporting More

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      What do the US campus protests mean for Joe Biden in November?

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      The policies of Joe Biden and Democrats towards Israel, which have prompted thousands of students across the country to protest, could affect the youth vote for Biden and hurt his re-election chances, experts have warned, in what is already expected to be a tight election.Thousands of students at universities across the US have joined with pro-Palestine rallies and, most recently, encampments, as Israel’s war in Gaza has killed more than 34,000 people.Some of the protests began as a call to encourage universities to ditch investments in companies that provide weapons and equipment to the Israeli military. But as the Biden administration has continued to largely support Israel, the president has increasingly become a focus of criticism from young people. Polling shows that young Americans’ support for Biden has been chipped away since 2020.With Biden narrowly trailing Trump in several key swing states, it’s a voting bloc the president can ill afford to lose.“The real threat to Biden is that younger voters, especially college-educated voters, won’t turn out for him in the election,” said Jonathan Zimmerman, a professor of history of education at the University of Pennsylvania.“I wouldn’t expect that the protesters on campuses today are going to vote for Trump, almost none of them will. That’s not the danger here. The danger is much simpler: that they simply won’t vote.”Turnout could be key to Biden winning November’s election, given the devotion of Trump’s base, and there are signs that Biden’s handling of the situation in Gaza is already costing him support.In Wisconsin, which Biden won by just 21,000 votes in 2020, more than 47,000 people voted “uninstructed” in the state’s Democratic primary, as a protest against the government’s support for Israel. It came after more than 100,000 voters in Michigan’s Democratic primary cast ballots for “uncommitted”: Biden won the state by just 154,000 votes four years ago.Biden triumphed in Pennsylvania by a similarly small margin, and average polling shows him currently trailing Trump in the state, albeit by less than two points. Protests at campuses at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Pittsburgh probably have Biden’s campaign worried.“In states like Pennsylvania, the margins are going to be so small, that it’s at least possible that a couple thousand people not turning out, or voting for one of the third-party candidates, could swing the election one way or the other,” Zimmerman said.In April, a Harvard poll found that Biden leads Trump by eight percentage points among 18- to 29-year-olds, down from a 23-point lead Biden had at the same point in 2020. In the same survey, 51% of young Americans said they support a permanent ceasefire in Gaza, while just 10% said they were opposed.Just as worrying for the voting figures was the sentiments Harvard unearthed. Nearly 60% of 18-to 29-year-olds said the country is “off on the wrong track”. Only 9% believe things are “generally headed in the right direction”.On Tuesday, even the College Democrats of America – a centrist, Biden-supporting organization – criticized their own party.“Each day that Democrats fail to stand united for a permanent ceasefire, two-state solution, and recognition of a Palestinian state, more and more youth find themselves disillusioned with the party,” the group said in a statement.The White House said that Biden had “reiterated his clear” opposition to Israel invading the Gaza city of Rafah, where about 1.4 million Palestinians are sheltering, in a call with Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister, over the weekend.skip past newsletter promotionafter newsletter promotionThe administration said Biden had also “reaffirmed his ironclad commitment to Israel’s security”. That came after Biden said he condemned “the antisemitic protests”, although the president added: “I also condemn those who don’t understand what’s going on with the Palestinians.”Zimmerman said “the most obvious” precedent for student protests influencing an election was in 1968, when Lyndon B Johnson dropped his re-election campaign in the face of anti-Vietnam war protests. Those protests, which had begun in 1965, weren’t the only reason for Johnson’s dropping out of the Democratic primary, Zimmerman said, but played a major role.The Vietnam-era movement grew to something much larger in scale than the current demonstrations, although with hundreds of students arrested so far, there is evidence the movement is growing, and according to National Students for Justice in Palestine, an advocacy group, there are more than 50 encampments at universities around the US.“A heavy-handed response to protests is basically not going to put them down. It’s just going to increase the protests and strengthen them, because then it becomes a question of free speech,” said Ralph Young, a history professor at Temple University whose work has focused on protest movements in the US.If the protests against Israel’s conduct – and against Biden’s ability or willingness to reel Israel in – continue, it will not be an issue for Trump. In a Gallup poll in March, 71% of Republicans said they approved of “the military action Israel has taken in Gaza”, compared with just 36% of Democrats.“The main negativity on this is for the Democrats. What Biden needs in order to win is a very heavy turnout of Democrats. If he loses even 10% of the Democratic vote and even if that does not go to Trump, I think the chances are slim for Biden to get re-elected,” Young said.“If there is a ceasefire, or if things ease up, then maybe cooler heads will prevail and things will settle down. Maybe then the protests will not have as much of an impact on the election. But the longer they go on, the more impact they will have.”Biden v Trump: What’s in store for the US and the world?On Thursday 2 May, 3-4.15pm ET, join Tania Branigan, David Smith, Mehdi Hasan and Tara Setmayer for the inside track on the people, the ideas and the events that might shape the US election campaign. Book tickets here or at theguardian.live More