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      US House speaker jeered at Columbia as tensions rise over campus protests

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      Mike Johnson, the Republican House speaker, was jeered by pro-Palestinian protesters at New York’s Columbia University on Wednesday afternoon as he condemned what he called a “virus of antisemitism” at colleges nationwide.His appearance came amid rising tensions over a wave of protests at campuses across the US.The demonstrations began last week after students at Columbia set up encampments calling for the university to divest from weapons manufacturers with ties to Israel. The protests have led to mass suspensions and arrests of students in New York and several other cities.As temperatures rose, Kathy Hochul, the Democratic governor of New York, called Johnson’s trip “divisive”, while the Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez assailed authorities for the “reckless and dangerous act” of calling police to non-violent demonstrations, resulting in hundreds of arrests.Also on Wednesday afternoon, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said that Joe Biden believes free speech, debate and nondiscrimination are important on college campuses, adding that “students should feel safe on college campuses”.Johnson, flanked by a number of Republican members of Congress, drew booing as he also called for the resignation of Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s president. He accused her of failing to protect Jewish students and allowing protests that led to the arrest of dozens of people there last week.“Things have gotten so out of control that the school has canceled in-person classes, and now they’ve come up with this hybrid model, where they will discriminate against Jewish students,” he said.“They are not allowed to come to class any more for fear of their lives. And it’s detestable, as Columbia has allowed these lawless agitators and radicals to take over.”The jeering continued as Johnson condemned what he saw as the “intimidation of mob rule” at Columbia and elsewhere. “The cherished traditions of this university are being overtaken right now by radical and extreme ideologies. The madness has to stop,” he said.Hochul accused Johnson of “politicizing” the issue, and “adding to the division”, according to the New York Post.“There’s a lot more responsibilities and crises to be dealt with in Washington,” she said.Campus protests have grown across the US this week, with thousands attending marches or setting up encampments at universities from Massachusetts to California, leading to scores of arrests. Students in Los Angeles posted to X, formerly Twitter, photographs of their occupation of the University of Southern California’s Alumni Park.View image in fullscreen“We, the USC Divest from Death Coalition, establish our occupation most fundamentally in solidarity with the people of Palestine as they resist genocide and continue in their struggle for liberation,” the group, calling itself the People’s City Council, wrote.Signs around the encampment laid out the students’ demands to the university, including full transparency of USC endowment and investments, as well as divesting from Israel. Students also protested against university’s cancellation of the valedictorian speech of Muslim student Asna Tabassum, who had posted on social media in support of Palestine, earlier this month.There have also been protests at the University of California, Berkeley, and at California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, where protesters barricaded themselves in a university building using furniture, tents, chains and zip ties.Rows of tents have been added to a cluster set up on the steps of UC Berkeley’s Sproul Hall at the center of campus. Starting with just a dozen, more students have joined the “Free Palestine Camp” over the last three days, a sit-in demanding their school sever its financial connections to BlackRock and other asset managers they see as complicit for financing genocide in Gaza.UC Berkeley holds a $427m investment in a BlackRock portfolio and school officials have commented that a change in their investment strategy is not on the table. There is minimal police or security presence on site, but the students say they are bracing for that to change. The group is determined to stay even if the university tries to have them forcibly removed.The protesters are also calling for an academic boycott, which would end collaborations with Israeli universities and the establishment of a new Palestinian studies program.On Wednesday, Shafik said she had extended by 48 hours a deadline for talks with protest leaders for the dismantling of a tent encampment on Columbia’s west lawn. More than 100 people were arrested at the university last week after she brought in the police, and more than 140 students, faculty members and others were arrested on Monday night at a separate protest at New York University’s Manhattan campus.“Calling in police enforcement on nonviolent demonstrations of young students on campus is an escalatory, reckless and dangerous act,” Ocasio-Cortez said in a tweet.Some Jewish students at Columbia, meanwhile, said they had been physically blocked by protesters from attending classes, and subjected to racial hatred by demonstrators demanding a ceasefire in Gaza and for the university to divest from companies linked to Israel’s military operations.Protest organizers blame outside actors for particularly inflammatory rhetoric against Jewish students.Johnson’s visit to Columbia follows a number of other trips there this week by bipartisan groups of politicians. Three competing delegations attended on Monday, Axios reported, with the entirety of New York’s Republican congressional delegation demanding Shafik’s resignation, and Democrats criticizing her for not protecting Jewish students and faculty.The White House has labeled any calls for violence and physical intimidation targeting Jewish students and the Jewish community “blatantly antisemitic”.Hochul, who called the Columbia protest “visceral” following a visit on Monday, told reporters on Wednesday that Johnson was politicizing the issue, adding: “I’d encourage the speaker to go back and perhaps take up the migrant bill, the bill to deal with closing the border, so we can deal with a real crisis that New York has.She said her Monday visit was private: “I did not bring press with me. I wanted to have a substantive conversation about public safety with the [university] president, with campus security, with the NYPD.” More

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      What I would have told Congress if i were in Nemat Shafik’s shoes | Francine Prose

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      Surely I’m not the only person who has wondered what I would say if I were one of the college presidents who has been summoned to testify before the House committee on education and the workforce. How would I answer their unmistakably hostile questions about how the war in Gaza has been affecting campus life – and about how the university administration is dealing with the divisive and threatening atmosphere that the conflict has created among students and faculty?After two presidents – Harvard’s Claudine Gay and the University of Pennsylvania’s M Elizabeth Magill – lost their jobs this winter, at least partly because of their responses to the committee’s interrogation, I imagined that I might have tried to sound more thoughtful, more human, less lawyered up, more cognizant of the difficulties and complexities inherent in these issues. But both women seemed to be repeating what they’d been instructed to say. They claimed that their response to an openly antisemitic statement would depend on context, a word that – they must have known – was wide open to the misinterpretation, dissatisfaction and mockery it almost instantly engendered. I even imagined appealing to the lawmakers’ decency and intelligence, to their sense that we were all working to find a way to end this brutal war. But, as time has shown, that would have been an absurd idea.Now that the Columbia University president, Minouche Shafik, has been called before the committee to testify about her administration’s handling of campus unrest – disciplining protesters, prohibiting demonstrations, considering whether or not to fire professors who have been accused of being overly zealous in their support of Israel or Palestine – the circumstances surrounding the subject have changed.The war has been going on for months. More than 30,000 people have died as we sign letters and petitions, block roadways, give speeches and post on social media even as we feel (and prove to be) increasingly powerless to end the carnage. So I have come to imagine a somewhat different response to the committee’s questions:“With all due respect, esteemed committee members, let me get one thing straight. The war that you are approving and partly funding is understandably causing division and anguish and a sense of crisis on my campus – and you are blaming me? Are we surprised that the massive bloodletting which the average American citizen feels powerless to staunch might be causing tensions to run high in a community – an academic community – whose members have strong political and religious loyalties and which, as an institution, values free speech?“Is it so hard to imagine that a war that we taxpayers are partly supporting might wind down if our government took a stronger position against it? Again, with all due respect, don’t you think there’s something shameful about using the deaths of more than 30,000 human beings as an excuse to go after our universities and try to exert control over those bastions of the ‘liberal elite’. And aren’t such places – for all their flaws, their expansion plans that have razed low-income neighborhoods, their reprehensible investment policies, their ties to morally sketchy corporate and private donors – nonetheless dedicated to the principles of education, which (at least some of us think) is a good thing.“Excuse me if I can’t remember when precisely the government was authorized to oversee the policies of private universities and determine the punishment of those who offend certain standards determined by politicians.“And while we’re on the subject of professors being censured and possibly fired for making (allegedly) extremist statements” – Shafik has apparently agreed to terminate the contract of a tenured professor accused of being pro-Hamas – “shouldn’t the same standards and penalties be applied to members of this very committee who, in their virulence, have outdone the most outspoken faculty members?“Though he later attempted to amend and explain his statement, the Michigan Republican representative Tim Walberg suggested that the proper response to the war in Gaza might be to simply nuke the territory. ‘It should be like Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Get it over quick.’ Nor was Walberg alone in his suggestion about how to deal with Gaza. Senator Lindsey Graham proposed that we should ‘level the place’.”Meanwhile, the killing goes on, and we – that is, our government – continue to condone and support it. The war has caused every negative aspect of human behavior to bubble to the surface. The rhetoric of rancor and hatred has spiked. Antisemitic incidents have risen at a terrifying rate. Three Palestinian students were shot on the streets of Burlington, Vermont.My ultimate answer to the US representatives currently interrogating Shafik would be this: “Throughout history, wars have begun and ended. This one too will have to end. Leave our educational institutions alone. The conflict in the Middle East is not their fault. Were we to join together in working toward a peaceful resolution to the slaughter and famine in Gaza, I can almost promise you: the rancor, the unrest, the division in academia is not a permanent situation that anyone expects or desires to perpetuate. It’s not conducive to learning. Broker a viable solution to the conflict, and the rage and misery on our college campuses will disappear on its own – as soon, or very soon after, the war ends.”
      Francine Prose is a novelist. Her memoir, 1974: A Personal History, will be published in June More

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      Ilhan Omar’s daughter among over 100 arrested at Columbia University protest

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      Isra Hirsi, the daughter of the Minnesota Democratic representative Ilhan Omar was among more than 100 protesters arrested on Thursday on Columbia University’s campus in New York City, as police were called in to break up those who pitched tents to stage a pro-Palestinian protest.Further demonstrations protesting the arrests and the university’s decision to call in outside law enforcement continued into the night at the private Ivy League school.Tensions boiled over on Thursday as the New York police department arrived at the center of the campus in uptown Manhattan to began dismantling student protests over Israel’s war on Gaza at the direction of the school’s president.Hundreds of students had pitched tents and camped out, starting early morning on Wednesday, demanding a ceasefire and for the university to financially divest from Israel.Nemat Minouche Shafik, the university’s president who a day earlier came under fire from Republicans at a House of Representatives committee hearing on antisemitism on campus, said she had authorized police to clear an encampment of dozens of tents set up by protesters on Wednesday morning.“Out of an abundance of concern for the safety of Columbia’s campus, I authorized the New York police department to begin clearing the encampment,” Shafik said in a statement.Shafik said the protesters had violated the school’s rules and policies against holding unauthorized demonstrations, and were unwilling to engage with administrators.Eric Adams, New York City’s mayor, said police made more than 108 arrests without violence or injuries. Police said the arrests were related to trespassing.Columbia said it had started to suspend students who had participated in the tent encampment, considered an unauthorized protest.“We are continuing to identify them and will be sending out formal notifications,” a university spokesperson said by email.At least three students – including Hirsi, Maryam Iqbal and Soph Dinu – have received suspension notices from Barnard College, an affiliate of Columbia, for participating in the encampment, the pro-Palestinian advocacy group Institute for Middle East Understanding said.“Those of us in Gaza solidarity encampment will not be intimidated,” Hirsi said on social media after being suspended.The clash was the latest in a series of demonstrations disrupting university campuses, bridges and airports since the latest escalation of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict began on 7 October, when Hamas, which controls the Palestinian territory of Gaza that abuts Israel, launched a murderous attack and hostage-grab on southern Israel.Israel’s military counteroffensive on Gaza is ongoing and has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians and prompted famine in parts of the besieged territory.Alongside protests on US campuses and streets, human rights advocates have also pointed to a rise in bias and hate against Jews, Arabs and Muslims.Reuters contributed reporting More

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      Giuliani defamation trial live: election worker testifies ex-Trump lawyer’s 2020 lies ruined her life and left her ‘in a dark place’

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      Shaye Moss just ended approximately two hours of haunting testimony detailing how her life has been ruined ever since Rudy Giuliani spread lies about her after the 2020 election.Her worst fear, she said, is that her teenage son will come home to find her and her mother hanging from a tree in front of their home. She still pulls over in her neighborhood because she feels like someone is following them. She doesn’t go out alone. She has panic attacks. She left the job that she worked hard to get because she had become a “pariah” in the office. When her son started getting harassing messages and failed all of his classes in the 9th grade, she felt responsible and like “the worst mom in the world”.“I feel like I’m in a dark place and the only thing that surrounds me are the conspiracy and the lies,” she said.She ended her direct testimony by talking about how she’s trapped in a cycle of eating, sleeping, and crying. “Sadly that’s my life.”Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer will cross-examine her when court resumes this afternoon at 2pm.
      It was a day of emotional testimony in a Washington courtroom, where Shaye Moss took the stand in the defamation trial against Rudy Giuliani. She recounted in devastating detail the ways the former New York City mayor’s lies and the ensuing harassment upended her life, destroyed her sense of security and self-worth and hurt her family.
      Under cross-examination, Moss pointedly noted that the harm caused by Giuliani continues to this day as the former mayor repeated his lies about her to reporters as recently as Monday. Giuliani’s comments to reporters drew a sharp rebuke from the judge.
      Beyond the trial, other big stories today:
      New York’s top court said the state must redraw its congressional maps, in a decision widely seen as a victory for Democrats in the battle to win control of the narrowly divided House of Representatives.
      The Texas supreme court overturned a lower court order that would have allowed Kate Cox to get an abortion for a fetus with a fatal condition. Cox went out of state for the procedure.
      Claudine Gay will remain the president of Harvard University despite calls for her removal following testimony before a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus last week.
      US inflation ticked down again last month, with cheaper gas helping further lighten the weight of consumer price increases in the US.
      Meanwhile, Volodymyr Zelenskiy failed to persuade congressional Republicans to rush aid to Ukraine as Russia’s war nears its third year. During a visit to Washington, Zelenskiy met with members of Congress and Joe Biden on Tuesday.
      Still to come: CNN will host a presidential town hall in Iowa with Republican White House hopeful Ron DeSantis.
      Sam reports that Shaye Moss has completed her testimony after taking the witness stand to answer questions from Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer and her own.Giuliani’s lawyer, Joseph Sibley, sought to undercut the idea millions of dollars in damages were required to repair her reputation. He also sought to distance Giuliani from any harm Moss suffered.John Langford, one of Moss’s attorneys, asked her to further explain why she was not looking for work.“I definitely would have to start off again at the bottom and work my way up. I am wanting to do that but I am not mentally able to do that with things are the way are now,” Moss said. “Most days I pray that God does not wake me up and I just disappear.”She also explained that she does not go out alone, except for one instance in which she did it as homework for her therapist.“I did it so terrified. I felt extremely nauseous. But thankfully there was this guy at the bar,” she said. “He was a Jewish guy. He literally talked the entire time about this movie about this family that is in the pharmaceuticals. The guy was just talking. And I did it. I was very proud of myself. But unfortunately I have not been able to do that again. But I did do it once.”Plaintiffs are now playing a videotaped deposition from Bernard Kerik.Here’s some background on the situation in New York written by our in-house expert on redistricting, Sam Levine (yes, the same one in court covering the election case).Despite outperforming expectations on election night last year, Republicans made stunning gains across New York, one of the nation’s most liberal states. They won four toss-up races and picked off congressman Sean Patrick Maloney, the House Democratic campaign chairman charged with protecting his party’s hold on Congress.That was possible under the map that will now be redrawn.Breaking from the Giuliani trial to mark a new legal development out of New York, where a court has agreed to allow the state to redraw its congressional map in a decision widely seen as a victory for Democrats.In an opinion issued on Tuesday afternoon, the liberal-leaning New York State Court of Appeals ordered the state’s redistricting commission to draw new maps by February 28, 2024. The court is effectively tossing out the highly competitive electoral map that gave Republicans an edge in several key House races last cycle – just enough to win the majority.The commission is split evenly between Republicans and Democrats, but the Democratic-controlled state legislature has final say over the redrawn map. Given the narrow divide in the US House, New York Democrats will be under pressure to reject any proposal that does not improve their electoral odds, particularly after Republicans aggressive gerrymanders in states like North Carolina.Giuliani’s lawyer is pressing Moss to disclose additional details about her medical health as a result of the former mayor’s lies.Here’s some more back-and-forth in what appears to be a somewhat combative round of questioning.More from our man on the ground:
      I personally cannot repair my reputation at the moment because your client is still lying on me and ruining my reputation further. How could I do that? How could you work in law everyone was saying you’re a horrible lawyer? Moss said under questioning.
      She added, per Sam: “We need to make a statement. We need to ensure that the election workers that are still there don’t have to go through this. Hopefully by hitting someone in their pockets, for someone whose whole career has been about their pockets, we will send a message.”Sam is back in the courtroom in the defamation trial in Washington DC, where Moss is being cross-examined.It’s unclear where exactly Sibley is going with his questions, Sam reports.A lot of his questions seem to be trying to get Moss to concede that there was confusion or uncertainty about what happened immediately after the 2020 election. The US district judge Beryl Howell has already found Giuliani liable for defamation, so whether or not Giuliani had grounds to make his outlandish claims is not really at issue in the trial.It cannot be easy to be the lawyer for the voluble former New York mayor. Moss is back on the stand for cross-examination from Giuliani’s attorney, Joseph Sibley.While we await the return of the Giuliani trial in DC, we’re linking to our Israel-Hamas war blog, where Biden has said Israel is “starting to lose support” of international community over its bombardment of Gaza.Biden also said that Netanyahu needs to change his hardline government.Biden’s comments come as Netanyahu thanked the US for its support on Tuesday, but noted that the US and Israel have had disagreements about “the day after Hamas”, said Israel’s prime minister on X.It is 1.20pm in Washington DC. Here is a round-up of what’s happened today:
      Georgia election worker Shaye Moss took the stand in the defamation trial against Rudy Giuliani, giving a haunting testimony of the ways the former New York City mayor’s lies and the ensuing harassment ruined her life and affected her family.
      Moss told the court she was a “bubbly, outgoing, happy Shaye” before she first became aware of lies Giuliani was spreading about her – and that threats left her feeling scared for her life. She recalled how she started receiving racist text messages and threats. “I was afraid for my life. I literally felt like someone was going to come and attempt to hang me and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.”
      Moss also told the court how her life has been ruined and she often still feels like she is being followed. She doesn’t go out alone and has panic attacks. She had to leave her job because she says she became a “pariah” in the office. Moss told the court her ordeal has left her feeling “in a dark place”.
      Giuliani’s mental fitness was questioned by the judge after he again told lies about Moss and Ruby Freeman in response to media questions after court last night. His comments entered into the court case Tuesday when Moss brought up how he had never apologized and continued to lie about her.
      Moss will be back on the stand at 2pm in Washington for cross-examination from Giuliani’s attorney.
      Beyond the trial, other big stories today …
      The Texas supreme court overturned a lower court order that would have allowed Kate Cox to get an abortion for a fetus with a fatal condition. Cox went out of state for the procedure.
      Claudine Gay will remain the president of Harvard University despite calls for her removal following testimony before a congressional hearing about antisemitism on campus last week.
      Shaye Moss just ended approximately two hours of haunting testimony detailing how her life has been ruined ever since Rudy Giuliani spread lies about her after the 2020 election.Her worst fear, she said, is that her teenage son will come home to find her and her mother hanging from a tree in front of their home. She still pulls over in her neighborhood because she feels like someone is following them. She doesn’t go out alone. She has panic attacks. She left the job that she worked hard to get because she had become a “pariah” in the office. When her son started getting harassing messages and failed all of his classes in the 9th grade, she felt responsible and like “the worst mom in the world”.“I feel like I’m in a dark place and the only thing that surrounds me are the conspiracy and the lies,” she said.She ended her direct testimony by talking about how she’s trapped in a cycle of eating, sleeping, and crying. “Sadly that’s my life.”Rudy Giuliani’s lawyer will cross-examine her when court resumes this afternoon at 2pm.Though Giuliani has already been found liable for defaming Moss and Freeman, his comments last night to the media where he claimed his lies about them were true will likely factor into the trial.Already, the US district judge Beryl Howell asked about Giuliani’s mental fitness, given his comments: “everything I said about them is true.”And on the stand this afternoon, Moss brought up his remarks, saying he was still “spreading lies about us last night”. Politico’s Kyle Cheney wrote on X that the judge is permitting Moss to talk about these comments, despite an objection from Giuliani’s lawyer. More

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      The Harvard and UPenn presidents walked into a trap in Congress | Moustafa Bayoumi

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      Last week in Congress, Representative Elise Stefanik proved how well she can throw a dead cat.Let me explain. During an hours-long hearing on 5 December, members of Congress grilled university presidents from Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania, some of the country’s most elite institutions of higher learning, about antisemitism on their campuses. But it was Stefanik’s questioning that grabbed the spotlight. She repeatedly asked the presidents essentially the same question: does calling for the genocide of Jews on your campus constitute harassment, yes or no?The question is a trap, of course, and for several reasons. The first and most important reason is that there’s no evidence anyone since 7 October, or even in recent history, has called for the genocide of Jews on any American campus, public or private. Stefanik’s question implies that such calls are commonplace, but she offered no proof.The second reason this is a trap is that the question can’t be answered with just “yes” or “no”. Public universities, as state actors, are bound by the first amendment, as are private universities which receive federal funding. And the vast majority of private universities guarantee freedom of speech and academic freedom as part of their core mission. The American university is, by tradition and design, precisely where abhorrent ideas can be uttered. So, if someone had called for the genocide of Jews, which they haven’t, that would be extremely disturbing but still protected speech.The utterance alone does not constitute harassment. In fact, the utterance should be an opportunity to debate and debunk – and not silence – the worst ideas of our day. To rise to harassment, such conduct must be targeted at an individual and, as a 2019 supreme court case decided, be “so severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive that it effectively bars the victim’s access to an educational opportunity or benefit”. Context makes the difference, or as this 2011 article, published by the American Bar Association, says: “It is the context that matters, and the context helps to make the determination about whether conduct is actionable under school policy or protected by the First Amendment.”The third reason the question is trap is that the situation is complicated by the overarching codes of conduct many universities have adopted, codes that I believe do often (wrongly) cross over into limiting speech. But here, too, Stefanik seems confused. Writing in the Wall Street Journal after the hearing, Stefanik ridiculed Harvard for requiring incoming undergraduates to take an online training session to help them identify language and behavior that could be considered hateful to others. But, while mocking Harvard’s approach, Stefanik – a rising Maga Republican – is at the same time demanding to be included in it. So, which is it?To recap: all three presidents were asked how they would hypothetically punish hypothetical students for uttering hypothetical thoughts. They answered, albeit with lawyerly detachment. Yet their responses were deemed by many, from the White House on down, as callous and insufficiently protective of Jewish students. Following the hearing, all the presidents attempted damage control, but the University of Pennsylvania president has since resigned.Meanwhile, not a word was spoken about the threats that Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim students and faculty (and their supporters) are facing. Billboard trucks drive around Cambridge, Massachusetts, and New York City and Washington, broadcasting the names and faces of Palestinian supporters and libelously labeling them “antisemites”. University leaders suspend campus groups such Students for Justice in Palestine in moves the ACLU has said “harken back to America’s mistakes during the McCarthy era, and in the months and years after 9/11”. Three Palestinian college students, speaking a mixture of Arabic and English, were shot in Vermont over Thanksgiving break in what was “absolutely was a hateful act”, the Burlington police chief told CNN. On 29 November, dozens of students and some faculty members at Trinity College, where one of the students is enrolled, walked out of a vigil for the injured student because they say the campus administration is downplaying their insecurity on campus.But there is something even more ominous in Stefanik’s questions. “You understand that the term ‘intifada’ in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for … the genocide of Jews,” she asked the Harvard president, Claudine Gay. I’m not aware if Stefanik is an Arabic speaker, but I suspect she’s not since she’s wrong again. The term “intifada” literally means “shaking off”. It’s often translated as “uprising”, and there have been non-violent and violent periods of Palestinian uprisings against a brutal Israeli occupation. At no point, however, has the word ever stood as a call for the genocide of Jews. What a gross misrepresentation.But Stefanik’s questions are aimed at backhandedly discrediting words like “intifada” and patrolling the language we use to describe the Palestinian struggle. (We see the same thing with the phrase “from the river to the sea”, a version of which incidentally forms part of the founding charter of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party.) Needless to say, demonizing the Arabic language works to demonize Palestinians, Arabs and the world’s Muslims. And handing over the definitions of our political terms to partisan politicians would spell the death of free inquiry in this country.Which brings us back to Stefanik’s dead cat. In politics, a “dead cat strategy” is used to divert attention away from one issue and on to another by metaphorically throwing a dead cat onto a dining room table in the middle of a dinner party. “People will be outraged, alarmed, disgusted,” is how Boris Johnson once described the strategy. “That is true, but irrelevant,” he continued. “The key point … is that everyone will shout, ‘Jeez, mate, there’s a dead cat on the table!’ In other words, they will be talking about the dead cat – the thing you want them to talk about – and they will not be talking about the issue that has been causing you so much grief.”What Congress is not talking about is that the Israeli assault on Gaza has killed at least 17,000 people, over 7,000 of them children, and injured over 49,000. Israel has cut off regular supplies of food, water, fuel, electricity and medical supplies. Around 1.8 million Palestinians of Gaza’s 2.2 million have been displaced. More than 60% of the housing has been destroyed. Half the population is officially starving. Hospitals, historic mosques, essential libraries and the entire foundation of a society have been bombed into rubble. Meanwhile, the US was again the sole UN security council veto for a ceasefire, and the state department invoked an emergency measure to expedite weaponry to Israel that will almost certainly kill civilians. On 9 December, a group of esteemed scholars of genocide and Holocaust studies warned in a public letter “of the danger of genocide in Israel’s attack on Gaza”.Elise Stefanik would have us believe that that we should be more worried about non-existent calls for genocide on American college campuses than with what many experts are warning is an actual genocide in Gaza, funded and supported by US bombs and political cover. So, all credit where credit is due. She really knows how to throw a dead cat.
      Moustafa Bayoumi is a Guardian US columnist More

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      US university presidents face firestorm over evasive answers on antisemitism

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      The presidents of three of the nation’s top universities are facing intense backlash, including from the White House, after they appeared to evade questions during a congressional hearing about whether calls by students for the genocide of Jews would constitute harassment under the schools’ codes of conduct.In a contentious, hours-long debate on Tuesday, the presidents of Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) sought to address the steps they were taking to combat rising antisemitism on campus since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war. But it was their careful, indirect response to a question posed by the Republican congresswoman Elise Stefanik of New York that drew scathing criticism.In an exchange that has now gone viral, Stefanik, a graduate of Harvard, pressed Elizabeth Magill, the president of UPenn, on Tuesday to say whether students calling for the genocide of Jews would be disciplined under the university’s code of conduct. In her line of questioning, Stefanik appeared to be conflating chants calling for “intifada” – a word that in Arabic means uprising, and has been used in reference to both peaceful and violent Palestinian protest – with hypothetical calls for genocide.“If the speech turns into conduct, it can be harassment,” Magill replied, in a reference to distinctions in first amendment law. “It is a context-dependent decision.” Stefanik pushed her to answer “yes” or “no”, which Magill did not.The backlash was swift and bipartisan.“It’s unbelievable that this needs to be said: calls for genocide are monstrous and antithetical to everything we represent as a country,” said Andrew Bates, a White House spokesperson. “Any statements that advocate for the systematic murder of Jews are dangerous and revolting – and we should all stand firmly against them, on the side of human dignity and the most basic values that unite us as Americans.”The White House was joined by several Jewish officials and leaders in condemning the university presidents’ testimony before the US House committee on education and the workforce, at a hearing called by Republicans titled Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.Josh Shapiro, the Democratic governor of Pennsylvania, said the simple response was “yes, that violates our policy.” Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Shapiro urged UPenn’s board to meet soon, as a petition calling for Magill’s resignation garnered thousands of signatures. According to CNN, Penn’s board of trustees held an “emergency meeting” on Thursday.The liberal Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe noted that he rarely agreed with Stefanik, a far-right Trump ally, but wrote: “I’m with her here.”The Harvard president Claudine Gay’s “hesitant, formulaic, and bizarrely evasive answers were deeply troubling to me and many of my colleagues, students, and friends”. Tribe added.Republican presidential candidates also seized on the episode, folding it into their broader criticism of the US’s elite institutions as too “woke” and liberal.In an interview with the conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday, Ron DeSantis, who has led the rightwing crackdown on higher education as Florida’s governor, said the college presidents’ lack of moral clarity was a reflection of the liberal orthodoxy permeating higher education.“I think what this has revealed is the rot and the sickness that’s been festering inside higher education for a long time,” said DeSantis, a graduate of Harvard Law School who is running for president. He continued: “They should not be these hotbeds of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism. But that’s what they’ve become.”Amid a surge in youth activism around the conflict, university leaders have struggled to balance the free speech of some pro-Palestinian activists with the fears of Jewish students who say the rhetoric crosses a line into antisemitism. In a number of cases, schools have responded by banning campus groups supportive of Palestinian rights.During their appearances, Magill, Gay and Sally Kornbluth of MIT all expressed alarm at the rise of antisemitism and Islamophobia on college campuses, some of which have triggered federal investigations by the Department of Education. In response, the presidents said they had taken steps to increase security measures and reporting tools while expanding mental health and counseling services. They also said it was their responsibility to ensure college campuses remain a place of free expression and free thought.In a new statement on Wednesday, Gay stated: “There are some who have confused a right to free expression with the idea that Harvard will condone calls for violence against Jewish students. Let me be clear: calls for violence or genocide against the Jewish community, or any religious or ethnic group are vile, they have no place at Harvard, and those who threaten our Jewish students will be held to account.”Magill also sought to clarify her remarks to the committee in a video statement, in which she said her response to Stefanik’s question was an attempt to parse the university policies stating that speech alone is not punishable. But in doing so she said she failed to acknowledge the “irrefutable fact” that such speech represents a “call for some of the most terrible violence human beings can perpetuate.“I want to be clear, a call for genocide of Jewish people is threatening – deeply so,” she said, adding: “In my view, it would be harassment or intimidation.”In the video, posted to X, Magill said the university’s policies “need to be clarified and evaluated” and committed to immediately convening a process to do so.Some free speech advocates expressed alarm at the possibility that universities may respond to the backlash by adopting speech-restrictive policies that depart from the protections of the first amendment, which governs government actors including public schools. But the universities at issue in Tuesday’s hearing are all private. Fire, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, called Magill’s comments on re-evaluating Penn’s policies a “deeply troubling, profoundly counterproductive response” to the anger.“Were Penn to retreat from the robust protection of expressive rights, university administrators would make inevitably political decisions about who may speak and what may be said on campus,” it said in a statement. The result of placing new limits on speech, it said, would mean “dissenting and unpopular speech – whether pro-Israeli or pro-Palestinian, conservative or liberal – will be silenced”. More

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      US university presidents to testify before Congress over claims of antisemitic protests on campuses

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      The presidents of Harvard University, the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, three of the country’s most prestigious universities, are set to testify before a congressional committee next week on claims that antisemitic protests have taken place on their campuses, marking the latest window into ongoing tensions sparked by the Israel-Hamas war.Next Tuesday, Harvard’s Claudine Gay, Penn’s Liz Magill and MIT’s Sally Kornbluth will stand before the House education and workforce committee, a body chaired by Virginia Foxx, a Republican from North Carolina.“Over the past several weeks, we’ve seen countless examples of antisemitic demonstrations on college campuses. Meanwhile, college administrators have largely stood by, allowing horrific rhetoric to fester and grow,” said Foxx in a statement introducing the hearing, which is titled Holding Campus Leaders Accountable and Confronting Antisemitism.Foxx said college and university presidents have a responsibility to foster and uphold a safe learning environment for both students and staff.“Now is not a time for indecision or milquetoast statements,” she added. “By holding this hearing, we are shining the spotlight on these campus leaders and demanding they take the appropriate action to stand strong against antisemitism.”Earlier this month, the US Department of Education’s office for civil rights opened investigations into possible ancestry or ethnic discrimination at several universities, including Cornell, Penn, Wellesley College, Cooper Union, Lafayette College, the University of Tampa and Columbia.Of those, at least five allege antisemitic harassment, and two allege anti-Muslim harassment. The office for civil rights said the investigations are part of “efforts to take aggressive action to address the alarming nationwide rise in reports of antisemitism, anti-Muslim, anti-Arab and other forms of discrimination”.But finding a line between legitimate protest and discrimination or hate speech has proven difficult for US university leaders, who are bidden to uphold academic and political speech freedoms in their charters.Harvard’s statement of rights and responsibilities, for instance, maintains that “a diverse and inclusive community depends upon freedom of expression; we are not truly inclusive if some perspectives can be voiced and heard while others cannot”.But notably, a recent poll found that more than half of Jewish US college students said they felt unsafe. Muslim students at universities across the country have said the same.Harvard has come under attack from alumni, including Mitt Romney, the Utah senator, for not doing enough to keep Jewish students safe. Some donors have also said they will stop funding the university.Billionaire investor Bill Ackman, a former student, has called university administrators to discipline protesters who violate rules because without disciplining they will take “more aggressive, disruptive and antisemitic actions”.Earlier this month Gay, Harvard’s president, wrote to alumni saying the institution rejects “all forms of hate, and we are committed to addressing them”, adding that the school had “started the process of examining how antisemitism manifests within our community”.While the House hearing is focused on antisemitism, there are also numerous claims of Islamophobia. Earlier this month, a professor at the university of Southern California allegedly walked on a list of names meant to memorialize the more than 11,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza since 7 October and remarked: “Everyone should be killed, and I hope they all are.”In a statement Hussam Ayloush, CAIR-LA’s executive director, said: “Anti-Palestinian rhetoric has been at an all-time high these last few weeks – especially at schools and universities – and wrongly conflating Palestinians and those who are in solidarity with the innocent people of Gaza with Hamas is only adding fuel to the flames of hate.”University officials, he added, “must also take action to provide protective measures and resources for Muslim, Palestinian, and Arab students as well as any others who are targeted by hate and bigotry”.Earlier this month, New York’s Columbia University saw around 400 students gathered to criticize university leaders for suspending two pro-Palestinian student groups, Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP), after forming a task force on antisemitism.The university said the groups had repeatedly violated policies related to holding campus events including one that “included threatening rhetoric and intimidation”. More

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      Black US journalism professor wins $1m over botched university appointment

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      A Black journalism professor who was hired by Texas A&M University before objections in some quarters over her history of promoting diversity foiled the job offer has secured a $1m settlement from the institution.Kathleen McElroy also received an apology from officials at Texas A&M, the largest public school in the US, who in a statement Thursday acknowledged “mistakes … made during the process”.In her own statement, McElroy said she would remain in a tenured teaching position at the University of Texas at Austin, and hoped the settlement would “reinforce A&M’s allegiance to excellence in higher education and its commitment to academic freedom and journalism”.“I will never forget that … students, members, former students and staff voiced support for me from many sectors,” McElroy’s statement also said.The payment and apology to McElroy all but closed an episode that unfolded as Republican lawmakers across the US eye the elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs at college campuses. Such programs are in conservatives’ crosshairs after the Republican supermajority on the US supreme court’s bench ruled in June that race-conscious college admissions decisions were unconstitutional.That court ruling effectively ended affirmative action in the US’s higher education system.Texas A&M announced in June that it had hired McElroy – a school alum and former New York Times editor – to refurbish its journalism department in June. Hiring McElroy away from a more liberal rival at the University of Texas won the school plaudits from some sectors.But then, in a July interview with the Texas Tribune, McElroy revealed that she had encountered pushback at Texas A&M because she had previously worked to diversify newsrooms and make them more inclusive.Documents released Thursday to media organizations including the Associated Press and the local news outlet KVUE showed that six of the school governing board’s members had expressed “concerns” about McElroy after the right-leaning website Texas Scorecard reported on her prior diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.Alums and active students had also called and emailed the university president’s office to challenge the hiring of “a DEI proponent … to serve as director of the new journalism program,” said the documents, which summarized Texas A&M’s investigation into the McElroy matter, according to the AP.Subsequently, as the professor told it, the school president Katherine Banks reduced McElroy’s job offer to a five-year position as opposed to one that was on track to be tenured, which implies certain longer-term employment protections. McElroy told the Tribune that the five-year position – from which she could be fired at any time – was then reduced to a one-year post.At that point, McElroy rejected the job and indicated that she would stay in her teaching role at the University of Texas at Austin.Banks maintained she was not involved in modifications to the contract offered to McElroy. Nonetheless, she resigned from the presidency on 21 July, and the Texas A&M board later negotiated a settlement with McElroy.McElroy was one of two reasons why Texas A&M drew national headlines in July. In a separate case, A&M professor Joy Alonzo was suspended within hours of speaking critically about Texas’s lieutenant governor Dan Patrick during a lecture on the ongoing opioid crisis.Alonzo’s suspension, along with McElroy’s botched hiring, have prompted concerns among many in higher education that colleges are increasingly clamping down on free speech at campuses in the face of political pressure.The Associated Press contributed reporting More