Students
Breaking video: LA police smash UCLA camp, violently arrest peaceful students
US state mobilises to break protest after taking hours to act against violent pro-Israel mob last night
Los Angeles police have stormed the pro-Gaza protest camp set up by peaceful student protesters at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA).
Riot-clad police are violently arresting students and faculty taking part in the protest against the university’s complicity in Israel’s genocide – which has killed well over 40,000 civilians, mostly women and children – and is smashing up tents and makeshift buildings, despite free speech and association rights being guaranteed by the US Constitution:
Video by Middle East Eye
Solidarity with the people of Gaza and with students everywhere demonstrating against genocide and for peace.
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Will they crush the biggest student movement since Vietnam?
In response to peaceful student anti-war protests against genocide, many school administrations have invited police onto campus for violent crackdowns.
The post Will they crush the biggest student movement since Vietnam? appeared first on New Politics.
Violence erupts as pro-genocide mob assaults peaceful pro-Gaza students
Reality of who is violent cuts across ‘mainstream’ and pro-Israel propaganda – but media ‘both-sides’ the one-sided racist attack
A victim of the mob receives treatment
The propaganda of pro-Israel groups and ‘mainstream’ media was again exposed last night after a pro-Israel mob of around one hundred mounted an assault on University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) students protesting peacefully against Israel’s genocide in Gaza. Thugs attacked students with sticks, poles and chemical spray, pulled down barriers and tents and committed, according to a university administrator, ‘horrific acts of violence’ against young people demonstrating against war crimes. The assault began just before 6am today, UK time.
Police were reportedly slow to disperse the attackers.
Despite the one-sided violence, UK and US press have persisted in headlines that ‘both-sides’ the violence, presenting it as ‘clashes’ or ‘violence between groups’ in a sick echo of the language used by media to hide the reality of Israeli military and settler violence against Palestinians:
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Uni encampments for Gaza demand end to ties with Israel
Gaza solidarity encampments have spread to university campuses in Melbourne, Sydney, Canberra and Brisbane, inspired by the movement on university campuses in the US and the camp at Columbia University.
At Sydney University the camp has already lasted a week. “The encampment was set up last Tuesday night,” Angus Dermody, a student activist, told Solidarity. “There was an organising meeting and from that, tents were set up on the Quad lawns.
“On the first night we had around 30 to 40 sleeping here.”
The students are demanding Sydney University cut ties with weapons manufacturers and cut ties with Israeli universities, as well as calling on NSW Premier Chris Minns to drop charges against pro-Palestine protesters and scrap the anti-protest laws.
Sydney Uni has partnerships with weapons companies including Safran, Thales and Lockheed Martin, which all produce weapons Israel is using in its genocide in Gaza.
It also continues to maintain exchange partnerships with the Israeli University of Technology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv University, which all have deep links with the Israeli Defence Forces and Israeli weapons companies.
At Melbourne University students have occupied the South Lawn since last Thursday, demanding the university divest and cut ties with all weapons manufacturers, including Lockheed Martin, Boeing, BAE Systems and Rosebank Engineering.
They have also called on the university to implement a complete boycott of companies complicit in the genocide in Gaza, and to release a statement condemning the systematic destruction of every university in Gaza, as well as the targeted killing of academics and students.
Students at ANU in Canberra and University of Queensland (UQ) began encampments this week.
At ANU, “The action has generated much more support than we first expected,” one of the campers, Finnian Colwell, told Solidarity. “We saw around 40-50 people come to the first meeting where we decided to set up the camp.
“The demands of the camp are that the university cut ties with Israel and that Australia cut ties with Israel.
“We recently found out that the ANU invests around $500,000 in three weapons companies, BAE Systems, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman, that all provide parts to the F-35 fighter jets that are used to bomb Gaza.”
At UQ the camp began with a protest against Boeing’s research institute on campus, which works on weapons technologies including hypersonic missiles. Another camp is launching at Monash University in Melbourne tomorrow.
“There’s a lot of interest from students,” in the encampment at Sydney Uni, Angus said.
The university has decided to let the encampment stay for now after a massive police crackdown on campus in 2020 caused it severe embarrassment.
“The university sent out an all-student email that didn’t mention what the protest was about, it just said that there was a protest encampment. But it gave permission for us to be here, so long as we follow a set of rules the University has set out.
“Off that more students have felt confident to come and camp.”
Ruby Halliday told Solidarity how the Political Economy Society joined in, “The first night we were here until 11pm, but we didn’t have a tent. The next morning we came back and set up camp, we’ve been here since then. Now we’ve set up another tent.
“We’ve got in touch with [Professor Emeritus] Frank Stillwell, who was a big part of the struggle for the political economy department on the campus, against the university administration back in the 1970s primarily. He’s going to come and do a talk to show solidarity.
“We’ve posted on our social media every day, about how it’s growing. Today we did announcements in all the ECOP [Political Economy] Classes.”
As the encampment began its second week, the Sydney Uni Muslim Students Association joined in as well, setting up more tents across the lawns.
Spreading support
“Within the broader student body, there’s a lot of passive support,” Angus said.
“People have seen what’s happening at Columbia and they’re inspired that there’s something like that here. The reception has been particularly good from students who have classes in the Quadrangle, who walk through the encampment to go into class and explain to people what’s happening afterwards.”
Student activists are using the encampment as a base to go out and campaign among wider layers of students.
“It’s a really good way to gain support for Palestine and to make sure that more people are involved in an active way.
“One of the best things to do with the encampment is to talk to everyone who walks past.
“We try to ask students if they have classes that we can make announcements in to build support in the broader student body.”
There have been regular protests, with around 150 people repeatedly marching on the F23 admin building. Every day there have been teach-ins and other activities, with speakers including Palestinian academic Lana Tatour and talks on Anzac Day and Australian imperialism, alongside film screenings at night.
Students at Sydney University march from the encampment to the admin building
Last Friday Families for Palestine organised a kids excursion to the encampment with face painting and a Tantreez Palestinian embroidery workshop.
“We can combine the encampment with broader initiatives around the Palestine movement, such as bringing contingents from the encampment to the Sunday rallies. We’re going to bring a contingent meeting at the encampment to May Day, when unions are on strike at Belmore Park, and try and inject the politics of this into the action that workers are taking,” Angus said.
“There’s a vote in the next meeting of the NTEU, the staff union, on 9 May about implementing a full institutional boycott of Israeli universities, and students at the encampment can support that vote.
“Connecting what students are doing here with the broader campaign, and making sure that a much wider layer of students support the campaign will be essential for ensuring that this continues and that we come out of it with a better movement for Palestine.”
By James Supple
The post Uni encampments for Gaza demand end to ties with Israel first appeared on Solidarity Online.
Breaking: Columbia University ‘will not divest from Israel’
University president continues capitulation to Israeli pressure
The student protest camp for Gaza at Columbia has been assaulted several times by police
Columbia University in New York will not divest its investments in Israeli firms and firms that supply weaponry to Israel, according to the university’s president Minouche Shafik, despite demands from thousands of its students who are protesting in solidarity with the Palestinian people and against Israel’s genocide. Shafik, echoing the narrative of Israel lobbyists, has even claimed that the protests have made the university unsafe for Jewish students, even though Jewish students and faculty members are playing a leading role in the protests, as if the feelings of some students, who don’t like to be confronted with the reality that a country they support is engaged in genocide, are more important than stopping mass murder of women and children.
The announcement continues Shafik’s shame after she failed to challenge a narrative spouted by pro-Israel lawmakers during her questioning by politicians – and claimed a pro-Palestine professor at the university had been sacked and would never teach at Columbia again, a claim denied by Professor Mohamed Abdou.
Columbia is one of a string of universities across the US that have shamed themselves by calling in armed police to arrest and disperse protests against the genocide in Gaza. Some, parroting the pro-Israel lobby, have even accused the students of ‘siding with terrorists’.
Meanwhile, Israel continues to slaughter hundreds of Palestinians daily, mostly women and children – and the US is trying to block a planned warrant by the International Criminal Court for the arrest of Israel’s war criminal prime minister and other ministers for Israel’s war crimes.
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Video: thousands gather for Gaza at Columbia as professor condemns uni’s ‘day of shame’
History professor Christopher Brown describes scandal of university president setting riot police on peaceful anti-genocide demo and condemns craven congressional testimony
Thousands have again gathered on the lawns of Columbia University in New York, despite the attempted repression of the university’s management and the New York police – where they heard speeches from faculty members as well as students against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the authorities’ attempts to silence them:
Despite the state’s aggression, which has included the use of riot police and state troops in various locations – and the shameful demonisation of peace protesters by politicians and pro-Israel lobby groups willing to collude in Israel’s war crimes, mirroring the tactics used in the UK – the protest movement is growing and the US public is increasingly aware and condemning of Israel’s mass murder of Palestinian civilians, mostly women and children.
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US unis even arresting TEACHERS as Israel lobby group demands anti-Palestine crackdown
Students and teachers targeted by police as ADL demands government breaks student anti-genocide protest movement
At least one US university has called in police to arrest faculty members as well as students, as the so-called ‘Anti-defamation League’ (ADL) demanded a crackdown on the spreading anti-genocide protest movement among US students.
NYPD officers took NYU teachers as well as students away from a demo against Israel’s genocide in Gaza, as demonstrations spread to universities around the country. Columbia University, also in New York, has seen further student arrests as a sit-in demo by students against Israel’s slaughter of innocents continues undeterred.
In a tactic reminiscent of the recent rigged stunt in the UK by the Israel-linked, so-called ‘Campaign against Antisemitism’ (CAA), the ADL has claimed Jewish students are unsafe and demanded the immediate suspension of anyone who dares protest against mass murder:
Innocent women and children in Gaza are being slaughtered by the tens of thousands by Israel – and Palestinian students have been attacked, leaving at least one paralysed, by morons whipped up by the Islamophobic speech of politicians and pro-Israel lobbyists – but it seems we are meant to treat the feelings of the friends of genocide and apartheid as more important, on both sides of the Atlantic.
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As News Deserts Expand, Student Journalists Step Up
On the drizzly first Tuesday in March, voters crammed into a historic white clapboard meeting house on a hill in Stockbridge, Vermont. It was Town Meeting Day, when Vermonters across the state gather to debate and vote on local government. And the election for the next member of Stockbridge’s three-person select board, the main governing body of this town of just over 700 people, had drawn record turnout.
As voters waited to cast handwritten ballots in a long queue that snaked around wooden benches, University of Vermont sophomore Sarah Andrews approached locals, notebook in hand. Andrews and two classmates were not just there for course work: They were there as part of UVM’s Community News Service, reporting for the White River Valley Herald, the weekly newspaper that covers 16 towns in this rural region.
Small newspapers like the Herald have long been the main way of recording and distributing information about community happenings. But local news outlets are disappearing. The 2023 State of Local News report found that about half of all counties across the country have only one local news outlet, and more than 200 counties have none.
UVM student reporters covered an unusually busy Town Meeting Day in the small town of Stockbridge. Credit: Elizabeth Hewitt
As local news deserts grow, universities are stepping in. With initiatives ranging from student-staffed statehouse bureaus to newspapers run by journalism schools, these academic-media partnerships are bolstering local news.
“It’s a short-term win and it’s a long-term win,” says Penny Muse Abernathy, a visiting professor at Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, and co-author of the local news report.
University-media partnerships provide reliable local news coverage in communities where it is needed. In the process, students get hands-on experience with community decision-making in a way that shapes their careers and worldviews going forward.
Credit: Elizabeth Hewitt
Sarah Andrews and two of her classmates covered Town Meeting Day for the White River Valley Herald, the weekly newspaper that covers 16 communities in Vermont’s rural Upper Valley region.
“Too often over the last 20 years, we’ve tended to focus on teaching students what we assume are professional digital skills for the digital age, when in fact journalism at its core teaches not only the journalist but the citizen how to employ critical thinking and make wise decisions,” says Abernathy.
Closures of smaller news outlets over the last several decades have left many regions without reliable media coverage. Since 2005, the number of newspapers in the US has dropped by a third, and the number of journalists has declined by 60 percent. The erosion of local news makes it harder for community members to be aware of the issues in their regions.
“Most of the decisions that affect our immediate everyday life occur at the local level,” says Abernathy.
Through university-led journalism programs, students — under the tutelage and editorial supervision of faculty members — are stepping in to fill in some of those gaps. The model isn’t new: The University of Missouri has been practicing a “teaching hospital” approach that involves students in community news coverage since 1908. Now, in the current media landscape, higher education institutions are looking at how they can both offer students enriching experiences and contribute to communities, according to Richard Watts, who heads the University of Vermont’s Center for Community News.
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“Students like to do things that are real,” he says. “There’s a sense of agency about writing real stories that real people read and make a real difference.”
There are about 120 such programs at colleges and universities across the country, according to Watts. The Center for Community News found in 2023 that over the last year, more than 2,000 student journalists across the US had produced more than 10,000 news stories that were published in community outlets. The stories were estimated to reach more than 14 million people.
Often offered to students in the forms of classes, the programs require a high level of commitment from faculty members — editing stories for publication is more intensive than typical grading. Across different regions, the scope and focus of programs varies, says Watts.
Louisiana State University’s Manship School of Mass Communication has taken advantage of its location a few miles away from the State Capitol to bolster coverage of the legislature.
News coverage of state policy-making is among the casualties of the erosion of local news. Across the country, the number of reporters covering statehouses full-time declined by 34 percent between 2014 and 2022.
Claire Sullivan has been an LSU Manship School Statehouse reporter for both the 2023 and the 2024 sessions. Credit: Ria Salway
As press coverage of the Louisiana legislature diminished, LSU launched a statehouse bureau in 2016. Through a high-level journalism class, student reporters cover committee meetings and floor proceedings. Grant funding allows the program to keep students on as interns to cover the weeks of the legislative session after the semester ends. Christopher Drew, a former New York Times investigative reporter and editor who heads the bureau program, edits the stories. Then they’re made available for any news outlet to publish for free.
Ninety-five outlets have run LSU student statehouse stories, ranging from some of the state’s largest newspapers to small weekly and bi-weekly papers, many of which Drew says wouldn’t have another option to get stories about news from the statehouse.“Our students never have any problem getting taken seriously by lawmakers because we often are the hometown reporter for the lawmakers,” says Drew. “A lot of them come from places [where] the only thing that constituents could read about what they do comes from what the LSU students do.”
The idea is spreading; 20 states have some form of university-led statehouse bureau, and Drew is involved in conversations with schools interested in launching programs in additional states. LSU also offers an investigative journalism course, focused on civil rights era cold cases, which similarly distributes stories to outlets. Drew is working on a new project that would create a network of universities and colleges around Louisiana, partnering journalism programs with small local news outlets.
LSU senior Claire Sullivan is taking the statehouse course for the second time this spring. She sees the community news model as mutually beneficial for students like herself who want experience and local news outlets that want coverage.
“It’s the best kind of motivator,” says Sullivan. “You want to do your best job for the local outlets.”
Devon Sanders, an LSU Manship School Statehouse reporter, interviewed State Representative Katrina Jackson in 2018. Credit: Katherine Seghers / LSU
The Oglethorpe Echo has been covering the issues of Oglethorpe County in northeastern Georgia since 1874. The weekly was poised to shut down in 2021, when the long-time publisher was ready to retire. Instead, a community member hatched a plan for the local paper to be taken over by the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication.
Over the last two and a half years, students have reported the stories that fill the Echo’s pages. During fall and spring semesters, the newspaper is staffed by students in a senior capstone class. Over summer and winter breaks, students are hired as interns, so there’s no break in news coverage. The paper was converted to a nonprofit, and Andy Johnston, a longtime sports journalist who had been an adjunct professor, came on as the paper’s editor.
Student journalists have dug into issues related to limited rural broadband access, and use of a particular form of fertilizer on local farms. In its first full year of operating under the university, the paper won nine awards from the Georgia Press Association.
Courtesy of Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication
The Oglethorpe Echo nearly shut down in 2021. Instead, the University of Georgia’s Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication took over the paper. Now, student stories fill its pages.
One difference between university-led media and traditional local outlets is that student reporters turn over frequently, so they don’t have the long-term knowledge and relationships that a professional reporter would. But editors — both employed by universities and with community news outlets — help provide that expertise. In Vermont, when the White River Valley Herald picks up stories written by UVM students, editor Tim Calabro says he occasionally adds in local context that students don’t know.
When the University of Georgia took over the Echo, Johnston says there was an adjustment period of building trust with the community. The university is located about 25 miles west of Oglethorpe County, so students don’t live locally. But the feedback he gets is generally positive. Readers appreciate having a local news source, and they particularly like slice-of-life stories that feature their friends and family members.
“We’re writing to tell the stories of the community, tell the stories of the county,” he says.
Current Echo students Michael Johnson (left) and Izzy Wagner read through a copy of The Oglethorpe Echo. Courtesy of Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication
Back in Vermont, on Town Meeting Day, a total of 139 people voted in the election for Stockbridge’s new select board member. Two days later, Andrews’ story about the election ran in the White River Valley Herald.
For the Herald’s editor, Tim Calabro, UVM students’ stories helped his limited staff cover news around the region on the biggest single day for local government of the year. But Calabro says there are broader benefits of the program beyond filling the paper with news.
“Of all the dangers that newspapers, news organizations of any stripe are facing, the biggest worry is that people just won’t care about what’s going on in their communities,” Calabro says.
Not every student who goes through a university-led news program will go on to a career in journalism, he says. But even for those without ambitions in journalism, he sees this kind of program as valuable for engaging young people in communities: “Being a human being in society,” as Calabro puts it, “it’s good to care about society.”
The post As News Deserts Expand, Student Journalists Step Up appeared first on Reasons to be Cheerful.
Students occupy Bristol uni building in protest at ‘profits from genocide’
Students demand divestment and an end to academic ties
Bristol University students have taken control of one of the university’s Wills Memorial Building in a protest to demand an end to its ‘complicity with arms companies’ and to call for a series of actions on its part to ‘support Palestine and Palestinians’:
The demanded actions include:
- an end to cooperation with weapons manufacturers
- protection for Palestinian students and special consideration for those taking exams who have been affected by Israel’s slaughter in Gaza
- protection for anti-Zionist beliefs among staff and students – an issue on which Bristol university has a shameful record and has been the scene of intense pressure campaigns by pro-Israel groups claiming that anti-Zionism, opposition to the settler-colonial state that has displaced Palestinians and treats them as inferior
- recognition of the existence of Palestine – an existence denied by hardcore supporters of Israel
- scholarships for Palestinian refugees
Israel has killed over forty thousand Palestinian civilians, more than two thirds of them women and children, and injured twice as many, in its genocidal assault on Gaza and has ignored orders from the International Court of Justice to cease its slaughter and allow food, fuel and medicines into Gaza immediately. Gaza is now in famine, with experts predicting that more will die in the coming months from hunger and disease than from Israel’s bombs, missiles and bullets, with children again worst affected.
Palestinian flags can be seen through the Wills building’s doors. The figures in the second image have been blurred to protect identities.
The group is also demanding an end to the use of a ‘check-in’ system that tracks the location of students.
Wednesday’s action is not the first by Bristol students demanding justice for Palestinians and an end to discrimination against them and their supporters. Four months ago, students protested in the university’s ‘profits from genocide’:
And earlier this month, a group occupied Bristol University’s Victoria Rooms in a pro-Gaza protest.
The British government has mounted a pressure campaign against universities, threatening to defund them if they allow ‘extremism’ or ‘antisemitism’ in the form of pro-Palestinian speech and activism. Shamefully, a number of universities have capitulated to pressure from the UK state and from pro-Israel groups claiming that speech against Israel’s crimes and occupation of Palestinian land infringe on their rights and constitutes ‘hate’ toward Jews, even though many UK Jews oppose Israel’s actions and oppression of Palestinians.
Last month, former Bristol professor David Miller won a landmark employment tribunal case against the university, which had sacked him after pressure from pro-Israel groups, despite lawyers it appointed to run two investigations finding that he had said nothing antisemitic. The win set a precedent that anti-Zionist political beliefs are a protected characteristic under equalities law and cannot be used as grounds for dismissal. Skwawkbox understands that Prof Miller is not involved in the students’ protest.
Solidarity with students in Bristol and elsewhere who are demanding an end to complicity in war crimes.
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Are Your Students Doing The Reading?
And if they’re not, what can be done to get them to do it? Or is that the wrong way to think about it?
[Note: This was originally posted on February 16, 2024, 9:04am, but was lost when a problem on February 17th, 2024 required the site to be reset. I’m reposting it on February 18th with its original publication date, but I’m sorry to report that the comments, many of which contained helpful suggestions, may have been lost; I’m looking into the matter.]
These questions come up in response to a recent piece by Adam Kotsko (North Central College) at Slate. He writes about the “diffuse confluence of forces that are depriving students of the skills needed to meaningfully engage” with books:
As a college educator, I am confronted daily with the results of that conspiracy-without-conspirators. I have been teaching in small liberal arts colleges for over 15 years now, and in the past five years, it’s as though someone flipped a switch. For most of my career, I assigned around 30 pages of reading per class meeting as a baseline expectation—sometimes scaling up for purely expository readings or pulling back for more difficult texts. (No human being can read 30 pages of Hegel in one sitting, for example.) Now students are intimidated by anything over 10 pages and seem to walk away from readings of as little as 20 pages with no real understanding. Even smart and motivated students struggle to do more with written texts than extract decontextualized take-aways. Considerable class time is taken up simply establishing what happened in a story or the basic steps of an argument—skills I used to be able to take for granted.
Kotsko anticipates one kind of reaction to this complaint:
Hasn’t every generation felt that the younger cohort is going to hell in a handbasket? Haven’t professors always complained that educators at earlier levels are not adequately equipping their students? And haven’t students from time immemorial skipped the readings?
He reassures himself with the thought that other academics agree with him and that he is “not simply indulging in intergenerational grousing.” That’s not a good response, because the intergenerational divide is not as relevant as the divide between academics and non-academics (i.e., nearly all of their students): professors were not, and are not, normal.
Still, I’m a professor, too, and despite my anti-declinist sentiments and worries about my own cognitive biases, I can’t help but agree that students do not seem as able or willing to actually do the reading, and as able or willing to put in the work to try to understand it, as they have in the past (though I probably don’t think the decline is as steep as Kotsko thinks it is).
Kotsko identifies smartphones and pandemic lockdowns as among the culprits responsible for poor student reading, but acknowledges we “can’t go back in time” and undo their effects. Nor does he offer any solutions in this article.
Are there any solutions? What can we do? What should we do? What do you do?
Related:
“How Do You Teach Your Students to Read”
“The Point and Selection of Readings in Introductory Philosophy Courses”
“Why Students Aren’t Reading”
The post Are Your Students Doing The Reading? first appeared on Daily Nous.