Category: college students behaving badly

Graduate-student union strike looming at Harvard

March 11, 2026 • 10:18 am

It must be strike season at American universities. Spring seems to be the time when well-paid, privileged, and entitled graduate students look to their unions—unions like the United Auto Workers—to demand even higher wages, other privileges, and, as I posted yesterday, political statements by some universities.

As I reported yesterday, there’s an impending graduate-student strike at Columbia, with the union demanding not only big salary increases for the students, but also that the University do all manner of anti-Israel things, like divesting from Israel and withdrawing from opening a program in Tel Aviv. That seems to me a violation of institutional neutrality, and I trust that Columbia won’t en

Now Harvard is follow suit, threatening a strike about wages, though fortunately there are no demands there about Israel. (It’s unlikely that any union demands related to Israel would be accepted by either university, as they’ve both been subject to lawsuits for ongoing antisemitism.)

As the article in the Harvard Crimson reports, both teaching fellow and research assistants (two ways that grad students can get paid while getting advanced degrees) want raises, with teaching fellows demanding a huge increase in pay.

Harvard is not biting, so a strike may be impending.

Click the link to read the Crimson article:

This is a bit complex; see what you make of it.  First, the demands (Crimson quotes indented):

Harvard rejected graduate student workers’ demands for sweeping wage increases at a Tuesday bargaining session, countering with more modest raises and declining to equalize pay between teaching fellows and research assistants.

The proposals come as contract negotiations between Harvard and Harvard Graduate Student Union-United Auto Workers stretch past a year and union members vote in an ongoing strike authorization vote launched last Tuesday.

Last month, HGSU-UAW proposed a plan to close the wage gap between teaching fellows and research assistants, which would raise TF pay by roughly 74 percent — bringing it in line with the equivalent of a 10-month RA salary. The proposal also included a 12 percent increase to base salaries and annual raises of five percent.

Harvard instead offered a 10 percent raise over four years and a nearly 3 percent raise in the first year, amounting to annual raises of roughly 2.5 percent, according to a Harvard spokesperson.

It declined to match TF and RA monthly pay, according to HGSU-UAW president Sara V. Speller.

It appears, though that TF and RA pay is the same for the first four years of graduate fellowships:

Under Harvard’s current pay structure, graduate students earn roughly $50,000 annually during the first four years of their program, typically comprising two years of fellowship funding and two years of teaching fellowships supplemented with salary top ups and summer funding.

But those supplements expire after four semesters and summer funding ends after four years. During the remainder of their time at Harvard, many graduate students rely solely on teaching fellowships — which pay roughly $6,500 per section.

Now $50,000 is certainly enough to live, even in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Notice that this is appears to be a minimum salary, as there is summary salary and diverse “top ups”.  After four years, you can either teach or be an RA, and that seems to be when the differential kicks in.  I know that in the biological sciences there’s no substantial disparity even after four years, as they somehow find money to adequately support all students, but perhaps it’s in the humanities where they are demanding salary increases. And I’m unable to find out much about the humanities given the time constraints of time for writing posts.

Given that no student has to pay tuition, and the salary is what the university gives them on top of tuition remission, I was told that in biology the students are sitting pretty throughout their entire graduate career, even if they have to teach after four years. They are not making $6500 per year.  In fact, they’re getting paid well on top of a free education at Harvard, so one may argue that these kinds of union demands are excessive.  One of those who feel that way is reader Bat, who who called my attention to the Crimson article and commented,

Much like scholarship uni athletics and the obscenities of NIL pay [universities now paying student athletes] and free agency portals for colleges, I just think none of this [graduate-student unions] has a place in higher education.

Throw the rascals out.  Plenty of hungry and bright applicants in the sea (as you informed Harvard when turning them down for grad school years ago if I recall correctly).

Sometimes we geezers are right.  You kids get off my lawn!

Columbia’s anti-Israel grad student union makes big demands, prepares to strike

March 10, 2026 • 11:30 am

Graduate student unions are relatively new: they weren’t around when I was in graduate school in the Pleistocene.  They are officially part of larger labor unions (the University of Chicago grad student union, for example, is part of  the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers of America (GSU-UE, Local 1103).  Today’s piece is about the Columbia University grad-student union, affiliated with the United Auto Workers.

The rationale for students joining unions is that they consider themselves employees rather than just students, and that comes from requirements that students often have to teach to get their degree (they can be paid by the university if they’re on fellowship, as I was at Harvard, and taught for a year as part of the degree requirements). Teaching and even the requirement to do research is considered “employment” in the same way that making cars is considered employment, though many grad students disagree, considering their activities involved in getting a graduate degree—including learning to teach—to be education, not employment. The resolution of these differences involves grad students voting: if enough of them want a union, they get a union.  Whether or not they must join a union or pay dues to a one depends on the university. Neither Chicago nor Columbia requires membership, for example, but the benefits all students get are those agreed on via bargaining between the university and the union.  Chicago grad students have to pay someone, however. As Grok tells me:

University of Chicago graduate students are not required to join the union (GSU-UE) as members. However, those in covered teaching or research positions must pay union dues or an equivalent agency fee as a condition of employment, per the collective bargaining agreement effective April 2024.
I’m not sure who gets the “equivalent agency fee.”

The two articles below, the first from the Free Press (FP) and the second from the Columbia Spectator (CS; the student paper) describe a potential upcoming strike by Columbia graduate students. Click on either headline to go to the article. I’ll identify where quotes come from, and all quotes are indented.

The CS describes how grad-student unions bargains with the university; this holds, I think, for all universities:

Under the National Labor Relations Act, the union’s legally mandated role involves bargaining with the University over wages, hours, and working conditions, which are ‘mandatory’ subjects of collective bargaining; the employer and the union are legally required to bargain over these subjects if one of the parties raises concerns. Other topics which may be brought for bargaining include any condition outside of wages, hours, and working conditions. Neither party may insist on bargaining for permissive demands, but they may discuss them.

One of the problems with requesting big increases in student salaries, as Columbia’s union is doing, is that it ultimately leads to the admission of fewer grad students, for the funds for grad students are limited. (This shrinking has happened, I’m told, at the University of California.)  Another problem, highlighted in the FP but not the CS article, is that student unions, which have historically taken political stands (including endorsing candidates), can and have made demands for the university itself to take political stands. In the case of Columbia, this often involves anti-Israel stands, and you can see that many students—especially Jewish ones—don’t want to be part of a union that is explicitly and blatantly anti-Israel.

The FP article (not archived):

And the CS:

Columbia students went on strike for 10 weeks in 2021, and that of course degraded classes in which grad students teach, and also research (nobody is supposed to teach or do research during a strike). Now they’re threatening to strike again, and the union’s demands are big. From the CS:

The Student Workers of Columbia-United Auto Workers [SWC] opened a strike authorization vote Friday to “ramp up the pressure” for the University to meet its demands amid seven months of stalled contract negotiations.

The vote follows continued disagreement between the union and the University over the scope of issues subject to collective bargaining and is open to all union members through March 8. If affirmed, the vote would authorize union leadership to hold a later vote to decide whether and when to initiate a strike. SWC-UAW last went on strike in 2021 for 10 weeks during its first contract negotiation before signing a contract with the University.

A University spokesperson characterized the strike authorization vote as “disappointing” in a statement to Spectator because it comes “after only six bargaining sessions and without even putting forward all the proposals they have said they want to discuss with the University.”
“During negotiations for SWC’s first contract in 2021, Columbia met with the union 73 times before they decided to strike,” the spokesperson wrote.

Here’s what Columbia students get now and what they’re asking in terms of benefits (from the FP):

Now that the union has gotten around to its economic demands, they are far beyond what graduate students at comparable academic institutions are typically offered. On top of a full tuition remission valued at over $55,000 per academic year, SWC has demanded an annual minimum salary of over $76,000 for PhD students who are teaching or conducting research, even though they are expected to work only about 20 hours per week.

The union also is seeking a childcare subsidy of up to $50,000 per child per year. For so-called casual employees, including undergraduate student workers, the union is demanding minimum pay of $36.50 per hour, up from $22.50 per hour, and more than twice New York City’s minimum wage of $17 per hour.

SWC also plans to bargain for union shop status, which would force student workers to join and pay dues to remain employed, or for agency shop status, in which nonunion members must pay a fee to cover bargaining costs.

Some Googling indicates that grad students now make up to about $50,000 per year, so they’re asking for about a 50% increase in salary.  And depending on whether a member has kids, the demands could total as much as $200,000 per year.  Further, the “union shop status” they’re requesting means that all students must join the union, and since the union is demanding political stands, that can be problematic. From the FP:

The battle isn’t primarily about wages or working conditions. Instead, it is focused on the demands of anti-Israel activists on Columbia’s campus. Some student workers say this activism means that they feel uncomfortable about seeking help with basic functions like workplace conditions or health insurance.

“They’ve singularly focused on pursuing policies that are meant to disenfranchise Jews and Israelis, as opposed to pursuing and negotiating on policies for the betterment of all student workers,” one Columbia grad student told me. An engineering graduate student added, “If you look at what the union is doing now, you can see there’s no sane people left.”

SWC’s president, Grant Miner, isn’t even allowed on campus. He was one of the 22 students arrested following the occupation of Hamilton Hall in 2024, was expelled, and therefore is no longer employed by the university. Yet Miner is paid over $46,000 a year by the union, according to a contract reviewed by The Free Press. Miner did not respond to a request for comment.

Some of the Columbia union’s demands (from the FP):

The union has demanded that Columbia public safety officers not “use force against Columbia affiliates or non-Columbia affiliates under any circumstances,” carry weapons, or require anyone to show their university identification. SWC also wants Columbia to dismantle its security cameras, halt Columbia’s dual degree program with Tel Aviv University, block the opening of a new facility in Tel Aviv, and divest Columbia from Israel.

. . .Olya Skulovich, who is Jewish and Israeli, said SWC deserves credit for improvements in health insurance and other areas. “There was not even coverage for spouses” when she started, said Skulovich, who arrived at Columbia in 2018 and earned a PhD in earth and environmental engineering.

But she was shocked when the union quickly veered away from economic priorities after Hamas attacked Israel on October 7, 2023. SWC described Israel as “genocidal” and called on Columbia to divest from the “Israeli war machine.” The statement was approved by just 100 of the eligible union members.

“I lived a big part of my life in Belarus, and I know what antisemitism is firsthand,” Skulovich said. Brian Frost, a union steward for the engineering school, resigned from his SWC post over the post–October 7 statement. “The lists of demands are not labor demands,” he wrote in an email to other PhDs in his department. The statement was “uncharacteristically heartless for a labor organization,” said Frost.

Once the union had taken an official side on the war in Gaza, it began to support student protesters. SWC voted to join the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, the main anti-Israel campus group that includes Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP). The three groups are not recognized by Columbia and were therefore ineligible to organize protests, but union leaders believed that SWC could veil their activities as labor actions.

“We were putting up rallies for the student organizations who weren’t allowed to protest on campus,” union steward Ioanna Kourkoulou told other UAW branch organizations. She bragged that SWC was “allowed to picket whenever the fuck we want.”

I have never been involved in any of these negotiations or votes, as I was a faculty member when the union began at my school, and I can’t even tell you what deal was made between the union here and the university, though I doubt it forces the University of Chicago to take political stands, which is prohibited by our Kalven principles.

I thus can’t say how many grad student positions here have been lost here because of bargaining, but if the Columbia union gets its demands of a $76,000 annual salary and childcare subsidies (on top of the $55,000 tuition remission), I expect there will be substantially fewer grad students.  That is for the talks to decide.

What I most object to is the union’s anti-Israel demands, which include university divesting from Israel,  blocking the Tel Aviv facility, and joining three anti-Israel groups (and sponsoring their rallies)—at least two of them (SJP and JVP) that I see as antisemitic. This would force Columbia to take ideological and political stands, which would violate its existing policy of institutional neutrality and chill the speech of Jewish or pro-Israel students.  It is the political positions of grad-student unions that, I think, make them different from “normal” labor unions and inappropriate for universities. Whatever Columbia decides to do about grad-student funding, it must not agree to adopt these ideological positions.

The Atlantic: A history of protest at Columbia University

March 18, 2025 • 9:30 am

This article in The Atlantic by Frank Foer, former editor of The New Republic (and who attended Columbia) gives a thorough and excellent summary of the history of antisemitic protests at the school. You can probably access it for free by clicking on the headline below, or you can find the article archived here. It’s well worth reading.

 

You can read the whole thing for yourself, but I’ll give a few quotes. It begins with the recent anti-Semitism at Columbia when Avi Shilon’s class on the history of modern Israel was interrupted by four disruptive pro-Palestinian protestors, two of whom have been expelled and another under investigation.  This, however, is only a small part of the anti-Israel and antisemitic atmosphere at that toxic school, which is cleaning up its act only since the Trump administration took away $400 million in federal funds. (Note, however, that this kind of threat could spread throughout U.S. colleges, and that Columbia also detained, probably unlawfully, ex-student Mahmoud Khalif, who may have only been exercising freedom of speech):

Over the many months of that [Israel/Hamas] war, Columbia was the site of some of America’s most vitriolic protests against Israel’s actions, and even its existence. For two weeks last spring, an encampment erected by anti-Israel demonstrators swallowed the fields in the center of the compact Manhattan campus. Nobody could enter Butler Library without hearing slogans such as “Globalize the intifada!” and “We don’t want no Zionists here!” and “Burn Tel Aviv to the ground!” At the end of April, students, joined by sympathizers from outside the university gates, stormed Hamilton Hall—which houses the undergraduate-college deans’ offices—and then battled police when they sought to clear the building. Because of the threat of spiraling chaos, the university canceled its main commencement ceremony in May.

. . .Over the past two years, Columbia’s institutional life has become more and more absurd. Confronted with a war on the other side of the world, the course of which the university has zero capacity to affect, a broad swath of the community acted as if the school’s trustees and administrators could determine the fate of innocent families in Gaza. To force the university into acceding to demands—ending study abroad in Israel, severing a partnership with Tel Aviv University, divesting from companies with holdings in Israel––protesters attempted to shut down campus activity. For the sake of entirely symbolic victories, they were willing to risk their academic careers and even arrest.

Because the protesters treated the war as a local issue, they trained their anger on Jewish and Israeli students and faculty, including Shilon, some of whom have been accused of complicity with genocide on the basis of their religious affiliation or national origin. More than any other American university, Columbia experienced a breakdown in the fabric of its community that demanded a firm response from administrators—but these administrators tended to choke on their own fears.

Many of the protesters followed university rules governing demonstrations and free expression. Many others did not. Liberal administrators couldn’t or wouldn’t curb the illiberalism in their midst. By failing to discipline protesters who transgressed university rules, they signaled that disrupting classrooms carried no price. By tolerating professors who bullied students who disagreed with them, they signaled that incivility and even harassment were acceptable forms of discourse.

Columbia’s invertebrate President (now ex-President) Minouche Shafik set up an antisemitism task force, which gathered tons of examples of antisemitic behavior. On top of that, four Columbia deans were photographed making fun of Jews on their phones as they watched a panel on Jewish life at Columbia (the deans are all gone now).  The main promoter of all the student activity was Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD), the group to which Khalil belonged. It’s a big group—and a nasty one:

A month later, at the beginning of the academic year, the task force published a damning depiction of quotidian student life. An especially powerful section of the report described the influence of Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the organizer of the anti-Israel protests. CUAD was a coalition of 116 tuition-supported, faculty-advised student groups, including the university mariachi band and the Barnard Garden Club.

CUAD doesn’t simply oppose war and occupation; it endorses violence as the pathway to its definition of liberation. A year ago, a Columbia student activist told an audience watching him on Instagram, “Be grateful that I’m not just going out and murdering Zionists.” At first, CUAD dissociated itself from the student. But then the group reconsidered and apologized for its momentary lapse of stridency. “Violence is the only path forward,” CUAD said in an official statement. That wasn’t a surprising admission; its public statements regularly celebrate martyrdom.

Foer notes the history of keeping Jews out of Columbia, a history that had largely waned when Foer attended the University but was later exacerbated by the work of Edward Said and his book Orientalism. I found this bit interesting:

The story of American Jewry can be told, in part, by the history of Columbia’s admissions policy. At the turn of the 20th century, when entry required merely passing an exam, the sons of Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe began rushing into the institution. By 1920, Columbia was likely 40 percent Jewish. This posed a marketing problem for the school, as the children of New York’s old Knickerbocker elite began searching out corners of the Ivy League with fewer Brooklyn accents.

To restore Anglo-Saxon Protestant demographic dominance, university president Nicholas Murray Butler invented the modern college-application process, in which concepts such as geographic diversity and a well-rounded student body became pretexts to weed out studious Jews from New York City. In 1921, Columbia became the first private college to impose a quota limiting the number of Jews. (In the ’30s, Columbia rejected Richard Feynman, who later won a Nobel Prize in physics, and Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer.) Columbia, however, was intent on making money off the Jews it turned away, so to educate them, it created Seth Low Junior College in Brooklyn, a second-rate version of the Manhattan institution.

Only after World War II, when America fought a war against Nazism, did this exclusionary system wither away.

Shafik’s task force found powerful evidence of a plague of antisemitism at Columbia, but when the task force handed its report to Columbia’s university senate, peopled by pro-Palestinian activists who wanted to be on the Senate, the report more or less died, for the faculty simply didn’t want the report given official approval. (It’s Columbia’s faculty that intensifies the atmosphere of Jew- and Israel hatred.)  Almost no students were ever punished, even the ones who broke into Hamilton Hall, and this leniency towards rule-breaking, pro-Palestinian protestors seems widespread in American universities, even my own—a fact about which I’ve wailed loudly.

Foer accepts the antisemitism revealed by the task force, but also criticizes Trump’s heavy handed treatment of the university which, to be sure, may be the only thing that will cause Columbia to take action. (Remember, the University Senate tried to quash the task force’s findings.) And Foer has no truck with the treatment of Khalil.

But make no mistake about it: the atmosphere of antisemitism lingers, since it was largely promoted by Columbia’s (and Barnard’s) faculty, and it’s so bad that were I a Jewish parent, I would send my kids anywhere but Columbia—even to Harvard! The litany of antisemitic incidents is much longer than I’ve mentioned here, and that’s one reason Foer’s article is worth reading. Nevertheless, he ends on an upbeat note.

The indiscriminate, punitive nature of Trump’s meddling may unbalance Columbia even further. A dangerous new narrative has emerged there and on other campuses: that the new federal threats result from “fabricated charges of antisemitism,” as CUAD recently put it, casting victims of harassment as the cunning villains of the story. In this atmosphere, Columbia seems unlikely to reckon with the deeper causes of anti-Jewish abuse on its campus. But in its past—especially in its history of overcoming its discriminatory treatment of Jews—the institution has revealed itself capable of overcoming its biases, conscious and otherwise, against an excluded group. It has shown that it can stare hard at itself, channel its highest values, and find its way to a better course.

I cannot share his optimism.

CODA: If you want to see how bad things were at Columbia, have a look at this thread reader recounting the pro-Palestinian break-in into Hamilton Hall, where Columbia’s administration is housed (h/t Jez).  It starts this way, and there are a lot of photos (the ones shown are from Getty images in the NY Post article).

🚨NEW: A shocking report from the @nypost announces a new federal investigation into @Columbia after janitors trapped in the Hamilton Hall occupation reported retaliatory harassment for reporting antisemitic conduct. Let’s break it down. 🧵

Lester Wilson and Mario Torres, two janitors who work @Columbia, started noticing an increase in racist and antisemitic graffiti in Nov. 2023. “No matter how many times Mr. Wilson removed the swastikas, individuals kept replacing them with more.”

Mr. Wilson lost track of how many swastikas he had to scrub, while Mr. Torres “pegged it in the dozens”. Despite reporting it to his superiors, @Columbia did nothing, so Mr. Torres started throwing away chalk left in classrooms so the vandals wouldn’t have anything to write with.

“…Torres and Wilson observed masked protesters storm through Hamilton Hall chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” and scrawling swastikas as well as other obscene graffiti in the building.” Despite security cameras and ID scanners, @Columbia did nothing.

They’ve now expelled a few students who broke into the building.  The thread is longer, but here are three picture of the break-in and then one of two janitors (both were held hostage by the protestors) defending himself with a fire extinguisher. Note that the cowards all wear masks so they can’t be identified. This is NOT civil disobedience, a form of protest against an unjust law in which those who are arrested are nonviolent and also willing to take the consequences:

Jewish Mammas don’t let your babies grow up to be Columbia students. If somebody had told me five years ago that this would be happening, I would have laughed.

Harvard Law School students vote to divest, boycott, and sanction Israel; University of Chicago investigated for racial discrimination

March 15, 2025 • 12:30 pm

You wanna know why I’m depressed? Stuff like this:

Yep, the Law School at my Ph.D. alma mater is showing a bit of antisemitism (I no longer believe that this is completely about Israel’s actions, because the Law School never had any resolutions about Hamas or its actions). As it says above, “no other international issue has ever been voted on.” Why, then they’re singling out the world’s only Jewish state? No resolutions about Syria, where there was far more carnage? Not on your life.

Here’s the article about it from the Harvard Crimson (click headline to read).

An excerpt:

The Harvard Law School student body voted on Thursday to call on the University to divest from Israel — delivering a decisive endorsement of language that Law School administrators harshly criticized before it went up for a vote.

The resolution, which called on Harvard to “divest from weapons, surveillance technology, and other companies aiding violations of international humanitarian law, including Israel’s genocide in Gaza and its ongoing illegal occupation of Palestine,” passed with 72.7 percent of votes in favor, with 842 students participating. Nearly 2,000 students attend HLS.

The results — announced late Thursday night — mark the second vote by a Harvard student body in favor of divestment. Students at the Harvard School of Public Health voted in June to urge Harvard to divest from Israel, and governments at the Law School, Harvard Divinity School, and the Graduate School of Design have all urged divestment. But its passage is unlikely to result in change from Harvard, whose leaders have rebuffed calls for divestment at every turn.

All those misguided students, uninformed about the war but bent on flaunting their virtue! Fortunately, the people who have the power to divest, the administration, aren’t having it. They’re institutionally neutral, like Chicago:

The Law School moved swiftly to distance itself from the referendum outcome.

HLS spokesperson Jeff Neal wrote in a statement that “although it has historically administered leadership elections for student government, and offered to do so again this year, the law school administration played no role in the referendum conducted by student government.”

“As explained in a message to students, the administration expressed deep disappointment with student government’s leadership’s decision to proceed with a needlessly divisive referendum which runs contrary to student government’s stated objectives of ‘fostering community’ and ‘enhancing inclusion,’” he added.

Sadly, Mr. Neal doesn’t know that Jews don’t fall under DEI protection. We are “white adjacent.”

The referendum was first proposed in a petition by Law Students for a Free Palestine, an unrecognized student group, which passed the 300-signature threshold to trigger a Student Government referendum Feb. 18.

Of course Harvard is one of the schools (there are nine total) under investigation by the Department of Justice for allowing a climate of antisemitism to arise (a Title VI violation, I believe). This won’t make it any easier on the school.

More depressing news. My new academic home, The University of Chicago, is one of 45 schools being investigated for racial discrimination. Click below to see the Chicago Maroon article:

An excerpt:

The University of Chicago is one of 45 schools under investigation by the Department of Education for alleged violations of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race-based discrimination in programs receiving federal financial assistance.

The announcement alleges that the University has engaged in “race-exclusionary practices in [its] graduate programs” through its partnership with the PhD Project, an organization that works to expand diversity in business school Ph.D. programs. Booth School of Business’s Stevens Doctoral Program is included on the Project’s website as a university partner.

The PhD Project, the Department of Education’s announcement reads, “purports to provide doctoral students with insights into obtaining a Ph.D. and networking opportunities, but limits eligibility based on the race of participants.”

By “race-exclusionary,” of course, they mean “violation of DEI strictures”, and, indeed, some of that has been going on here. But since those violations are kept quite quiet, with phone calls used instead of emails (or so I hear), so it’s hard to know what’s going on.  As far as I can see, DEI initiatives are still pervasive at Chicago, (here’s the main website), but I don’t know if they rise to the level that would cause the government to withhold federal money—as they did for Columbia University.

A bit more. The link at “has quietly removed” below tells you how DEI sites are being muted here. However, if we follow the model of other schools, they’re not being shelved but just put into a file cabinet with a different name.

The investigation follows a February 14 letter sent by Acting Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights Craig Trainor, which informed educational institutions and agencies that they had 14 days to eliminate diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs or “face potential loss of federal funding.”

In the letter, Trainor wrote that universities’ “embrace of pervasive and repugnant race-based preferences and other forms of racial discrimination have emanated throughout every facet of academia.”

Since President Donald Trump’s inauguration in January, the University has quietly removed many mentions of DEI from its websites.

In a statement, the University informed the Maroon that it had received notice of the Department of Education’s investigation.

“The University has been notified that a complaint was filed with the Department of Education, Office for Civil Rights (OCR), and an investigation was opened. The University prohibits unlawful discrimination and will cooperate with OCR on its investigation,” the statement read.

The list of schools being investigated.

Anti-Israel and pro-BDS students harass Brown University trustees

October 22, 2024 • 9:45 am

You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to predict that last spring’s pro-Hamas (or “anti-Israel”) protests would continue into this academic year.  Despite Hamas being pretty well crushed, the entitled and enraged fans of Palestinian terrorism continue to cause trouble on campus.  The latest target is the elite Brown University. (Elite universities are the ones where protests are most vocal.)

Earlier in October, the University rejected a BDS proposal to divest from Israeli corporations, and also affirmed that such political moves were not in the University’s interest.

As The Algemeiner previously reported, Brown University earlier this month voted down a proposal — muscled onto the agenda of its annual meeting by an anti-Zionist group which attempted to hold the university hostage with threats of illegal demonstrations and other misconduct — to divest from 10 companies linked to Israel.

“The Corporation also discussed the broader issue of whether taking a stance on a geopolitical issue through divestment is consistent with Brown’s mission of education and scholarship. The Corporation reaffirmed that Brown’s mission is to discover, communicate, and preserve knowledge. It is not to adjudicate or resolve global conflicts,” university president Christina Paxson and Brown Corporation chancellor Brian Moynihan said in a letter commenting on the vote. “Whether you support, oppose, or have no opinion on the decision of the Corporation, we hope you will do so with a commitment to sustaining, nurturing, and strengthening the principles that have long been at the core of our teaching and learning community.”

In effect, Brown here is espousing institutional neutrality, refusing to make political statements through investing or divesting. (Brown does not appear on FIRE’s list of 22 colleges besides the University of Chicago that have adopted a Kalven-like institutional neutrality.)

Click below to read more from The Algemeiner:

The students didn’t get their way, so, like toddlers denied a cookie, they acted out, going after the trustees, impeding their movements, and calling them names. Some of that may be free speech, but it’s not clear whether any University rules were violated:

Brown University has launched investigations of anti-Israel groups and individual students following their riotous conduct during a protest of the Brown Corporation that was held on Friday.

Staged outside the Warren Alpert Medical School to inveigh against the Corporation’s recent rejection of a proposal to adopt the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement — which aims to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination — the demonstration saw the Ivy League students engage in harassment and intimidation, according to a community notice first shared by the Brown Daily Herald and later obtained by The Algemeiner. The protesters repeatedly struck a bus transporting the Corporation’s trustees from the area, shouted expletives at them, and even lodged a “a racial epithet … toward a person of color.”

Other trustees were stalked to their destinations while some were obstructed from entering their bus, according to the missive by Russell Carey, Brown’s interim vice president for campus life and executive vice president of planning and policy. The official added that the students — many of whom are members of Students for Justice in Palestine, which has links to terrorist organizations, and its spin-off, Brown Divest Coalition (BDC) — harmed not only the trustees but also the university as an institution of higher learning.

“No member of the Brown community would want or expect to be treated in the manner some of our members experienced on Friday, and it was troubling to read in media reports the express intent of some organizers to provoke discomfort that ultimately targeted individuals,” Carey wrote. “Disciplinary sanctions will be imposed where violations of conduct codes are found.”

He added, “As we continue to navigate challenging times on campus and in the nation, our resolve and our principles as a compassionate learning community will continue to be tested. I am hopeful that members of the Brown community will engage in discussion with each other about these challenges and commit to treat each other with respect and dignity.”

Anyone who thinks that civil discussion will ensue between anti-Israel and pro-Israel (or neutral) groups, much less come to any agreement, is an arrant optimist.  Obstructing trustees from getting on their bus, as well as harassing individuals and striking their bus, is likely to be committing violations. And shouting a racial epithet, which of course is odious behavior, may well be “fighting words” prohibited by the First Amendment. (Brown, however, is a private university.)

This is just more evidence that the toddlers will continue their tantrums for an indefinite time.  But schools are getting tired of it, and, I hope, more of them will start punishing the protesters when they violate university regulations (my own school has been clearly reluctant to levy such punishments).  Without such sanctions, there is simply no deterrent to breaking the rules, leading to more and more (and more violent) demonstrations. Pomona College struck back last week:

Last week, Pomona College in Claremont, California levied severe disciplinary sanctions, ranging from expulsion to banishment, against 12 students who participated in illegally occupying and vandalizing the Carnegie Hall administrative building on the anniversary of the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.

The news was first reported by an Instagram accounted operated by Pomona Divest from Apartheid (PDfA), the group which led the assault on the building. PDfA acknowledged that “property crimes” were perpetrated but maintained that the college lacked evidence to identify the offenders. Noting that PDfA members concealed their identities with masks, it charged that Pomona president G. Gabrielle Starr has resorted to “indiscriminately” punishing minority students, as well as depriving them of housing and food, for the sake of upholding fascism.

Starr, who is an African American woman, told a different story, however, accusing the group of “violation of our collective life on campus” in a statement which noted that the pro-Hamas student group was aided by non-student adults who managed to gain access to the campus.

“The destruction in Carnegie Hall was extensive, and the harm done to individuals and our mission was so great,” Starr wrote. “Starting this week, disciplinary letters are going out to students from Pomona and other Claremont Colleges who have been identified as taking part in the takeover of Carnegie Hall. Student groups affiliated with this incident are also under investigation.”

This, of course, is why the cowardly protesters wear masks, taking their actions out of the real of civil disobedience, which they also erode when demanding that, even when caught violating the rules, that they not be punished.

But on the other side we have P. Z. Myers, who has emerged as a full-blown demonizer of Israel.  Myers proclaims this about protests at a branch of his school (The University of Minnesota)  that just led to the arrest of students:

“Free Palestine. End the genocide. Divest now. Those are simple, clear ideas that won’t be answered by arresting people.”

The genocide to which Myers refers is committed by Hamas and Hezbollah, not Israel. And yes, free Palestine—but from Hamas. (Lebanon also needs to be freed from Hezbollah, but the UN apparently lacks the will.)

And of course the point of arresting people is to ensure that campus rules are followed, which are intended to produce a climate that doesn’t chill speech. And somehow Myers neglects to give details about what the protesters actually DID to warrant their arrest. But ABC News did:

A demonstration at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities Monday led to 11 arrests after pro-Palestinian protesters barricaded an administrative hall on campus, locking staff members inside the building.

The protesters blocked the entrance and exit of Morrill Hall, which houses the offices of the university president, Rebecca Cunningham.

According to a statement from the university issued Monday night, the protest began with a peaceful assembly on a lawn in front of the campus’ Coffman Memorial Union at about 3 p.m. local time.

However, “A group of these individuals quickly moved north, up the Northrop Mall, and entered Morrill Hall,” according to the university.

“Once inside the building, protesters began spray painting, including covering lenses of all internal security cameras, breaking interior windows, and barricading the building’s entrance and exit points,” the statement said.

, , , , The university has said that “a number” of staff were present, and many were unable to exit the building “for an extended period of time.”

Police officers arrived on the scene and began to detain protestors around one hour after the first alert was issued, according to the university’s statement.

“With necessary support from the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office, UMPD entered the building at approximately 5:40 p.m. and arrested 11 people,” it said.

Barricading yourself inside buildings, vandalizing it and breaking windows, and preventing staff from leaving: those are not things that are going to win supporters to their “cause”.

A tweet-video of the protesting students at U. Minn.

 

The haters put up a tent and a declaration

October 15, 2024 • 9:30 am

As I reported earlier, last Friday anti-Israel protesters at the University of Chicago went wild, vandalizing our Henry Moore sculpture and the surrounding area with spray paint, putting up illegal banners, trying to lock the main northern gate to the campus, and battling with police (three protesters were arrested). University of Chicago United for Palestine (UCUP) issued a document (below) explaining their actions.

And they also put an “installation” on the Quad, consisting of a tent. It’s clearly designed to evoke the Encampment of last year, and has a sign saying “We are still here and Palestine is still here”.  According to the placard, the tent should be down by today. It’s authorized free speech, but I can’t say that it doesn’t make me queasy. Another year of demonstrations, Jew hatred, and disruptions seems to be in the offing.

The installation, photographed by a member of the University community:

UChicago United for Palestine, a group of students that includes the Students for Justice in Palestine, also put up a Google Document declaring their intentions and motivations. This too is free speech, but to me it’s nauseating. Click headline to read:

It’s the same boilerplate activism, but I noticed the repeated use of the words “Zionist entity” to refer to “Israel”, with the latter word hardly being used at all (and not capitalized when it is). The new term is of course meant to deny the existence of Israel, and also to suggest that it’s an artificial entity, i.e., that Jews aren’t indigenous to the area that is now Israel.

Some excerpts. First, the opening two paragraphs, nearly every word of which is a lie:

It has been more than a year since israel commenced its genocidal assault on Gaza. Armed and enabled by the US government, the Zionist entity has slaughtered more than 42,000 captive Palestinians within this timeframe while also systematically destroying Gaza’s civilian infrastructure and killing tens of thousands more by starvation and preventable disease. Nor has israel’s genocidal rampage been limited to Gaza—Zionist forces have murdered hundreds of Palestinians in the West Bank within this timeframe, aggressively expanded israel’s settlement enterprise, and launched repeated attacks on Yemen, Syria, Iran, Lebanon, and Iraq.

In the past week, israel’s aggression both in Gaza and across the region has reached unprecedented heights. As part of its ongoing effort to ethnically cleanse and erase Northern Gaza, it has imposed a total siege on the area, preventing all food and aid from entering it for the past 13 days. Deliberately assassinating journalists in the northern Gaza Strip, few bravely remain to broadcast to the world. Simultaneously, Israel [they forgot to use a small “i”] has launched an all-out invasion into Lebanon, displacing over a million Lebanese citizens and slaughtering nearly 2,000 in recent weeks. 

Below: a vow to disrupt the University of Chicago.  Unfortunately, the demands they list will not be met by the University, so their demonstrations are futile. I think they know this, which is why they act out, yelling, attacking cops, and vandalizing University property.  Will they be taken any more seriously after throwing red paint on a Henry Moore sculpture? I doubt it.

Note that they say Israel is conducting a “war of expansion in Lebanon”, which is simply a lie showing their willful ignorance of history. Do they not know about UN Resolution 1701 or Hezbollah’s repeated rocket attacks on Israel for a year?

UChicago United for Palestine called this action to interrupt business as usual at the University of Chicago, whose financial and institutional ties with the Zionist entity mirror its objective role as a colonial outpost on Chicago’s South Side—gentrifying neighborhoods and surveilling, policing, and displacing the people who live here. Our experiences during last year’s encampment taught us that our demands—disclosure, divestment, and repair—would not be taken seriously without demonstrating our willingness and ability to use every means at our disposal, including suspending the daily operation of the university. We called this action in conjunction with an international movement against a civil society, state, and international order that prop up the Zionist entity, facilitate its genocide in Palestine, and enable its war of expansion in Lebanon.

Their attack on the statue, which is far more than a celebration of the University’s involvement in developing nuclear weapons. Read what the sculptor said about it.  

More from the document, in which UChicago United swears “to pick apart this university”:

On the afternoon of October 11th, following a rally that drew more than 150 students, community members, and faculty, protestors locked the main gate of the University of Chicago shut before hanging a banner reading “FREE PALESTINE – HANDS OFF LEBANON.” This was the first of a series of autonomous actions that marked the end of the Week of Rage for Palestine and Lebanon, as we passed a year of genocide in Gaza. 

Protestors later marched to a statue commemorating the University’s involvement in the development of the nuclear bomb. A speaker said: “Today, Palestine and Lebanon are being used as the testing grounds of technologies built by universities like this one.” Tags reading FREE GAZA, FUCK THE BOMBS, and KEEP ESCALATING proliferated, and balloons full of paint were thrown at the statue. He continued: “our ultimate message today is that we can pick apart this university, and when we do, we can build something better in its place.” When the crowd regrouped and began to march north to disperse, UCPD cut into the middle of the march, targeting several protestors.

They then recount their battle with cops from the University as well as Chicago city cops, and make clear that their enemies are not just the University of Chicago, but America in general. At least they admit that!  Good luck with dismantling America!  But Americans should realize that the aspirations of the organized nationwide demonstrations go far beyond erasing Israel, extending to the erasure of Western democracies.

. . . . Whether on campus, in the city, or in the street, the Palestine movement must recognize and confront its enemies: the university, the police, American civil society, and the state, all of which collaborate to facilitate dispossession, land theft, and occupation at home and abroad. The people who locked the gate did so to shut down a university that has refused to even acknowledge the destruction of all Gazan universities, much less the ongoing genocide. It symbolized how, while we walk to class every day, the schools in Gaza are bombed, while israel’s genocide against Palestinians continues and the university remains materially and intellectually invested. Protestors painted the nuclear bomb statue red to expose the university’s culpability in the nuclear weapons program, a fact they memorialize through a statue that was explicitly designed to reflect “the mushroom cloud of a nuclear explosion, but also ha[ve] the shape and eye sockets of a skull”—mirrored in the present by its ‘neutral’ research and development programs which directly abet the slaughter in Gaza and Lebanon.

They end by promising to disrupt the campus until Palestine is free.  For them that will be, well, forever, for “Palestine” includes Israel (aka “the Zionist entity”), and Am Yisrael Chai:

. . . We will never stop fighting as long as [Palestinians] face genocide and occupation. We will remain steadfast and committed in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle for liberation, and the cause of all those who face brutal violence and occupation from UCPD and CPD every day. And we will not stop fighting until Palestine is free!

I hope they’re prepared for a long and futile battle. They’ve already lost on campus, and, as Israel slowly wins the war in Gaza and Lebanon, they’ll become increasingly angry that they haven’t removed the Zionist entity “from the river to the sea.”

Are campus encampments unethical?

September 17, 2024 • 10:30 am

Given the spate of articles on antisemitism that Conor Friedersdorf publishes in the Atlantic, he would seem to be the house conservative (yes, defending Israel or criticizing campus antisemitism is now largely the purview of the right or of centrists). Indeed, Wikipedia says this about him:

In an interview with journalist Matt Lewis, Friedersdorf stated that he has right-leaning views but that he does not consider himself to be a doctrinal conservative or a member of the conservative movement.

I’m not sure, though, whether this is relevant when discussing his views, like those in the article below, as his arguments should stand on their own.  And I think that in the main they do, although perhaps the word “unethical” is a bit strong (I’d say “a violation of the right to a college education” or “campus protest encampment should be banned”). But you can decide for yourself by reading the piece. Click on the headline, or find the article archived here. (BTW, I’m going to try to find archived versions of articles that are paywalled, so look for “archived here” links in future posts.)

Indeed, Friedersdorf begins not by discussing ethical issues, but by arguing that campus encampments are maladaptive: the costs exceed the benefits. I’ve bolded the one place where he mentions ethics:

The practical, legal, and moral arguments against occupying the quad add up to a protest tactic with costs that far outweigh any benefits. Some of the problems with encampments are obvious, others subtle; taken together, they show that academic communities cannot thrive when any group uses coercion to try to force others to adopt its ideas––an approach that usually fails anyway. Activists should reject encampments as both unethical and ineffective.

Again, I’d say “ineffective and disruptive” rather than “unethical”. I can see where some could consider that activist notions that they have a right to disrupt the education of others is “unethical”, but if that’s the case, then any disruption in the cause of ideology is “unethical.” (Besides, it’s not at all clear that we’ll have any encampments this year.)

Now I know what you’re thinking: if encampments are unethical, why weren’t the disruptions of the Civil Rights movement in the Sixties—lunch counter sit-ins and so on—also unethical.  But there are several crucial differences between then and now, and I believe I’ve pointed them out before. But here they are again from Friedersdorf:

A standard defense of disruptive tactics is to invoke the civil-rights movement. Its leaders repeatedly engaged in civil disobedience––the knowing, willful violation of laws and rules to disrupt the status quo. If such “good trouble” played an integral part in a cause as righteous as the U.S. civil-rights movement, why are today’s encampments any different or less defensible? It’s a fair question to pose, but not a hard one to answer.

In the civil-rights-era victories, protesters were violating unjust laws, such as the ones that forced lunch counters to segregate. Today’s students are violating perfectly reasonable rules, such as the ones that forbid anyone, regardless of viewpoint, from erecting barricades to prevent fellow students from traversing the quad. Ending those illegitimate laws against segregated lunch counters made almost everyone better off. Ending legitimate rules against occupying the quad would make almost everyone worse off.

In addition, when “occupying” was a tactic in civil-rights-era civil disobedience, it was aimed at cogent targets. To protest segregation in a given jurisdiction, activists targeted segregated spaces in that jurisdiction.

Well, I suppose one could answer that divesting from Israel—the ultimate goal of encampments, which of course is completely futile—could be conceived as violating campus regulations in pursuit of a just cause.  After all, what’s really important vis-á-vis ethicality is the ultimate goal of your action, not which local regulations (short of proscribing violence) you violate to achieve it. Fortunately, for Friedersdorf (and unfortunately for the encampers), the immorality of colleges investing in Israeli companies (or even in funding through investments Israel’s war against Hamas) is not at all obvious.

There’s another difference, too, and one that Friedersdorf doesn’t mention. Civil rights protesters knew that they would be punished for their actions, and gladly accepted that punishment, even when it was severe, like being bashed by Southern cops, sprayed with water hoses, or jailed. The punishment was clearly part of the moral suasion that horrified onlookers. In contrast, today’s protesters and encampers regularly make it part of their list of “demands” that they not be punished for their actions. In other words, they insist on breaking the rules, but also insist on immunity to punishment.  That takes away from them the right to claim civil disobedience.

There’s no doubt that many, perhaps most, encampments are against college regulations and are disruptive. Ours certainly was, blocking access to campus and disrupting classes with noises, bullhorns, and megaphones.  These encampments are against most college regulations, but invertebrate administrators let them go up  anyway. In some cases, such as UCLA, the encampers even prevent “Zionist” students (i.e., Jews), from crossing the area or even entering class.  And that is not only disruptive, but against campus regulations.  Sadly, administrators, who are often weak and spineless, let this stuff happen under the misapprehension that it constitutes “free speech” (it might be in some situations; see below).

I found this story about UCLA interesting because the Jewish students filed suit against their school and won:

UCLA offers a case study in what’s wrong with encampments. Royce Quad is a space many students crisscross to access central parts of campus. On April 25, pro-Palestine protesters formed an encampment with barricades. Entrances were guarded by activists, many of them masked. They barred entry to students who support Israel’s existence. On April 30, an angry crowd gathered to protest the barricades and encampment. Counterprotesters “hid their faces behind masks and scarves,” CNN reported. “Some attackers sprayed protesters with chemical irritants, hit them with wooden boards, punched and kicked them and shot fireworks into the crowd of students and supporters huddled behind umbrellas and wooden planks, attempting to stay safe.” Authorities, who had failed to stop protesters from unlawfully occupying the quad, similarly did not intervene as counterprotesters unlawfully assaulted some of its occupiers.

Three Jewish students who were denied the ability to cross the quad filed a federal lawsuit against UCLA, arguing that they have a religious obligation to support a Jewish state in Israel, that their religious belief caused them to be denied equal access to their college education, and that UCLA nevertheless allowed the encampment to remain in place for a week. UCLA countered that it lawfully exercised the discretion that it needs when trying to avoid the escalation of conflicts.

The group Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA submitted an amicus brief in the case, arguing that their allies are the ones who were mistreated. “Students and faculty of the Palestine Solidarity Encampment have been subjected to police brutality and mob attacks by self-proclaimed Zionists and white Supremacists, representing an almost total failure of UCLA to provide timely intervention or protection,” their brief asserts. In its telling, “Entrance to the encampment is contingent on principles, politics, and solidarity with the Palestinian struggle, and not on identity.”

Federal Judge Mark C. Scarsi disagreed. Earlier this month, he issued a preliminary injunction siding with the Jewish students, writing that they “were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith.” He called this “abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.” UCLA appealed the ruling, then dropped that appeal. The school is obligated to clear future encampments, or else to shut down any educational program––a class, lecture series, and so on—that is inaccessible to anyone due membership in a protected class.

Note that UCLA was on the side of the protestors!

I have to note, though, that even Friedersdorf isn’t down on all encampments, as he gives a pass to those that aren’t so disruptive:

Granted, it is possible to set up a peaceful encampment that is intended not to intimidate, but to raise awareness or show ongoing commitment to a cause. When visiting UC Berkeley one day last spring, I found the tents pitched in front of Sproul Plaza to be minimally disruptive, in a lively part of campus where free-speech activities are constant. The encampment was far from academic buildings, did not block pedestrian traffic, was easy to avoid by using other routes onto campus, and seemed easily monitored by UC police officers stationed nearby.

But nondisruptive encampments are the exception, not the rule, partly because crowds of young people behave unpredictably, and partly because disruption is often the point.

Does this mean that Friedersdorf considers encampments like the one at Berkeley to be “ethical”? Unless there are university regulations that allow encampments in some places but not in others, then they’re equally illegal.  But I guess to Friedersdorf, “ethicality” equates with “nondisruptive.”

I’m on the fence about this one, at least the “unethical” desription. Clearly, it’s illegal to blockade campuses in a disruptive way, and, after a warning, violators should be disciplined.  But for just a few tents in an out-of-the-way place that aren’t disruptive, I wouldn’t be so draconian.  That could, after all, be considered a demonstration of freedom of speech, and even if violations prohibit encampments, I wouldn’t necessarily enforce a small, unobtrusive one. But of course the very point of encampments is to be disruptive in a way that is supposed to force the university to divest (along with other demands).

About the “ethicality” trope, I am not sure I agree. But perhaps our difference is largely semantic. To me, “disruptive and illegal” would suffice.

h/t: Mayaan