Amid Gaza War, College Campuses Become Free Speech “Testing Ground” [Intercepted]

The conflict in Gaza has galvanized a new generation of young anti-war activists, in the same way that opposition to the Vietnam War and apartheid South Africa did in decades past. A backlash is now building in the United States, led by right-wing activist and pro-Israel groups aimed at eliminating any public dissent over U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. As the death toll of Palestinians rises, a new authoritarian climate is sweeping across the U.S. — particularly on college campuses, which have transformed into laboratories for censorship… Continue reading “Amid Gaza War, College Campuses Become Free Speech “Testing Ground” [Intercepted]”
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Islamophobia, Antisemitism and Palestine [Cornell]

Sahar Aziz, Distinguished Professor of Law and Chancellor’s Social Justice Scholar at Rutgers University Law School, examines the erroneous zero-sum discursive frames, most acutely in foreign policy debates, that pits Muslims and Jews as competitors, rather than allies, in defending civil and human rights. This talk was the third in the series “Antisemitism and Islamophobia Examined” that brought four leading academics to Cornell University in the Spring 2024 semester to explore the history of these forms of prejudice, examine the impact on Jews and Muslims in America today, and map… Continue reading “Islamophobia, Antisemitism and Palestine [Cornell]”
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Amid Gaza Protests, Universities are Cracking Down on a Celebrated Protest Tactic: Sit-Ins [The Intercept]

On October 25, hundreds of people participated in a sit-in at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, calling on school administrators to cut ties with weapons manufacturers involved in Israel’s occupation of Palestine. It was part of a wave of activism around Israel’s siege of Gaza on university campuses around the country, and it ended in increasingly typical fashion: Campus police arrested 57 of the demonstrators for trespassing because they remained in the university’s Whitmore Administration Building after it had closed at 6 p.m. The incident at Amherst is reflective of… Continue reading “Amid Gaza Protests, Universities are Cracking Down on a Celebrated Protest Tactic: Sit-Ins [The Intercept]”
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Israel-Gaza: Does Islamophobia play a part in US foreign policy? [UpFront]

As the war in Gaza rages on, the death toll keeps increasing and residents face starvation. Despite the heavy civilian toll, the United States keeps voicing its strong support for Israel. Is there a double standard when it comes to Palestine? And why do some in the US seem to conflate solidarity with Palestinians with anti-Semitism, as explained in the report “Presumptively Antisemitic: Islamophobic Tropes in the Palestine Israel Discourse” published by the Rutgers Center for Security, Race and Rights. On UpFront, Marc Lamont Hill speaks… Continue reading “Israel-Gaza: Does Islamophobia play a part in US foreign policy? [UpFront]”
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Why Can’t We Humanize Palestinians? [#RaceClass]

The Israeli government responded to the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, 2023 by indiscriminately bombing residential towers, denying water, food, fuel, electricity and medical supplies to over 2.3 million Palestinian civilians living under occupation in Gaza. Despite the practices constituting what many legal experts conclude are genocidal, the Israeli government has received the full support of President Biden and the U.S. Congress. Meanwhile, the American media humanizes only Israeli civilian victims while failing to report on the lives of 11,000 Palestinian civilians killed by the Israeli military and missing… Continue reading “Why Can’t We Humanize Palestinians? [#RaceClass]”
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