Utah ranked top jurisdiction for mining investment by  Fraser Institute

CATO INSTITUTE NORTH

Staff Writer | May 24, 2024 | 

Bingham Canyon mine, Utah. Credit: Utah Geological Survey

Utah took over the No.1 spot in the Fraser Institute’s 2023 ranking of jurisdictions for mining investment, topping its neighboring state Nevada, the winner from 2022.


The ranking encompasses 86 jurisdictions around the world, based on their geologic attractiveness (minerals and metals) and government policies that encourage or deter exploration and investment, including permit times.

To arrive at the ranking, the Fraser Institute surveyed approximately 2,045 mining-related firms globally between August 16, 2023, and January 9, 2024, tallying their opinions on both mineral endowment and policy factors.

These companies had reported exploration expenditures of $4.2 billion in 2022 and $4.1 billion in 2023, according to Canadian think tank.

The top rankings for 2023. Credit: The Fraser Institute

Rounding out the top five were the Canadian provinces of Saskatchewan and Quebec, followed by Western Australia, which topped the list in 2021. Overall, Canada has the most jurisdictions within the top 10.

On the other end of the scale, the least-attractive jurisdiction was Niger, followed by China, Solomon Islands, and Argentina: La Rioja. In fact, of the 10 least-attractive jurisdictions in the world, four are in Africa.

“A sound regulatory regime coupled with competitive taxes make a jurisdiction attractive to investors,” said Elmira Aliakbari, director of the Fraser Institute’s Center for Natural Resource Studies and co-author of the report.

“Policymakers across the globe should understand that mineral deposits alone are not enough to attract investment,” she added.

Utah, now the most attractive jurisdiction, has a rich history in mining dating back to the 1860s. The total historical value of its minerals is valued at over $215 billion, according to government estimates. The state was ranked 17th in investment attractiveness in 2022.

Click here to read the full report.

CBC Has Whitewashed Israel’s Crimes In Gaza. 

I Saw It Firsthand

By Molly Schumann

May 23, 2024

Source: Breach Media


LONG READ 

Working for five years as a producer at the public broadcaster, I witnessed the double standards and discrimination in its coverage of Palestine—and experienced directly how CBC disciplines those who speak out

The executive producer peered at me with concern. It was November 16, 2023 and I had been called into a virtual meeting at CBC. I was approaching my sixth year with the public broadcaster, where I worked as a producer in television and radio.

He said he could tell I was “passionate” about what was happening in Gaza. His job, he told me, was to ensure my passion wasn’t making me biased. He said I hadn’t “crossed the line” yet, but that I had to be careful. The conversation ended with him suggesting that I might want to go on mental health leave.

I declined. My mind was fine. I could see clearly what was happening.

Earlier that day, I had spoken out in a meeting with my team at CBC News Network—the broadcaster’s 24 hour television news channel. It was six weeks into Israel’s siege and bombardment of the Gaza Strip, which had, at the time, killed over 11,000 Palestinians, the majority of them women and children. Legal experts were already suggesting that what was taking place could be a “potential genocide,” with an Israeli Holocaust scholar calling it “a textbook case.”

I expressed concern to my team about the frequency of Palestinian guests getting cancelled, the scrutiny brought to bear on their statements, and the pattern of double standards in our coverage. After this, I pitched a reasonable and balanced interview: two genocide scholars with opposing views discussing whether Israel’s actions and rhetoric fit the legal definition of the crime.

Senior colleagues sounded panicked. My executive producer replied that we had to be ”careful not to put hosts in a difficult position.” They wanted time to consult with higher-ups before making a decision. A few hours later, I was sitting across from the same executive, being warned about “crossing the line.”

The following afternoon, I showed up for what was supposed to be a typical meeting to go over the interviews we had lined up for the coming days—but some unusual guests were present. In addition to my co-workers, the faces of my executive producer and his higher-ups appeared on Google Meet.

The managers were there to talk about my pitch. They said they weren’t vetoing it—they weren’t meant to even make editorial decisions—but suggested our show wasn’t the best venue. I pointed out that the network was deemed a suitable place for interviews with guests who characterized Russia’s war on Ukraine and China’s oppression of the Uighurs as instances of genocide. The managers looked uncomfortable. I was reassigned to work on a panel with two guests calling on the West to support regime change in Moscow and Tehran. (Ever since these unusual meetings had started, I was recording them for my protection.)


IF JOURNALISTS IN GAZA WERE SACRIFICING THEIR LIVES TO TELL THE TRUTH, I SHOULD AT LEAST BE PREPARED TO TAKE SOME RISKS.

But that wasn’t the end of the blowback. The next week, late on a Friday afternoon, I received an email from the same two managers who had poured cold water on my pitch. They needed to speak to me urgently. Over the phone, I was asked to keep the conversation secret.

They told me I had hurt the feelings of some of my co-workers. But it was more than just hurt feelings: someone was accusing me of antisemitism.

I had, it appeared, “crossed the line.”

Trying to work your way up to a permanent position at Canada’s public broadcaster requires knowing the sort of stories, angles and guests that are acceptable—and which are out of bounds. As a precarious “casual” employee—a class of worker that makes up over a quarter of CBC’s workforce—it hadn’t taken me long to realize that the subject of Israel-Palestine was to be avoided wherever possible. When it was covered, it was tacitly expected to be framed in such a way as to obscure history and sanitize contemporary reality.

After October 7, it was no longer possible for the corporation to continue avoiding it. But because CBC had never properly contextualized the world’s longest active military occupation in the lead-up to that atrocity, it was ill-equipped to report on what happened next.

The CBC would spend the following months whitewashing the horrors that Israel would visit on Palestinians in Gaza. In the days after Israel began its bombing campaign, this was already evident: while virtually no scrutiny was applied to Israeli officials and experts, an unprecedented level of suspicion was being brought to bear on the family members of those trapped in Gaza.

My job required me to vet the work of associate producers and to oversee interviews, so I was well-positioned to see the double standards up close.

At first, out of concern that it would jeopardize my chances of landing a staff job that I had recently applied for, I only voiced mild pushback. But as the death toll mounted, my career started to seem less important. If journalists in Gaza were sacrificing their lives to tell the truth, I should at least be prepared to take some risks.

Besides, I naively told myself, it would be easier for me to dissent than most of my colleagues. I am of mixed Jewish heritage, having been raised by a father who fled the Holocaust as a young child and dealt with the life-long trauma and guilt of surviving while his family members were murdered by the Nazis. It would be more challenging, I believed, for cynical actors to wield false accusations of antisemitism against me.

I turned out to be wrong.
The Palestine exception at CBC

In the run-up to Oct. 7, a senior colleague said that if we were lucky, “the news gods would shine on us” and put an end to a stretch of “slow news” days. Waking up on that fateful Saturday to multiple alerts on my phone, I knew that both the world and my professional life were about to dramatically change.

Even before Oct. 2023, trying to persuade senior CBC colleagues to report accurately on Palestinians was a struggle. Here are some of the TV interview ideas that a colleague and I pitched but had turned down: Human Rights Watch’s 2021 report designating Israel an apartheid state; the Sheikh Jarrah evictions in the same year; Israel assassinating Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh in 2022; and the Israeli bombing of the Jenin refugee camp in July 2023.

The last of these ideas was initially greenlit but was later cancelled because a senior producer was concerned that the host would have too much on her plate. Around this time, I also pitched someone from the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem to talk about the potential impact of widely-protested judicial reforms on Palestinians—but this was nixed for fear of complaints. These would become familiar excuses.

After October 7, I dreaded going into work: every shift, the impact of the biases went into overdrive. Even at this early stage, Israeli officials were making genocidal statements that were ignored in our coverage. On October 9, Defence Minister Yoav Gallant said, “I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel; everything is closed. We are fighting human animals and we act accordingly.” Even after this comment, my executive producer was still quibbling over uses in our scripts of the word “besieged” or references to the “plight of Palestinians.”

On October 20, I suggested having Hammam Farah, a Palestinian-Canadian psychotherapist, back on the network. In an earlier interview he had told us that his family were sheltering in Saint Porphyrius Greek Orthodox church in Gaza City. The following week, I learned from social media that his step-cousin had been killed in an Israeli airstrike on the 12th-century building. My executive producer responded to my pitch via instant message: “Yeah, if he’s willing. We also may have to potentially say we can’t verify these things though—unless we can.”

I was stunned. Never in my nearly 6 years at CBC had I ever been expected to verify the death of someone close to a guest, or to put a disclaimer in an interview that we couldn’t fact-check such claims. That’s not a standard that producers had been expected to uphold—except, apparently, for Palestinians.

Besides, even at that early stage, civil society had completely broken down in Gaza. I couldn’t just call up the health authority or courthouse to ask that they email over a death certificate. I already had Farah’s relative’s full name and had found a Facebook profile matching a commemorative photo he had posted on Instagram. This was already more verification than I had done for Israeli interviewees who had loved ones killed on October 7. A few days later, a different program on the network aired an interview with the guest using passive language in the headline: “Toronto man says relative was killed in airstrike that hit Gaza.”

I was being forced to walk a tightrope, trying to retain some journalistic integrity while keeping my career intact.

In early November, I was asked to oversee production of an interview with a former US official now working for the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a pro-Israel think tank.

During the interview, he was allowed to repeat a number of verifiably false claims live on air—including that Hamas fighters had decapitated babies on October 7 and that Gazan civilians could avoid being bombed if only they listened to the Israeli military and headed south. This was after civilian convoys fleeing southward via “safe routes” had been bombed by the Israeli military before the eyes of the world.

As soon as I heard this second falsehood, I messaged my team suggesting that the host push back—but received no response. Afterwards, the host said she had let the comment slide because time was limited, even though she could have taken the time from a less consequential story later on in the program.

The majority of Palestinian guests I spoke to during the first six weeks of Israel’s assault on Gaza all said the same thing: they wanted to do live interviews to avoid the risk of their words being edited or their interview not being aired. These were well-founded concerns.

Never before in my career had so many interviews been cancelled due to fear of what guests might say. Nor had there ever been direction from senior colleagues to push a certain group of people to do pre-taped interviews. (CBC told The Breach it “categorically rejects” the claim that interviews were “routinely cancelled”.)

On another occasion in November, a Palestinian-Canadian woman in London, Ontario named Reem Sultan, who had family trapped in the Strip, was scheduled for one such pre-taped interview. Because of her frustration over previous interviews that she had given and coverage of her family’s situation being “diluted,” she asked if she could go live instead.

When I asked the senior producer, he looked uneasy and said the interview should be cancelled, citing that the guest had already been on the network that week. I agreed that it would be preferable to interview a new Palestinian voice and said I had contact information for a number of alternative guests. However, after cancelling the interview with Sultan, the senior producer informed me that he didn’t want another guest after all.
Editing out ‘genocide’

Most shows on the network seemed to avoid airing any mention of “genocide” in the context of Gaza.

On November 10, my senior producer pushed to cancel an interview I had set up with a Palestinian-Canadian entrepreneur, Khaled Al Sabawi. According to his “pre-interview”—a conversation that typically happens before the broadcastable interview—50 of his relatives had been killed by Israeli soldiers.

The part of the transcript that concerned the senior producer was Al Sabawi’s claim that Netanyahu’s government had “publicly disclosed its intent to commit genocide.” He also took issue with the guest’s references to a “documented history of racism” and “apartheid” under Israeli occupation, as well as his suggestion that the Canadian government was complicit in the murder of Gazan civilians.

The senior producer raised his concerns via email to the executive producer, who then cc’ed one of the higher-up managers. The executive producer replied that it “sound[ed] like [his statement was] beyond opinion and factually incorrect.” The executive manager’s higher up chimed in, saying she thought the interview would be “too risky as a pre-tape or live [interview].”

Despite the guest’s position aligning with many UN experts and Western human rights organizations, the interview was cancelled. (CBC told The Breach “the guest turned down our offer of a pre-taped interview,” but Al Sabawi had said to the producers from the start that he would only do a live interview.)


NEVER IN MY NEARLY 6 YEARS AT CBC HAD I EVER BEEN EXPECTED TO VERIFY THE DEATH OF SOMEONE CLOSE TO A GUEST. THAT’S NOT A STANDARD THAT PRODUCERS HAD BEEN EXPECTED TO UPHOLD—EXCEPT, APPARENTLY, FOR PALESTINIANS.

In another instance, a Palestinian-Canadian guest named Samah Al Sabbagh, whose elderly father was then trapped in Gaza, had part of her pre-taped interview edited out before it went to air. She had used the word “genocide” and talked about the deliberate starvation of Palestinians in Gaza. The senior producer told me the edit was because of time constraints. But that producer and the host were overheard agreeing that the guest’s unedited words were too controversial. (CBC told The Breach it “has not ‘cancelled’ interviews with Palestinians because they reference genocide and apartheid.”)

By November 2023, it was getting harder to ignore the brazen rhetoric coming from senior Israeli officials and the rate of civilian death, which had few precedents in the 21st century. But you wouldn’t have heard about these things on our shows, despite a number of producers’ best efforts. (By early 2024, the International Court of Justice’s hearings—and later its ruling that Israel refrain from actions that could “plausibly constitute” genocide—forcibly changed the discussion, and the word “genocide” finally made some appearances on CBC.)

But back in late October, I booked an interview with Adel Iskandar, Associate Professor of Global Communication at Simon Fraser University, to talk about language and propaganda from Israeli and Hamas officials. The host filling in that day was afraid of complaints, was concerned about the guest wanting to be interviewed live, and judged him to be biased. Yet again an interview was cancelled.
A secret blacklist?

One Saturday in mid-October, I arrived at work shortly after the airing of an interview with the prominent Palestinian-Canadian lawyer and former spokesperson for the Palestine Liberation Organization, Diana Buttu.

There had been a commotion, I was told. A producer from The National—the CBC’s flagship nightly news and current affairs program—had apparently stormed into the newsroom during the interview saying that Buttu was on a list of banned Palestinian guests and that we weren’t supposed to book her.

I heard from multiple colleagues that the alleged list of banned Palestinian guests wasn’t official. Rather, a number of pro-Israel producers were rumoured to have drawn up their own list of guests to avoid.

Later, I was told by the producer of the interview that, after the broadcast, Buttu’s details had mysteriously vanished from a shared CBC database. By then, I had also discovered that the name and contact details for the Palestinian Ambassador Mona Abuamara, who had previously been interviewed, had likewise been removed. It didn’t seem coincidental that both guests were articulate defenders of Palestinian rights.

While producers distressed by the CBC’s coverage of Gaza were speaking in whispers, pro-Israeli colleagues felt comfortable making dehumanizing comments about Palestinians in the newsroom.

In one case, I heard an associate producer speak disparagingly about a guest’s decision to wear a keffiyeh for an interview before commenting that “[the host] knows how to handle these people.” This guest had dozens of family members killed by the Israeli military in Gaza.

It seemed the only Palestinian guest CBC was interested in interviewing was the sad, docile Palestinian who talked about their suffering without offering any analysis or solutions to end it. What they did not want was an angry Palestinian full of righteous indignation towards governments complicit in their family’s displacement and murder.

At this stage, I was starting to feel nauseous at work. And then one Saturday night, that sickness turned into anger.

I had been asked to finish production on a pre-taped interview with a “constructive dialogue” researcher on incidents of campus hostilities over the war and how to bring people together—the sort of interview CBC loves, as it’s a way to be seen covering the story without actually talking about what’s happening in Gaza.

I carried out the task in good faith, writing an introduction leading with an example of antisemitism and then another of anti-Palestinian hate, taking care to be “balanced” in my approach. But my senior producer proceeded to remove the example of anti-Palestinian hate, replacing it with a wishy-washing “both sides” example, while leaving the specific serious incident of antisemitism intact. He also edited my wording to suggest that pro-Palestinian protesters on Canadian campuses were on the “side” of Hamas.

I overheard the host thank the senior producer for the edits, on the basis that incidents of antisemitism were supposedly worse. While the introduction of these biases into my script was relatively minor compared to some other double standards I witnessed, it was a tipping point.

I challenged the senior on why he had made my script journalistically worse. He made up a bad excuse. I told him I couldn’t do this anymore and walked out of the newsroom, crying.
Truth-telling about CBC

That evening at home, the nausea and the anger dissolved, and for the first time in six weeks I felt a sense of peace. I knew it was untenable to stay at CBC.

At a team meeting the following week, in mid-November, I said the things I had wanted to say since the start of Israel’s assault on Gaza.

I prefaced the conversation by saying how much I loved my team and considered some coworkers friends. I said the problems weren’t unique to our team but across the CBC.

But the frequency of Palestinian guests getting cancelled, the pressure to pre-tape this one particular group, in addition to the unprecedented level of scrutiny being placed on them, demonstrated a pattern of double standards. I said there seemed to be an unspoken rule around words like “genocide.”

I pointed out that Arab and Muslim coworkers, especially those who were precariously employed, were scared of raising concerns, and that I and others had heard dehumanizing comments about Palestinians in the newsroom. (The CBC told The Breach that there “have been no specific reports of anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic comments in the newsroom for managers to respond to or follow up”.)

I said that two decades since the US-led invasion of Iraq, it was widely-acknowledged that the media had failed to do their jobs to interrogate the lies used to justify a war and occupation that killed one million Iraqis—and that as journalists we had a special responsibility to tell the truth, even if it was uncomfortable.

A couple of coworkers raised similar concerns. Others rolled their eyes. (CBC told The Breach that it doesn’t recall there was anyone else who raised concerns in the meeting, but audio recordings show otherwise.)

The question of why there was nervousness around this issue came up. I said one reason why we were adverse to allowing Palestinian guests to use the “G-word” was because of the complaint campaigns of right-wing lobby groups like HonestReporting Canada.

Indeed, in just 6 weeks, there were already 19 separate instances of HonestReporting going after CBC journalists, including a host on our team. HonestReporting had also claimed responsibility for the firing at two other outlets of two Palestinian journalists, one of whom was on maternity leave at the time.

All this had a chilling effect. Hosts and senior colleagues would frequently cite the threat of complaints as a reason not to cover Israel-Palestine. During my time there, a senior writer was even called into management meetings to discuss her supposed biases after a HonestReporting campaign targeted her. Her contract was cut short.

This policing of media workers’ output reinforced existing institutional tendencies that ensured CBC rarely deviated from the narrow spectrum of “legitimate” opinions represented by Canada’s existing political class.

Certain CBC shows seemed to be more biased than others. The National was particularly bad: the network’s primetime show featured 42 per cent more Israeli voices than Palestinian in its first month of coverage after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, according to a survey by The Breach.

Although some podcasts and radio programs seemed to cover the war on Gaza in a more nuanced way, the problem of anti-Palestinian bias in language was pervasive across all platforms.

According to an investigation in The Breach, CBC even admitted to this disparity, arguing that only the killing of Israelis merited the term “murderous” or “brutal” since the killing of Palestinians happens “remotely.” Images of children being flattened to death in between floors of an apartment building and reports of premature babies left to starve in incubators suggested otherwise.


IT SEEMED THE ONLY PALESTINIAN GUEST CBC WAS INTERESTED IN INTERVIEWING WAS THE SAD, DOCILE PALESTINIAN WHO TALKED ABOUT THEIR SUFFERING WITHOUT OFFERING ANY ANALYSIS OR SOLUTIONS TO END IT.

I spoke to many like-minded colleagues to see if there was any action we could all take to push back on the tenor of our coverage, but understandably others were reluctant to act—even collectively—out of fear doing so would endanger their jobs. Some of those colleagues would have loved to have walked out, but financial responsibilities stopped them.

There had been previous attempts at CBC to improve the public broadcaster’s coverage of Israel-Palestine. In 2021, hundreds of Canadian journalists signed an open letter calling out biases in the mainstream media’s treatment of the subject.

A number of CBC workers who signed the letter were hauled into meetings and told they either weren’t allowed to cover the subject or would have any future work on the issue vetted. A work friend later regretted signing the letter because she got the sense that she had been branded as biased, leading to her pitches on Palestine being more readily dismissed.
Smeared as antisemitic

In mid-November, after laying out my concerns to my colleagues, the regular weekly pitch meeting took place. It was then that I pitched the two genocide scholars, before having to attend that virtual meeting with my executive producer—where he suggested I go on mental health leave—and yet another meeting with two managers who raised concerns over my pitch the next day. But the most unpleasant meeting with management was about to come.

A week later, I was accused of antisemitism on the basis of something I didn’t even say. According to a manager, someone had accused me of claiming that “the elephant in the room [was] the rich Jewish lobby.” (CBC told The Breach that “employees expressed concerns” that what she said was “discriminatory”.)

The accusation was deeply painful because of my Jewish heritage and how my dad’s life—and, as a consequence, my own—was profoundly damaged by antisemitism. But I also knew I could prove that it was baseless: I had recorded what I said, anxious that someone might twist my words to use them against me.

What I had actually said, verbatim, was this:

“I just want to address the elephant in the room. The reason why we’re scared to allow Palestinian guests on to use the word ‘genocide’ is because there’s a very, very well funded [sic], there’s lots of Israel lobbies, and every time we do this sort of interview, they will complain, and it’s a headache. That’s why we’re not doing it. But that’s not a good reason not to have these conversations.”

I stand by my statement. HonestReporting Canada is billionaire-funded. In December 2023, HonestReporting bragged about having “mobilized Canadians to send 50,000 letters to news outlets.” The group has also published a litany of attacks on journalists at CBC and other publications who’ve done accurate reporting on Palestine, and created email templates to make it easier for their followers to complain to publications about specific reporters.

Other, similar pro-Israel groups like the Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting in America (CAMERA) and the Canary Mission employ similar tactics to try to silence journalists, academics, and activists who tell the truth about Israel-Palestine.

I told the manager it was telling that instead of following up on the racist comment I had heard from colleagues about Palestinians, I was the one being accused of antisemitism and discrimination—on the basis of words I hadn’t even uttered.
The banality of whitewashing war crimes

When I handed in my resignation notice on November 30, I felt relieved that I was no longer complicit in the manufacturing of consent for a genocidal war of revenge.

Despite my experience, I still believe in the importance of the national broadcaster to act in the public interest by reporting independently of both government and corporate interests, presenting the truth and offering a diverse range of perspectives.

However, I believe that CBC has not been fulfilling these duties when it comes to its coverage of Israel-Palestine. I believe that in the future, historians will examine the many ways that CBC, and the rest of mainstream media, have all failed to report truthfully on this unfolding genocide—and in doing so likely accelerated their delegitimization as trusted news sources.

Before resigning, I raised the issue of double standards with various levels of the CBC hierarchy. While some members of management pledged to take my concerns seriously, the overall response left me disappointed with the state of the public broadcaster.

After my appeal to my coworkers in mid-November, I had a phone conversation with a sympathetic senior producer. He said he didn’t think my words at the meeting would interfere with my chances of getting the permanent staff job I had long dreamed of. Despite this assurance, I was certain that I wouldn’t get it now: I knew I’d crossed the line for saying out loud what many at CBC were thinking but couldn’t say openly. Indeed, I wouldn’t have spoken out if I hadn’t already decided to resign.

As a kid, I had fantasies of shooting Hitler dead to stop the Holocaust. I couldn’t fathom how most Germans went along with it. Then, in my 20s, I was gifted a copy of Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann In Jerusalem: A Report On The Banality Of Evil by anti-Zionist Israeli friends. I’ve been thinking a lot about that piece of reportage when trying to make sense of the liberal media’s complicity in obfuscating the reality of what’s happening in the Holy Land. As Arendt theorized, those who go along with genocides aren’t innately evil; they’re often just boring careerists.

To be sure, while there are a number of senior CBC journalists who are clearly committed to defending Israel no matter its actions, many journalists just follow the path of least resistance. The fact that permanent, full-time CBC jobs are in such short supply, combined with threats of looming cuts, only reinforces this problem.

I still hear from former colleagues that pitch meetings are uphill battles. Some shows are barely covering Gaza anymore.

Being a journalist is a huge privilege and responsibility, especially in a time of war. You’re curating the news for the audience; deciding which facts to include and which to omit; choosing whose perspectives to present and whose to ignore. I believe that a good journalist should be able to turn their critical eye, not just on the news, but on their own reporting of the news. If you’re unable to do this, you shouldn’t be in the profession.

I purposefully haven’t given away identifiable information about my former colleagues. Ultimately, this isn’t about them or me: it’s part of a much wider issue in newsrooms across the country and the Western world—and I believe it’s a moral duty to shed a light on it. If I didn’t, I’d never forgive myself.

Just as I’m not naming my colleagues, I’m writing this using a pseudonym. Although the spectrum of acceptable discourse continues to shift, the career consequences for whistleblowers on this issue remains formidable.

I encourage fellow journalists who refuse to participate in the whitewashing of war crimes, especially those with the security of staff jobs, to speak to like-minded coworkers about taking collective action; to approach your union steward and representative; and to document instances of double standards in your newsrooms and share them with other media workers.

It was scary, but I have no regrets about speaking out. My only regret is that I didn’t write this sooner.

Molly Schumann is a pseudonym for a former TV and radio producer who worked at CBC for 5 years.

Posthaste: Canada's standard of living on track for worst decline in 40 years


Pamela Heaven
Thu, May 16, 2024

Measuring a country’s growth can be contentious.

Measure Canada’s gross domestic product by aggregate and it doesn’t look so bad, but measure it by person or per capita and it’s dismal.

For example, between 2000 and 2023 Canada had the second highest rate of aggregate GDP growth in the G7, but one of the lowest growth rates per person.

When a country has had a population surge as Canada has, economists say measuring by person gives a better picture of its standard of living, and according to a new study by Fraser Institute that standard is headed for its biggest decline in 40 years.

The study by Grady Munro, Jason Clemens, and Milagros Palacios looks at the three worst periods of decline and recovery of real GDP per person in the country since 1985. They are between 1989 and 1994, years that included a recession, between 2008 and 2011, the aftermath of the great financial crisis, and this last that began in 2019.

This latest period is unique because even though GDP per person recovered for one quarter in mid-2022, it immediately began to decline again, and by the end of 2023 was well below where it was in 2019.

“This lack of meaningful recovery suggests that since mid-2019, Canada has experienced one of the longest and deepest declines in real GDP per person since 1985,” said the study’s authors.

Between April of 2019 and the end of 2023, when the last data was available, inflation-adjusted per-person GDP fell 3 per cent from $59,905 to $58,111. That is surpassed only by the declines in 1989 to 1992, when GDP per person fell 5.3 per cent and in the financial crisis, when it fell 5.2 per cent, says the study.

The latest decline has lasted 18 quarters, making it the second longest in the past 40 years. Only the decline of 1989 to 1994, which lasted 21 quarters, was longer.

Key, though, are signs that it is not over yet. GDP per person in the fourth quarter of 2023 was down 0.8 per cent from the quarter before, suggesting it is still on a downward track, said the study.

“The decline in incomes since Q2 2019 is ongoing, and may still exceed the downturn of the late 1980s and early 1990s in length and depth of decline,” said the authors.

“If per-capita GDP does not recover in 2024, this period may be the longest and largest decline in per-person GDP over the last four decades.”

Fraser Institute is not alone in flagging this problem. In a recent article for the Financial Times, Ruchir Sharma, chair of Rockefeller International, identified Canada as one of the countries that has suffered a steep decline in real per-capita income growth and a drop in their share of global GDP.

A leader among the so-called “breakdown nations,” Canada’s GDP per capita has been falling 0.4 per cent a year since 2020, the worst rate among 50 developed economies.

“Widely admired for how it weathered the global financial crisis of 2008, [Canada] missed the boat when the world moved on, driven by Big Tech instead of commodities,” wrote Sharma. “New investment and job growth are being driven mainly by the government.”

Not only does Canada lag most developed economies, Canadian provinces also fall far behind almost all U.S. states, said Trevor Tombe, a professor of economics at the University of Calgary, in a column last year for the Hub.

Ontario last year had a per-person level of economic output similar to Alabama, said Tombe. The Maritimes were below Mississippi, and Quebec and Manitoba lag West Virginia.

Canada’s strongest economy, Alberta beat the U.S. average, but ranked 14th overall.

“It’s roughly comparable to New Jersey and Texas, but 13 per cent below California and nearly one-quarter below New York,” wrote Tombe.

Campus protests over the war in Gaza have gone international

MAY 3, 2024

By Willem Marx

NPR

Pro-Palestinian students protest outside the Department for Education on March 22 in London. The students called for an immediate cease-fire in Gaza and for an end to links between U.K. universities and Israel.

Mark Kerrison/In Pictures via Getty Images

LONDON — A growing global student movement to occupy university campuses has continued to coalesce and expand in recent days, following dramatic scenes involving pro-Palestinian protesters and police captured on cameras at American colleges.

Student groups in the United Kingdom, France and Mexico — among others — have sought to erect what many of them are terming "solidarity encampments," prompting a variety of responses from university authorities and local law enforcement.

The efforts by students to pressure institutional leaders, and in some cases national policy makers, to change their stances on Israel's military actions reflect a widespread anger among young people in wealthy and developing nations alike.
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MIDDLE EAST CRISIS — EXPLAINED
Why a majority of Britons want the U.K. to halt arms exports to Israel

These protests are continuing against the backdrop of sustained violence in the Gaza Strip, the continued failure of negotiations led by Qatar, Egypt and the U.S. to bring about a new cease-fire between Israel and Hamas, and renewed threats by Israeli leaders about launching a ground offensive in the southern Gaza city of Rafah.

A common demand among many of the protesters is for their learning institutions to cut ties with companies that conduct business with the Israeli state, or in some cases to end collaboration agreements with universities in Israel.

Student concerns in the U.K. — for instance — seemed to echo the focus of an increasingly high-profile nationwide campaign to end British arms exports to Israel. Earlier this week, hundreds of activists surrounded a government trade office in London and protested at British aerospace manufacturer BAE Systems locations elsewhere in the U.K., leading to arrests.

That came just days after the United Nations' top court in The Hague rejected arguments by Nicaragua that Germany should immediately halt military transfers to Israel.


MIDDLE EAST CRISIS — EXPLAINED
A top U.N. court won't order Germany to halt weapons exports to Israel

The protest against arming Israel is particularly pronounced at Warwick University in central England, where a coalition of students and staff built an encampment on a central campus square late last Thursday evening, April 25, demanding the institution sever relations with companies supplying military materiel to Israel.

"The University of Warwick has some of the most partnerships of any U.K. universities with arms companies," says Fraser Amos, a student member of the group called Warwick Stands For Palestine. "We've been campaigning for the last few months for a university to break these ties — an overwhelming majority of students voted in November for it to do so, and we've seen 27,000 Palestinians die since. And so we've been forced to take this action."


SPECIAL SERIES
Campus protests over the Gaza war


Warwick acknowledges it maintains academic and research partnerships with companies involved in the production of weapons systems or components used in weapons, including Rolls-Royce, BAE Systems and Moog.

In a statement, university spokesperson Bron Mills told NPR, "the University is working to begin discussions with the demonstration's organizers about the demands that have been made."

But so far, few of the student campaigns have seen success.

The elite French university Sciences Po has been rocked by protests over the past week, but administrators on Thursday began what were described by participants as an "emotional" dialogue with students to try and calm the situation.

"It's good to have these debates, because we are in a school that all the time says that we have to debate politics, we have to discuss," said student Ismail El Gataa, soon after participating in those conversations with university authorities.




Students set up camp on the campus of Sorbonne University to stage a protest against the war in Gaza, in Paris on April 29.Ameer Alhalbi/Anadolu via Getty Images

Despite the students' specific demands, Sciences Po's leadership says it would refuse to cut ties or investigate its relationships with four Israeli universities. With the overnight occupation of a school auditorium into Friday morning, the student campaigners responded that their demonstrations would continue — though far more peacefully and less confrontationally than in the United States.

"I feel like the context for U.S. and here are different," El Gataa said. "Unfortunately what I've seen in the U.S. is that there's a lot of extremism in some in some settings."

But by Friday morning, police units began to gather outside Sciences Po's campus — just as they had at another high profile Paris university, the Sorbonne — after authorities requested their help evacuating the students.

Another group, Goldsmiths for Palestine, was created in November last year at Goldsmiths University in London, when students started conducting walkouts, urging university management to make a statement condemning the circumstances facing Palestinians and to divest from a business called Nice Ltd. that sells surveillance equipment to government for use by police units and prison systems.

Graduate student Danna Liu Macrae says their move this week to occupy part of the college's library was quite specific to Goldsmiths, where students had earlier disbanded a previous encampment after university management offered to discuss their concerns, but had then grown disillusioned with those efforts.

"We had sat in multiple meetings with them, and they had made some commitments which they pulled out of — with little explanation," says Liu Macrae, speaking of the latest library occupation. "It made sense for us to put the pressure back on to hold them accountable, make sure they follow through with their commitments."

The pro-Palestinian protests across U.S. campuses have meanwhile prompted largely positive reactions from contemporaries and peers elsewhere — without much sign of the pro-Israel counter-protests seen at several American colleges.

At the National Autonomous University of Mexico, known as UNAM, bullhorns at the country's largest college boomed across campus Thursday as students erected several tents in front of the university's administration buildings to protest Israel's military actions in Gaza.

Mexican geography student Alexa Carranza says she was heartened by the U.S. college protests, particularly since she had long considered U.S. students to be apathetic about global injustice. "To see them wake up inspired me," she says.

Thursday was the first day of the protest, and students were demanding the state of Mexico — not just their own university — should entirely sever its diplomatic relations. "Break ties with Israel," a small crowd chanted, as some students spray-painted signs that read "Long Live Palestine."

At Warwick University, where police and university authorities have largely kept the situation calm, Fraser Amos says the treatment of American student protesters has been "appalling" and his group wants to show "full solidarity" with similar encampments from Columbia University in New York to the University of Texas in Austin.

For Samir Ali, an undergraduate at Goldsmiths in London, students like her are on the front foot right now, at this moment of mutual global support. "We see ourselves as part of that collective struggle and part of that collective student movement," she says.

A woman raises her fist while she shouts slogans during a demonstration against Israel's attacks on Gaza, in Mexico City, April 13.Daniel Cardenas/Anadolu via Getty Images

It's an emotional kinship for Ana Jiménez, an 18-year-old UNAM student who grew up in Guerrero, a Mexican region ravaged by drug-related conflict. She says she can relate very powerfully to Palestinian children caught up in the Gaza conflict.

"We need global solidarity, an empathetic world," Jiménez says. "When you're young, there is no other choice but to be a revolutionary."

Eleanor Beardsley contributed reporting from Paris. Eyder Peralta contributed reporting from Mexico City.

Pro-Palestinian campus protests are going global

Police moved in to clear a sit-in at an elite French university Friday, as encampments were launched at universities around the world, including in Britain, France, Australia and Japan.

May 3, 2024,
By Chantal Da Silva


LONDON — Pro-Palestinian demonstrations that have rocked college campuses in the United States are now gaining traction across the world, from London, Paris and Rome to Sydney, Tokyo, Beirut and beyond.

These protests at schools in major cities around the globe were launched in response to Israel's monthslong military assault on the Gaza Strip, but students told NBC News they were also inspired by the dramatic scenes from colleges in the U.S. in recent weeks.

They have stopped short of the size and intensity of the American encampments, which have stirred fierce debate and clashes with both authorities and pro-Israel counterprotesters. But on Friday, police moved in to clear a sit-in that had closed an elite French university — a sign of the fervent opposition to Israel's actions felt by many young people in countries beyond the U.S., its closest ally.

Video captured by news agencies showed police marching into the Sciences Po university building, with one demonstrator telling NBC News she was among the dozens removed peacefully by authorities.

The office of French Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, who like President Emmanuel Macron is an alum of Sciences Po, said police had been requested to remove students from 23 sites on French campuses Thursday. “All were evacuated within a few hours," his office said.

VIDEO

Students across the world protest over Gaza and in support of U.S. demonstrators

01:26

A protester is escorted away by police in Paris on Friday. Miguel Medina / AFP - Getty Images

'We really felt inspired'

A growing number of protests have also been launched on campuses in the United Kingdom.

"I think we felt really inspired seeing Columbia and just all the universities cropping up with the encampments," Ella Ward, a 21-year-old environmental science student at the University of Leeds in northern England, said in a phone interview Friday.

Around 50 students at Leeds launched their own encampment Wednesday, according to Ward, a representative of Youth Demand, a student-led group calling for a two-way arms embargo on Israel. She said she did not play an active role in organizing the demonstration, but supported the initiative and hoped to see it grow.

"I think Palestine has woken a lot of us up," she said. And seeing students in the U.S. continue to hold mass demonstrations, despite thousands of people facing arrest and suspension from their schools, "it's so important," she said.

Ward said that as of Friday, university administrators at Leeds had not "condemned or condoned" the students' encampment.

The University of Leeds did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News.

Several other universities in the U.K. have seen pro-Palestinian demonstrations crop up on campuses in recent days, according to photos and videos posted to social media, including University College London, the University of Warwick and Newcastle University.

A spokesperson for the University of Warwick said the protests were being "managed in line with our legal duty and commitment to allow freedom of speech on campus."

University College London and Newcastle University did not respond to requests for comment from NBC News

.

An encampment on the grounds of Newcastle University in northeast England, one of many that have popped up in Britain.Owen Humphreys / AP

Some students feel silenced

Not all students are supportive of the protest action, with some expressing concerns for their safety and others complaining that the demonstrations have impeded their studies.

"While Jewish students remain resilient, encampments are growing on campus and increasing in hostility," said Edward Isaacs, president of the Union of Jewish Students, which represents Jewish students in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

"Universities must have moral clarity in their leadership to ensure campuses are welcoming and inclusive to Jewish students," he said in a statement on X.

Samuel Lejoyeux, who leads the Union of Jewish Students of France, noted that French student protests appeared more peaceful than those in the U.S.

“With the overwhelming majority of students at French universities, including Sciences Po, it is still possible to have a debate. I even think there is an increased hunger for debate,” he told the broadcaster BFM TV, according to Reuters.

Some protests in the U.S. have drawn accusations of antisemitism, which Jewish groups say has been on the rise in the midst of the Israel-Hamas war. Student protesters, who include Jewish participants, have rejected the accusation, with some saying claims of antisemitism are being weaponized against them in an effort to dismiss criticisms of Israel's actions in Gaza.

Elisa Lin, a 21-year-old master's degree student studying public policy at Sciences Po, said she is one of many students who feel caught in the middle of mounting tensions on campus.

"We feel like a few minorities on both sides of the protest, like pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel, kind of took away the mic and we as a silent majority can't really say what we feel without being immediately bashed or insulted," she said.

Earlier this week, she and other students launched an online petition calling for open dialogue between students and the university's administration — as well as for demonstrators to stop blockading the school and for those who have "illegally" occupied buildings on campus to be reprimanded.

As of Friday, just over 1,170 people had signed the petition, launched Monday on Change.org.

“Of course, I do have my own convictions,” said Lin, who is from Paris. “I personally condemn the terrorist attack by the Hamas organization during the 7th of October. I very clearly condemn these attacks, but at the same time, I’m very strongly against the politics of Netanyahu in Israel,” she added.

Some 1,200 people were killed and 250 taken hostage in the Hamas-led attack, according to Israeli officials. More than 34,000 people have been killed in Gaza since Israel launched its operation in the wake of that attack, according to the Palestinian enclave's Health Ministry.

Lin said that she and other students wanted to be able to continue their studies and speak freely about their beliefs without fearing retribution from their peers.

In Australia, hundreds of people took part in demonstrations at the University of Sydney, with tents set up including one emblazoned with the words: “Free Gaza.”

Tensions appeared to rise as demonstrators were confronted by a rally of pro-Israel supporters, Reuters reported.

A pro-Palestinian protest at the University of Sydney on Friday.

Ayush Kumar / AFP - Getty Images

A university spokesperson told NBC News in a statement Wednesday that school administrators wanted to honor its "long tradition of understanding that peaceful protests can be important demonstrations of free speech." But the spokesperson also said that "exercising such freedom of expression must not inhibit the freedom of other members of our community."

On Thursday, the spokesperson said the school had begun investigating "some alleged behavior on our campus that is completely unacceptable." The spokesperson did not expand on what behavior was alleged to have taken place, but said anyone found to have violated the university's code of conduct could face disciplinary action.

“We’re also cooperating with police investigations where alleged conduct might have broken the law,” the spokesperson said.

Demonstrations have also been reported at schools in other major cities, including Sapienza University of Rome in Italy, the University of Toronto in Canada, the University of Tokyo in Japan, the American University of Beirut and the Lebanese American University in Lebanon, and the National Autonomous University of Mexico.

Ward, in the U.K., noted that demonstrations at many universities around the world appeared to lack the level of intensity and friction as those seen in the U.S.

She said she believed there were multiple reasons for that, including the level of outrage in the U.S. over Washington’s active role in funding and arming Israel’s military. But she also said the U.S. had gained a reputation on the international stage for cracking down on such protests.

“I’d be very very surprised if the one in Leeds ended with, you know, riot police,” she said. “That’s quite a U.S.-specific thing.”

In pictures: Palestine solidarity protests spread across the world

The "Student Spring" protests on US campuses, the biggest since the Vietnam demonstrations in the 1960s and 1970s, have inspired universities from Australia to Mexico to the United Kingdom to protest in solidarity with Palestine.



AFP

Members of the Australian Palestinian community shout slogans at the Palestinian Protest Campsite at University of Sydney in Sydney on May 3, 2024. / Photo: AFP


Thousands of students protesting Israel's war in Gaza rallied at some of the top universities worldwide demanding divest from companies with ties to Israel, in a movement inspired by the student protests in several US campuses.


Hundreds of people protesting Israel's war on Gaza set up an encampment last week outside the sandstone main hall at University of Sydney, one of Australia's largest tertiary institutions.

Similar camps have sprung up at universities in Melbourne, Canberra and other Australian cities.

Unlike in the US, where police have forcibly removed scores of defiant antiwar protesters at several colleges, demonstration sites in Australia have been peaceful with scant police presence.



AFP

Members of the Australian Palestinian community gather at the Palestinian Protest Campsite at University of Sydney in Sydney on May 3, 2024.


In Canada, students erected antiwar camps across some of the largest universities, including the University of Toronto, the University of British Columbia and the University of Ottawa, demanding they divest from groups with ties to Israel.



AFP

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators wave flags and hold up smartphones outside the fenced in area of an encampment on the University of Toronto campus on May 2, 2024, in Toronto, Canada.


In Mexico, dozens of pro-Palestinian students from the country's largest university camped out in solidarity as well.



AFP

Pro-Palestinian students and activists face police officers after protesters were evicted from the library on campus earlier in the day at Portland State University in Portland, Oregon on May 2, 2024.


Mounting flags and chanting "Long live free Palestine," the protesters set up tents in front of the National Autonomous University of Mexico's (UNAM) head office in Mexico City.


The students called on the Mexican government to break diplomatic and commercial ties with Israel.



AFP

Activists from the Interuniversity and Popular Assembly in Solidarity with the People of Palestine erect tents in front of the rectory building of the Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM)


In Türkiye, a group at Bogazici University's South Square held a rally in support of Palestine, carrying balloons and signs in Turkish, English, and Arabic.

Students condemned Israel's attacks in Palestine despite international outcry, pledging solidarity with Palestinian people and denouncing the atrocities in Gaza with US support.

Students also called for an end to the humanitarian crisis and justice for the victims, urging intervention to stop the crimes against humanity committed by the Zionist regime.



AA

Students from Bogazici University Islamic Studies Club (BISAK) gather to organise a solidarity demonstration for Pro-Palestinian encampment in the US universities such as Columbia University, in Istanbul.


Students from the universities Warwick, York, Leeds, Newcastle, Bristol and Sheffield in the United Kingdom are set to hold action at the campuses against administration of universities and British government in solidarity with the Palestinians.

Students will finalise demands and publish them at the Bristol University while they hold protest/rally outside the senate of the University.



REUTERS

People gather during a protest in support of Palestinians, during the ongoing conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas, at Newcastle University, in Newcastle, Britain.


Earlier this week, hundreds of students gathered outside the University of Tehran to express support for students in the US protesting against the Israeli war on Gaza.


Shouting slogans against Israel and the US, protesters condemned police action against students at various US universities in recent days, including Columbia University.



OTHERS

Students at Amirkabir University of Technology in the Iranian capital of Tehran are seen in a pro-Palestine rally on April 28, 2024.


In France, protesters supporting Palestine gathered at Paris' Sorbonne University, chanting "Free Palestine" and setting up tents.



AFP

Students display a giant Palestinian flag as they take part in a rally in support of Palestinians at the Sorbonne University in Paris on April 29, 2024.


The Sorbonne protest was peaceful, with students calling for the university to condemn Israel.

Police secured the area, and several French politicians, including Mathilde Panot, encouraged support for the protest.

Paris' Sciences Po university was closed for the day on Friday after a debate between the institute's leadership and students on the war in Gaza failed to ease tensions, prompting protesters to occupy it overnight.

SOURCE: TRTWORLD AND AGENCIES

Students set up indefinite pro-Palestinian encampment at McGill University

CBC
Sat, April 27, 2024 

The indefinite encampment went up around 1:30 p.m. Saturday. (Jennifer Yoon/CBC - image credit)

About a dozen tents have gone up on McGill's downtown campus in what students are calling an act of solidarity with the Palestinian cause, joining a wave of similar protests taking place across U.S. campuses.

Protestors are demanding McGill and Concordia universities "divest from funds implicated in the Zionist state as well as [cut] ties with Zionist academic institutions," according to a statement sent to CBC News by Zaynab Ali, a McGill student participating in the protest.

The Montreal chapter of the Palestinian Youth Movement called the encampment "indefinite," adding that it refuses to let universities "be complicit in genocide," in a social media post on Instagram.


Another student group, Solidarité pour les droits humains des Palestiniennes et Palestiniens also urged UQAM's students and personnel to join in as well, in a post to Facebook.

In an email to CBC News, McGill University says it's aware the encampment is happening and it supports the right of its students to freedom of expression and freedom of assembly within the bounds of the university's policies and law. It says its security officers are on site.

Pro-Palestine protesters march through downtown State College, demanding Penn State changes

Halie Kines, Josh Moyer
Sat, April 27, 2024 

Two days after rallying in front of Old Main on the Penn State campus, about 200 pro-Palestine protesters marched through downtown State College on Saturday afternoon, blocking traffic as a few police trailed closely behind.

Protesters chanted many of the same demands they made Thursday — including for Penn State to divest from Israel and to free Palestine. The protest was held in recognition of the upcoming International Workers Day because, organizers said on Instagram, workers’ struggles against oppressors aren’t unlike those facing the people of Palestine.

The march was also held on a day the university expected plenty of visitors, with its first outdoor concert at Beaver Stadium in seven years scheduled for 5:45 p.m. Saturday.


The protest began at the Allen Street gates at 2 p.m. Saturday, before marching through parts of Beaver and College avenues, along with Burrowes Street, Fraser Street, and others. Protesters also made stops at Old Main and Penn State’s Applied Research Laboratory, which is affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense.

Pro-Palestine protesters march through downtown State College and the Penn State campus on Saturday afternoon for many of the same demands they made during a Thursday protest — including for Penn State to divest from Israel and to free Palestine.

A handful of police officers stood in front of the ARL’s door, and the march appeared to remain peaceful.

“We are here today as part of a movement,” said Roua Daas, of Penn State Students for Justice in Palestine, “as part of a movement of students, of community members, of Palestinians, of Black and Brown people everywhere that are saying, ‘We will not do this anymore.’ ...

“We will not stop. We will not stop until Penn State has divested. We will not stop until there is a ceasefire.”

Saturday’s march ended shortly after 5 p.m. Saturday, after protesters returned to campus and spent some time in front of Old Main.

The State College Police patrol officer in charge Saturday, Ken Shaffer, told the CDT that police were aware of the possibility of a march.

“It is a criminal violation to block a roadway like that, but we do give some leeway at times as long as no one is being hurt,” Shaffer added. “I’m not sure if that’ll be the case moving forward here, and that’s a decision that’s made every time by our administration.”

Penn State is the latest campus to see these types of recent events, joining other protests across the nation including University of Maryland, American University and Purdue University. Other colleges, like Harvard, Brown University and Michigan State University, have seen protesters set up encampments on campus. More than 400 arrests have been made across many campuses, according to the New York Times.

State College Police did not arrest anyone in connection with Saturday’s protest, as of late Saturday afternoon, and no damage had been reported, Shaffer said.

Pro-Palestine protesters march through downtown State College and the Penn State campus on Saturday afternoon for many of the same demands they made during a Thursday protest — including for Penn State to divest from Israel and to free Palestine

UNC students camped out to protest Israel-Hamas war say: ‘We will not be leaving.’

Korie Dean
Fri, April 26, 2024 at 11:29 a.m. MDT·5 min read



Students and others pitched tents on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill Friday, calling on the university “to divest from the ongoing genocide in Gaza” and forming an encampment similar to others on college campuses nationwide.

The event, which began around 10 a.m., was organized by the UNC chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, which has held protests and other events on campus this academic year to support Palestinians as the Israel-Hamas war continues.

“We emphasize that this encampment serves to show solidarity with Gaza, which now has no more universities due to Israeli massacres with US-made bombs. We stand in solidarity with our comrades at Columbia and across the US who have been repressed, arrested, and physically attacked,” the group said in a news release Friday morning, referencing the ongoing protests at Columbia University that have become a flashpoint of pro-Palestinian student activism in recent weeks.

Protesters gather amongst their tents as part of a Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Polk Place on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill on Friday afternoon, April 26, 2024.

“The central purpose, however, of this encampment is to meet the demands of the present moment, and to center Palestine and call attention to the university’s participation in the genocide in Gaza,” the release stated.

More than a dozen tents and over 100 people filled the middle of Polk Place, the central quad on the main part of campus. The tents were decorated with signs reading “Gaza solidarity encampment” and “free Palestine,” among other sayings.

Friday marked the second time in a week that the group has formed a tent encampment on campus to call attention to their demands. A week earlier on April 19, the group formed a similar encampment before being told by administrators that setting up temporary structures, including tents, on university grounds is prohibited unless approved in advance.

Protesters set up a tent as part of a Gaza Solidarity Encampment at Polk Place on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill on early Friday afternoon, April 26, 2024.

Students on Friday were seen speaking with university administrators Christi Hurt and Desirée Rieckenberg — interim Chancellor Lee Roberts’ chief of staff and the dean of students, respectively — throughout the afternoon, appearing to negotiate terms that would allow the group to remain protesting but to take down their tents.

Friday around 1 p.m., a student organizer announced to the encampment that they had reached an agreement with the administrators to take the tents down by 1:45. The group, which removed the poles from the tents but left the fabric remaining on the ground, planned to remain on the quad at least throughout the afternoon — but likely much longer.

“I just want to say loud and clear, that even though we take the poles out of our tents, we will remain here,” the student organizer said around 1 p.m. “We will not be leaving until the university divests.”

An evening Shabbat service, hosted by Jewish community groups in collaboration with the encampment, was planned for 7:30.
What the students want from administrators

In an Instagram post Friday, UNC SJP outlined its four demands for the university: to “acknowledge the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” to provide “full transparency of UNC investments,” to divest “from companies complicit in this genocide” and to end university study abroad programs to Israel.

UNC SJP said in its news release that students have, since the war began, “asked to meet university administrators to discuss the communities’ demands for disclosing UNC investments and to demand divestment from companies that benefit from Israeli Apartheid and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

Sylvie, a UNC SJP member who identified themselves as a graduate student at the university but who did not provide their last name, told The News & Observer that the group has not received such a meeting.

“We have communicated our demands, which have not changed since October, to the administration, who has met us with not only ignorance and negligence, but also, as of recently, threats, discrimination and punishment, which we see as deeply concerning, and reflective of their ideological commitment to upholding the genocidal status quo,” Sylvie said.

At committee meetings of the university Board of Trustees last month, SJP members disrupted the proceedings multiple times with pro-Palestinian chants before being told, including by trustee Dave Boliek, that additional disruptions would result in their arrest. Under state law, anyone “who willfully interrupts, disturbs, or disrupts an official meeting and who, upon being directed to leave the meeting by the presiding officer, willfully refuses to leave the meeting is guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor.”

At the full-board meeting the next day, Roberts invited the group to nominate a representative to address the trustees and list their concerns. The group nominated Sylvie, who spoke for roughly three minutes. Later, the group again began to chant over the meeting and were escorted out by university police.

Roberts said after the meeting that he “certainly” understands and appreciates the group’s “desire to be heard.”

“Peaceful protest has a long, noble tradition on this campus, on other college campuses in our country, across Western liberal democracies,” Roberts said.

Sylvie said Friday that they didn’t understand the administration’s “strategy” in allowing the group to speak.

“But it didn’t work,” they said. “Because we’re here now.”

The agreement reached between administrators and protesters Friday included only the decision to remove the tents, and did not result in a meeting with Roberts, Sylvie said.

Friday’s events were peaceful, with members of the encampment sharing meals, playing music and gathering for prayer. A group of about 15 to 20 counter-protesters arrived around 2:30 p.m. Several left quickly after speaking with UNC police chief Brian James, while others remained on the quad but at a distance from the encampment.

After the counter-protesters arrived, the members of the encampment began playing music and chanting phrases including “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

That chant has been a common rallying cry, but the Anti-Defamation League considers it an antisemitic phrase seeking the elimination of Israel and the removal of Jewish people from the area.

Mendy Heber, a rabbi, said he came to campus Friday to support Jewish students.

“I think the Jewish kids need support. I think they feel threatened and I think that [they] feel under siege,” Heber said.

Heber said he believes that the encampment at UNC and the similar ones at universities across the country are “a pretty organized effort to create havoc and make chaos all over,” which he believes protesters could use “as a leveraging point” to get government bodies and other agencies to meet their demands.

Sylvie said of the rally: “This is about freedom. This is about Palestine.”

“This is about humanity and people with consciences who believe that humanity deserves dignity.”

Students and others pitched tents on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill Friday, protesting Israel’s actions in the Gaza Strip and forming an encampment similar to others formed on college campuses nationwide.


City College of New York becomes latest site of heated pro-Palestinian demonstrations

Roni Jacobson, Elizabeth Keogh and Cayla Bamberger, New York Daily News
Thu, April 25, 2024 



NEW YORK — Students set up a pro-Palestinian encampment Thursday at City College of New York, with one passerby being driven away when a protester claimed she could “smell” he was a “Zionist.”

Concern about antisemitism at protests sweeping campuses around the nation has grown in recent days, sparking demands for university officials to act more decisively to dismantle the demos.

Protests at Columbia University and New York University have led to the arrests of more than 200. The State University of New York’s Fashion Institute of Technology saw a small pro-Palestinian encampment pop up Thursday, following a similar demonstration at The New School.

At City College in Harlem, students have erected dozens of colorful tents around an American flagpole, where they also hung a Palestinian flag. “CUNY Students Resist Zionism” and “BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY,” signs read.

On Thursday night, protesters at the campus were seen booing a passerby and driving him away from the demonstration.

“I can sniff you, we can all sniff you,” one protester sneered at the man. “We can smell the Zionist on you.”

The protester told the New York Daily News the person she’d targeted was “frowning and recording” as he passed.

“I just could tell he was a Zionist,” said the woman. “They victimize themselves so quickly.”

CNN initially reported that university officials had been in touch with the NYPD, with plans to clear the encampment at about 5 p.m., but posted an update citing an unnamed law enforcement official saying “no action is imminent.” A call to the NYPD seeking clarification was not immediately returned.

“In solidarity with Palestine, while following the legacy of the CUNY student organizers that came before us, we have established the CUNY GAZA Solidarity Encampment at City College, the oldest campus from the City University of New York,” students wrote on Instagram.

CUNY students are calling for the university system to divest from Israel, ban partnerships and trips to Israel such as Birthright and Fulbright programs, reverse student and faculty disciplinary action related to pro-Palestinian activism and remove police from campus.

They also called on CUNY to release a statement “affirming the right of the Palestinian people to national liberation and the right of return,” and to make CUNY tuition-free.

“We demand a fully-funded, free CUNY that is not beholden to zionist and imperialist private donors,” the students wrote.

Throughout the afternoon, students shouted chants like, “Disclose, divest, we will not stop, we will not rest.” Some of them were skipping their plans for spring break, which runs through Tuesday, to be at the encampment.

“Frankly, I can’t really relax in a time like this,” said Andrew Shapiro, a PhD sociology candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center and part-time faculty member at Hunter College, who is Jewish. “I have not felt like I could relax comfortably, like I can be a student normally. Nothing feels normal as an ongoing genocide is happening, allegedly in my name.”

“People were away and they flew back in,” said Hadeeqa Arzoo, a student at City College. “They flew from home to be here, and I think that speaks volumes to what this means for many people.”

Arzoo, who’s majoring in political science and international relations, said the encampment at Columbia “really lit a fire under us” that could not be delayed until after the break. CUNY officials had not engaged in any negotiations as of Thursday afternoon, she noted.

“As of right now, we’re seeing what happens,” Arzoo said. “Because we’re not moving. We’re not gonna be intimidated into silence. We’re here.”

Meanwhile in Chelsea, students set up a similar encampment inside the Fashion Institute of Technology.

Demonstrators stormed into The Museum at FIT on W. 27th St. and Seventh Ave., Fox News reported. Video shows scores of people pushing through the doors, where a security guard worked to pull them closed but was overtaken.

“Free, free, free Palestine,” protesters shouted as they took over the lobby of the on-campus museum.

By early Thursday evening, about 60 protesters remained in the lobby, where tents and a sign stating “FIT Gaza Solidarity Encampment” were set up.

A student group said in a statement they’re calling on FIT to divest from Israel and provide amnesty from disciplinary action. Encampment rules include: “Do not under ANY circumstances talk with NYPD or media.”

The NYPD had not responded to the site as of Thursday evening.

“We are monitoring and managing the situation to ensure the safety of the entire FIT community, which remains our highest priority,” a FIT spokesperson said in a statement.

At City College, a spokesperson said it was in the process of determining if the protesters were affiliated with CUNY.

“While The City College of New York is strongly committed to the principles of freedom of speech and expression on campus, it is mindful of any action that may cause disruption to our community in any way,” the spokesperson said in a statement.

“CCNY’s longstanding position is that any legitimate protest — by any group that is part of our community — must be peaceful, respectful, nonthreatening, and devoid of any hatred or intimidation. It must also not interfere with any activities on campus.”

The encampment included a poster to “Support the Five Demands Viva Palestina,” resembling similar signage to “Support the Five Demands Viva Harlem U” in April 1969, when a group of Black and brown students set up a tent demonstration to promote racial equity.

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Columbia University president Minouche Shafik in hot water for handling of pro-Palestinian protests

Mariamne EVERETT

AFP
Fri, April 26, 2024 



As pro-Palestinian student protests at Columbia University continue, university president Minouche Shafik finds herself under fire from all sides as politicians, students and faculty all call for her to resign over her handling of the sit-ins. Columbia's university senate is scheduled to meet on Friday to vote on a resolution that would express displeasure with her decision to summon police to arrest protesting students on campus.

Shortly after the Israel-Hamas war entered its six month, pro-Palestinian students at Columbia University established an on-campus encampment on April 17 of approximately 50 tents, called the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, to put pressure on the elite Ivy League university to cut ties with Israeli academic institutions and divest from Israel.

The encampment was forcibly dismantled the following day when Shafik called on the New York City Police Department to intervene, resulting in the arrests of more than 100 protesters on suspicion of criminal trespassing. Columbia also suspended students participating in the protest encampment. After these mass arrests, demonstrators quickly regrouped and other students across the United States started organising their own sit-ins, including at universities in Los Angeles, Boston and Austin, Texas.

Many Columbia students also want Shafik to resign.


Pro-Palestinian student protests highlight lessons learned from past demonstrations
Lexi Lonas

Fri, April 26, 2024 


The pro-Palestinian protesters making themselves heard at universities across the country see their demonstrations as part of a tradition of anti-war activism on campus.

Hundreds of students have been arrested after setting up encampments on school grounds and demanding their institutions call for a cease-fire in Gaza and divest their endowments away from companies associated with Israel.

While universities and police have made changes over the decades in their handling of student protests, experts are pointing to similarities with years past on the activists’ demands and public perception.

“They are pretty similar in a number of important ways and also some of the responses that campuses took during that era echo some of the kinds of issues that are facing law enforcement and campus administrators now,” said Robert Corn-Revere, chief counsel for the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE).

Corn-Revere pointed to the free speech protests and anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the 1960s, which also saw a “demand for many universities to take positions on the pressing issues of the day.”

“The same kinds of issues led Yale to consider how to handle free expression, and they issued what was called the Woodward Report in 1974. There’s sort of traced backgrounds of the kinds of disputes that had happened on Yale’s campus through the ’60s and into the ’70s and how to deal with those things,” Corn-Revere said.

The Woodward Report, which became Yale’s official guiding document for its free expression policies on campus, defends “the right to think the unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable.”

Corn-Revere said, “The same considerations of how to balance the need for preserving a wide space for freedom of expression and, at the same time, not to tolerate violence or disruption — it’s that same balance is what we’re facing today.”

In an Instagram post, the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter at Columbia University, where the current batch of pro-Palestinian protests began, showed an image likening the current demonstration to a protest at the school against the Vietnam War.

The post shows an image of Columbia students in 1968 protesting with a banner that says “Liberated Zone.” Another image on the same post shows pro-Palestinian protesters on campus with a banner that says the same thing.

As in the past, those willing to protest anti-war efforts believe the risk of school discipline pales in comparison to the cause they are fighting for.

“What we’re putting on the line is so minimal in risk, compared to what Gazans are going through,” Niyanta Nepal, a student at Brown University, told The New York Times. “This is the least we can be doing, as youth in a privileged situation, to take ownership of the situation.”

The biggest decision schools face in the short term is how to respond to the demonstrations. Columbia has seen multiple arrests, but school officials have attempted to negotiate with student leaders. While the encampment there that activists set up was supposed to be torn down Tuesday, the administration extended the timeline due to advances in talks with the demonstrators.

That move to talk with activists for a more peaceful resolution has not always been the go-to for schools.

Fifty and 60 years ago, “the campuses responded to them usually pretty heavy-handedly. I mean, the most important ones are the most infamous ones at Berkeley, and Wisconsin, and of course, also here in Ohio State,” said history professor David Steigerwald. “Authorities were called in on different levels. National Guard, local police, state police, typically in a pretty heavy-handed way in those most famous instances.”

At Kent State in 1970, four students were killed and nine were injured after the Ohio National Guard opened fire on a crowd protesting the Vietnam War. At the University of California, Berkeley, more than 800 students were arrested.

This week, the University of Texas at Austin vowed there would not be disruptions on campus, and state police made dozens of arrests Wednesday within hours of protesters leaving their classes to demonstrate.

Those arrests have sparked backlash from numerous free speech experts, as violence was not reported at the demonstration.

“The image I’ve seen from the University of Texas appears to be a disproportionate response to what the images suggest were a peaceful protest. And when you’re using preemptive government force against people who are protesting and not engaging in violence, then you err on the wrong side,” Corn-Revere said.

Experts say institutions today are more sensitive specifically to protests that disrupt student learning, which could make them more quick to try to shut down an event.

Robert Cohen, professor of social studies at New York University, noted that at Columbia in the 1960s, it took students occupying the inside of five buildings before the police were called.

“What’s different now is that at Columbia or here at NYU, the protests were not disruptive in any kind of way to the educational system,” Cohen said, adding the protests were outside on the lawn of the schools, where demonstrations have commonly taken place on campuses for decades.

However, many schools say that without proper permission, students cannot set up tents and stay on the premises overnight, and others say the behavior and rhetoric of the activists has crossed the line into antisemitism, creating an unsafe atmosphere for Jewish students even when actual classes aren’t being impeded.

Reports of antisemitism at the protests have been condemned by the White House, and Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said his department is following “reports about protests—including very alarming reports of antisemitism—on and around college campuses across the country. This Department of Education won’t tolerate hate, discrimination, and threats of violence that target students because of who they are.”

“If there are some incidents, then you go after the person who committed the harassment,” Cohen said. “It’s like, if the people in the apartment building — if there’s a crime, you don’t evict everybody, every apartment. You find out who did the crime, right?”

One thing the protesters definitely share with their anti-Vietnam predecessors: Public sentiment does not appear to be on their side.

Protests back in the 1960s and 1970s, “generally speaking, didn’t generate a whole lot of sympathy for the students’ positions,” Steigerwald said.

Corn-Revere argues colleges and governments have learned a lot about how to balance the line between free expression and violence, but implementing solutions is a more difficult task.

“The idea, at least from my perspective, is you err on the side of protecting free speech, you try to make clear that crossing the line into violence will not be tolerated. And that it is the government’s responsibility,” he said. “Sometimes the government, through the administration of the school, take steps to try and allow speech while preventing violence. Now the problem is, it’s a hard decision to make and we see people erring on

one side or the other in different situations.”

What the pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses actually want
Matt Egan and Ramishah Maruf, CNN
Fri, April 26, 2024 

What the pro-Palestinian protesters on college campuses actually want


College campuses across America have been shaken by unrest that has resulted in clashes with police, shut down some classrooms and captured the attention of the nation.

Although much of the initial focus has been on antisemitic incidents and how university officials and police are responding to the demonstrations, all of this raises a fundamental question: What do the pro-Palestinian protesters actually want?

The specific demands of the protesters vary somewhat from school to school yet the central demand is that universities divest from companies linked to Israel or businesses that are profiting off its war with Hamas. Universities have largely refused to budge on this demand, and experts say divestment may not have a significant impact on the companies themselves.

Other common threads include demanding universities disclose their investments, sever academic ties with Israeli universities and support a ceasefire in Gaza.

“We asked that Columbia University pull all investments away from companies that profit off of the genocide of Palestinians or Israeli companies that profit off of the oppression of Palestinians,” Althea, a student protester at Columbia, told CNN. Althea asked for her last name not to be used for privacy reasons.

Student demonstrators occupy the pro-Palestinian "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" on the West Lawn of Columbia University on April 24, 2024 in New York City. - Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

Protest movements at some universities are also calling for school officials to protect free speech and spare students from being punished for participating in the protests.

At the University of Southern California, where dozens were arrested on Wednesday, protesters are demanding “full amnesty” for those brought into custody and that there be “no policing on campus.”

At Princeton University, protesters are demanding, among other things, that the Ivy League school end research on weapons of war “used to enable genocide,” according to a flyer at a campus demonstration on Thursday.

Some demands are local.

At Columbia University, where the pro-Palestinian protest movement started last week, protesters are demanding support for low-income Harlem residents, including housing and reparations, according to Columbia University Apartheid Divest, the student group responsible for organizing the encampment.

The Columbia protesters are also calling for the university to “disclose and sever all ties” with the New York Police Department.

Students are also calling for an academic boycott from Israeli universities. For example, Columbia protesters want the university to sever ties with the school’s center in Tel Aviv and a dual degree program with Tel Aviv University. New York University protesters use the school’s Tel Aviv center as a rallying cry as well.

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Is it possible to divest?

Still, divestment is at the top of the list of demands from protesters and the one they mention most often.

As Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson addressed students at Columbia on Wednesday, students chanted: “Disclose, divest, we will not stop we will not rest.”

Like many major universities, Columbia has a massive endowment. It was valued at $13.6 billion, as of mid-2023.

And there is a history of student activists targeting endowments during demonstrations. In the 1980s, students successfully persuaded Columbia to divest from apartheid South Africa.

More recently, Columbia and other universities have divested from fossil fuels and private prisons.

Charlie Eaton, assistant professor of sociology at the University of California, Merced and author of “Bankers in the Ivory Tower,” said Columbia can “absolutely” make the choice to divest from Israel-linked investments.

“It’s not unreasonable practice for schools to make decisions about how they invest based not just on maximizing investment returns, but also around principles of equity and justice in what they invest in,” he said.

But Mark Yudof, chairman of the Academic Engagement Network, which opposes campus antisemitism, said it’s not a simple solution to implement.

“The truth is it’s sometimes murky to figure out who is doing business in Israel and what the relationship is to the war,” Yudof said.

Yudof, the former president of the University of California, said he’s not aware of a single university that has divested from Israel despite years of pressure to do so.

“I don’t think it will happen,” he said.
‘Hostile and threatening’

However, none of the universities have announced plans to divest from Israel-linked investments and some experts say they will be very reluctant to accept this demand.

“A significant obstacle to divestment is that any university supporting divestment would be sending a clear signal that they either: (a) acquiesce in; or (b) support the destruction of the State of Israel and its citizens,” said Jonathan Macey, a professor at Yale Law School.

Macey said that while such a move may be supported by protesters, it would be “viewed as hostile and threatening to many students, faculty and staff.”

Lauren Post, an analyst at the Anti-Defamation League, said the push for divestment is related to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement.

Although Post acknowledged that some individuals may be pushing for divestment as a way to hold Israel accountable, she said the ADL views the goals of BDS as antisemitic.

“The goal – ultimately dismantling the state of Israel, is antisemitic,” said Post.

Yudof, the former University of California president, said he also feels it is antisemitic.

“It smacks of a double standard. Why is it only Israel?” He criticized protesting college students for focusing on Israel instead of undemocratic regimes around the world, including Iran and Russia.

It’s worth noting, however, that the student protests don’t directly say they are affiliated with BDS.

“We are not going anywhere until our demands are met,” Khymani James, a student at Columbia University, said during a news briefing Wednesday.

James, a student activist associated with the Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) coalition, has since apologized for saying on video that “Zionists don’t deserve to live.”

James acknowledged the statement in a post on X, saying it was from an Instagram Live video in January. “I misspoke in the heat of the moment, for which I apologize.”

The apology came early Friday morning, hours after an interview with CNN at Columbia where James repeatedly declined to apologize for the video, saying that the focus should be on Palestinian liberation.
Universities don’t own that much stock

There is also a debate over how effective divestment campaigns are.

One issue is that selling stock in a company means the university would give up its influence over the company.

“Be careful what you ask for. If you sell your stock, someone else will buy it and they may be less concerned about the issue you care about,” said Cary Krosinsky, a lecturer at Yale who has advised university endowments.

Another issue is that while university endowments are large, public companies are much bigger. If a university divests, many companies would not even notice it.

University endowments own approximately 0.1% of public companies, according to research by Krosinsky.

“0.1% is not going to move the needle very much. Someone else will buy the stock and life will go on,” he said.

Most university funds are invested with private equity funds and hedge funds, rather than broad-ranging mutual or index funds.

Of course, the divestment push is about more than directly punishing companies. It’s about a desire to send a message and raise awareness.

More than wanting to take down defense contractors like Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, protesters would view divestment as a symbolic victory for justice and equality.

Students are “complicit in what this institution does,” graduate student Basil Rodriguez said to CNN Wednesday, noting that students pay tuition.

Rodriguez is Palestinian herself, and said her family members have been “murdered and executed” and displaced.

Student protesters say the demands to disclose and to divest are interconnected.

Protesters argue that many of the financial interests of universities are opaque and the links to Israel may be even greater than officials realize.

“At the same time, this is only the tip of the iceberg,” Rodriguez said. “We demand full financial transparency.”

This story has been updated to include James’ apology for statements James made in a video shared online.

CNN’s John Towfighi contributed to this report.

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