It’s possible that I shall make an ass of myself. But in that case one can always get out of it with a little dialectic. I have, of course, so worded my proposition as to be right either way (K.Marx, Letter to F.Engels on the Indian Mutiny)
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.
Friday, May 03, 2024
Campus protests over the war in Gaza have gone international
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. Sponsor Message
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.
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."
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.
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.
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
Saturday, April 27, 2024
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 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.”
“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.
____ 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.
unknown content item
- 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.
For more CNN news and newsletters create an account at CNN.com
Archaeologists try to answer new questions about first humans in Southeast Alaska
A team of scientists and Alaska Native community members use an autonomous underwater vehicle to explore the continental shelf west of Prince of Wales Island in southeast Alaska, seeking submerged caves and rock shelters that would have been accessible to early inhabitants of the region. (From NOAA)
A few years ago, a set of 20,000-year-old human footprints in a dry lakebed in New Mexico set scientists reeling. Those fossilized footprints, originally discovered in 2009, called into question what we thought we knew about when people first showed up in North America. Archaeologists thousands of miles away in Alaska felt the scientific impact especially strongly.
A recent paper published in the journal Nature attempts to set a new timeframe of when the first humans might have appeared along the coast of Southeast Alaska, using cave remains and animal fossils from the region.
But it’s just one piece of a much bigger puzzle.
The Nature article caught the attention of Nick Schmuck, an archaeologist with the Alaska Department of Natural Resources. He said how and when people showed up in Alaska and the Americas is a debate that may never be settled in the scientific community.
“It doesn’t take long getting into the literature on this topic to realize that this is really a heated debate,” Schmuck said. “You’ve got folks who are diehards for one idea. You can think about it as paradigms, you know, we all think about a topic in a certain way for a while.”
According to Schmuck, there are many theories in this debate but currently, the most commonly held belief is in the Coastal Migration Theory.
Remember learning about the Bering land bridge in middle school? That’s part of the Coastal Migration Theory, which suggests that after the last Ice Age, early humans migrating from Asia crossed the land bridge between Russia and Alaska in search of food. Then they traveled, either by foot or by boat, down along the coast of Alaska and into the rest of the Americas.
“These people coming into the Americas – doesn’t matter how far back we go – they’re just as capable as you and I. So, they can figure out how to use boats. They were no strangers to rivers and things like that, so, why not the coast?” Schmuck said.
For his own part, Schmuck is a bit of a pluralist. He believes this is one of many potential routes early humans took.
The recent Nature article, “New age constraints for human entry into the Americas on the north Pacific coast” by Martina Steffen, attempts to tighten the parameters of the coastal migration debate. The paper looks at gaps in dates of animal fossils and archaeological sites, including 18 caves and sites in Southeast Alaska.
During the iciest part of the last Ice Age, a massive ice sheet advanced across the western part of the continent and over Prince of Wales Island, the largest island in Southeast. All of that now dry land, buried under thousands of tons of ice. Archaeologists believe that at its peak — known as the “glacial maximum” — about 18,000 years ago, that giant wall of ice would have blocked off any land routes down the coastline. Think of it like a gate that closed for over 1,000 years.
So, the commonly held belief is that people showed up after that, as the glaciers melted from the outside in, revealing land and food to eat.
For Schmuck, it isn’t just the fossil record that supports this post-glacial theory, it’s the spoken record of the descendants of these first people.
“They sound like people coming to an early post-glacial Southeast Alaska,” Schmuck said, describing oral histories. “They talk about coming to a land that’s just a narrow strip of land between the ice and the sea. Like, holy cow! That’s what Southeast Alaska would have been before the trees came in.”
“I think the important thing to remember is that we know that we have been here for at least 12,000 years. We know that from DNA science,” said KaahániRosita Worl, a Lingit anthropologist and president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute.
Worl is a descendant of those first people.
“To me, it affirms our oral traditions that say we’ve been here since time immemorial,” she said.
If the carbon dating was done correctly, and most archaeologists now agree it was, the New Mexico footprints are much older than the signs of human life found in Southeast Alaska. That means the footprints were from someone who was in North America before those giant ice sheets sealed the land shut, which, in turn, means that either the humans that left the New Mexico footprints didn’t cross the Bering land bridge at all or people were here much earlier than Western scientists had thought.
“There had to be another route,” said Worl. “And the coastal route – it opens up and you have resources available that people could live on.”
The footprints changed everything, according to Bryn Letham, an archaeologist at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver. And of course, he says, there were skeptics. Some made a plausible argument that the carbon-dating was wrong. But as time went on, that didn’t seem to be the case. The White Sands team kept testing the fossils and every time got the same result: that footprint was from someone 21,000-23,000 years ago.
In a 2024 article for PaleoAmerica, Letham wrote that it was breathtaking, but it also raised an existential question for him and his colleagues: “What have we been spending our careers doing?”
Had they been searching in the wrong places? The wrong times?
The footprints in New Mexico started a race among those studying the Pacific Northwest coast. Most of the geologists and archaeologists are united by a common goal — to find the oldest sites of human occupation.
Currently, the earliest signs of life in Southeast Alaska is Shuká Káa – a human skeleton and set of tools from about 10,300 years ago in a cave on Prince of Wales Island.
It’s possible archaeologists just haven’t found older evidence yet, because of the challenges of searching in the forest-covered region.
“I mean, you’ve been in the Tongass, it’s big trees. It’s hard to see very far ahead of you and it’s hard to imagine what the landscape looked like,” said Nick Schmuck, adding though that the technology is improving. Specifically, a method called LiDAR that can map the earth’s topography using pulsed lasers.
“It takes all the trees off and gives you a new map based on the surface. All of the sudden, beach terraces pop out like you wouldn’t believe. And you can just look at the image and say, ‘Oh, there’s an ancient shoreline right here.’ And you can hike right to it. And boom, there’s your 10,000 year old beach with a 10,000 year old site on it.”
Another factor in Southeast Alaska is what one scientist refers to as almost a tectonic seesaw effect. During that glacial maximum, the massive ice sheet that covered the mainland was so heavy that it literally pushed the land down. That caused the outlying islands and land masses further off the mainland to rise up above sea level, like a seesaw.
What this means for Southeast Alaska is that a lot of the oldest evidence of humans is probably either at the top of a mountain or the bottom of the ocean — which is where Kelly Monteleone, an underwater archaeologist with Sealaska Heritage Institute, comes in.
“There’s this huge, vast area that we haven’t explored yet. And so there’s so much we can find,” Monteleone said.
According to Monetleone, her profession is pretty much the same thing as a regular archaeologist. It just involves some extra work.
“Nothing changes between the terrestrial answer and the underwater answer, we just have a much more complicated step every step of the way,” she laughed.
What Monetleone and her team have found on the seafloor, including a fish weir that would have been at sea level more than 10,000 years ago, changes the “when” of coastal migration.
“I see myself as having the resources to help answer the questions of the Indigenous people of Southeast Alaska. So I have the skills as an underwater archaeologist to go out and look in areas to help them learn about their past,” she said.
As Bryn Letham put it, the current people of the coastal First Nations are the descendants of those first post-glacial humans.
Schmuck agreed, saying that in Southeast Alaska, “we’re talking about the ancestors of people who’ve been here for a really long time.”
He acknowledged that archaeology as a profession hasn’t always been a positive force in that regard.
“We don’t want to get too abstract about the people in the past,” he said. “We don’t want to get back into the old faults of archaeology, where we’re just looking at rocks and forgetting to think about people. These are people’s ancestors.”
Letham, Worl, Schmuck, and Monteleone all point out that the Indigenous peoples along the Northwest Coast are strikingly diverse. There are so many languages and cultures in such a condensed area and they are so isolatedly different from each other that it seems like people would’ve had to have been here a lot longer than other parts of the Americas. In other words, it takes a lot of long, sustained time in one place for entire languages and cultures to develop.
On the northwest Pacific coast, there are dozens in close proximity, each distinctly different from the next, which tells anthropologists that people got to Southeast Alaska after the last Ice Age and stayed, splintering off into tribes and isolate cultures over many thousands of uninterrupted years.
These origins are older than people can generally comprehend, predating known forms of agricultural civilization.
“The concept of time at 12,000 years is not a concept that humans can usually digest,” said Moneteleone. “Time immemorial, the beginning of time: 12,000 years ago, 16,000, 20,000 years ago – those are all the beginning of time.”
And while the rest of the world chases after New Mexico’s footprints, Monteleone says that understanding the history of the people of the Northwest Coast is an archaeological field of study that is still in its infancy.
