Dozens of professors among those arrested in campus protests
Scott Glover, Audrey Ash and Bob Ortega, CNN
Sat, May 11, 2024
As police cracked down on anti-war protests on college campuses across the US in recent weeks, among those arrested were a pair of silver-haired 65-year-old professors armed only with their cell phones.
Annelise Orleck was knocked to the ground and restrained with plastic handcuffs at a protest at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. She later complained of whiplash.
Steve Tamari was tackled by officers and taken into custody at a demonstration at Washington University in St. Louis, an attack he said resulted in multiple broken ribs and a broken hand.
Each had been filming the protests in the moments before they were arrested. Both Orleck, who is Jewish, and Tamari, who is Palestinian American, said they were motivated to attend in part by a desire to support student protesters exercising their right to free speech.
Their stories illustrate a facet of the student-led protests that has received comparatively little attention: The role professors have played in the demonstrations, and the response by their administrations and police.
Orleck and Tamari are among at least 50 professors arrested at campus protests across the country, according to a CNN review of police records, court filings, and news reports. (Since April 18, more than 2,400 students have been arrested amid protests on more than 50 campuses.) In some cases, professors said they were actively participating in protests based on their own beliefs. Others said they attended to show support for their students.
In recent years, universities across the US have come under increasing pressure from conservative politicians and donors criticizing them as liberal bastions of “wokeness.” That pressure has heightened following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and the subsequent Israeli war on Hamas. Many conservative politicians and donors have accused campuses of tolerating or abetting antisemitism by allowing protests against the war, even as student protesters accuse the universities of ignoring what they call genocide. While university administrations uniformly say they are trying to allow free speech on campus while maintaining order and keeping students safe, critics say many schools too quickly turned to police action, suspensions, and other disciplinary measures to shut down protests.
At Emory University in Atlanta, an economics professor who attempted to intervene in the arrest of a protester was physically subdued by police when she did not immediately comply with an officer’s command to “get your ass…on the ground.”
In video of the incident, Caroline Fohlin’s glasses fall off as she is forced to the sidewalk and she can be heard telling officers, “You just hit my head on the concrete.” Fohlin was charged with disorderly conduct and simple battery against a police officer.
In New York, a newly retired Japanese history associate professor at Columbia University told the New York Times he had merely been taking photos of police officers assembling before raiding Columbia’s campus when he was arrested. Gregory Pflugfelder told the paper he didn’t comply with officers’ demands he go back into his building, but played no role in the protest.
Dr. Isaac Kamola, the director of the American Association of University Professors’ Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, said professors being hauled off in handcuffs are “the viral moments” that garner attention, but that the threats to academic freedom on college campuses are more nuanced and run much deeper.
Faculty of Columbia University link arms to protect students inside threatened with suspension if they refused to voluntarily dismantle the pro-Palestine encampment on campus. - Alex Kent/Getty Images
“You don’t see the moments that are more subtle, of faculty being removed from teaching, being sanctioned without due process,” he said. There’s a chilling effect where faculty are not sure what they can and can’t say. The problem is exacerbated, he said, by the increasing number of non-tenured faculty members who “feel incredibly vulnerable” about taking a public stance on a controversial issue such as the war in Gaza.
Increasingly, Kamola said, university administrators are calling in law enforcement to sort out what should be internal debates about the parameters of academic freedom.
“There’s been a normalization of having cops on campus,” he said.
Officials from several universities where professors were arrested in connection with recent protests declined to comment on individual cases. Broadly speaking, officials have said they are committed to free speech on campus, but that there are limits when it comes to safety and when it encroaches on the rights of other members of the campus community.
At Emory, which said May 6 it would move its commencement ceremonies off campus, President Gregory Fenves wrote to faculty members and students promising to review the events of April 25, when police removed a protest encampment. Fenves said the review would include reexamining “how Emory engages external law enforcement agencies.” But at the same time, he said that while Emory supports students and faculty in expressing their views peacefully, “We will not tolerate conduct that undermines those efforts.”
Some faculties have pushed back against leadership. On Wednesday, the University of Southern California’s faculty senate voted 21-7 to censure USC President Carol Folt and Provost Andrew Guzman over the removal of a protest encampment from campus and the use of Los Angeles police to arrest protesters, among other issues. On April 26, Columbia University’s senate stopped short of censuring President Minouche Shafik, but passed a resolution saying her administration had undermined academic freedom and violated due-process rights in calling in police and shutting down protests on that campus. On April 29 a group of faculty members donned yellow safety vests and linked arms to block the entrance to the students’ encampment on campus. Joseph Howley, an associate professor of Classics, said they did so to de-escalate tensions and to keep students safe “from troublemakers and police.”
In Los Angeles, associate professor Graeme Blair told CNN he was among “a line of 15 faculty members” at UCLA who joined a demonstration to support their students’ rights to protest. All the professors, Blair said, were “expecting to get arrested.” Though Blair himself was not arrested, at least four other UCLA professors were that day.
‘Got grandma’
Orleck, the Dartmouth professor arrested earlier this month, said she was stunned to see the large police presence on campus on the evening of May 1.
“It was like it was an armed invasion,” Orleck, who is Jewish, recalled in a telephone interview with CNN. She described “this line of riot cops with helmets and batons,” and said she’d “never seen anything like it” in her more than three decades as a professor.
Orleck had attended what she described as a small, peaceful protest earlier in the day over a labor dispute that had been sponsored by the faculty and Students for Justice in Palestine at Dartmouth. But after leaving for dinner, a colleague reached out to let her know things had grown more tense.
When she returned to the campus’ College Green that evening at about 8:30 p.m., she was joined by several other older women faculty. She said they believed police would never hurt them, and that they could safeguard student protesters by standing between them and the officers.
“And boy was I naive,” she said. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
Video captured at the event shows Orleck approaching police officers, saying “leave our students alone, they’re not criminals!” Orleck is then dragged beyond the police line and forced to the ground. She was zip-tied and arrested with 89 other people, including one other professor.
In a letter addressed to the Dartmouth community, university president Sian Leah Beilock stood by her decision to involve the Hanover Police Department, but wrote that she was “sorry for the harm this impossible decision has caused.”
In an Instagram post three days after the protest, Orleck wrote that officers called out “got grandma” as she was taken into custody.
Though Orleck did not consider herself an active participant in the protest, she said she shared the demonstrators’ concerns about the plight of Palestinians in the ongoing war. She was adamant that the entire demonstration was peaceful.
Annelise Orleck is seen confronting police during a protest at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire on May 1, 2024. - WMUR
She said the student protesters were respectful and never engaged in antisemitic comments. She told CNN she was glad she was there, saying that she hoped her story brought attention to how violent the police response was to a peaceful demonstration of students. “I want to say some of my colleagues, particularly at Emory and Washington University, were treated much more brutally. I mean, really, really brutally. Yeah, I have – I have injuries, but, you know, mine will heal.”
One of the colleagues Orleck was referring to was Tamari, a Palestinian-American professor who was arrested April 27 during a protest at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Tamari did not respond to an interview request from CNN. His wife said in a post on X that he was not granting media interviews and that “we are asking for time to rest and heal.” Tamari, however, described his ordeal in a detailed statement his wife also posted on X.
The professor, who teaches at a university just across the state line from Missouri in Illinois, said he joined the April 27 protest at Washington University in hopes of both ending the war in Gaza and to “support and protect the students,” according to the statement.
Once there, he wrote, he was “body slammed and crushed by the weight of several St. Louis County police officers,” resulting in “multiple broken ribs and a broken hand.”
He assailed Washington University for paying “lip service” to free speech, “while they trample anything that might rattle the military-industrial complex to which they are so beholden.”
Police arrest pro-Palestinian protesters attempting to camp on Washington University's campus, Saturday, April 27, 2024, in St. Louis, Mo. - Christine Tannous/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/AP
Protesters that day had been demanding that the university divest from Israel and cut ties with the Boeing Company, a defense contractor that has provided bombs used by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza.
The university’s chancellor, Andrew Martin, responded to queries from the student newspaper about divestment with the single word, “No,” in an interview published March 6. The university hasn’t commented publicly on the demands since then.
‘Don’t hurt him’
As police swarmed Tamari that afternoon, a lecturer at Washington University in St. Louis, recorded the confrontation with his phone.
“Don’t hurt him,” Michael Allen, who teaches American cultural studies, can be heard yelling.
“They’re being extra brutal today out here,” Allen says aloud to himself. He also chided police with chants of “fascists go home,” and “shame on you,” as he continued to document the scene.
As Allen followed one zip-tied detainee being led toward a police van, a pair of officers told him to stay back.
“Alright, I’ll stay back,” Allen said, adding, “I’m a faculty member. I’m concerned about my students getting arrested.”
Seconds later, Allen himself was taken into custody. He told CNN he was following the officers’ orders to back up when he bumped into two other officers and was immediately arrested. The encounter was partially captured as his phone fell to the ground.
Allen said he received a letter from university officials two days later outlining various allegations against him and placing him on paid administrative leave, effective immediately. According to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by CNN, Allen was summarily “relieved of all job duties” and “prohibited from being on any part of the University campus.” He was even barred from meeting with students off campus, the letter states.
Among the allegations was that he helped set up an encampment on university grounds and ignored “multiple warnings” by police to disperse, resulting in his arrest for trespass. He denied both allegations in an interview with CNN.
Steve Tamari is seen being taken into custody during a demonstration at Washington University in St. Louis. - Courtesy Michael Allen
“I not only had no involvement in creating the encampment,” he said, “I never set foot in the encampment.”
As for trespassing, Allen said, the orders to disperse given by the police were directed at people who did not have university IDs. Since he had one, he said, he did not believe the order pertained to him.
Allen said he felt blindsided and “completely unsupported” by the university.
“There was no attempt to even hear my side before writing that letter,” he said.
Chancellor Martin, who this semester co-taught a course on free speech at the university, issued a statement May 3 saying Washington University in St. Louis took the steps it “felt necessary to keep our campus safe” and “will not comment publicly about any of the specifics” of its discipline of students, staff or faculty.
Some professors have been arrested willingly. Bikrum Gill and Desirée Poets, both assistant professors at Virginia Tech, were among at least five faculty members supporting the student encampment on their campus who opted not to leave when police warned students the night of April 28 to clear out or face arrest.
“As faculty, what do you do? We decided to stay with them so they wouldn’t be on their own at that moment,” said Poets.
Both she and Gill have been teaching at Virginia Tech since the fall of 2018 and will come up for tenure soon. But they agreed they couldn’t let that affect their support for the protests.
“Students see what’s happening in Gaza and they’re saying we don’t want to normalize this. That informs us,” Gill told CNN. “If the price of tenure is to stay silent on Gaza, it’s not worth it.”
Scott Glover, Audrey Ash and Bob Ortega, CNN
Sat, May 11, 2024
As police cracked down on anti-war protests on college campuses across the US in recent weeks, among those arrested were a pair of silver-haired 65-year-old professors armed only with their cell phones.
Annelise Orleck was knocked to the ground and restrained with plastic handcuffs at a protest at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire. She later complained of whiplash.
Steve Tamari was tackled by officers and taken into custody at a demonstration at Washington University in St. Louis, an attack he said resulted in multiple broken ribs and a broken hand.
Each had been filming the protests in the moments before they were arrested. Both Orleck, who is Jewish, and Tamari, who is Palestinian American, said they were motivated to attend in part by a desire to support student protesters exercising their right to free speech.
Their stories illustrate a facet of the student-led protests that has received comparatively little attention: The role professors have played in the demonstrations, and the response by their administrations and police.
Orleck and Tamari are among at least 50 professors arrested at campus protests across the country, according to a CNN review of police records, court filings, and news reports. (Since April 18, more than 2,400 students have been arrested amid protests on more than 50 campuses.) In some cases, professors said they were actively participating in protests based on their own beliefs. Others said they attended to show support for their students.
In recent years, universities across the US have come under increasing pressure from conservative politicians and donors criticizing them as liberal bastions of “wokeness.” That pressure has heightened following the October 7 Hamas attack on Israeli civilians and the subsequent Israeli war on Hamas. Many conservative politicians and donors have accused campuses of tolerating or abetting antisemitism by allowing protests against the war, even as student protesters accuse the universities of ignoring what they call genocide. While university administrations uniformly say they are trying to allow free speech on campus while maintaining order and keeping students safe, critics say many schools too quickly turned to police action, suspensions, and other disciplinary measures to shut down protests.
At Emory University in Atlanta, an economics professor who attempted to intervene in the arrest of a protester was physically subdued by police when she did not immediately comply with an officer’s command to “get your ass…on the ground.”
In video of the incident, Caroline Fohlin’s glasses fall off as she is forced to the sidewalk and she can be heard telling officers, “You just hit my head on the concrete.” Fohlin was charged with disorderly conduct and simple battery against a police officer.
In New York, a newly retired Japanese history associate professor at Columbia University told the New York Times he had merely been taking photos of police officers assembling before raiding Columbia’s campus when he was arrested. Gregory Pflugfelder told the paper he didn’t comply with officers’ demands he go back into his building, but played no role in the protest.
Dr. Isaac Kamola, the director of the American Association of University Professors’ Center for the Defense of Academic Freedom, said professors being hauled off in handcuffs are “the viral moments” that garner attention, but that the threats to academic freedom on college campuses are more nuanced and run much deeper.
Faculty of Columbia University link arms to protect students inside threatened with suspension if they refused to voluntarily dismantle the pro-Palestine encampment on campus. - Alex Kent/Getty Images
“You don’t see the moments that are more subtle, of faculty being removed from teaching, being sanctioned without due process,” he said. There’s a chilling effect where faculty are not sure what they can and can’t say. The problem is exacerbated, he said, by the increasing number of non-tenured faculty members who “feel incredibly vulnerable” about taking a public stance on a controversial issue such as the war in Gaza.
Increasingly, Kamola said, university administrators are calling in law enforcement to sort out what should be internal debates about the parameters of academic freedom.
“There’s been a normalization of having cops on campus,” he said.
Officials from several universities where professors were arrested in connection with recent protests declined to comment on individual cases. Broadly speaking, officials have said they are committed to free speech on campus, but that there are limits when it comes to safety and when it encroaches on the rights of other members of the campus community.
At Emory, which said May 6 it would move its commencement ceremonies off campus, President Gregory Fenves wrote to faculty members and students promising to review the events of April 25, when police removed a protest encampment. Fenves said the review would include reexamining “how Emory engages external law enforcement agencies.” But at the same time, he said that while Emory supports students and faculty in expressing their views peacefully, “We will not tolerate conduct that undermines those efforts.”
Some faculties have pushed back against leadership. On Wednesday, the University of Southern California’s faculty senate voted 21-7 to censure USC President Carol Folt and Provost Andrew Guzman over the removal of a protest encampment from campus and the use of Los Angeles police to arrest protesters, among other issues. On April 26, Columbia University’s senate stopped short of censuring President Minouche Shafik, but passed a resolution saying her administration had undermined academic freedom and violated due-process rights in calling in police and shutting down protests on that campus. On April 29 a group of faculty members donned yellow safety vests and linked arms to block the entrance to the students’ encampment on campus. Joseph Howley, an associate professor of Classics, said they did so to de-escalate tensions and to keep students safe “from troublemakers and police.”
In Los Angeles, associate professor Graeme Blair told CNN he was among “a line of 15 faculty members” at UCLA who joined a demonstration to support their students’ rights to protest. All the professors, Blair said, were “expecting to get arrested.” Though Blair himself was not arrested, at least four other UCLA professors were that day.
‘Got grandma’
Orleck, the Dartmouth professor arrested earlier this month, said she was stunned to see the large police presence on campus on the evening of May 1.
“It was like it was an armed invasion,” Orleck, who is Jewish, recalled in a telephone interview with CNN. She described “this line of riot cops with helmets and batons,” and said she’d “never seen anything like it” in her more than three decades as a professor.
Orleck had attended what she described as a small, peaceful protest earlier in the day over a labor dispute that had been sponsored by the faculty and Students for Justice in Palestine at Dartmouth. But after leaving for dinner, a colleague reached out to let her know things had grown more tense.
When she returned to the campus’ College Green that evening at about 8:30 p.m., she was joined by several other older women faculty. She said they believed police would never hurt them, and that they could safeguard student protesters by standing between them and the officers.
“And boy was I naive,” she said. “I won’t make that mistake again.”
Video captured at the event shows Orleck approaching police officers, saying “leave our students alone, they’re not criminals!” Orleck is then dragged beyond the police line and forced to the ground. She was zip-tied and arrested with 89 other people, including one other professor.
In a letter addressed to the Dartmouth community, university president Sian Leah Beilock stood by her decision to involve the Hanover Police Department, but wrote that she was “sorry for the harm this impossible decision has caused.”
In an Instagram post three days after the protest, Orleck wrote that officers called out “got grandma” as she was taken into custody.
Though Orleck did not consider herself an active participant in the protest, she said she shared the demonstrators’ concerns about the plight of Palestinians in the ongoing war. She was adamant that the entire demonstration was peaceful.
Annelise Orleck is seen confronting police during a protest at Dartmouth College in New Hampshire on May 1, 2024. - WMUR
She said the student protesters were respectful and never engaged in antisemitic comments. She told CNN she was glad she was there, saying that she hoped her story brought attention to how violent the police response was to a peaceful demonstration of students. “I want to say some of my colleagues, particularly at Emory and Washington University, were treated much more brutally. I mean, really, really brutally. Yeah, I have – I have injuries, but, you know, mine will heal.”
One of the colleagues Orleck was referring to was Tamari, a Palestinian-American professor who was arrested April 27 during a protest at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Tamari did not respond to an interview request from CNN. His wife said in a post on X that he was not granting media interviews and that “we are asking for time to rest and heal.” Tamari, however, described his ordeal in a detailed statement his wife also posted on X.
The professor, who teaches at a university just across the state line from Missouri in Illinois, said he joined the April 27 protest at Washington University in hopes of both ending the war in Gaza and to “support and protect the students,” according to the statement.
Once there, he wrote, he was “body slammed and crushed by the weight of several St. Louis County police officers,” resulting in “multiple broken ribs and a broken hand.”
He assailed Washington University for paying “lip service” to free speech, “while they trample anything that might rattle the military-industrial complex to which they are so beholden.”
Police arrest pro-Palestinian protesters attempting to camp on Washington University's campus, Saturday, April 27, 2024, in St. Louis, Mo. - Christine Tannous/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/AP
Protesters that day had been demanding that the university divest from Israel and cut ties with the Boeing Company, a defense contractor that has provided bombs used by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza.
The university’s chancellor, Andrew Martin, responded to queries from the student newspaper about divestment with the single word, “No,” in an interview published March 6. The university hasn’t commented publicly on the demands since then.
‘Don’t hurt him’
As police swarmed Tamari that afternoon, a lecturer at Washington University in St. Louis, recorded the confrontation with his phone.
“Don’t hurt him,” Michael Allen, who teaches American cultural studies, can be heard yelling.
“They’re being extra brutal today out here,” Allen says aloud to himself. He also chided police with chants of “fascists go home,” and “shame on you,” as he continued to document the scene.
As Allen followed one zip-tied detainee being led toward a police van, a pair of officers told him to stay back.
“Alright, I’ll stay back,” Allen said, adding, “I’m a faculty member. I’m concerned about my students getting arrested.”
Seconds later, Allen himself was taken into custody. He told CNN he was following the officers’ orders to back up when he bumped into two other officers and was immediately arrested. The encounter was partially captured as his phone fell to the ground.
Allen said he received a letter from university officials two days later outlining various allegations against him and placing him on paid administrative leave, effective immediately. According to the letter, a copy of which was obtained by CNN, Allen was summarily “relieved of all job duties” and “prohibited from being on any part of the University campus.” He was even barred from meeting with students off campus, the letter states.
Among the allegations was that he helped set up an encampment on university grounds and ignored “multiple warnings” by police to disperse, resulting in his arrest for trespass. He denied both allegations in an interview with CNN.
Steve Tamari is seen being taken into custody during a demonstration at Washington University in St. Louis. - Courtesy Michael Allen
“I not only had no involvement in creating the encampment,” he said, “I never set foot in the encampment.”
As for trespassing, Allen said, the orders to disperse given by the police were directed at people who did not have university IDs. Since he had one, he said, he did not believe the order pertained to him.
Allen said he felt blindsided and “completely unsupported” by the university.
“There was no attempt to even hear my side before writing that letter,” he said.
Chancellor Martin, who this semester co-taught a course on free speech at the university, issued a statement May 3 saying Washington University in St. Louis took the steps it “felt necessary to keep our campus safe” and “will not comment publicly about any of the specifics” of its discipline of students, staff or faculty.
Some professors have been arrested willingly. Bikrum Gill and Desirée Poets, both assistant professors at Virginia Tech, were among at least five faculty members supporting the student encampment on their campus who opted not to leave when police warned students the night of April 28 to clear out or face arrest.
“As faculty, what do you do? We decided to stay with them so they wouldn’t be on their own at that moment,” said Poets.
Both she and Gill have been teaching at Virginia Tech since the fall of 2018 and will come up for tenure soon. But they agreed they couldn’t let that affect their support for the protests.
“Students see what’s happening in Gaza and they’re saying we don’t want to normalize this. That informs us,” Gill told CNN. “If the price of tenure is to stay silent on Gaza, it’s not worth it.”
UCLA chancellor faces growing faculty criticism, no-confidence vote, after weeks of turmoil
Teresa Watanabe, Ashley Ahn
Sat, May 11, 2024
Police clash with pro-Palestinian protesters last week after an order to disperse was given at UCLA. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block is facing faculty calls for his resignation and motions of no confidence and censure as criticism mounts against his leadership in the wake of a violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters and a sweeping police takedown of their encampment that resulted in more than 200 arrests last week.
Representatives of the 3,800-member UCLA Academic Senate — made up of tenured and tenure-track faculty — are preparing to vote on separate motions for censure and no-confidence, both stating that Block "failed to ensure the safety of our students and grievously mishandled the events of last week."
The vote was scheduled for Friday but has been postponed to next week.
The vote has no legal power to force action, but it marks a grave moment for Block. The leader of the nation's top public research university is completing the final months of his 17-year tenure, after steering the Westwood campus through a financial crisis and global pandemic to reach new heights by expanding enrollment, diversity, philanthropy and research funding. Last year, Block announced he planned to step down on July 31 and return to faculty research.
Other university leaders also have been criticized for their handling of campus protests, sparked last October when Hamas militants launched a deadly surprise attack on Israel and Israel retaliated with a massive bombardment of Gaza. Earlier this week, USC's Academic Senate voted to censure the university’s president, Carol Folt, and provost, Andrew Guzman, after the widely criticized decision to cancel the valedictorian's commencement speech due to unspecified "threats" and controversy over an aggressive police takedown of a pro-Palestinian encampment.
Read more: USC's faculty senate censures President Carol Folt and provost over commencement
UCLA declined to comment on the upcoming faculty vote.
Three weeks of turmoil at UCLA started April 25, when students set up an encampment in the campus' grassy quad to express solidarity with Palestinians, condemn Israel's actions in Gaza and demand that UCLA divest from firms that make and deliver weapons and services to Israel. The encampment was initially free of violence, with protesters engaged in teach-ins, art builds, yoga and other activities.
“Many of us have personally witnessed the vibrant, respectful and highly disciplined learning [at the encampment],” Chicano Studies department chair Charlene Villaseñor Black said. “And university administration have gotten it wrong every time.”
But UCLA Police Chief John Thomas said he advised campus leadership against allowing the encampment, as it violated rules against overnight camping. Inna Faliks, a professor of piano, said she and some other Jewish campus members felt targeted by protest chants, graffiti of expletives against Jews and blocked access to public walkways and buildings.
UCLA declared the encampment unlawful on April 30. Later that night, a violent mob attacked the encampment and students were left to fend for themselves against beatings, pepper spray and fireworks for three hours. Law enforcement in riot gear moved in during the early morning of May 1, but it took hours to quell the violence. Police later took down the encampment and arrested more than 200 people.
Read more: 'Shut it down!' How group chats, rumors and fear sparked a night of violence at UCLA
Since then, a number of people have been blamed for the debacle.
Before the Academic Senate meeting Friday, more than 900 faculty and staff members throughout the University of California system issued a list of demands. They included a call for Block's resignation; amnesty for students, staff and faculty who participated in the encampment and peaceful protests; university disclosure of all investments and divestment from military weapon production companies.
“Following the violent and aggressive police sweep of the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on May 2, 2024, resulting in more than 200 students, faculty, and staff arrested while peacefully protesting, it has become obvious that Chancellor Block has failed our university,” the demand letter said.
Faculty who signed the letter represented various departments including those of mathematics, American Indian Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Asian American Studies, history, Chicana/o and Central American Studies, African American Studies, and anthropology.
They spoke out about their demands Thursday, joined by a group of volunteer medics — representing about 100 UCLA medical students, nurses, residents and emergency medical technicians — who raised concerns regarding police brutality and the absence of medical help from the university after the attack. They said more than 150 students were attacked with pepper spray and bear mace, and at least 25 students were hospitalized for head trauma, fractures and severe lacerations.
"UCLA Chancellor Gene Block’s and UC President Michael Drake’s statements minimize the severity of both the physical and psychological impact of their actions while attempting to justify the force they authorized against their students," a medic said in a statement.
Read more: Police report no serious injuries. But scenes from inside UCLA camp, protesters tell a different story
When police took down the encampment, medics said, more than a dozen students were evaluated for rubber bullet injuries and others showed contusions and musculoskeletal injuries.
"We strongly feel that Chancellor Block endangered the lives of our students, faculty and staff," said Michael Chwe, a political science professor who helped organize the demand letter.
Judea Pearl, a computer science professor, said Drake was ultimately responsible for the campus security failures. He said Block should not be blamed for failing to bring in a stronger police presence because he was a "victim" of UC systemwide guidelines that direct campuses to rely first on communication with protesters and bring in law enforcement as a last resort.
"He was trying to protect the campus but had to follow the directive ... not to bring in police," Pearl said.
Another source, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said Block was in an "impossible situation."
"It's impossible to square all of the circles of adhering to UC policy, shared governance with faculty and bitterly competing agendas still playing out nationwide," the source said. "To his credit, he's taking swift action on everything that's in his control."
Other critics have blamed Thomas, the police chief. Three sources not authorized to speak publicly told The Times that campus leadership, even before the mob attack, had wanted to beef up security and authorized Thomas to bring in external law enforcement to assist UCLA police and private security with as much overtime pay as needed. But he failed to do so, they said, and also did not provide a security plan to campus leadership despite multiple requests.
Others said that Administrative Vice Chancellor Michael Beck, who oversaw the police department and Office of Emergency Management at the time of the mob attack, should step aside. Previous lapses are now being scrutinized, including his responsibility for not stopping the LAPD from using the UCLA-leased Jackie Robinson Stadium as a staging area for action against Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020 — which Block, Beck and others called a mistake and a violation of university values. Beck's duties also include management of Bruin Woods, the university's Lake Arrowhead facility, where two counselors alleged they were hazed and sexually assaulted by other counselors in 2022.
Beck did not respond to requests for comment.
Read more: 'Are you a Zionist?' Checkpoints at UCLA encampment provoked fear, debate among Jews
There is much debate on campus leading up to the Academic Senate vote.
Pearl said a censure and no-confidence vote would send the wrong message to Block's successor to refrain from strong leadership and instead pander to campus political sentiments, which he said would represent a "caving in" to demands to cut business and academic ties with Israel. Chwe, however, said it would signify faculty's strong views that the chancellor must be held responsible for student safety.
Drake has announced an external investigation into UCLA's response, which Block says he welcomes as he conducts his own internal review. Drake has helped guide campus protest responses and was in the UCLA command center as law enforcement began taking down the encampment last week.
UCLA also has moved swiftly to improve security by creating a new chief safety officer position to oversee campus security operations, including the campus police department. Rick Braziel, a former Sacramento police chief who has reviewed law enforcement responses in high-profile cases across the country, is leading the new Office of Campus Safety as associate vice chancellor.
Some critics, however, said the move would further "militarize" the campus. UCLA deployed a larger law enforcement presence earlier this week, when campus police arrested 44 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in a parking structure before a planned demonstration. Police said they carried equipment that could be “used to unlawfully enter and barricade a building.” Some students decried the arrests as harassment and intimidation. Classes were moved online for the rest of the week as a security precaution.
Read more: UCLA alleges protesters arrested Monday had tools to barricade buildings
Differing opinions among faculty over the university’s response to student protests have created small rifts within departments, according to multiple faculty members.
Chwe said they are working to combat misinformation being spread to faculty members surrounding recent events and continue to hold conversations with their colleagues.
“It’s not only about dialogue with the university but also with our colleagues,” he said.
Caroline Luce, a UCLA historian and member of University Council-American Federation of Teachers, which represents more than 3,000 non-senate faculty and several hundred professional librarians, called the atmosphere for UCLA faculty, particularly those not tenured like lecturers, “dicey with lots of risk.”
“There are reputations and interpersonal dynamics in departments that they have to navigate,” she said.
John Branstetter, a UCLA lecturer in political science, was one of about 10 faculty arrested after police took down the encampment. He said the university’s crackdown on free speech on campus has not only made him fear for his students’ safety but for his own.
“I do feel threatened by the general atmosphere that the administration is fostering through this continuing quasi-criminalization of free speech on campus, so I don’t know if they will try to get rid of me or the protections I have will be abided by,” he said.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
New School Faculty Set Up an Encampment in Solidarity With Student Protesters
Rosemary Feitelberg
Thu, May 9, 2024
Less than a week after pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested at The New School’s campus, a faculty-led encampment has been set up in solidarity of their efforts.
The majority of last week’s protesters, who were organized by The New School’s Students for Justice in Palestine (TNS SJP), were released from police custody without any charges. They were said to have been first warned by police officers that they could leave the campus before any arrests were made.
Like TNS SJP, the faculty protesters are calling on The New School to divest from companies that had ties to Israel. Organizers spread the word about the new encampment, which they said is composed of autonomous faculty, Wednesday afternoon in a press release.
A media request sent to the group inquiring about the number of people who are part of the encampment was unreturned.
Asked for comment Wednesday, representatives from The New School shared a statement to the school community from interim president Donna Shalala that highlighted how criminal charges against the student protesters would not be pursued and that every effort would be made to ensure conduct reviews for the student protesters would be expedited. She also said a historical view of The New School’s divestments would be shared. Shalala said that the university supports the NewSWU’s right to organize and has repeatedly told them that they can do so now. “We maintain our unshakable commitment to free speed and peaceful demonstration,” Shalala said.
The faculty-led encampment is said to be located in The New School’s University Center, which is where TNS SJP had previously established one. There also had been another group of student protesters in the lobby of a residence hall on the lower Fifth Avenue campus.
Organizers for the faculty-based protest said that the action taken to set up a new encampment followed “the mass arrests and violence that took place last week across New York City campuses, when university leadership called in the NYPD to sweep and shutter the solidarity encampments.” In their press material, they cited the more than 2,200 arrests of protesters that have been made in recent weeks on college campuses. That included the 282 protesters at Columbia University and at the City University of New York that were detained by police, as well as 56 other student protesters at The New School and New York University.
NYPD deputy commissioner of operations Kaz Daughtry posted a detailed account of the NYPD’s handling of The New School situation, including a video of police officers on the scene and an image of The New School’s request to the NYPD seeking assistance and highlighting why.
As protests, and in some instances police action, continue at other campuses nationwide like the University of Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there were more arrests of protesters in New York City earlier this week. Forty-six protesters were taken into police custody at the Fashion Institute of Technology Tuesday afternoon.
Supporters of the the newly established faculty-led initiative at The New School, which is being called the Refaat Alareer Faculty Solidarity Encampment, alleged that Shalala’s decision to clear student protesters last week “destroyed what many experienced to be a site of learning political commitment and powerful solidarity with the Palestinian people facing genocide.”
In a statement released after the student protesters’ arrests, Shalala said that some of the student protesters had blocked the entrance to Kerrey Hall, which houses 600 residents. By her account, after hours of negotiations with representatives of the student protesters, “they would not budge.” She also claimed that three offers for a meeting between some of the student protesters and representatives from the school’s investment committee was declined. She also claimed that student protesters had “escalated the situation and set up a second encampment.”
The faculty-led initiative is calling on The New School’s investment committee and The New School’s board of trustees “to vote immediately to divest from companies that benefit directly or indirectly from the genocide of the occupation of Palestine.” TNS SJP claimed that the university is invested in 65 funds that includes 13 companies with ties to Israel including Google, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard and Boeing among others.
The faculty-led encampment’s organizers said the group also is “standing with students across the city and the country” and demand that all charges against arrestees be dropped, all disciplinary actions facing participants in student-led encampments be revoked, and that police be “permanently kept off campus.”
Cornell University President Martha Pollack resigns amid widespread campus turmoil
Simon Druker
Fri, May 10, 2024
After a tumultuous last six months, Cornell University President Martha Pollack is resigning, ending a 7-year tenure at the Ivy League institution, as pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations have taken hold on campuses (Columbia University pictured) across the United States. File Pool photo by Mary Altaffer/UPI
May 10 (UPI) -- Cornell University President Martha Pollack announced she plans to resign, ending a 7-year tenure at the Ivy League institution.
Pollack, 65, confirmed that her last official day on the job will be June 30, in an open letter published Friday on the university's website.
"It is only after extensive reflection that I have determined that this is the right decision," Pollack wrote in the letter, adding she initially made the decision last December but pushed pause because of "events on our and/or on other campuses."
"But continued delay is not in the university's best interests, both because of the need to have sufficient time for a smooth transition before the start of the coming academic year, and because I do not want my announcement to interfere with the celebration of our newest graduates at Commencement in just a few weeks," she wrote.
She also downplayed any suggestion of being forced out.
"I understand that there will be lots of speculation about my decision, so let me be as clear as I can: This decision is mine and mine alone," Pollack wrote in the letter.
"After seven fruitful and gratifying years as Cornell's president -- and after a career in research and academia spanning five decades -- I'm ready for a new chapter in my life."
Pollack did not directly mention any incidents involving the university, but it was one of several placed on a list of institutions being investigated by the Department of Education for Discrimination.
In November, a Cornell student was arrested for posting anti-Semitic threats against the Ivy League school's Jewish community. Federal officials later charged the 21-year-old man with "posting threats to kill or injure another using interstate communications."
Cornell, along with fellow Ivy League institutions Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, are being investigated after the department announced in November it was looking into five complaints alleging anti-Semitic harassment and two alleging anti-Muslim harassment.
Several American universities have canceled or toned down graduations as a result, to avoid potential unrest.
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned from her post a month later amid the fallout and harsh criticism.
Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations have taken hold on campuses across the United States, leading different reactions from different institutions.
"There is so much more to Cornell than the current turmoil taking place at universities across the country right now, and I hope we do not lose sight of that," Pollack wrote.
Pollack's resignation comes after University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned in December following testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives on responding to anti-Semitism on university campuses. Harvard University President Claudine Gay who also testified at that hearing and faced accusations of plagiarism resigned in January.
"There will be plenty more to do over the coming months and years. Higher education has come under attack from many quarters, and our core values have faced enormous pressure," Pollack wrote.
"Indeed, if I have one piece of advice for the Cornell community going forward, it is this: We must develop more capacity to seek out different perspectives and be willing to listen to those with whom we differ, doing so with intellectual curiosity and an open mind; at the same time, we must always consider the impact of what we say to one another; and we must thoughtfully engage in debate."
Arizona State University dismisses scholar after video shows him verbally attacking a woman in a hijab
Amanda Musa and Kelly McCleary, CNN
Thu, May 9, 2024
A video showing a confrontation between a man and a woman wearing a hijab during a pro-Israel rally at Arizona State University is further highlighting the roiling tensions on college campuses across the US over the Israel-Hamas war and a steep increase in reported antisemitic and anti-Muslim incidents. Here are the latest developments:
Arizona State University investigation: A scholar at ASU’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership will not return to teach at the university after a video under investigation by university officials shows him confronting and cursing at a woman wearing a hijab during a pro-Israel rally on campus, ASU announced Thursday. “He is no longer permitted to be on campus and will never teach here again,” ASU President Michael Crow said in a statement to CNN regarding Jonathan Yudelman, who the university had placed on leave following the May 5 incident.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology protesters arrested: At least nine pro-Palestinian student protesters were arrested Thursday afternoon on MIT’s campus, according to Francesca Riccio-Ackerman, a spokesperson for MIT Scientists Against Genocide Encampment. This marks the first time demonstrators have been detained on MIT’s campus in connection to the pro-Palestine protests, according to the group. Videos provided to CNN by the Boston Party for Socialism and Liberation show protesters being detained and hauled out of the crowd. In another video, a protester can be seen being thrown on the ground by an officer attempting to remove people from the entrance to the garage. MIT on Monday ordered demonstrators to peacefully clear an encampment or face disciplinary action after efforts to reach an agreement broke down. By Wednesday, 23 students were suspended, with some receiving eviction notices from MIT, according to Riccio-Ackerman. CNN has reached out to MIT for comment on the suspensions and eviction notices.
More than 800 UCLA faculty and staff call for chancellor’s resignation: Hundreds of University of California Los Angeles faculty and staff signed a letter calling for the immediate resignation of Chancellor Gene Block, saying those involved in recent protests on campus have been “wronged” by the school’s administration, the group announced Thursday. The group is calling for “legal and academic amnesty” for students, faculty and staff who were arrested during protests on campus, Matt Barreto, a professor of Chicano studies and political science, said at a Thursday news conference. CNN has reached out to Block for comment. The letter also calls for a vote of no confidence from the UCLA academic senate and the union representing librarians and non-senate faculty throughout the University of California system. “We condemn the UCLA administration for enabling a terrorizing Zionist attack and orchestrating a violent police offensive against its students,” said a member of a group of medics who provided medical support to protesters during demonstrations.
Pennsylvania governor calls for UPenn to disband encampment: The University of Pennsylvania needs to disband the growing pro-Palestinian protest encampment on its campus that “has gotten even more unstable and out of control,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said Thursday. “It is past time for the university to act, to address this, to disband the encampment and to restore order and safety on campus,” Shapiro said at an unrelated event. After a third round of negotiations did not result in an agreement on Tuesday, protesters set up more tents in the center of UPenn’s College Green Wednesday evening. The university confirmed to CNN on Thursday that it issued “mandatory temporary leaves of absence for six students” involved with the encampment. The students were informed they “may not enter academic buildings, be present on campus and participate in university programming – including classes and graduation-related events,” according to a statement posted to the protesters’ “UP Against the Occupation” Instagram account.
No criminal charges for The New School protesters: The New School university in New York won’t pursue criminal charges against student protestors who were arrested on May 3, and the university has asked the district attorney to drop all charges, according to interim president Donna E. Shalala. She called the recent events on campus “difficult and upsetting” in a message to the university community, adding “there are many things that we will want to work on together in the days ahead.” The university is working to expedite conduct reviews for student protestors, according to Shalala, and also expects to soon announce “a significant educational effort about investment principles and the history of divestment at The New School.”
University of Southern California officials censured: USC’s Academic Senate voted 21-7 Wednesday to censure the university’s president and provost over their recent decisions to remove pro-Palestinian protesters from campus and change graduation plans, according to the student-led USC Annenberg Media. The resolution calls for a task force to investigate administrative decisions and provide a public report.
Hundreds of Columbia University students sign letter addressing tension on campus: The letter, titled “In Our Name: A Message from Jewish Students at Columbia University,” calls out reported antisemitic incidents on campus that have “forced us into our activism and forced us to publicly defend our Jewish identities.” Columbia has been the focal point of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses and more than 100 people were arrested last week after barricading themselves in the university’s Hamilton Hall.
Emory undergraduate students vote no-confidence in school president: A little more than 40% of undergraduates at the university participated in the vote against university president Gregory L. Fenves, the Emory Student Government Association said, with 73% voting in favor of the referendum. The vote came less than a week after Emory’s College of Arts and Sciences faculty senate overwhelmingly approved a vote of no confidence against Fenves. The votes are a symbolic condemnation of the university’s choice to call in outside law enforcement officers who arrested students and faculty during a pro-Palestinian protest on campus on April 25. The vote results may now go to the Board of Trustees, who would have the discretion to remove Fenves. “While we take any concerns expressed by members of our community seriously, Emory community members are sharing a wide range of perspectives that are not reflected in the motion passed by SGA,” Emory spokesperson Laura Diamond told CNN.
Dozens arrested at George Washington University: More than 30 protesters were arrested at or near George Washington University early Wednesday as the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, worked to clear a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus, officials said. Encampments were also cleared in recent days at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
House lawmakers question liberal cities’ school officials over antisemitism: School officials from New York City; Berkeley, California; and Montgomery County, Maryland, were questioned Wednesday over their response to alleged antisemitic incidents by members of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education. The session marked the first such congressional hearing to focus on K-12 schools.
Video of now-ousted scholar prompts university investigation
The video that led to postdoctoral research scholar Jonathan Yudelman’s dismissal and sparked an investigation at Arizona State was recorded Sunday during a pro-Israel rally on the school’s campus in Tempe, according to CNN affiliate KPNX.
The 58-second video shows a postdoctoral research scholar, Jonathan Yudelman, continually moving toward a woman in a hijab as she tries to move away from him.
“You’re disrespecting my religious boundaries,” the woman can be heard saying. She has not been identified.
Yudelman replies, “You disrespect my sense of humanity, b-tch.”
It’s unclear what happened before and after the video was recorded, and CNN is working to confirm who recorded it. The clip has been posted to various pro-Palestinian social media channels.
The same day, Yudelman was interviewed by a KPNX news crew covering the rally.
“It was important to come out and make a statement for the community,” Yudelman told the outlet. “I see what’s going on all across the country – campuses being taken over by supporters of terrorism and Jewish students being intimidated.” It’s unclear if Yudelman made this statement before or after the confrontation with the woman.
Arizona State is aware of the allegations against Yudelman and is investigating, a university spokesperson told CNN. The Tempe Police Department is also aware of the incident and is investigating, the department told CNN.
Yudelman did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
The Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned Yudelman’s behavior in the video as “disgusting” and “dangerous” in a statement on Tuesday and called for ASU officials to terminate his employment if the allegations against him are verified.
Before the altercation, Yudelman had submitted his resignation from ASU, which was set to take effect on June 30, ASU said in a news release on Wednesday.
USC president and provost censured
The resolution to censure the University of Southern California’s president and provost says there is “widespread dissatisfaction and concern among the faculty about administrative decisions and communication” related to the removal of pro-Palestinian protesters from campus and changes to graduation plans.
The censure of USC President Carol Folt and Provost Andrew Guzman passed in the university’s Academic Senate “after a chaotic three-hour session Wednesday afternoon,” the USC Annenberg Media reported.
The resolution calls for “the immediate creation of a task force to investigate these events and the associated administrative decisions and communication, and to provide a public report of its findings by September 15, 2024; and calls on the President of the University to cooperate fully with the task force’s investigation.”
The vote to censure comes after the university announced last month it canceled valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s commencement speech over security concerns.
“The intensity of feelings, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement,” the university said.
Tabassum, a first-generation South Asian American Muslim, said she was “shocked” and “profoundly disappointed” in the decision.
As pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the campus escalated, the school’s main stage commencement ceremony was canceled and the Los Angeles Police Department has helped campus police clear encampments on the campus.
‘We would like to speak in our name’
More than 500 Columbia students have so far signed the “In Our Name” letter, which was shared online by Columbia assistant professor Shai Davidai and many others, including Eden Yadegar, president of Students Supporting Israel at Columbia University.
The letter says they are “average students,” most of whom “did not choose to be political activists.”
“We do not bang on drums and chant catchy slogans. We are average students, just trying to make it through finals much like the rest of you,” the letter says. “Those who demonize us under the cloak of anti-Zionism forced us into our activism and forced us to publicly defend our Jewish identities.”
In the letter, students express their pride in Israel and the diverse voices coming from the Jewish people.
“Our love for Israel does not necessitate blind political conformity. It’s quite the opposite,” according to the letter. “All it takes are a couple of coffee chats with us to realize that our visions for Israel differ dramatically from one another. Yet we all come from a place of love and an aspiration for a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”
The letter also calls out reported antisemitic incidents on campus in recent months.
“Students at Columbia have chanted ‘we don’t want no Zionists here,’ alongside ‘death to the Zionist State’ and to ‘go back to Poland,’ where our relatives lie in mass graves,” according to the letter.
“One thing is for sure. We will not stop standing up for ourselves. We are proud to be Jews, and we are proud to be Zionists,” the letter says before ending on a hopeful note.
“While campus may be riddled with hateful rhetoric and simplistic binaries now, it is never toolate to start repairing the fractures and begin developing meaningful relationships across political and religious divides,” the letter says. “Our tradition tells us, ‘Love peace and pursue peace.’ We hope you will join us in earnestly pursuing peace, truth, and empathy. Together we can repair our campus.”
CNN’s Rob Frehse, Melissa Alonso, Jillian Sykes, Nick Valencia, Jade Gordon, Devon Sayers, Cindy Von Quednow, Cheri Mossburg, Joe Sutton, Danny Freeman, Isabel Rosales, Taylor Galgano, Sharif Paget, Rob Frehse and Zenebou Sylla contributed to this report.
Teresa Watanabe, Ashley Ahn
Sat, May 11, 2024
Police clash with pro-Palestinian protesters last week after an order to disperse was given at UCLA. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
UCLA Chancellor Gene Block is facing faculty calls for his resignation and motions of no confidence and censure as criticism mounts against his leadership in the wake of a violent mob attack on pro-Palestinian protesters and a sweeping police takedown of their encampment that resulted in more than 200 arrests last week.
Representatives of the 3,800-member UCLA Academic Senate — made up of tenured and tenure-track faculty — are preparing to vote on separate motions for censure and no-confidence, both stating that Block "failed to ensure the safety of our students and grievously mishandled the events of last week."
The vote was scheduled for Friday but has been postponed to next week.
The vote has no legal power to force action, but it marks a grave moment for Block. The leader of the nation's top public research university is completing the final months of his 17-year tenure, after steering the Westwood campus through a financial crisis and global pandemic to reach new heights by expanding enrollment, diversity, philanthropy and research funding. Last year, Block announced he planned to step down on July 31 and return to faculty research.
Other university leaders also have been criticized for their handling of campus protests, sparked last October when Hamas militants launched a deadly surprise attack on Israel and Israel retaliated with a massive bombardment of Gaza. Earlier this week, USC's Academic Senate voted to censure the university’s president, Carol Folt, and provost, Andrew Guzman, after the widely criticized decision to cancel the valedictorian's commencement speech due to unspecified "threats" and controversy over an aggressive police takedown of a pro-Palestinian encampment.
Read more: USC's faculty senate censures President Carol Folt and provost over commencement
UCLA declined to comment on the upcoming faculty vote.
Three weeks of turmoil at UCLA started April 25, when students set up an encampment in the campus' grassy quad to express solidarity with Palestinians, condemn Israel's actions in Gaza and demand that UCLA divest from firms that make and deliver weapons and services to Israel. The encampment was initially free of violence, with protesters engaged in teach-ins, art builds, yoga and other activities.
“Many of us have personally witnessed the vibrant, respectful and highly disciplined learning [at the encampment],” Chicano Studies department chair Charlene Villaseñor Black said. “And university administration have gotten it wrong every time.”
But UCLA Police Chief John Thomas said he advised campus leadership against allowing the encampment, as it violated rules against overnight camping. Inna Faliks, a professor of piano, said she and some other Jewish campus members felt targeted by protest chants, graffiti of expletives against Jews and blocked access to public walkways and buildings.
UCLA declared the encampment unlawful on April 30. Later that night, a violent mob attacked the encampment and students were left to fend for themselves against beatings, pepper spray and fireworks for three hours. Law enforcement in riot gear moved in during the early morning of May 1, but it took hours to quell the violence. Police later took down the encampment and arrested more than 200 people.
Read more: 'Shut it down!' How group chats, rumors and fear sparked a night of violence at UCLA
Since then, a number of people have been blamed for the debacle.
Before the Academic Senate meeting Friday, more than 900 faculty and staff members throughout the University of California system issued a list of demands. They included a call for Block's resignation; amnesty for students, staff and faculty who participated in the encampment and peaceful protests; university disclosure of all investments and divestment from military weapon production companies.
“Following the violent and aggressive police sweep of the Palestine Solidarity Encampment on May 2, 2024, resulting in more than 200 students, faculty, and staff arrested while peacefully protesting, it has become obvious that Chancellor Block has failed our university,” the demand letter said.
Faculty who signed the letter represented various departments including those of mathematics, American Indian Studies, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Asian American Studies, history, Chicana/o and Central American Studies, African American Studies, and anthropology.
They spoke out about their demands Thursday, joined by a group of volunteer medics — representing about 100 UCLA medical students, nurses, residents and emergency medical technicians — who raised concerns regarding police brutality and the absence of medical help from the university after the attack. They said more than 150 students were attacked with pepper spray and bear mace, and at least 25 students were hospitalized for head trauma, fractures and severe lacerations.
"UCLA Chancellor Gene Block’s and UC President Michael Drake’s statements minimize the severity of both the physical and psychological impact of their actions while attempting to justify the force they authorized against their students," a medic said in a statement.
Read more: Police report no serious injuries. But scenes from inside UCLA camp, protesters tell a different story
When police took down the encampment, medics said, more than a dozen students were evaluated for rubber bullet injuries and others showed contusions and musculoskeletal injuries.
"We strongly feel that Chancellor Block endangered the lives of our students, faculty and staff," said Michael Chwe, a political science professor who helped organize the demand letter.
Judea Pearl, a computer science professor, said Drake was ultimately responsible for the campus security failures. He said Block should not be blamed for failing to bring in a stronger police presence because he was a "victim" of UC systemwide guidelines that direct campuses to rely first on communication with protesters and bring in law enforcement as a last resort.
"He was trying to protect the campus but had to follow the directive ... not to bring in police," Pearl said.
Another source, who was not authorized to speak publicly, said Block was in an "impossible situation."
"It's impossible to square all of the circles of adhering to UC policy, shared governance with faculty and bitterly competing agendas still playing out nationwide," the source said. "To his credit, he's taking swift action on everything that's in his control."
Other critics have blamed Thomas, the police chief. Three sources not authorized to speak publicly told The Times that campus leadership, even before the mob attack, had wanted to beef up security and authorized Thomas to bring in external law enforcement to assist UCLA police and private security with as much overtime pay as needed. But he failed to do so, they said, and also did not provide a security plan to campus leadership despite multiple requests.
Others said that Administrative Vice Chancellor Michael Beck, who oversaw the police department and Office of Emergency Management at the time of the mob attack, should step aside. Previous lapses are now being scrutinized, including his responsibility for not stopping the LAPD from using the UCLA-leased Jackie Robinson Stadium as a staging area for action against Black Lives Matter protesters in 2020 — which Block, Beck and others called a mistake and a violation of university values. Beck's duties also include management of Bruin Woods, the university's Lake Arrowhead facility, where two counselors alleged they were hazed and sexually assaulted by other counselors in 2022.
Beck did not respond to requests for comment.
Read more: 'Are you a Zionist?' Checkpoints at UCLA encampment provoked fear, debate among Jews
There is much debate on campus leading up to the Academic Senate vote.
Pearl said a censure and no-confidence vote would send the wrong message to Block's successor to refrain from strong leadership and instead pander to campus political sentiments, which he said would represent a "caving in" to demands to cut business and academic ties with Israel. Chwe, however, said it would signify faculty's strong views that the chancellor must be held responsible for student safety.
Drake has announced an external investigation into UCLA's response, which Block says he welcomes as he conducts his own internal review. Drake has helped guide campus protest responses and was in the UCLA command center as law enforcement began taking down the encampment last week.
UCLA also has moved swiftly to improve security by creating a new chief safety officer position to oversee campus security operations, including the campus police department. Rick Braziel, a former Sacramento police chief who has reviewed law enforcement responses in high-profile cases across the country, is leading the new Office of Campus Safety as associate vice chancellor.
Some critics, however, said the move would further "militarize" the campus. UCLA deployed a larger law enforcement presence earlier this week, when campus police arrested 44 pro-Palestinian protesters gathered in a parking structure before a planned demonstration. Police said they carried equipment that could be “used to unlawfully enter and barricade a building.” Some students decried the arrests as harassment and intimidation. Classes were moved online for the rest of the week as a security precaution.
Read more: UCLA alleges protesters arrested Monday had tools to barricade buildings
Differing opinions among faculty over the university’s response to student protests have created small rifts within departments, according to multiple faculty members.
Chwe said they are working to combat misinformation being spread to faculty members surrounding recent events and continue to hold conversations with their colleagues.
“It’s not only about dialogue with the university but also with our colleagues,” he said.
Caroline Luce, a UCLA historian and member of University Council-American Federation of Teachers, which represents more than 3,000 non-senate faculty and several hundred professional librarians, called the atmosphere for UCLA faculty, particularly those not tenured like lecturers, “dicey with lots of risk.”
“There are reputations and interpersonal dynamics in departments that they have to navigate,” she said.
John Branstetter, a UCLA lecturer in political science, was one of about 10 faculty arrested after police took down the encampment. He said the university’s crackdown on free speech on campus has not only made him fear for his students’ safety but for his own.
“I do feel threatened by the general atmosphere that the administration is fostering through this continuing quasi-criminalization of free speech on campus, so I don’t know if they will try to get rid of me or the protections I have will be abided by,” he said.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
New School Faculty Set Up an Encampment in Solidarity With Student Protesters
Rosemary Feitelberg
Thu, May 9, 2024
Less than a week after pro-Palestinian protesters were arrested at The New School’s campus, a faculty-led encampment has been set up in solidarity of their efforts.
The majority of last week’s protesters, who were organized by The New School’s Students for Justice in Palestine (TNS SJP), were released from police custody without any charges. They were said to have been first warned by police officers that they could leave the campus before any arrests were made.
Like TNS SJP, the faculty protesters are calling on The New School to divest from companies that had ties to Israel. Organizers spread the word about the new encampment, which they said is composed of autonomous faculty, Wednesday afternoon in a press release.
A media request sent to the group inquiring about the number of people who are part of the encampment was unreturned.
Asked for comment Wednesday, representatives from The New School shared a statement to the school community from interim president Donna Shalala that highlighted how criminal charges against the student protesters would not be pursued and that every effort would be made to ensure conduct reviews for the student protesters would be expedited. She also said a historical view of The New School’s divestments would be shared. Shalala said that the university supports the NewSWU’s right to organize and has repeatedly told them that they can do so now. “We maintain our unshakable commitment to free speed and peaceful demonstration,” Shalala said.
The faculty-led encampment is said to be located in The New School’s University Center, which is where TNS SJP had previously established one. There also had been another group of student protesters in the lobby of a residence hall on the lower Fifth Avenue campus.
Organizers for the faculty-based protest said that the action taken to set up a new encampment followed “the mass arrests and violence that took place last week across New York City campuses, when university leadership called in the NYPD to sweep and shutter the solidarity encampments.” In their press material, they cited the more than 2,200 arrests of protesters that have been made in recent weeks on college campuses. That included the 282 protesters at Columbia University and at the City University of New York that were detained by police, as well as 56 other student protesters at The New School and New York University.
NYPD deputy commissioner of operations Kaz Daughtry posted a detailed account of the NYPD’s handling of The New School situation, including a video of police officers on the scene and an image of The New School’s request to the NYPD seeking assistance and highlighting why.
As protests, and in some instances police action, continue at other campuses nationwide like the University of Berkeley and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, there were more arrests of protesters in New York City earlier this week. Forty-six protesters were taken into police custody at the Fashion Institute of Technology Tuesday afternoon.
Supporters of the the newly established faculty-led initiative at The New School, which is being called the Refaat Alareer Faculty Solidarity Encampment, alleged that Shalala’s decision to clear student protesters last week “destroyed what many experienced to be a site of learning political commitment and powerful solidarity with the Palestinian people facing genocide.”
In a statement released after the student protesters’ arrests, Shalala said that some of the student protesters had blocked the entrance to Kerrey Hall, which houses 600 residents. By her account, after hours of negotiations with representatives of the student protesters, “they would not budge.” She also claimed that three offers for a meeting between some of the student protesters and representatives from the school’s investment committee was declined. She also claimed that student protesters had “escalated the situation and set up a second encampment.”
The faculty-led initiative is calling on The New School’s investment committee and The New School’s board of trustees “to vote immediately to divest from companies that benefit directly or indirectly from the genocide of the occupation of Palestine.” TNS SJP claimed that the university is invested in 65 funds that includes 13 companies with ties to Israel including Google, General Electric, Hewlett-Packard and Boeing among others.
The faculty-led encampment’s organizers said the group also is “standing with students across the city and the country” and demand that all charges against arrestees be dropped, all disciplinary actions facing participants in student-led encampments be revoked, and that police be “permanently kept off campus.”
Simon Druker
Fri, May 10, 2024
After a tumultuous last six months, Cornell University President Martha Pollack is resigning, ending a 7-year tenure at the Ivy League institution, as pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations have taken hold on campuses (Columbia University pictured) across the United States. File Pool photo by Mary Altaffer/UPI
May 10 (UPI) -- Cornell University President Martha Pollack announced she plans to resign, ending a 7-year tenure at the Ivy League institution.
Pollack, 65, confirmed that her last official day on the job will be June 30, in an open letter published Friday on the university's website.
"It is only after extensive reflection that I have determined that this is the right decision," Pollack wrote in the letter, adding she initially made the decision last December but pushed pause because of "events on our and/or on other campuses."
"But continued delay is not in the university's best interests, both because of the need to have sufficient time for a smooth transition before the start of the coming academic year, and because I do not want my announcement to interfere with the celebration of our newest graduates at Commencement in just a few weeks," she wrote.
She also downplayed any suggestion of being forced out.
"I understand that there will be lots of speculation about my decision, so let me be as clear as I can: This decision is mine and mine alone," Pollack wrote in the letter.
"After seven fruitful and gratifying years as Cornell's president -- and after a career in research and academia spanning five decades -- I'm ready for a new chapter in my life."
Pollack did not directly mention any incidents involving the university, but it was one of several placed on a list of institutions being investigated by the Department of Education for Discrimination.
In November, a Cornell student was arrested for posting anti-Semitic threats against the Ivy League school's Jewish community. Federal officials later charged the 21-year-old man with "posting threats to kill or injure another using interstate communications."
Cornell, along with fellow Ivy League institutions Columbia University and the University of Pennsylvania, are being investigated after the department announced in November it was looking into five complaints alleging anti-Semitic harassment and two alleging anti-Muslim harassment.
Several American universities have canceled or toned down graduations as a result, to avoid potential unrest.
University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned from her post a month later amid the fallout and harsh criticism.
Pro-Palestinian and pro-Israel demonstrations have taken hold on campuses across the United States, leading different reactions from different institutions.
"There is so much more to Cornell than the current turmoil taking place at universities across the country right now, and I hope we do not lose sight of that," Pollack wrote.
Pollack's resignation comes after University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill resigned in December following testimony before the U.S. House of Representatives on responding to anti-Semitism on university campuses. Harvard University President Claudine Gay who also testified at that hearing and faced accusations of plagiarism resigned in January.
"There will be plenty more to do over the coming months and years. Higher education has come under attack from many quarters, and our core values have faced enormous pressure," Pollack wrote.
"Indeed, if I have one piece of advice for the Cornell community going forward, it is this: We must develop more capacity to seek out different perspectives and be willing to listen to those with whom we differ, doing so with intellectual curiosity and an open mind; at the same time, we must always consider the impact of what we say to one another; and we must thoughtfully engage in debate."
Arizona State University dismisses scholar after video shows him verbally attacking a woman in a hijab
Amanda Musa and Kelly McCleary, CNN
Thu, May 9, 2024
A video showing a confrontation between a man and a woman wearing a hijab during a pro-Israel rally at Arizona State University is further highlighting the roiling tensions on college campuses across the US over the Israel-Hamas war and a steep increase in reported antisemitic and anti-Muslim incidents. Here are the latest developments:
Arizona State University investigation: A scholar at ASU’s School of Civic and Economic Thought and Leadership will not return to teach at the university after a video under investigation by university officials shows him confronting and cursing at a woman wearing a hijab during a pro-Israel rally on campus, ASU announced Thursday. “He is no longer permitted to be on campus and will never teach here again,” ASU President Michael Crow said in a statement to CNN regarding Jonathan Yudelman, who the university had placed on leave following the May 5 incident.
Massachusetts Institute of Technology protesters arrested: At least nine pro-Palestinian student protesters were arrested Thursday afternoon on MIT’s campus, according to Francesca Riccio-Ackerman, a spokesperson for MIT Scientists Against Genocide Encampment. This marks the first time demonstrators have been detained on MIT’s campus in connection to the pro-Palestine protests, according to the group. Videos provided to CNN by the Boston Party for Socialism and Liberation show protesters being detained and hauled out of the crowd. In another video, a protester can be seen being thrown on the ground by an officer attempting to remove people from the entrance to the garage. MIT on Monday ordered demonstrators to peacefully clear an encampment or face disciplinary action after efforts to reach an agreement broke down. By Wednesday, 23 students were suspended, with some receiving eviction notices from MIT, according to Riccio-Ackerman. CNN has reached out to MIT for comment on the suspensions and eviction notices.
More than 800 UCLA faculty and staff call for chancellor’s resignation: Hundreds of University of California Los Angeles faculty and staff signed a letter calling for the immediate resignation of Chancellor Gene Block, saying those involved in recent protests on campus have been “wronged” by the school’s administration, the group announced Thursday. The group is calling for “legal and academic amnesty” for students, faculty and staff who were arrested during protests on campus, Matt Barreto, a professor of Chicano studies and political science, said at a Thursday news conference. CNN has reached out to Block for comment. The letter also calls for a vote of no confidence from the UCLA academic senate and the union representing librarians and non-senate faculty throughout the University of California system. “We condemn the UCLA administration for enabling a terrorizing Zionist attack and orchestrating a violent police offensive against its students,” said a member of a group of medics who provided medical support to protesters during demonstrations.
Pennsylvania governor calls for UPenn to disband encampment: The University of Pennsylvania needs to disband the growing pro-Palestinian protest encampment on its campus that “has gotten even more unstable and out of control,” Gov. Josh Shapiro said Thursday. “It is past time for the university to act, to address this, to disband the encampment and to restore order and safety on campus,” Shapiro said at an unrelated event. After a third round of negotiations did not result in an agreement on Tuesday, protesters set up more tents in the center of UPenn’s College Green Wednesday evening. The university confirmed to CNN on Thursday that it issued “mandatory temporary leaves of absence for six students” involved with the encampment. The students were informed they “may not enter academic buildings, be present on campus and participate in university programming – including classes and graduation-related events,” according to a statement posted to the protesters’ “UP Against the Occupation” Instagram account.
No criminal charges for The New School protesters: The New School university in New York won’t pursue criminal charges against student protestors who were arrested on May 3, and the university has asked the district attorney to drop all charges, according to interim president Donna E. Shalala. She called the recent events on campus “difficult and upsetting” in a message to the university community, adding “there are many things that we will want to work on together in the days ahead.” The university is working to expedite conduct reviews for student protestors, according to Shalala, and also expects to soon announce “a significant educational effort about investment principles and the history of divestment at The New School.”
University of Southern California officials censured: USC’s Academic Senate voted 21-7 Wednesday to censure the university’s president and provost over their recent decisions to remove pro-Palestinian protesters from campus and change graduation plans, according to the student-led USC Annenberg Media. The resolution calls for a task force to investigate administrative decisions and provide a public report.
Hundreds of Columbia University students sign letter addressing tension on campus: The letter, titled “In Our Name: A Message from Jewish Students at Columbia University,” calls out reported antisemitic incidents on campus that have “forced us into our activism and forced us to publicly defend our Jewish identities.” Columbia has been the focal point of pro-Palestinian demonstrations on college campuses and more than 100 people were arrested last week after barricading themselves in the university’s Hamilton Hall.
Emory undergraduate students vote no-confidence in school president: A little more than 40% of undergraduates at the university participated in the vote against university president Gregory L. Fenves, the Emory Student Government Association said, with 73% voting in favor of the referendum. The vote came less than a week after Emory’s College of Arts and Sciences faculty senate overwhelmingly approved a vote of no confidence against Fenves. The votes are a symbolic condemnation of the university’s choice to call in outside law enforcement officers who arrested students and faculty during a pro-Palestinian protest on campus on April 25. The vote results may now go to the Board of Trustees, who would have the discretion to remove Fenves. “While we take any concerns expressed by members of our community seriously, Emory community members are sharing a wide range of perspectives that are not reflected in the motion passed by SGA,” Emory spokesperson Laura Diamond told CNN.
Dozens arrested at George Washington University: More than 30 protesters were arrested at or near George Washington University early Wednesday as the Metropolitan Police Department in Washington, DC, worked to clear a pro-Palestinian encampment on campus, officials said. Encampments were also cleared in recent days at the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst.
House lawmakers question liberal cities’ school officials over antisemitism: School officials from New York City; Berkeley, California; and Montgomery County, Maryland, were questioned Wednesday over their response to alleged antisemitic incidents by members of the House Subcommittee on Early Childhood, Elementary and Secondary Education. The session marked the first such congressional hearing to focus on K-12 schools.
Video of now-ousted scholar prompts university investigation
The video that led to postdoctoral research scholar Jonathan Yudelman’s dismissal and sparked an investigation at Arizona State was recorded Sunday during a pro-Israel rally on the school’s campus in Tempe, according to CNN affiliate KPNX.
The 58-second video shows a postdoctoral research scholar, Jonathan Yudelman, continually moving toward a woman in a hijab as she tries to move away from him.
“You’re disrespecting my religious boundaries,” the woman can be heard saying. She has not been identified.
Yudelman replies, “You disrespect my sense of humanity, b-tch.”
It’s unclear what happened before and after the video was recorded, and CNN is working to confirm who recorded it. The clip has been posted to various pro-Palestinian social media channels.
The same day, Yudelman was interviewed by a KPNX news crew covering the rally.
“It was important to come out and make a statement for the community,” Yudelman told the outlet. “I see what’s going on all across the country – campuses being taken over by supporters of terrorism and Jewish students being intimidated.” It’s unclear if Yudelman made this statement before or after the confrontation with the woman.
Arizona State is aware of the allegations against Yudelman and is investigating, a university spokesperson told CNN. The Tempe Police Department is also aware of the incident and is investigating, the department told CNN.
Yudelman did not respond to CNN’s request for comment.
The Arizona chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations condemned Yudelman’s behavior in the video as “disgusting” and “dangerous” in a statement on Tuesday and called for ASU officials to terminate his employment if the allegations against him are verified.
Before the altercation, Yudelman had submitted his resignation from ASU, which was set to take effect on June 30, ASU said in a news release on Wednesday.
USC president and provost censured
The resolution to censure the University of Southern California’s president and provost says there is “widespread dissatisfaction and concern among the faculty about administrative decisions and communication” related to the removal of pro-Palestinian protesters from campus and changes to graduation plans.
The censure of USC President Carol Folt and Provost Andrew Guzman passed in the university’s Academic Senate “after a chaotic three-hour session Wednesday afternoon,” the USC Annenberg Media reported.
The resolution calls for “the immediate creation of a task force to investigate these events and the associated administrative decisions and communication, and to provide a public report of its findings by September 15, 2024; and calls on the President of the University to cooperate fully with the task force’s investigation.”
The vote to censure comes after the university announced last month it canceled valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s commencement speech over security concerns.
“The intensity of feelings, fueled by both social media and the ongoing conflict in the Middle East, has grown to include many voices outside of USC and has escalated to the point of creating substantial risks relating to security and disruption at commencement,” the university said.
Tabassum, a first-generation South Asian American Muslim, said she was “shocked” and “profoundly disappointed” in the decision.
As pro-Palestinian demonstrations on the campus escalated, the school’s main stage commencement ceremony was canceled and the Los Angeles Police Department has helped campus police clear encampments on the campus.
‘We would like to speak in our name’
More than 500 Columbia students have so far signed the “In Our Name” letter, which was shared online by Columbia assistant professor Shai Davidai and many others, including Eden Yadegar, president of Students Supporting Israel at Columbia University.
The letter says they are “average students,” most of whom “did not choose to be political activists.”
“We do not bang on drums and chant catchy slogans. We are average students, just trying to make it through finals much like the rest of you,” the letter says. “Those who demonize us under the cloak of anti-Zionism forced us into our activism and forced us to publicly defend our Jewish identities.”
In the letter, students express their pride in Israel and the diverse voices coming from the Jewish people.
“Our love for Israel does not necessitate blind political conformity. It’s quite the opposite,” according to the letter. “All it takes are a couple of coffee chats with us to realize that our visions for Israel differ dramatically from one another. Yet we all come from a place of love and an aspiration for a better future for Israelis and Palestinians alike.”
The letter also calls out reported antisemitic incidents on campus in recent months.
“Students at Columbia have chanted ‘we don’t want no Zionists here,’ alongside ‘death to the Zionist State’ and to ‘go back to Poland,’ where our relatives lie in mass graves,” according to the letter.
“One thing is for sure. We will not stop standing up for ourselves. We are proud to be Jews, and we are proud to be Zionists,” the letter says before ending on a hopeful note.
“While campus may be riddled with hateful rhetoric and simplistic binaries now, it is never toolate to start repairing the fractures and begin developing meaningful relationships across political and religious divides,” the letter says. “Our tradition tells us, ‘Love peace and pursue peace.’ We hope you will join us in earnestly pursuing peace, truth, and empathy. Together we can repair our campus.”
CNN’s Rob Frehse, Melissa Alonso, Jillian Sykes, Nick Valencia, Jade Gordon, Devon Sayers, Cindy Von Quednow, Cheri Mossburg, Joe Sutton, Danny Freeman, Isabel Rosales, Taylor Galgano, Sharif Paget, Rob Frehse and Zenebou Sylla contributed to this report.
