'No abnormalities' reported at Japanese nuclear plants following earthquake

02 January 2024

Japanese nuclear power plant operators have reported some minor damage, but no public safety issues, following the 7.6 magnitude earthquake which struck Ishikawa Prefecture on Monday.

A file image of the Shika nuclear power plant (Image: Hokuriku)

The International Atomic Energy Agency said it was in contact with Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority and had been told there were "no abnormalities in nuclear power plants within the affected area", adding that the agency would continue to monitor the situation.

By Tuesday at 13:00 GMT the earthquake, the largest since 2011, was known to have caused the deaths of 48 people, with rescuers continuing to search rubble for survivors.

The closest nuclear power plant to the epicentre of the earthquake was Hokuriku Electric Power Company's Shika plant, which has been shut since the Fukushima Daiichi accident in 2011. With aftershocks continuing, regular inspections are taking place at the plant, but no major damage has been reported, with cooling and monitoring systems all operating, the company said.

A leak has been identified and is being investigated in a water tank which feeds the cooling ponds, although the operator says it is not affecting the cooling functions at the plant. There has also been a tilting by several centimetres of part of the four-metre-high steel seawall, but the rest of it is reported to be "sound and there is no risk of collapse". The automatic fire extinguishing system had been activated in the area of a transformer near unit 2, although no fire was detected.

The Japan Times reported that at Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings' (Tepco) Kashiwazaki Kariwa nuclear power plant officials "confirmed Monday that water from a spent fuel pool spilled over due to the earthquake, but that no abnormalities in operation had been detected". In an update issued on Tuesday, Tepco said: "At the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant, the readings on the stack monitors and monitoring posts installed at the power plant site boundaries are within normal fluctuation ranges, and there is no radioactivity impact on the outside world. The spent fuel pool cooling system is in operation at all units, and there are no abnormalities in fuel cooling. As of 12:25 pm on 2 January, all patrols had been completed and no abnormalities caused by this earthquake were confirmed."

Prior to the March 2011 accident at the Fukushima Daiichi plant, Japan's 54 reactors had provided around 30% of the country's electricity. However, within 14 months of the accident, the country's nuclear generation had been brought to a standstill pending regulatory change with new safety checks and regulations brought in. So far, 12 of Japan's 33 operable reactors have cleared inspections confirming they meet the new regulatory safety standards and have resumed operation. Another 17 reactors have applied to restart.

NRA lifts ban on Kashiwazaki-Kariwa fuel activities

02 January 2024

Japan's Nuclear Regulation Authority (NRA) has decided, at a meeting on 27 December, to lift an administrative order imposed on Tokyo Electric Power Company (Tepco) in 2021 that prohibited the company from moving nuclear fuel or loading it into reactors at the seven-unit Kashiwazaki-Kariwa nuclear power plant.

The Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant (Image: Tepco)

Tepco applied for NRA approval of its design and construction plan for Kashiwazaki-Kariwa units 6 and 7 in September 2013. It submitted information on safety upgrades across the site and at those two units. These 1356 MWe Advanced Boiling Water Reactors began commercial operation in 1996 and 1997 and were the first Japanese boiling water reactors to be put forward for restart.

In 2017, Tepco received permission from the NRA to restart units 6 and 7. Local government consents are still required before the reactors can be restarted.

However, in January 2021, Tepco notified the NRA that a contractor had accidentally damaged intruder detection equipment at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa site. The company informed the regulator the following month that some of the functions related to this equipment had been repaired. At that time Tepco said it had also found malfunctions in intruder detection equipment at 12 locations on the site and that alternative measures had been implemented. Tepco later informed the NRA of three further locations experiencing equipment malfunctions. In addition, it reported the unauthorised use of an ID card.

The NRA told Tepco in March 2021 that a preliminary assessment had rated the significance of these security lapses as 'red' - the highest level on its four-point scale of risks in safeguarding nuclear material. This rating implies a large impact on safety functions or performance. The NRA decided to "suspend for the time being" its pre-use inspections, which are required for Tepco to load fuel into Kashiwazaki-Kariwa unit 7.

The following month, the NRA issued an administrative order to Tepco prohibiting it from moving nuclear fuel at the plant until improvements in security measures there have been confirmed by additional inspections.

At the 27 December meeting, the NRA decided to lift the administrative order after inspections confirmed that measures had been enhanced at the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa plant, in Japan's Niigata Prefecture.

Kashiwazaki-Kariwa was unaffected by the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, which damaged Tepco's Fukushima Daiichi plant, although the plant's reactors were previously all offline for two to three years following the 2007 Niigata-Chuetsu earthquake, which caused damage to the site but did not damage the reactors themselves. While the units were offline, work was carried out to improve the plant's earthquake resistance.

Although it has completed work at the other idled units at Kashiwazaki-Kariwa, Tepco is concentrating its resources on units 6 and 7 while it deals with the clean-up at Fukushima Daiichi. Restarting those two units - which have been offline for periodic inspections since March 2012 and August 2011, respectively - would increase the company's earnings by an estimated JPY100 billion (USD706 million) per year.

"While going back once again to the reflections and lessons learned from the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station Accident, we will continue to engage in activities in which all personnel voluntarily engage as we strive to become a nuclear power operator that is trusted by the people of the region and society as a whole," Tepco said.

Researched and written by World Nuclear News

UPDATED

Japan earthquake: Fires hit quake zone as rescuers race to reach survivors

3 January 2024 Share on Linked In

Emergency services are in a "race against time" to rescue survivors. 

Photo: STR / Yomiuri Shimbun / AFP

Rescue efforts continue in Japan after at least 62 people were killed in a powerful earthquake that hit the country on New Year's Day.

Homes collapsed, buildings caught fire and roads were extensively damaged, hindering the work of rescue services.

The epicentre of the 7.6 quake was the Noto peninsula, in central Japan.

The Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, said emergency services were locked in a "race against time" to rescue survivors.

On Tuesday, Mr Kishida also said some 3000 rescuers were trying to reach parts of the Noto peninsula. Helicopter surveys showed many fires and widespread damage to buildings and infrastructure. The city of Wajima, on the northern tip of Noto, has been cut off from land routes.

In the coastal city of Suzu in Ishikawa prefecture, some 90 percent of homes in the city had been "completely or nearly completely destroyed", mayor Masushiro Izumiya told news outlet Kyodo.

The Japanese military has been handing out supplies including food, water and blankets for those who have had to vacate their homes. The country's government has said that 57,360 people had to be evacuated.

Tens of thousands of meals are being delivered across the affected region.

The epicentre of the 7.6 quake was the Noto peninsula, in central Japan. 

Photo: AFP

Aftershocks continued throughout Monday and Tuesday. Japan's chief cabinet secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi warned people to "be alert" for more earthquakes "of an intensity of up to 7" in the coming week.

Ishikawa, 155km (96.3 miles) south of the Noto peninsula, experienced a 4.9 quake on Tuesday afternoon.

The major tsunami warnings put out by the Japanese government on Monday were later downgraded. By Tuesday, all tsunami advisories were lifted along the Sea of Japan, meaning there was no longer a risk of such an event.

Residents of the affected area of Japan have been sharing their experiences of the quake, which lasted several minutes.

An 82-year-old resident of Nanao, Toshio Iwahama, told the BBC that his wooden home had partially collapsed. He said that despite living through multiple earthquakes, he had never experienced tremors of this magnitude.

Many also said the quake reminded them of the devastating 2011 earthquake.

 Photo: AFP / MASANORI INAGAKI

Briton Emma Ward, 41, who was on a skiing holiday in the resort village of Hakuba, said the quake had hit "without warning", prompting her group to take shelter under a table in a café. She told the BBC that the intensity of the tremors caused people to flee the building entirely, she said. "The worst part during the earthquake was not knowing how intense it was going to become. It's a very frightening experience," Ward said.

Many also said the quake reminded them of the devastating 2011 earthquake and tsunami that killed 18,000 people and triggered an accident at a nuclear plant in Fukushima.

In an incident unrelated to the earthquake, a Japan Airlines plane caught fire on Tuesday as it collided with a coastguard aircraft on its way to provide earthquake relief at Tokyo's Haneda airport.

Five people on board the coastguard plane are known to have died, but the Japan Airlines plane's 379 passengers and crew managed to escape.

Japan is one of the most seismically active nations on Earth, owing to its location on the so-called Pacific Ring of Fire.

Japan quake toll rises to 57, more tremors likely

Hiro Komae and Yuri Kageyama
Jan 03, 2024

A series of powerful earthquakes that hit western Japan left at least 57 people dead and damaged thousands of buildings, vehicles and boats as officials warned more quakes could lie ahead.

Aftershocks continued to shake Ishikawa prefecture and nearby areas a day after a magnitude 7.6 temblor slammed the area on New Year’s Day.

The damage was so great that it could not immediately be assessed. Japanese media reports said tens of thousands of homes were destroyed.

Water, power and cell phone services were still down in some areas.

Two of the latest reported deaths came from Suzu, where the death toll grew to 22, according to city officials. In nearby Wajima city 24 people died.

Although casualty numbers continued to climb gradually, the prompt public warnings, relayed on broadcasts and phones, and the quick response from the general public and officials appeared to have limited some of the damage.

Toshitaka Katada, a University of Tokyo professor specialising in disasters, said people were prepared because the area had been hit by quakes in recent years. They had evacuation plans and stocks of emergency supplies.

“There are probably no people on earth who are as disaster-ready as the Japanese,” he told The Associated Press.

Japan is frequently hit by earthquakes because of its location along the Ring of Fire, an arc of volcanoes and fault lines in the Pacific Basin.

Katada warned the situation remained precarious and unpredictable. A March 2011 quake and tsunami in northeastern Japan had been preceded by other quakes.

“This is far from over,” Katada said.

Japanese media’s aerial footage showed widespread damage in the hardest-hit spots, with landslides burying roads, boats tossed in the waters and a fire that had turned an entire section of Wajima city to ashes.

Japan’s military dispatched 1000 soldiers to the disaster zones to join rescue efforts, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said Tuesday.

“Saving lives is our priority and we are fighting a battle against time,” he said. “It is critical that people trapped in homes get rescued immediately.”

A quake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.6 shook the Ishikawa area as he was speaking. Quakes continued to rock the area, reaching more than 100 aftershocks over the past day.

Nuclear regulators said several nuclear plants in the region were operating normally.

On Monday, the Japan Meteorological Agency issued a major tsunami warning for Ishikawa and lower-level tsunami warnings or advisories for the rest of the western coast of Japan’s main island of Honshu, as well as for the northern island of Hokkaido.

The warning was downgraded several hours later, and all tsunami warnings were lifted as of early Tuesday. Waves measuring more than one metre hit some places.

Still, half-sunken ships floated in bays where tsunami waves had rolled in, leaving a muddied coastline.

People who were evacuated from their houses huddled in auditoriums, schools and community centres. Bullet trains in the region were halted, but services was mostly restored by Tuesday afternoon. Sections of highways were closed.

Weather forecasters predicted rain, setting off worries about crumbling buildings and infrastructure.

The region includes tourist spots famous for lacquerware and other traditional crafts, along with designated cultural heritage sites.

US President Joe Biden said in a statement that his administration was “ready to provide any necessary assistance for the Japanese people.”

-AAP

Japan: Land Shifts To West By 1.3 Meters After Series Of Earthquakes, Says Authority

The phenomenon of land sifting following the series of 155 earthquakes has been put forward by Japan's Geospatial Information Authority, known as GSI, after meticulous analysis of GPS data following the 7.6 magnitude quake

Visual from Japan's earthquake-hit Ishikawa Prefecture AP

Outlook Web Desk
UPDATED: 02 JAN 2024

As a crucial geological development amidst the catastrophic series of earthquakes in the island country of Japan, the land in the Noto region near the epicenter has shifted to the west by 1.3 meters. 155 powerful earthquakes rocked the Ishikawa Prefecture on Monday.
About the land shifting

The phenomenon of land sifting has been put forward by Japan's Geospatial Information Authority, known as GSI, after meticulous analysis of GPS data following the 7.6 magnitude quake. According to the geological watchdog, preliminary figures indicated that an observation point in Wajima City in Ishikawa Prefecture experienced the biggest shift, moving horizontally about 1.3 meters to the west.

Moreover, the data analysis also points to a westward shift of about 1 meter in Anamizu Town and 80 centimeters in Suzu City while an observation point in Nanao City's Notojima has been displaced by 60 centimeters northwest toward the Sea of Japan coast.

Land appears to have shifted about 20 centimeters to the northwest in the prefectures and Niigata. Several centimeters of land shifts were also observed in the Kanto-Koshin elsewhere.

Japan Earthquake: Death Toll Reaches 64, Major Aftershock Possible Over Next 7 Days

Japan Earthquake LIVE Updates: At least 62 people have died in quake-hit Japan, with the toll expected to go higher as many are said to be still stuck under collapsed houses

A series of powerful earthquakes that hit western Japan have damaged thousands of buildings, vehicle AP

Outlook Web Desk
UPDATED: 03 JAN 2024 

The death toll in Japan earthquakes has reached 64, with aftershocks still shaking parts of the country amid a warning that more quakes could lie ahead. The country has been hit by more than 155 earthquakes since Monday.

The Japan Meteorological Agency reported earthquakes hitting western Japan's Ishikawa and nearby prefectures shortly after 4 pm (local time) on Monday, with one of them measuring a preliminary magnitude of 7.4-7.6. A tsunami alert was issued for Ishikawa and nearby prefectures of the Japan sea side and huge waves began hitting the coast shortly.

Scary visuals of damaged houses, cracked open roads, and shaking buildings have emerged since then, suggesting that the death toll is expected to go higher. Japanese media reports said tens of thousands of homes were destroyed.

Water, power and cell phone service are also reportedly still down in some areas.

Japan Earthquake-Tsunami Latest Updates:

-64 Killed in Japan: Rescue operations are underway in earthquake-hit Japan, where officials say 64 people are confirmed dead and many still feared trapped under collapsed houses. Japan's Ishikawa prefecture, where majority of the earthquakes, including the one that measured 7.6, is the worst hit.

In Ishikawa prefecture's Wajima city, 25 houses are said to have collapsed while quake-triggered fires have also destroyed about 200 houses, Japanese public broadcaster NHK reported. In nearby Suzu City, officials confirmed more than 50 houses have been levelled.

ALSO READ | 155 Earthquakes Trigger Massive Tsunami Waves in Ishikawa

Japanese media's aerial footage showed widespread damage in the hardest-hit spots, with landslides burying roads, boats tossed in the waters and a fire that had turned an entire section of Wajima city to ashes.

-Thousands Without Electricity: Tens of thousands remain without electricity in Japan, while scores in affected prefectures are also sheltering at evacuation centres. Water supplies in some areas have been cut off, leaving residents to line up to receive drinking water, NHK reported.The quake also triggered mudslides that shut several roads

.

This satellite image provided by Maxar Technologies shows a damaged neighborhood in Wajima, Japan, Tuesday, Jan. 2, 2024.AP

Major Aftershock Warning Issued: While casualty numbers continue to climb gradually, officials have warned people over for possible earthquakes with an intensity of seven on the Japanese scale over the next week. The Japanese scale runs from zero to seven, with seven being the strongest. The prompt public warnings relayed on broadcasts and phones, and the quick response from the general public and officials appeared to have limited some of the damage.

The highest-level tsunami alert, which was issued in Japan on Monday, has been lowered but residents of coastal areas have been asked not to return to their homes as deadly waves could still come.

ALSO READ: 'A Race Against Time To Save People': Scenes Of Devastation Strike Japan On New Year

-1,000 Soldiers Deployed: Japan's military has deployed 1,000 soldiers to the disaster zones to join rescue efforts, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida said on Tuesday. "Saving lives is our priority and we are fighting a battle against time... It is critical that people trapped in homes get rescued immediately," news agency AP quoted Kishida as saying.

A quake with a preliminary magnitude of 5.6 shook the Ishikawa area as PM Kishida was speaking.

Nuclear Plants Operating Normally: Nuclear regulators have said several nuclear plants in Ishikawa region were operating normally. The massive earthquake and tsunami of 2011 had caused three reactors to melt and release large amounts of radiation at a nuclear plant in northeastern Japan.

India’s BJP set to ‘whip up’ Hindu nationalist sentiment with Ayodhya temple campaign

The BJP has led a campaign to build a temple in Ayodhya since riots in 1992 in which a mosque there was destroyed and thousands of mostly Muslims died

Analysts says it’s ‘a matter of time’ before other mosques give way to Hindu temples, with the ruling party timing it ‘to suit them most politically’

Biman Mukherji
, 3 Jan, 2024

Braving thick fog, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Ayodhya over the weekend to launch an airport, train services and roads, giving a US$1.8 billion boost to the ancient city in northern Uttar Pradesh before the January 22 inauguration of a Ram temple at a disputed site.
Modi’s visit in the face of bad weather – which disrupted traffic across north India, with hundreds of flights and dozens of trains delayed, and several deaths in road traffic accidents – symbolised his ruling Bharatiya Janata Party’s determination to fulfil a key pledge to the country’s majority Hindu population ahead of crucial national elections in April and May.

The campaign to build a temple to Lord Ram, the deity also known as Rama who devotees believe was born in Ayodhya, has been at the centre of a three-decade campaign by the BJP. In 1992, Hindu mobs razed a mosque at a site in the city where they say a temple had earlier existed.

The Hindu temple in Ayodhya, believed to be the birthplace of Lord Ram, is due to be inaugurated by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 22. Photo: EPA-EFE

Nearly 2,000 people were killed in the nationwide riots that followed, mostly Muslims. After years of legal wrangling, the Supreme Court in 2019 allowed the Hindu community to build a temple at the disputed site and allocated a separate plot for rebuilding the mosque.


“There was a time when, in this very Ayodhya, Lord Ram was kept inside a tent. Today, a permanent house has been built for not only Lord Ram but also for 40 million [shelterless] Indians,” Modi told a packed gathering at the weekend, many people waving flags emblazoned with Ram’s image.

The prime minister’s reference to permanent homes relates to concrete ones built for the poor, highlighting his government’s development work.

In Ayodhya, a religious dispute that sways elections 130 years on
31 Oct 2018

Modi urged Indians to light up their houses during the temple’s inauguration, in the same way Hindus celebrate Diwali, the annual festival of lights, which marked Ram’s return from exile to his Ayodhya home after defeating his evil adversary Ravan.

The prime minister will soon lead a consecration ceremony for a Ram sculpture at the temple, with opposition leaders invited.

Some observers believe the ceremony will strengthen Hindu nationalism. The BJP “will use the occasion to whip up religious and cultural sentiment”, said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, a journalist and commentator focusing on Hindu nationalism.
The opposition has never been able to have a consistent response to the Hindu nationalist programme of the BJPNilanjan Mukhopadhyay, political commentator

Thanks to a series of BJP initiatives and online posts, Mukhopadhyay said, the religious narrative is likely to swirl until the Ram Navami festival in April, which marks Ram’s birth.

That is also likely to serve as a starting point for widening a campaign to establish temples at other disputed sites, he added.

Last month the Allahabad High Court in Uttar Pradesh gave the go ahead for a survey of a mosque near a temple called Krishna Janmabhoomi – said to be the birthplace of the god Krishna – in the city of Mathura after petitioners claimed the Muslim place of worship showed signs of Hindu religion.

Indian Hindus arrive to take a dip in the Sarayu river in Ayodhya on Friday. Photo: EPA-EFE

Mukhopadhyay said it was “a matter of time” before mosque sites in Varanasi and Mathura – key Hindu pilgrimage cities – give way to temples. The BJP “will time it to suit them most politically”, he said.
Opposition leaders appear divided over how to respond to the BJP’s religious slant, especially following its recent wins in three state elections – Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Rajasthan – which account for most voters in the party’s heartland northern and central areas.

West Bengal state chief minister Mamata Banerjee, leader of regional party the Trinamool Congress, indicated she will skip this month’s Ram ceremony, while Samajwadi party leader Akhilesh Yadav, influential in Uttar Pradesh, responded vaguely, saying he will visit the temple “whenever god wants him to”.
Calls grow for Nepal to ditch secularism as India’s BJP pushes Hindu agenda
19 Jun 2023

India’s main opposition Congress Party leader Rahul Gandhi, whose months-long Unite India march from September 2022 helped his party win a state election in southern Karnataka in May, is planning a similar march called Bharat Nyay (Justice) this month.
It is set start in the northeastern state of Manipur, which was besieged by communal riots last year. According to government figures, as of September 15, 175 people are known to have died in the violence, with more than 1,100 injured.

The march is expected to go through several states, including Uttar Pradesh.
Little resistance

“The opposition has never been able to have a consistent response to the Hindu nationalist programme of the BJP,” said Mukhopadhyay, adding that “the moment you take a soft line … you are taking the position of a B-team”, which “can never win”.

The Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance – commonly known as INDIA – is an opposition coalition that was strung together last year in an attempt to halt the BJP juggernaut. However, it has not arrived at a seat-sharing arrangement to field a common candidate against the BJP that avoids undercutting each constituent party’s votes.

Nor has the group been able to decide on who would be able take on the hugely popular Modi, amid infighting and a lack of ideas, Mukhopadhyay said.

Modi, right, with Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh Yogi Adityanath before the inauguration of a new airport and railway station in Ayodhya on Saturday. 

Photo: AP

Meanwhile, enthusiasm for the temple and its associated projects seems strong in Ayodhya.

“The roads were so bad that it would take us six hours to reach Lucknow [the state capital], but now we are able to do the same distance in a couple of hours because of a new road,” said Prabhakar Pandey, a 64-year-old lawyer in Ayodhya.

The city’s youth hope an influx of visitors will bring employment.

“I am a college graduate and have completed a postgraduate vocational programme, but jobs are few and far between. But now I think there will be new jobs,” said 23-year-old Dharmendra Kumar, who wants to be a train driver.

More big fat Indian weddings are heading abroad – and Modi’s not happy about it
21 Dec 2023


Modi has also called for a cleanliness drive at pilgrimage centres across India from mid-January to coincide with the spiritual festival Makar Sankranti.

Praveen Rai, a political analyst at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies in New Delhi, said most ancient temples in India “have been in bad shape. The BJP has played on this smartly by appealing to people’s pride”.

The temple movement will push local development and highlight Hinduism ahead of elections, he said.

Rai added that religious fervour was unlikely to overshadow the BJP’s governance ahead of this year’s elections, as voters are often swayed by good leadership.

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDUISM IS FASCISM 

LA REVUE GAUCHE - Left Comment: Search results for HINDUISM DONIGER 

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THE NEW MCARTHYISM

Harvard President’s Resignation Part of Larger War on Education, Professor Says

We’re witnessing a campaign to destroy the U.S.’s capacity to address its past and present, says Khalil Gibran Muhammad.

By Amy Goodman , DEMOCRACYNOW!

January 3, 2024

We look at the resignation of Harvard University President Claudine Gay, the first African American and second woman to lead the Ivy League school, after conservative-led allegations of plagiarism and backlash over her testimony at a congressional hearing on antisemitism that is part of a broader effort to censor pro-Palestinian speech on college campuses. “This is a terrible moment for higher education,” says Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. He says plagiarism became a “pretext” to oust Gay, and discusses the larger right-wing war on education aimed at undoing progress on race, gender and addressing inequality.

TRANSCRIPT

This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.

AMY GOODMAN: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
The first African American and second woman to lead Harvard University resigned Tuesday after allegations of plagiarism and backlash over her testimony at a congressional hearing on antisemitism last month that’s part of a broader effort to restrict pro-Palestinian speech on college campuses. Claudine Gay’s six-month tenure is the shortest of any Harvard president in history. Claudine Gay will remain at Harvard as a tenured professor of government and African and African American studies.

In a letter Tuesday, she wrote, quote, “It has been distressing to have doubt cast on my commitments to confronting hate and to upholding scholarly rigor — two bedrock values that are fundamental to who I am — and frightening to be subjected to personal attacks and threats fueled by racial animus,” she wrote.

RELATED STORY

INTERVIEW |

EDUCATION & YOUTH

Ivy League Presidents at Congress Hearing Threw Student Protesters Under the Bus

Not one of the university leaders questioned the baseless premises of many claims, says professor Nivedita Majumdar.

By Daniel Falcone , TRUTHOUTDecember 22, 2023

The plagiarism allegations against President Gay were part of a campaign started last month, led in part by conservative activist Christopher Rufo, who cheered her resignation on X, writing in all capital letters, ”SCAPLED” [sic]. The conservative website The Washington Free Beacon published new plagiarism allegations against Gay Tuesday. One of the authors Rufo accused Gay of plagiarizing was her thesis adviser, Gary King, who has dismissed the allegations, telling The Daily Beast, quote, “There’s not a conceivable case that this is plagiarism. … Her dissertation and every draft I read of it met the highest academic standards,” he said.

The Harvard Corporation issued a statement Tuesday, saying Gay, quote, “acknowledged missteps” and showed, quote, “remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks,” unquote.

Claudine Gay’s resignation comes after the University of Pennsylvania President Elizabeth Magill also resigned, just days after the two appeared, along with MIT President Sally Kornbluth, at a congressional hearing led by right-wing Republican Congressmember Elise Stefanik. This is Stefanik questioning President Gay.




CLAUDINE GAY: … free speech extends —

REP. ELISE STEFANIK: It’s a yes-or-no question. Let me ask you this. You are president of Harvard, so I assume you’re familiar with the term “intifada,” correct?

CLAUDINE GAY: I have heard that term, yes.

REP. ELISE STEFANIK: And you understand that the use of the term “intifada” in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict is indeed a call for violent armed resistance against the state of Israel, including violence against civilians and the genocide of Jews. Are you aware of that?

CLAUDINE GAY: That type of hateful speech is personally abhorrent to me. …

REP. ELISE STEFANIK: Well, let me ask you this: Will admissions offers be rescinded or any disciplinary action be taken against students or applicants who say “from the river to the sea” or “intifada,” advocating for the murder of Jews.

CLAUDINE GAY: As I have said, that type of hateful, reckless, offensive speech is personally abhorrent to me.



AMY GOODMAN: That was last month. On Tuesday, Congressmember Stefanik celebrated Gay’s resignation on social media, writing in all caps, ”TWO DOWN.” Stefanik added this is, quote, “just the beginning of what will be the greatest scandal of any college or university in history,” and vowed to hold more hearings.

Congressmember Stefanik is a major Trump ally and a Harvard alumna who was removed from a Harvard advisory board in 2021 over her comments about voter fraud in the 2020 election that had, quote, “no basis in evidence.”

Meanwhile, the conservative activist Christopher Rufo announced Tuesday evening he was, quote, “contributing an initial $10,000 to a ‘plagiarism hunting’ fund.”

For more on all of this, we’re joined by Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race and public policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He’s the author of The Condemnation of Blackness: Race, Crime, and the Making of Modern Urban America.

Professor, welcome back to Democracy Now! It’s great to have you with us. First, if you can respond to, and were you surprised by, the resignation of Claudine Gay yesterday?

KHALIL GIBRAN MUHAMMAD: Thanks, Amy, for having me on.

I have to admit I wasn’t surprised, but I was extremely disappointed. This is a terrible moment for higher education. Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania are just the beginning. The political attacks that you’ve just profiled by Elise Stefanik and most other members of the House committee that held those hearings on December 5th have actually declared war on the independence, on academic freedom, on the truth of American history and our present at all colleges and universities, just as Governor DeSantis has done in Florida and Greg Abbott has done in Texas and other governors and legislative bodies in many other states.

This is the next step in now a three-year-long campaign to destroy this country’s capacity to address its past and its present, to deal with the structural racism, the systemic inequalities that cause premature death amongst millions of Americans every year. And right now the Republicans and their allies are winning.

AMY GOODMAN: So, if you can put Claudine Gay in context? The first Black president, the first Black woman president, the second woman to lead Harvard University, now her presidency is the shortest in Harvard’s history. And put it in the context of the whole attack on DEI, the whole attack on critical race theory. And if you can talk about this campaign by Stefanik, by Rufo, as they go from the congressional hearing, which didn’t succeed in taking her down, to this issue of plagiarism?

KHALIL GIBRAN MUHAMMAD: OK. Well, let me start with the fact that Harvard is the oldest, wealthiest, most prestigious university in this country and globally. So, for almost 400 years, Harvard has systematically excluded white women and people of color, by and large, from its hallowed corridors, from entering its gates. That’s just an absolute fact, a fact that the university, under the previous president, Larry Bacow, admitted to in a report called the Harvard Legacy of Slavery report, that was issued just over a year ago, a report that points out precisely how not only did the university exclude people of color from getting an education, but in fact collected the bodies of Indigenous people and enslaved people for scientific research, and led, into the 20th century, calls for scientific racism that helped to construct the racial hierarchies that we still live with in this country today. That’s Harvard’s own history as a leader.

So the very university that finally arrived at a moment where it not only reckoned with its own history, but also recognized the talent is universal and that the best of us actually have the ability to move this country and world forward, in a time when the planet is literally on fire and most people who will suffer most from that will be people of color, that is the context that brought Claudine Gay to the presidency. And she was ably and excellently qualified for that role. She had proven herself in previous administrative roles as a dean of the largest school on Harvard’s campus.

So, when we put that in context, the affirmative action decision last June was the first victory for the conservative right in this country to dismantle the very possibility that people like Claudine Gay would have the qualifications, the Harvard and Stanford degrees, necessary to take on such positions. And so, within that political context, the attack on affirmative action is one example of what’s been going on, which is 30 years old, a battle. But additionally, and more proximate to this moment, people like Christopher Rufo in late 2020, in response to George Floyd’s killing, have initiated an effort, what we would call a whitelash or a backlash, forms of misinformation to essentially define a body of knowledge known as critical race theory, that is the intellectual basis for understanding how systemic and structural racism work, as anti-American, as Marxist, as a threat to American civilization. And that led to 24 states criminalizing the teaching of history in all its truth about race, about racism, about sex, about gender. That led to the banning of DEI in places like Florida and, to some degree, in Texas.

And what we saw happen here with this campaign against Claudine Gay, where plagiarism became the pretext, kind of like a Black motorist with tinted windows being stopped only to look for drugs so that they could be incarcerated as part of a war on Black people during mass incarceration, that is the context where Christopher Rufo, who initiated the critical race theory, anti-woke campaign, has now culminated in yet another victory with taking down Claudine Gay over a very, very minor offense within academic context.

AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking to Khalil Gibran Muhammad, professor of history, race and public policy at the Harvard Kennedy School. I want to turn to an op-ed published in The Harvard Crimson by Bernie Steinberg. He was the executive — he was the executive director of Harvard Hillel from 1993 to 2010. It’s headlined “For the Safety of Jews and Palestinians, Stop Weaponizing Antisemitism.” In his essay, Steinberg supports President Gay.

He wrote, quote, “During my long career as a Jewish educator and leader — including thirteen years living in Jerusalem — I have seen and lived through my community’s struggles. Now, as an elder leader, with the benefit of hindsight, I feel compelled to speak to what I see as a disturbing trend gripping our campus, and many others: The cynical weaponization of antisemitism by powerful forces who seek to intimidate and ultimately silence legitimate criticism of Israel and of American policy on Israel.

“In most cases, it takes the form of bullying pro-Palestine organizers. In other [cases], these campaigns persecute anyone who simply doesn’t show due deference to the bullies.”

Steinberg continued, quote, “The recent effort to smear our new University President, Claudine Gay, is a case in point. I applaud the decision by the Harvard Corporation to stand by Dr. Gay amid the ludicrous charges that she somehow supports genocide against Jews, and I hope Harvard will continue to take a clear and strong stance against any further efforts by these powerful parties to meddle in university affairs, especially over personnel decisions.”

Now, again, those are the words of Bernie Steinberg, who was the executive director of Harvard Hillel from 1993 to 2010. Of course, this was before the resignation of Claudine Gay. And we can only assume that the Harvard Corporation, the kind of board of overseers of Harvard, made a deal with her, you know, helped to force her out. So, they had first supported her, and now, with tremendous pressure also from billionaire donors, she is out. If you can talk about the significance of Harvard Hillel — the former head of Harvard Hillel talking about the weaponization of antisemitism as a way to suppress dissent over what Israel is doing in Gaza right now, Professor Muhammad?

KHALIL GIBRAN MUHAMMAD: Well, I think that his comments and his testimony in the op-ed that he wrote from his vantage point speaks very clearly to the absence of a balanced discussion about Claudine Gay’s testimony, as was true of the two other presidents, Liz Magill and Kornbluth. The truth is that they all performed as they should have. They spoke clearly and directly to personally condemning expressions of antisemitism, of which “intifada,” by definition, is not necessarily, which we could talk about more. But putting that aside, they were following the instructions of general counsel and, likely, the board chairs of their various universities. In the case of Claudine Gay, for example, you can see Alan Garber, who is now the current president, the interim president, sitting behind her in glasses and a beard, almost mouthing her responses, because as second in charge of the university, they were both prepared to explain the current policies that deal with hate speech and academic freedom.

And so, what Mr. Steinberg is talking about is the context in which that entire hearing was a setup, where there was no correct answer to a lawful question, a legal question, about whether or not certain forms of speech violate the code of conduct. It always depends. And the weaponization of Jews in this case, as he described in his op-ed, suggested to me, in watching that hearing for five hours and 40 minutes, that people like Virginia Foxx had no intention of extending protections to Jews at Harvard or anywhere else. This was a setup to take down DEI and antiracism and all of the other things that the right has been going after, because that’s what she said when she opened the hearing. She described the hearing as a case of people like me teaching classes which she identified in her opening remarks as the real problem, as a prime example of antiracism and critical race theory creating institutional antisemitism. That’s a lie. It’s a form of fascist propaganda. I actually teach about antisemitism in that class.

And so, what Mr. Steinberg is describing is exactly what is happening here. Jews have been used as a wedge for the right to take down all the entire edifice that has been put in place to deal with structural racism in the society.

AMY GOODMAN: Do you feel a chill at the Kennedy School? What about other African American professors? Your response to Christopher Rufo cheering the resignation of Gay, writing the word “scalped”?

KHALIL GIBRAN MUHAMMAD: Well, listen, I mean, you know, speaking of history, in order to even understand that reference, one would have to understand the war against Indigenous people, the genocide committed against them and forms of settler colonialism that birthed this country. This is an evocation of that history in Christopher Rufo, who is leading the charge against people like me, against Claudine Gay, against everyone who works in a university who believes in truth and justice and a future that is better than our past.

It’s not an accident that in the same news week that ultimately brings us the resignation of Claudine Gay, Nikki Haley was on tape being a slavery denier. I mean, this is the debate we’re having in this country about whether you can actually be honest about the country in all of its complexity. No one is saying that is the whole story, that all the terrible things that happened in the past are the only thing that matters. But the truth is that in half the states — let me repeat — you can’t teach that. And the way things are going now, you won’t be able to teach it at private universities, either.

AMY GOODMAN  is the host and executive producer of Democracy Now!, a national, daily, independent, award-winning news program airing on more than 1,100 public television and radio stations worldwide. Time Magazine named Democracy Now! its “Pick of the Podcasts,” along with NBC’s “Meet the Press.”

What led to Harvard president Claudine Gay's resignation?  CBS NEWS

How the Right Toppled Harvard’s President

A coordinated pressure campaign led to Claudine Gay’s resignation.


Claudine Gay’s departure marked the rare exit that occasioned widespread congressional comment. 

| Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images

By CALDER MCHUGH
POLITICO USA
01/02/2024

Conservatives who have long been at war with elite academic institutions have pointed to these universities’ responses to the conflict between Israel and Hamas as the latest example of the ivory tower’s skewed values.

On Tuesday, the right got a strong dose of satisfaction by engineering the departure of the head of the most influential university in the world.


Almost a month after a widely panned congressional hearing where she said it was context-dependent whether calls for genocide against Jews violated Harvard’s code of conduct, President Claudine Gay announced that she was resigning, a coda that followed a pronounced pressure campaign led by conservatives in Congress, prominent donors and right-leaning media and activists.

Gay’s departure marked the rare exit that occasioned widespread congressional comment. House Speaker Mike Johnson argued “the resignation of Claudine Gay is long overdue,” giving voice to the disdain held for Harvard and other elite institutions by an increasingly populist Republican Party.

Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.), the Harvard grad whose line of questioning during the hearing produced the viral moments that doomed Gay — and led to University of Pennsylvania President Liz Magill’s resignation — took a victory lap Tuesday.

“TWO DOWN,” wrote Stefanik in a post on X.

Yet it was the conservative media ecosystem, not Stefanik, that struck the crowning blow leading to Gay’s resignation. Gay managed at first to escape Magill’s fate with the support of the Harvard Corporation, the smaller and more powerful of Harvard’s two governing boards. But a sustained pressure campaign that focused on allegations of plagiarism in her scholarship ultimately led to her downfall.

It began Dec. 10, when conservative activists Christopher Rufo and Christopher Brunet published a newsletter on Substack titled “ Is Claudine Gay a Plagiarist?”

Rufo occupies a unique place in the culture wars. He describes himself as a policy scholar and a political combatant, a polemicist and a journalist; Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis appointed him as a trustee of New College of Florida as part of his efforts to eliminate what he calls the “ideological conformity” of higher education. (Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) refers to Rufo as “a right-wing propagandist” on a “ campaign to destroy public education in America.”)

Rufo, who has spent much of his career fighting diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives and advocating for bans on teachers discussing LGBTQ+ issues in classrooms, compiled a provocative piece featuring evidence from Gay’s dissertation that wasn’t easily dismissed. Aaron Sibarium, a reporter at the conservative Washington Free Beacon, followed with a Dec. 11 article in which he spoke with scholars about the plagiarism accusations and uncovered new allegations — Sibarium has since reported on additional charges of plagiarism.

On the heels of a hearing that had Gay on the ropes, Rufo was frank about his intentions.

“We launched the Claudine Gay plagiarism story from the Right. The next step is to smuggle it into the media apparatus of the Left, legitimizing the narrative to center-left actors who have the power to topple her. Then squeeze,” Rufo posted on X (formerly known as Twitter) on Dec. 19.

Rufo says it took a three-pronged attack to force Gay’s hand — with Stefanik leading from Congress, financier Bill Ackman ( who continually posted about Gay on X) galvanizing the university’s donor class and his own efforts, along with Brunet and Sibarium.

“We executed it to a really stunning degree of perfection,” Rufo said in an interview Tuesday.

Sibarium, for his part, says that it was a natural reporting process that led him to the story. “I was not sitting there twisting my thumbs asking ‘how do I time this exactly to cause maximum damage?’” he said. “I got a tip and I tracked it down.”

Questions about plagiarism involving Gay have swirled since before she assumed the job of Harvard president in July. An anonymous post on the online discussion forum econjobrumors from June 11 reads “Claudine Gay plagiarized several sources nearly verbatim … in her dissertation, according to a 100-page report circulated to the Harvard Board of Overseers.” A commenter responds “send it to chrisbrunet @ protonmail dot com.”

Brunet had his own history with Gay, dating back to at least April 2022, when she was dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences at Harvard. He published a newsletter on Substack entitled “ The Curious Case of Claudine Gay,” where he opined on her connection to various scandals at Harvard and elsewhere.

But Brunet’s writing and various anonymous posts, though often filled with venom, included few verifiable facts and made little to no impact outside of conservative media at the time. The more rigorous reporting — actual reporting that more closely adhered to mainstream media standards — made the allegations harder to overlook.

“The right has excelled at and outperformed the left when it comes to television and radio opinion … where the right has always lagged is in reporting,” Eliana Johnson, the editor-in-chief of the Free Beacon, said (Johnson formerly worked at POLITICO).

By Dec. 20, mainstream news outlets were reporting on plagiarism allegations against Gay. The Free Beacon’s continued reporting during the holidays — as well as reporting and op eds in The Harvard Crimson, the university’s student newspaper — kept the spotlight on Gay, who began to bleed support among former allies who had to that point stood by her.

“Her support behind the scenes really had collapsed,” Johnson said.

Ian Ward and Jasper Goodman contributed to this report.

Republican hails downfall of first Black president of 368-year-old Harvard

Claudine Gay, who has become second Ivy League president to resign in past month following congressional testimony, says she was subjected to personal threats and racism.

AFP
Claudine Gay during congressional testimony in Washington, DC 

/ Photo: AFP Archive

The president of Harvard University has resigned after coming under ferocious attack over plagiarism accusations and her response to alleged anti-Semitism on campus amid Israel's brutal war on besieged Gaza.

Claudine Gay, who resigned on Tuesday, is the second Ivy League president to resign in the past month following the congressional testimony — Liz Magill, president of the University of Pennsylvania, resigned on December 9.

Gay was criticised in recent months after reports surfaced alleging that she did not properly cite scholarly sources. The most recent accusations came on Tuesday, published anonymously in a conservative online outlet.

Gay, Magill and Massachusetts Institute of Technology President Sally Kornbluth were engulfed in controversy after the trio declined to give a definitive "yes" or "no" answer to Republican Representative Elise Stefanik's question of whether calling for the genocide of Jews would violate their schools' codes of conduct regarding bullying and harassment, saying they had to balance it against free speech protections.

Gay, who made history as the first Black person to be president of the powerhouse university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said in her resignation letter that she'd been subjected to personal threats and "racial animus."

Her downfall comes after the university's governing Harvard Corporation had initially backed her after the public relations disaster of the congressional testimony.

'Racist vitriol'

More than 70 lawmakers, including two Democrats, demanded her resignation, while a number of high-profile Harvard alumni and donors also called for her departure.

Still, more than 700 Harvard faculty members had signed a letter supporting Gay, and her job appeared to be safe.

The resignation, first reported by the student-run newspaper the Harvard Crimson, was confirmed shortly after by Gay herself.

"It is with a heavy heart but a deep love for Harvard that I write to share that I will be stepping down as president," Gay said in a statement.

Gay also wrote that she had faced threats to her safety and "racial animus" in the wake of the furore over her handling of claims of mounting anti-Semitism on campus.

The university's governing Harvard Corporation said that Gay had "shown remarkable resilience in the face of deeply personal and sustained attacks."

"While some of this has played out in the public domain, much of it has taken the form of repugnant and, in some cases, racist vitriol directed at her through disgraceful emails and phone calls. We condemn such attacks."

In the United States, the anti-Semitism on campus controversy came amid a rise in attacks and violent rhetoric targeting Jews and Muslims, including at universities, since the start of Israel's brutal war on besieged Gaza.

However, Islamophobic attacks were never taken seriously, like anti-Semitism.

The president of another elite Ivy League institution, the University of Pennsylvania, had already been forced to resign.

Celebration

The House Republican who challenged Gay out during her testimony celebrated the latest academic's downfall.

"TWO DOWN," Representative Stefanik wrote on social media, referring to the resignations of Gay and former University of Pennsylvania president Magill.

"Harvard knows that this long overdue forced resignation of the antisemitic plagiarist president is just the beginning of what will be the greatest scandal of any college or university in history," said Stefanik.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, a close US ally, has claimed that a "whopping wave of anti-Semitism" has "seeped onto university campuses."

Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust memorial, has described it as a "cancer."

Former student and multi-million-dollar donor Bill Ackman claimed in a letter to Harvard's governing boards that "President Gay's failures have led to billions of dollars of cancelled, paused, and withdrawn donations to the university."

Gay, 53, was born in New York to Haitian immigrants and is a professor of political science who, in July, became the first Black president of 368-year-old Harvard.

80 Percent of Global Famine Is Currently in Gaza, UN Expert Warns

“In my life, I’ve never seen anything like this in terms of severity, in terms of scale, and then in terms of speed.”

By Sharon Zhang ,

TRUTHOUT

January 3, 2024

Palestinians flock to a truck carrying drinkable water, as they face the threat of hunger and thirst in Rafah, Gaza, on December 11, 2023.

ANADOLU / GETTY IMAGES


Truthout is a vital news source and a living history of political struggle. If you think our work is valuable, support us with a donation of any size.

Israel’s starvation campaign in Gaza is so severe that the vast majority of people across the world who are experiencing famine are located in Gaza, a UN food expert pointed out this week.

There are currently roughly 706,000 people in total across the world who are in populations experiencing “catastrophic” or “famine” levels of hunger, global food researchers have found. Of those people, about 577,000 are Palestinians in Gaza, according to a recent report by the UN-backed Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC).

This means Palestinians in Gaza make up 80 percent of the global population that is currently experiencing famine, as chief economist for the UN World Food Program Arif Husain said in an interview with The New Yorker’s Isaac Chotiner published Wednesday. Some of the other countries facing some level of famine are Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia, according to the IPC.

Don’t miss a beat

Husain emphasized that the hunger crisis in Gaza, which IPC researchers have determined is acute across the entire region, is unprecedented in its severity.

“I’ve been doing this for the past two decades, and I’ve been to all kinds of conflicts and all kinds of crises. And, for me, this is unprecedented because of, one, the magnitude, the scale, the entire population of a particular place; second, the severity; and, third, the speed at which this is happening, at which this has unfolded, is unprecedented,” Husain said. “In my life, I’ve never seen anything like this in terms of severity, in terms of scale, and then in terms of speed.”

RELATED STORY

Entire Gaza Population Facing Acute Hunger “Crisis,” UN-Backed Report Warns

A quarter of the population, or about 570,000 people, are facing famine, the report says.

By Sharon Zhang , TRUTHOUTDecember 21, 2023

Husain also pointed out that the IPC report determined that the entire population of Gaza, or about 2.2 million people, will be under “full-fledged famine” within the next six months if Israel continues its blockade of food and other basic needs. The economist said that the escalating crisis is largely the result of Israel barring food from entering and being distributed in the region, adding that its relentless bombing campaign has endangered humanitarian workers and made it nearly impossible to distribute resources.

Famine is the worst level of hunger under IPC’s classification system, characterized by three main criteria, as Husain explained. First, more than 20 percent of a region’s population must be starving. The second is that 30 percent of children in the region must be malnourished or extremely thin, known as being “wasted.” Then, the mortality rate must be double the average rate.

Currently, Gaza is not classified as a full famine because its population only meets the first criteria, he said, but the population is on the way there. Roughly a quarter of the population has already reached the “famine” classification, while 50 percent are in the next highest classification of a food insecurity “emergency” and the rest are in an acute “crisis” of hunger, the IPC found.

“The bottom line is that, in Gaza, pretty much everybody is hungry at the moment,” Husain said.

“[Y]ou hope not to say, ‘O.K., let’s act because there is a famine,’” he added. “You need to act to avoid a famine, right? Because if you say, ‘O.K., let’s act when there is a famine,’ that means you’re saying people have already died, children are already wasted, people are already starving. That’s not the point. The point is that we should never let a population reach that state.”


This article is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), and you are free to share and republish under the terms of the license.

SHARON ZHANGis a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labor. Before coming to Truthout, Sharon had written stories for Pacific Standard, The New Republic, and more. She has a master’s degree