"Everything I focus on is now a banned word"
academicfreedom
Wesleyan University President: 'The law should not dictate what your opinion is’
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_8-ZMza0fvA #Trump #Musk #JDVance 🛋️ #coup #fascism #ICE #MarcoRubio #Resist ✊ #project2025
#academicfreedom #freedomofspeech #MahmoudKhalil #FreeMahmoudKhalil #FreeSpeech
Trump intervention at Columbia alarms defenders of academic freedom | AP News https://apnews.com/article/columbia-university-mahmoud-khalil-ice-arrests-1921e26f6b5a8585ad5cbda790846324
France offers to take in #US scientists. Aix-Marseille University in the south of France is launching the Safe Place For Science program…for American researchers wishing to pursue their work free from persecution… the university says it is launching a scheme dedicated to welcoming those wishing to pursue their work "in an environment conducive to innovation, excellence, & #academicfreedom."’ | The Register https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/14/france_us_science_offer/
#ColumbiaUniversity Bent Over Backward to Appease #RightWing, #ProIsrael Attacks — And #Trump Still Cut #FederalFunding
Instead of #outrage, the school’s interim president responded to the cuts by vowing to continue its misguided crackdown.
by Natasha Lennard, March 8 2025
"Columbia University could hardly have been more draconian in the last year and a half since students began speaking out against Israel’s assault on #Gaza.
In early November 2023, four months before the Columbia #GazaSolidarity encampment even began, the university banned its chapters of #StudentsForJusticeInPalestine and #JewishVoiceForPeace. A few hundred students from the groups had had the audacity to walk out from classes and hold a “die-in” protest on campus — some of the most widely celebrated nonviolent protest tactics available.
"The crackdown was just getting started.
Since then, the university has ordered police raids on campus three times, leading to the arrests of over 100 students. Last week, the school expelled four students, three from #BarnardCollege one from Columbia. Many dozens of students have faced discipline and suspensions for participating in pro-Palestine protests and speech.
"Professors have been slandered before Congress, censured, removed from positions, and reportedly pushed into retirement over their support for Palestine and criticism of Israel. The campus has been essentially locked down for almost a year.
"Again and again, Columbia has shown a willingness to throw #students, #faculty, #FreeSpeech, and academic freedom under the bus in acquiescence to a #RightWing, #ProIsrael narrative that treats support for Palestinians as an affront to Jewish safety.
"For all Columbia’s #appeasement, President Donald Trump’s Federal Task Force to Combat Antisemitism announced last week that it would cancel $400 million in #FederalGrants and contracts to the university.
"'Columbia has worked overtime to appease,' wrote Layla, a student at Columbia’s School of Social Work, who asked to withhold her last name having faced doxxing attacks and harassment from Zionist groups. 'Students are miserable. Campus is a #panopticon. And their funding was still cut.'
"The Trump administration can be expected to use its perverted conception of antisemitism to further its explicit plans to decimate, #corporatize, and #ReWhiten #HigherEducation. The shame here lies with university leaderships — at Columbia and schools nationwide — that have failed to stand up for their purported missions of #CriticalThinking and #AcademicFreedom. Instead, they have put some of their most vulnerable community members, particularly international students and students of color, at risk.
"There is no appeasing a political force like the #TrumpianRight, intent on a program of destruction. And there is no appeasing a nationalist #Zionist worldview that, defying reason, sees #antisemitism in every call for #Palestinian freedom. Columbia is proof of the failure of caving in; the administration has offered up a platter of repression for more than a year and is still slated to lose $400 million."
Read more:
https://theintercept.com/2025/03/08/columbia-trump-funding-gaza-israel/
Archived version:
https://archive.ph/jrNva
#Fascism #Appeasement #FreePalestine #Gaza #RightToProtest #Censorship #Fascism #ICE #ACAB #Authoritarianism #USPol #FreeSpeech
"I think war crimes should be prosecuted regardless of who commits them."
That's a statement that could result in my residency revoked and deportation from Israel if a new law introduced into the Knesset passes.
And no scholar who has said such a thing would be admitted into the country either.
This is just one part of a four-part bill intended to silence dissent. The bill would also make it illegal for anyone to cooperate with any ICC or ICJ investigation against Israel for genocide or crimes against humanity.
Read more from my colleague Itamar Mann here: https://verfassungsblog.de/criminalizing-knowledge/
#activism #academicfreedom #israel #apartheid #warcrimes #ICC
#US / Harvard Divinity School administrators resign citing university's tolerance of anti-muslim bias and attacks on pro-Palestinian voices
Two administrators at Harvard Divinity School's Religion and Public Life program have resigned, citing the university's failure to address a hostile environment towards Muslims and those critical of Israel.
Hussein Rashid, the assistant dean, explicitly accused Harvard of tolerating racist and defamatory statements against the program, particularly from Jewish groups like Hillel and #Chabad.
[…] He cited as an example an Instagram post by Harvard Chabad, led by Rabbi Hirschy Zarchi, that said: “There are numerous Harvard academic centers that essentially function as Hamas or Palestinian embassies,” citing the Religion in Public Life center “in its entirety,” and concluding, “it’s stunning that there’s no call for some of these centers to be shut down or rebuilt in its entirety.”
@israel
@palestine
@academicchatter
#IsraelOccupation
#IsraelWarCrimes
#Islamophobia
#AcademicFreedom
Quoting Dr. Dotan Halevy: “For Israel, looking at Gaza is like looking in a mirror”
More than one hundred students and faculty members at Tel Aviv University participated in an anti-war event titled "Public Lesson on Gaza," organized by "Students Against the War" and "Academia for Equality." Despite initial attempts by the university administration to prevent the gathering, the event, featuring lectures on the extensive destruction in #Gaza and the various aspects of the war, proceeded in a packed hall under the sponsorship of the History Department.
Speakers addressed #Israel's disregard for the Palestinian issue, the problematic "just war" discourse, the deliberate destruction of Gaza's healthcare system, and Israel's failure to understand the ongoing impact of the Nakba on Gaza.
[…] The last speaker was Dr. Dotan Halevy, a lecturer in the Department of Middle Eastern History who researches the history of Gaza. At the beginning of his remarks, Halevy emphasized that the anti-war conference was organized by students and thanked the organizers for the important initiative. In his lecture, titled "Gaza: The Israeli Blind Spot," he stated that the military failure on October 7th is just the tip of the iceberg of Israel's failure to understand the Gaza Strip. "There is a pathology in the way Israel fails to understand the Gaza Strip and what is happening there. Again and again, Israel is surprised by the developments in Gaza," he said. According to Halevy, the root of the problem is Israel's refusal to understand the Nakba. He added: "Gaza is the representation of the Nakba as ongoing displacement and the loss of the possibility of a state. In the Nakba, there were 700,000-750,000 refugees, of whom 200,000 arrived in Gaza. Today, the refugees and their families are the vast majority in the Strip. Therefore, Gaza is a crystallization of the Palestinian situation. To deal with Gaza is to deal with the Nakba – with the core issue in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict – and therefore Israel is unable to do so. For Israel, looking at Gaza is like looking in a mirror."
Hebrew https://zoha.org.il/134802/
@israel
@palestine
@histodons
@academicchatter
#IsraelOccupation
#IsraelWarCrimes
#AcademicFreedom
#OatmealQuotes
The capitalist class must really be terrified of the angry rabble rising up against them. Especially with large percentages of millennials and gen-Zers supporting socialism.
No longer content with K-12 book bans, policing kids' gender expression, and repression against any support for Palestine, the Dems & Republicans have united to support new curriculum from the right wing Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation to proselytize kids on the evils of communism. No mention, of course, of HUAC, McCarthy, or the nation's history of mass imprisonment, deportation and murder of political dissidents in the US under the guise of fighting communism.
https://theintercept.com/2024/12/05/congress-anti-communism-school-curriculum/
#schools #education #students #children #communism #anticommunism #propaganda #censorship #bookbans #freespeech #academicfreedom
Edited 88d ago
UBC faculty members speak out in support of instructor who says he was let go for pro-Palestine activism.
UBC faculty say the instructor's dismissal demonstrates an “alarming erosion of free expression at UBC.”
What does Alberta’s Provincial Priorities Act signal for Canadian research?
#Alberta #Canada #AcademicFreedom #PostSecondary #Research #ProvincialPrioritiesAct #CanadianPolitics #HigherEducation #FederalFunding #UniversityResearch
https://the-14.com/what-does-albertas-provincial-priorities-act-signal-for-canadian-research/
🇻🇪 ‘Afraid to talk’: researchers fear the end for science in Venezuela
A lack of funding and academic freedom amid a political crackdown leave scientists feeling hopeless and pondering an exodus from the country.⤵️
🔗 https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-03144-4
🏷️ #Venezuela #Science #AcademicFreedom #Funding #Politics #Dictatorship #Crackdown #Students #Professors #HumanRights #Exodus
"A History Instructor Complained About Parking Fees. It Cost Him His Job"
https://www.chronicle.com/article/a-history-instructor-complained-about-parking-fees-it-cost-him-his-job
(#paywalled)
He complained about the high price of parking. He disputed the President's numbers in a "cordial" but "tense" public meeting on the topic. He turned over the research documenting his numbers. Two and a half weeks later, the provost fired him, explaining that #TarletonStateUniversity would not "tolerate intolerable behavior."
#Academia #AcademicFreedom
@academicchatter
Edited 266d ago
Holocaust Scholar Raz Segal Loses Job Offer for Saying Israel Is Committing Genocide. He says rescission of his offer "spells the end of this idea of free inquiry, of academic freedom, of research and teaching #StandWithGaza #FreePalestine #CeasefireNow #ICJ #ICC #TheHague #Gaza #WestBank #Palestine #Israel #Genocide #NeverAgain #NeverAgainIsNow #apartheid #racism #BDS #UNRWA #Biden #HillaryClinton #University #AcademicFreedom https://youtu.be/PE_Y3oz-HsY?si=B-N_bVHMrG-akd9p
Insecure and overworked: how it’s getting harder to pursue an academic career
#AcademicCareers #HigherEd #UniversityCrisis #Insecure #Overworked #PandemicImpact #Universities #Education #AcademicFreedom
https://the-14.com/insecure-and-overworked-how-its-getting-harder-to-pursue-an-academic-career/
‘Like a war zone’: Emory University grapples with fallout from police response to protest
https://www.inkl.com/a/GWbLWRCokGo
#israel #palestine #gaza #apartheid #ethnicCleansing #genocide #UnitedStates #studentProtests #freedomOfSpeech #academicFreedom #emory #emoryUniversity #BDS #boycottDivestmentAndSanctions
I train scientists in a graduate program. I just read my course evaluations, and I was shocked at how much the politicizing of science has already reached the students that I had always presumed were in our program to see through that politicization.
I'm also in #Florida, where the government is putting tremendous pressure on #AcademicFreedom with its laws to censor academics (we no longer have tenure, we have to teach what the government agrees with, etc.). Here is the story:
#Science
#Politics
#COVID
#oceanography
#GraduateSchool
#ScienceVersusBeliefs
1/
A&M’s right-wing Board of Regents—which wanted new journalism program to mint conservative journalists to “direct our message”—is a danger to its reputation and academic freedom at the school. Professors and students deserve better. https://www.texasobserver.org/mccarthyism-texas-am-journalism-freedom/ @TexasObserver #academicfreedom #education