technocrit

In late April 2024, a mob attacked a pro-Palestinian student encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles. Police and campus security stood by and watched the assault for nearly five hours before intervening. Pleas to university officials went nowhere. And the next day police returned, only to violently and unlawfully clear the encampment and arrest protesters.

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The Trump administration has repeatedly conflated participation in protests against Israel’s war in Gaza with support for Hamas. It has also accused demonstrators of supporting “terrorists”.

Kordia’s arrest marks the second time in less than a week that a Palestinian student at Columbia University has been taken into ICE custody for deportation. On Saturday, protest spokesperson Mahmoud Khalil likewise was arrested and placed in immigration detention, first in New Jersey and later in Louisiana.

Civil liberty advocates say the arrests are meant to stifle free speech rights, and Khalil’s lawyer this week argued he has not been able to contact his client privately, in violation of his right to legal counsel.

Khalil is a permanent resident of the US, with a green card, and his American wife is eight months pregnant. The Trump administration, however, says it plans to strip him of his green card.

“It is a privilege to be granted a visa to live and study in the United States of America. When you advocate for violence and terrorism that privilege should be revoked, and you should not be in this country,” Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem said in the news release.

But the arrests and student visa revocation were not the only strong-armed actions the Trump administration took against Columbia in the last 24 hours.

In a letter issued late on Thursday night, the administration demanded that Columbia’s Department of Middle Eastern, South Asian and African Studies (MESAAS) be placed in an “academic receivership” wherein an outside authority takes control, often as punishment for mismanagement.

The letter specified that the university must come up with a plan to create the academic receivership role no later than March 20.

Failure to comply, the letter warned, would negatively affect “Columbia University’s continued financial relationship with the United States government”.

Setting up a receivership was just one in a list of demands, which included abolishing the university’s judicial board for hearing disciplinary matters, banning masks on campus and adopting a controversial definition of anti-Semitism that some fear could limit legitimate criticisms of Israel.

President Donald Trump’s attempt to deport pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil marks one of Trump’s most egregious assaults on democratic liberties since taking office. Yet too many Democrats, particularly in party leadership, are responding to Trump in the most mealymouthed way possible. But this is a problem of Democrats’ own making: Their trepidation stems from their own history of repressing speech critical of Israel — and now we’re all at risk of paying the price for it.

President Donald Trump’s attempt to deport pro-Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil marks one of Trump’s most egregious assaults on democratic liberties since taking office. Yet too many Democrats, particularly in party leadership, are responding to Trump in the most mealymouthed way possible. But this is a problem of Democrats’ own making: Their trepidation stems from their own history of repressing speech critical of Israel — and now we’re all at risk of paying the price for it.

On Thursday, the university announced it was expelling, suspending and revoking the degrees of 22 students following last year’s Hamilton Hall protest, fulfilling one of the nine demands issued in a letter from the Trump administration to Columbia.

The University Judicial Board (UJB) - which has been overseeing disciplinary proceedings for pro-Palestinian protestors since the fall and issued the punishments - said it was issuing “multi-year suspension, temporary degree revocations, and expulsions related to the occupation of Hamilton Hall” on 30 April.

Previously, the UJB - an independent body of faculty, staff and students - had only suspended students. One of the demands made by the Trump administration is to eliminate the UJB and centralise discipline beneath the president’s office, giving them sole jurisdiction over punishing students.

A statement from the Columbia Palestine Solidarity Coalition alleged that co-chair of the Board of Trustees David Greenwald - who worked at Goldman Sachs for 20 years - “was revealed to have personally interfered in the disciplinary cases of these students”.

An estimated six students were expelled from Columbia University, according to student organisers. One of the students expelled and fired was Grant Miner, president of the Student Workers of Columbia (SWC) union.

According to the union, the expulsion occurred a day before contract negotiations were set to begin with the university on Friday. In a press release issued on Friday, they said: “Miner was expelled without any evidence after nearly a year of disciplinary proceedings.”

“The first bargaining session between SWC and Columbia begins Friday, where the Union will present demands to protect international and undocumented student workers.

"Mahmoud Khalil, a UAW card signer, was detained by the US government last week, making Miner the second SWC member to be targeted. The Union is demanding protections for international and undocumented students, which would make it more difficult for Columbia to cave to federal pressure by aiding the Department of Homeland Security in abducting student workers.”

At the time of publication, SWC said Columbia had cancelled bargaining two hours before negotiations were due to take place.

TL;DR:

• Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
• Russian President Vladimir Putin
• Former Sudanese President Omar Bashir
• Ugandan Warlord Joseph Kony
• Saif al-Islam Gaddafi
• Former Ivorian President Laurent Gbagbo

Recent coverage of Gaza and the West Bank illustrates that, while corporate media occasionally outright call for expelling Palestinians from their land, more often the way these outlets support ethnic cleansing is by declining to call it ethnic cleansing.

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