Four students at the University of Rochester are facing up to seven years in jail for putting up posters around campus accusing a small number of faculty members of enabling the genocide in Gaza.
“Despite the McCarthyite environment, the new anti-speech policies, the attempts to throw the book at students for minor violations of such policies, the student movement is still going strong,” says Palestine Legal attorney Radhika Sainath.
An student organizer with Columbia’s Gaza Solidarity Encampment talks to Mondoweiss about the importance of centering Palestine, the campus movement exploding across the U.S., and what happens next.
The ACLU and Palestine Legal are suing Florida Governor Ron DeSantis and the University of Florida over over the state’s ban of Students for Justice in Palestine.
Ben & Jerry’s is a company that made progressive politics part of its global brand from the very beginning. It’s openly embraced environmentalism, voting rights, the Black Lives Matter movement, and other causes. Palestine has long been viewed as a third rail issue, even among liberals, but not in this case. The political attacks and economic threats didn’t stop the company’s board from suing its parent company or deter it from adding the disclaimer and updated map to its website. If Ben & Jerry’s can show other companies that they can divest from apartheid and survive, that’s a positive.
“I do not recall a time in my life when I did not experience bans on freedom of speech,” writes Dr. Rabab Abdulhadi in a new book on academic freedom and its limits.
In 2016, Fordham University tried to block a Palestinian advocacy group from being formed. After a two year legal battle, students at the school have won a landmark victory which legal advocates are calling “the first major legal victory for free speech for advocates of Palestine on college campuses,” and a Students for Justice in Palestine club can now be established on their campus.