#settler universities

[readingsquotes]

genocide gentry [jen-uh-sahyd jen-tree]: members of the ruling class who hold prestigious positions at cultural & educational institutions despite their connections to warfare amidst an ongoing genocide.

About the project

Many board members of weapons companies also have significant ties to other neoliberal institutions and extractive industries such as fossil fuel corporations, think tanks, and philanthropy. We make particular note of individuals in this dataset who hold ties to fossil fuel corporations as a way to highlight that Palestinian liberation and climate justice are linked struggles, often having in common corporations fueling the ongoing genocide in Gaza as well as the broader climate crisis.

We hope our research will inspire others to uncover further connections between weapons manufacturers’ executives and directors and prominent cultural and educational institutions in your cities and states.

Key Findings:

We found 54 museums, cultural organizations, universities and colleges that currently host these individuals on their boards or in other prominent roles. 

Many of the board members of weapons companies also have significant ties to the fossil fuel industry, neoliberal think tanks, and philanthropy.

[intersectionalpraxis]

[capybaracorn]

Columbia suspends students after deadline to end Gaza camp passes

The number of arrests has crossed 1,100 since New York police detained first demonstrators at Columbia on April 18.

(April 30th 2024)

Pro-Palestinian demonstrators hold a protest outside Columbia University in New York City. [Michael M Santiago/Getty Images via AFP]

Columbia University has begun suspending student demonstrators after they defied an ultimatum to disperse.

The New York University, the epicentre of pro-Palestinian protests that have upended college campuses across the United States, made the call on Monday.

The move follows almost two weeks of protests against Israel’s war in Gaza, which have swept through higher education institutions from coast to coast, and spread into Europe. The demonstrators have demanded that the universities cease all investment in Israel or companies that are seen as supporting its war effort.

The response of the authorities has been tough, with critics of the protests referring to sporadic instances of anti-Semitism. About 100 protesters were arrested at Columbia on April 18.

In the latest crackdown, authorities at the prestigious university in New York had demanded that the protest encampment be cleared by 2pm (18:00 GMT) or students would face disciplinary action.

“These repulsive scare tactics mean nothing compared to the deaths of over 34,000 Palestinians,” said a statement, read out by a student at a news conference after the deadline passed, referring to the death toll in Gaza.

“We will not move until Columbia meets our demands or … [we] are moved by force,” said the student.

A few hours later, Columbia vice president of communications, Ben Chang, said the university had “begun suspending students as part of this next phase of our efforts to ensure safety on our campus”.

He said students had been warned they would be “placed on suspension, ineligible to complete the semester or graduate, and will be restricted from all academic, residential, and recreational spaces”.

Meanwhile, at the University of Texas in Austin, police used pepper spray as they clashed with protesters on Monday. Arrests were made as they dismantled an encampment, adding to the more than 350 people detained nationwide over the weekend.

“No encampments will be allowed,” Texas Governor Greg Abbott said on social media. “Instead, arrests are being made.”

Protests against the Gaza war, with its high Palestinian civilian death toll, have posed a challenge to university administrators trying to balance free speech rights with complaints that the rallies have veered into anti-Semitism and hate.

Footage of police in riot gear summoned at various colleges to break up rallies has been viewed around the world, recalling the protest movement that erupted during the Vietnam War.

Columbia University president, Minouche Shafik, in a statement on Monday announcing talks had broken down, said, “Many of our Jewish students, and other students as well, have found the atmosphere intolerable in recent weeks.

“Many have left campus, and that is a tragedy,” she continued. “Anti-Semitic language and actions are unacceptable and calls for violence are simply abhorrent.”

Protest organisers deny accusations of anti-Semitism, arguing their actions are aimed at Israel’s government and its prosecution of the conflict in Gaza.

They also insist there have been incidents engineered by non-student agitators.

A protester wears the university's disciplinary warning covered over by support for Palestinians in Gaza at Columbia University in New York City. [Alex Kent/Getty Images via AFP]

The protests have upended university campuses across the US, with the number of arrests crossing 1,100. [Caitlin Ochs/Reuters]

A faculty member holds up a sign as faculty members seek to protect students in the Pro-Palestinian "Gaza Solidarity Encampment" at Columbia University. [Michael M Santiago/Getty Images via AFP]

Protesters at Columbia defied a deadline to disband the event with chants, clapping and drumming. [Stefan Jeremiah/AP Photo]

Columbia University issued a notice to the protesters asking them to disband their encampment after negotiations failed to come to a resolution. [Spencer Platt/Getty Images via AFP]

Demonstrators gathered outside an entrance to Columbia University as the 2pm deadline to disband or face suspension approached. [David Dee Delgado/Reuters]

Students condemned the university’s attempts to silence the protesters and said they were determined to continue. “What trumps our fear is our love for Palestine, and our love for liberation, and our refusal to accept subjugation and censorship from an oppressive institution,” one said. [Nuri Vallbona/Reuters]

Pro-Palestinian supporters continue to demonstrate on the campus of Columbia University. [Spencer Platt/Getty Images via AFP]

One graduate student protester said: "It's finals week. But at the end of the day, school is temporary." [Alex Kent/Getty Images via AFP]

[drsonnet]

Gadzooks Bazooka

@GadzooksB

Here’s a drawing in my sketchbook of NYPD beating people protesting in solidarity with Palestine yesterday. They violently attacked people and press members at random on the Nakba day protest in Brooklyn, punching and choking them for protesting genocide.

[sscarletvenus]

today protesters for Palestine interrupted jimmy kimmel's subpar talk show segment with the war criminal kamala harris, rightfully calling the VP a "murderer" for her relentless championing of the dehumanisation of Palestinians and playing active accomplice in catalyzing the genocide of Gazans by the US-backed zionist entity.

this clip is horrifying in more aspects than one, absolutely jarring beyond all reasonable comprehension.

one day after the zionist entity dissipates into dust and defeat, our children will ponder why when people begged the Vice President to stop the beheading of Palestinian babies, kimmel joked that they're "ruining his flow," while simultaneously cueing the band to play off the protesters.

deplorable too are those in the audience, sitting quietly or trying to quiet the voices of sensible and moral dissent. then there's the rent-a-cop on a power trip, as always involved on extra-judicial brutalization, assaulting and kidnapping civilians.

i am forever flummoxed by the liberal elite's capacity for cruelty and yet.

[her-moth]

Ten years ago Mick Tausing's astonishing piece, ‘Two Weeks in Palestine: My First Visit’ was published in Critical Inquiry.

As much about storytelling and reading as it is about the ethics of them is one reason I love it, and another it took me months to get through.

[palestinegenocide]

How Israeli universities are an arm of settler colonialism

Maya Wind's new book meticulously demonstrates how Israeli academic institutions were created to serve the Zionist colonization of Palestine. They continue to do so to this day while fueling Israel's university-military-industrial complex.

[Link]

[grahamkennedy]

Not me deleting any and all posts I've made about skinheads/skinhead subculture because the USCentrism of this website means I will dragged out onto the street and hung if I dare to try and explain the subculture's origins in the 60s in Black British culture.

[readingsquotes]

More particularly, Salaita’s analysis of the role that academia plays in the economy is plainly laid out in all its egotistical glory. For anyone who wasn’t paying much attention to college life until Congress subpoenaed university presidents or until Gaza encampments made headlines, his portrayal of academe may seem jarring; “for all its self-congratulation, the academy’s loftiest mission is a fierce compulsion to eliminate any impediment to donations” (9). Indeed, watching the events unfold over the past few months makes it crystal clear that Harvard isn’t the only hedge fund that happens to have a campus.

...The university’s propensity to protect itself at all costs, rather than its faculty and students who populate its campus, is a germane theme in Salaita’s memoir.

...

But for Palestinians, and also for those whose research and writing is dedicated to the liberation of Palestine, the mythology of the university unravels much more quickly and readily. And beyond the Ivory Tower, it’s more of the same, as Salaita knows better than most of us: 

“We’re never truly free to speak. That’s one of the many myths arising from a religious devotion to ‘free speech’ in the United States. Speech has social effects and consequences and those are enough to limit the range of content, depending on the situation, never mind corporate or political restrictions. When situations change, so do the limits. Maintaining an academic career as an opponent of Zionism means being sharply mindful of vigorous limitations” (151).

In recent months we’ve seen how tenured and untenured professors are equally vulnerable to the precarity of their academic positions. And through the campus protests, criticism of the university has resonated with much of what Salaita has been arguing for years in his scholarship and his public writing. It’s made many people aware for the first time that “the university is a corporate organ wherein the life of the mind is less a regime than an ad campaign”

[intersectionalpraxis]

[capybaracorn]

This Moment Requires All Hands on Deck | Dr. Omar Suleiman

A call for institutional and individual support for encampment efforts across the country.

[drsonnet]

Today's photos from @OxAct4Pal Encampment by the Radcliffe Camera.

Oxford Action for Palestine (OA4P) is a collective of members of the University of Oxford community who are dedicated to Palestinian liberation.

Credit: Madeleine Jane (@_MadeleineJane) / X

[internutter]

Challenge #04073-K055: Lucky Neighbours

In self-imposed exile, even with a beloved pet, a person can go slowly mad from loneliness. The world is lush, perfect for colonies. The first colonists to come down? A boat-load of GOOD luckers. Bad luck doesn't stand a chance.

https://peakd.com/fiction/@internutter/challenge-03192-h283-a-bad-luckers-best-friend -- Anon Guest

In all the universe, there is a form of balance. For good luck, there is also bad luck. And, as many Humans know, some people have all the luck.

Those people are called Luckers.

Lucker Phy had the worst kind of bad luck. Everything she loved and held dear came to a horrible end. Except her gengineered pet, Porgy. The Mycojelly Dog was literally made to be immortal, as well as balancing out Phy's personal luck field.

All that said, exile is not always good for the psyche.

[Check the source for the rest of the story]

[immaculatasknight]

Opposing Canada's death cult

[agentfascinateur]

Gaza children hear US students 💜

[rebelwithacauze]