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Anti-Israel Faculty Target University Presidents With New Tactic in Bid to Oust Them Over Campus Protest Response
The remains of a pro-Hamas encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles. Photo: Reuters Connect
Anti-Israel faculty have been increasingly using a new tactic to push to terminate university presidents who punished students and requested police help in ending an ongoing paroxysm of pro-Hamas demonstrations that began erupting on college campuses across the US last month.
Votes of no confidence in the presidents’ leadership have happened or are forthcoming at Barnard College, Emory University, the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt (Cal Poly), and potentially other schools — a measure that all but guarantees a new leader will be installed at those schools.
On Tuesday, Barnard College President Laura Rosenbury lost a no-confidence vote handily, with 77 percent of participating faculty voting against her in an apparent act of retribution prompted by her suspending over 50 anti-Israel protesters and evicting them from campus. The action was, according to The Columbia Spectator, the first no-confidence vote against a president in the college’s history. The move came after the Barnard chapter of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) unanimously recommended the vote, citing the college’s decision to suspend students involved in the demonstrations.
At Emory, meanwhile, 90 percent of faculty members in Oxford College, an undergraduate division of the university, voted “no confidence” in President Gregory Fenves this week, according to The Emory Wheel. The vote came after Fenves took similar measures to end unauthorized demonstrations on campus and clear an encampment where the protesters had planted themselves.
Pro-Hamas demonstrations at Emory saw numerous clashes between law enforcement and students and faculty. In one instance, economics professor Caroline Fohlin was arrested for attempting to prevent the detention of a protester. Officers restrained her, bringing her to the ground, while she said repeatedly, “I’m a professor!” In another incident, students pelted objects at officers while using their bodies to press them against a building.
The faculty at Emory’s College of Arts and Sciences are currently holding their own no-confidence vote, the results of which will reportedly be unveiled on Friday afternoon.
In Texas, over 600 members of the UT Austin faculty have signed a letter proclaiming they “no longer have confidence” in President Jay Hartzell, who invited local police to quell unauthorized anti-Israel demonstrations which resulted in students commandeering a section of campus and refusing to leave. The UT Austin chapter of the AAUP spearheaded the effort.
“We, faculty members at the University of Texas at Austin, no longer have confidence in President Jay Hartzell,” the letter said, describing the restoration of order during final exams as a violation of trust. “We demand that criminal charges against students and others be dropped. We demand that the students not face disciplinary action at the university for their activities on April 24.”
Other school presidents have faced similar backlash for seeking to restore order on campus. At Cal Poly last week, 193 of 203 faculty attendees voted no confidence in President Tom Jackson Jr. Then on Monday, over 300 faculty members signed a letter demanding that Jackson and his chief of staff, Mark Johnson, resign, lambasting them for calling the police on student protesters when they occupied a campus building.
The wave of no-confidence votes, which may grow in the days ahead, came amid an explosion of anti-Israel demonstrations at universities amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza.
Indeed, for the past two weeks college students have been amassing in the hundreds at a growing number of schools, taking over sections of campuses by setting up “Gaza Solidarity Encampments” and refusing to leave unless administrators condemn and boycott Israel. Footage of the protests has shown demonstrators chanting in support of Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist organization; calling for the destruction of Israel; and even threatening to harm members of the Jewish community on campus. In many cases, activists have also lambasted the US and Western civilization more broadly.
The protests initially erupted across the US but have since spread to university campuses around the world, primarily in the West.
Scrutiny of faculty participation in the pro-Hamas demonstrations and efforts to change university leadership is necessary but has been lacking in public discourse about the protests, according to experts who have spoken with The Algemeiner since the disruptions began.
On several campuses — including George Washington University in Washington, DC, New York University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Michigan, and the University of Southern California, among others — faculty have colluded with or joined students in calling for the destruction of Israel and celebrating Hamas’ violence against the Jewish state as a form of “resistance.”
At Northeastern University in Boston, professors formed a human barrier around a student encampment to stop its dismantling by officers. At Columbia University in New York, faculty at the school, as well its affiliate Barnard College, staged a walkout in support of the demonstrations and demanded the abeyance of disciplinary sanctions against anti-Zionist students — dozens of whom cheered Hamas and threatened more massacres of Jews similar to Oct. 7 — who have violated school rules.
The power of faculty — an overwhelming majority of whom identify as leftist — to govern the university and set the tone of its culture has been a key source of radicalism and anti-American ideas that have wielded significant influence in the academy, according to campus antisemitism expert Tammi Rossman-Benjamin, who founded the AMCHA Initiative watchdog group.
“It’s the faculty. Faculty are behind the vote of no confidence at Barnard College and also at [Cal Poly],” Rossman-Benjamin told The Algemeiner this week. “Faculty run the university, and they are out of control. They have tenure, and university presidents do not. So, it’s not that administrators are capitulating to students. They are capitulating to the faculty, because they know that if they run afoul of the faculty, they are history”
Breaking the faculty’s hold on American higher education, she argued, can only come with the abolition of tenure and a wholesale reformation of higher education.
“This situation is not sustainable, and we have to focus specifically on the faculty. Take away their shared governance. Take away their tenure,” she said. “You have to get rid of tenure because it has protected faculty whose goal is to upend and undermine the university itself. It’s not just about social justice — their aim for decades has been to destroy the university as we know it and to use the university as a tool for revolutionizing society. If you can’t recognize how illegitimate that is, then the universities are lost. We will lose if we do not have the will to take them on.”
Asaf Romirowsky, an expert on the Middle East and executive director of Scholars for Peace in the Middle East, told The Algemeiner that since the 1960s, far-left “scholar activists” have gradually seized control of the higher education system, tailoring admissions processes and the curricula to foster ideological radicalism and conformity, which students then carry with them into careers in government, law, corporate America, and education.
“This is 1984,” he explained, alluding to George Orwell’s classic novel about a dystopian state. “As we can see, these rallies are not peaceful as their supporters have insisted. They are violent, verbally and physically. People are ending up in the hospital with injuries. This is analogous to Nazi Germany, and that should be a wake-up call to the American people. If these are the institutions that should be the vanguard of American democracy and Western values and this is what they are producing, we should be seriously questioning the functionality of higher education as a whole.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Israel to Send Delegation to Qatar for Gaza Ceasefire Talks

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference in Jerusalem, Sept. 2, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has decided to send a delegation to Qatar for talks on a possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, an Israeli official said, reviving hopes of a breakthrough in negotiations to end the almost 21-month war.
Palestinian group Hamas said on Friday it had responded to a US-backed Gaza ceasefire proposal in a “positive spirit,” a few days after US President Donald Trump said Israel had agreed “to the necessary conditions to finalize” a 60-day truce.
The Israeli negotiation delegation will fly to Qatar on Sunday, the Israeli official, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters.
But in a sign of the potential challenges still facing the two sides, a Palestinian official from a militant group allied with Hamas said concerns remained over humanitarian aid, passage through the Rafah crossing in southern Israel to Egypt and clarity over a timetable for Israeli troop withdrawals.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is due to meet Trump in Washington on Monday, has yet to comment on Trump’s announcement, and in their public statements Hamas and Israel remain far apart.
Netanyahu has repeatedly said Hamas must be disarmed, a position the terrorist group, which is thought to be holding 20 living hostages, has so far refused to discuss.
Israeli media said on Friday that Israel had received and was reviewing Hamas’ response to the ceasefire proposal.
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Tucker Carlson Says to Air Interview with President of Iran

Tucker Carlson speaks on July 18, 2024 during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jasper Colt-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
US conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson said in an online post on Saturday that he had conducted an interview with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, which would air in the next day or two.
Carlson said the interview was conducted remotely through a translator, and would be published as soon as it was edited, which “should be in a day or two.”
Carlson said he had stuck to simple questions in the interview, such as, “What is your goal? Do you seek war with the United States? Do you seek war with Israel?”
“There are all kinds of questions that I didn’t ask the president of Iran, particularly questions to which I knew I could get an not get an honest answer, such as, ‘was your nuclear program totally disabled by the bombing campaign by the US government a week and a half ago?’” he said.
Carlson also said he had made a third request in the past several months to interview Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will be visiting Washington next week for talks with US President Donald Trump.
Trump said on Friday he would discuss Iran with Netanyahu at the White House on Monday.
Trump said he believed Tehran’s nuclear program had been set back permanently by recent US strikes that followed Israel’s attacks on the country last month, although Iran could restart it at a different location.
Trump also said Iran had not agreed to inspections of its nuclear program or to give up enriching uranium. He said he would not allow Tehran to resume its nuclear program, adding that Iran did want to meet with him.
Pezeshkian said last month Iran does not intend to develop nuclear weapons but will pursue its right to nuclear energy and research.
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Hostage Families Reject Partial Gaza Seal, Demand Release of All Hostages

Demonstrators hold signs and pictures of hostages, as relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas protest demanding the release of all hostages in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Itai Ron
i24 News – As Israeli leaders weigh the contours of a possible partial ceasefire deal with Hamas, the families of the 50 hostages still held in Gaza issued an impassioned public statement this weekend, condemning any agreement that would return only some of the abductees.
In a powerful message released Saturday, the Families Forum for the Return of Hostages denounced what they call the “beating system” and “cruel selection process,” which, they say, has left families trapped in unbearable uncertainty for 638 days—not knowing whether to hope for reunion or prepare for mourning.
The group warned that a phased or selective deal—rumored to be under discussion—would deepen their suffering and perpetuate injustice. Among the 50 hostages, 22 are believed to be alive, and 28 are presumed dead.
“Every family deserves answers and closure,” the Forum said. “Whether it is a return to embrace or a grave to mourn over—each is sacred.”
They accused the Israeli government of allowing political considerations to prevent a full agreement that could have brought all hostages—living and fallen—home long ago. “It is forbidden to conform to the dictates of Schindler-style lists,” the statement read, invoking a painful historical parallel.
“All of the abductees could have returned for rehabilitation or burial months ago, had the government chosen to act with courage.”
The call for a comprehensive deal comes just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares for high-stakes talks in Washington and as indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas are expected to resume in Doha within the next 24 hours, according to regional media reports.
Hamas, for its part, issued a statement Friday confirming its readiness to begin immediate negotiations on the implementation of a ceasefire and hostage release framework.
The Forum emphasized that every day in captivity poses a mortal risk to the living hostages, and for the deceased, a danger of being lost forever. “The horror of selection does not spare any of us,” the statement said. “Enough with the separation and categories that deepen the pain of the families.”
In a planned public address near Begin Gate in Tel Aviv, families are gathering Saturday evening to demand that the Israeli government accept a full-release deal—what they describe as the only “moral and Zionist” path forward.
“We will return. We will avenge,” the Forum concluded. “This is the time to complete the mission.”
As of now, the Israeli government has not formally responded to Hamas’s latest statement.
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