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Pomona College Faculty Condemn Arrest of Anti-Zionist Protesters, Continuing Attack on Black Officials Who Resist Anti-Israel Pressure
Anti-Zionist protesters being arrested at Pomona College on April 5, 2024. They had taken over an administrative building. Photo: Screenshot/Students for Justice in Palestine via Instagram
The faculty at Pomona College in Claremont, California have censured their school for calling the police to arrest nearly two dozen anti-Zionist students who illegally occupied an administrative building to protest Israel’s military offensive against Hamas, the campus’ official newspaper reported over the weekend.
“The faculty condemns the present and future militarization and use of police on the campus,” said a resolution passed with the approval of 92 professors, while 39 voted no and four abstained. “It insists that the college immediately drop criminal charges and reverse the suspensions and all related consequences against student protesters for their actions of civil disobedience.”
The faculty’s volley of criticism came after dozens of students, many of whom were members of the anti-Zionist campus group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), began occupying Alexander Hall on campus earlier this month. At least 18 of the students commandeered the office of Pomona College president Gabrielle Starr.
According to Starr — the first African American in the history of the school to hold the position — the students spoke impertinently to their superiors and, along with refusing to provide identification, uttered an “anti-Black racial slur in addressing an administrator.”
In total, 20 students, including one who allegedly attempted to stand in the way of a police officer escorting a student in custody, were arrested and later released.
The demonstration was reportedly prompted by the administration’s dismantling of an “apartheid wall” that activists mounted earlier that week — SJP partisans have cited that as the reason the group unlawfully occupied Alexander Hall and disparaged Black administrators.
Since the incident, numerous campus groups have criticized Starr’s method of restoring order on campus, which included levying suspensions against any student who participated in the demonstration. SJP has demanded that Starr, who is African American, resign from her position, and the school’s student government, Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC), has accused her of violating the students’ right to due process by “circumventing” a disciplinary process in which students render the final judgement. The Middle East Studies Association (MESA), which supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, has maintained that the students acted peaceably but did not mention Starr’s accusation of anti-Black racism, which progressives in higher education have previously described as tantamount to violence.
“We ask you to refrain in the future from bringing the police to campus to coercively [sic] suppress student activism,” MESA said in a statement. “Finally, we urge you to publicly and vigorously reaffirm Pomona College’s commitment to respecting the right of your students and all other members of the college community to freedom of speech and assembly, and to academic freedom, including with regard to advocacy for Palestinian rights and divestment by means of peaceful protest and civil disobedience.”
This is not the first time that anti-Zionists have hurled abuse at a Black figure who refused to be browbeaten by anti-Zionist protesters.
Last week, an SJP spinoff group at George Washington University (GW) in Washington, DC handed out pamphlets accusing US Ambassador to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield — who was on campus to give a talk encouraging Black youth to pursue careers in foreign affairs — of being a “puppet” because she has vetoed UN Security Council resolutions calling for a ceasefire to the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza. They also compared Greenfield to Black enslaved persons who had been assigned, against their will, to work as overseers of other enslaved persons on cotton plantations, arguing that she represents “Black bodies as puppets to carry out repression and dissent.” The students also surrounded a Black GW dean, Colette Coleman, screaming that she should resign while one student clapped their hands in her face.
US colleges and universities are taking action against students who hold unauthorized demonstrations in defiance of school rules, reversing a decades-long trend of lax enforcement of rules governing such student protests.
Earlier this month, Vanderbilt University suspended and expelled anti-Zionist students who participated in occupying an administrative building last month. Several had “assaulted a Community Service Officer” to gain access to the building and others “pushed” officials who suggested having a discussion about their concerns, according to the school’s administration. Those students also verbally abused a Black official, shouting, “Shame on You!” at him and insisting that this racial identity demanded his becoming an accessory to their action.
On the same day, Columbia University president Minouche Shafik confirmed that up to six student members of an anti-Zionist organization that invited a terrorist to campus have been suspended. According to The Columbia Spectator, their scholarships have been cancelled and they are evicted from campus housing.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Pomona College Faculty Condemn Arrest of Anti-Zionist Protesters, Continuing Attack on Black Officials Who Resist Anti-Israel Pressure first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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US Shifts One of Two Aircraft Carriers Away From Middle East
The world’s largest aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford steams alongside USNS Laramie (T-AO-203) during a fueling-at-sea in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in this photo taken on Oct. 11, 2023 and released by the US Navy on Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: US Naval Forces Central Command / US 6th Fleet / Handout via REUTERS
One of two US aircraft carrier strike groups deployed to the Middle East in part to deter Iran from carrying out a threatened attack against Israel has departed the region, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
The decision to end the dual-carrier presence came nearly three weeks after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group to remain in the Middle East, even after the arrival of the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to replace it.
The Roosevelt has now departed the Middle East and is headed to the Asia-Pacific region, Major General Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, told a news briefing.
Austin’s order for the Roosevelt to stay in place came on Aug. 25, as Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel and Israel‘s military said it struck Lebanon with around 100 jets to thwart a larger attack, in one of the biggest clashes in more than 10 months of border warfare.
Officials have been concerned that Iran might make also good on its threats to carry out an attack against Israel over the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran in July.
Ryder played down the idea that the United States was no longer concerned about potential Iranian action and said the decision was based on the Navy’s fleet management.
“Iran has indicated that they want to retaliate against Israel. And so we’re going to continue to take that threat very seriously,” Ryder told reporters at the Pentagon.
Iran has vowed a severe response to the July killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which took place as he visited Tehran and which it blamed on Israel. Israel has neither confirmed or denied its involvement.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has been seeking to limit the fallout from the war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, now approaching its one-year anniversary. The conflict has leveled huge swathes of Gaza, triggered border clashes between Israel and Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group and drawn in Yemen’s Houthis.
“We remain intensely focused on working with regional partners to de-escalate tensions and deterring a wider regional conflict,” Ryder said.
The post US Shifts One of Two Aircraft Carriers Away From Middle East first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Toronto police charge three people at UJA event protest—while more cops find themselves assaulted
Protests also occurred at multiple screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The post Toronto police charge three people at UJA event protest—while more cops find themselves assaulted appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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SUNY Purchase President Steps Down Amid Backlash Over Handling of Anti-Israel Protests, Campus Antisemitism
SUNY Purchase College President Milagros Peña attends the 52nd annual commencement at Westchester County Center in White Plains, New York, May 17, 2024. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
State University of New York (SUNY) Purchase president Milagros Peña will leave office at the end of this academic year, ending a four-year tenure that was derailed by pro-Hamas demonstrations on the campus.
According to The Journal News, Peña announced her “retirement” in a letter to the campus community and further discussed the decision at a convocation event held earlier this month.
“After considerable reflection and discussion about what is best for me and my family, I informed Chancellor [John B. King, Jr.] over the summer that this 2024-2025 academic year will be my last year as president,” Peña wrote, according to excerpts of the letter shared by the local news outlet. “I have mixed emotions about my decision to retire as president after the spring semester, because, though we still face challenges as a community, we have accomplished a great deal together and our shared mission of providing access to a high quality, transformative public education is as important as ever.”
Appointed to office 2020, Peña became a target of far-left faculty last academic year when she authorized the clearing of an illegal “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” which, the school’s newspaper reported at the time, led to clashes between law enforcement and pro-Hamas students who refused to obey orders to leave the area. An estimated 70 students were arrested, The Phoenix Purchase has said, and at least one professor was detained for obstructing justice.
However, Peña was inconsistent as a policy maker. In an account of her responses to campus antisemitism published by The Algemeiner on Wednesday, SUNY Purchase alumna Esti Heller said the president ignored numerous supplications for increased security for Jewish life on campus after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Peña was unresponsive, even after someone vandalized an Israeli flag and desecrated a sukkah, a hut built for the Jewish festival of Sukkot. Later, Peña reversed course in her handling of the pro-Hamas protesters, Heller said, acceding to their demands for “ethical investing,” amnesty for students charged with violating the code of conduct, and public disclosure of the school’s financial decisions.
Ultimately, Peña lost a no-confidence vote on June 3 in which 87 percent of the voting faculty called for her to leave office.
“While disappointed by the resolution, I am committed to continuing to take part in conversations with stakeholders on and off campus about many of the issues raised and look forward to engaging with the faculty, staff, and students about our shared goals and the best way of moving forward as a community,” Peña told the Purchase following the vote.
Now, three months later, Peña has granted faculty their wish, becoming the third university president in New York State this year to leave office after being criticized for mismanaging a series of crises, antisemitic incidents, and riotous demonstrations. Last month, Minouche Shafik resigned as president of Columbia University after her administration’s credibility crumbled amid revelations of antisemitic conversations between administrators and a partisan investigation of a pro-Israel professor. In May, Cornell University president Martha Pollack resigned after weeks of convulsive protests and disruptions on campus caused by mobs of pro-Hamas students and faculty.
In Wednesday’s announcement, Peña pledged to make her final months in office productive.
“We still have a lot to do before I step away, and I look forward to working together to ensure that Purchase College continues to thrive,” she said. “While there are challenges ahead, I feel confident that we have the flexibility, the skills, and the determination to continue to provide an excellent education for our students and to make progress as an institution that is continually evolving, while safeguarding our community and living up to our values during this extraordinary time.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post SUNY Purchase President Steps Down Amid Backlash Over Handling of Anti-Israel Protests, Campus Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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