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new york university
'Deeply Disturbing' NYU Policy Change Equates Anti-Zionism With Antisemitism
"What the administrators have clearly failed to grasp is that repression cannot kill the student movement," one coalition said, promising "new and more creative forms of resistance."
Aug 26, 2024
After cracking down on anti-genocide campus protests this spring, New York University is under fire this week for its new policy equating anti-Zionism with antisemitism as Israel continues its U.S.-backed assault on the Gaza Strip.
The Anti-Defamation League—which has also been criticized for conflating the two—defines Zionism as "the movement for the self-determination and statehood for the Jewish people in their ancestral homeland, the land of Israel."
NYU's Nondiscrimination and Anti-Harassment Policy and Procedures for Students (NDAH), updated last week, states in part that "using code words, like 'Zionist,' does not eliminate the possibility that your speech violates the NDAH Policy. For many Jewish people, Zionism is a part of their Jewish identity. Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists."
"For example," the document details, "excluding Zionists from an open event, calling for the death of Zionists, applying a 'no Zionist' litmus test for participation in any NYU activity, using or disseminating tropes, stereotypes, and conspiracies about Zionists (e.g., 'Zionists control the media'), demanding a person who is or is perceived to be Jewish or Israeli to state a position on Israel or Zionism, minimizing or denying the Holocaust, or invoking Holocaust imagery or symbols to harass or discriminate."
The policy—seen as a potential model for other universities, as the next academic year begins—was blasted by critics of the Israeli slaughter of over 40,000 Palestinians, which is being investigated as genocide by the International Court of Justice, and the U.S. campus administrations that have invited violent law enforcement oppression of anti-war protests.
NYU Faculty and Staff for Justice in Palestine (FSJP) said Sunday that it was "alarmed" by the guidance, which "sets a dangerous precedent by extending Title VI protections to anyone who adheres to Zionism, a nationalist political ideology, and troublingly equates criticism of Zionism with discrimination against Jewish people. Furthermore, the new guidance implies that any nationalist political ideology (Hindu nationalism, Christian nationalism, etc.) that is integrated into some members of that group's understanding of their own racial or ethnic identity should be entitled to civil rights protections."
The "deeply disturbing" development "will legitimize far-right and ethnonationalist ideologies under the guise of protecting students from racial discrimination," the group continued. "This weaponization of the Title VI apparatus openly threatens the university's commitments to academic freedom and to nondiscrimination, and we insist that the administration reconsider these changes for the good of the university community."
The policy change "represents an intensification of NYU's yearlong effort to censor criticism and criminalize protest of Israel's ongoing genocide in Gaza," NYU FSJP added, noting that "equating criticism of Israel or Zionism with antisemitism has been roundly critiqued by scholars of antisemitism, by Israeli human rights groups, and by our own group."
In a joint Instagram post, NYU FSJP, the campus chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, Writers Against the War on Gaza, the Palestinian Youth Movement, and PYM New York City declared that "NYU ADMINS CHOOSE GENOCIDE."
"Under the guise of 'campus safety' and 'community values,' they informed the student body that speech against Zionism may be deemed antisemitic and a violation of civil rights law," the groups said. "This conflationary logic is not simply an effort to chill pro-Palestine speech on campus, not merely revanchist pushback for the spate of encampments and other actions that NYU students organized last spring, but a deliberate attempt to dissolve student and faculty efforts to protest a genocide that is approaching the one-year mark, with a death toll rising into the six-digit range."
"What the administrators have clearly failed to grasp is that repression cannot kill the student movement," they added. "Every attempt to silence, to punish, to quell, will be met with new and more creative forms of resistance. The students have chosen to stand with Palestine and against the racist, colonial, and expansionist ideology of Zionism. Together we will struggle alongside them, until liberation."
Several organizations are planning a National March on New York City for Gaza, scheduled for noon on Labor Day, September 2.
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More Than 4 Dozen Unions Demand 'End of Repression' of Columbia Protests
"The right to protest is necessary for every struggle, and the direct attack on this right is an attack on labor as well," said the labor groups. "An injury to one is an injury to all."
Apr 23, 2024
More than four dozen labor unions across numerous industries on Tuesday signed a letter expressing solidarity with students who have been suspended and arrested in recent days for protesting at Columbia University, including members of the on-campus labor group Student Workers of Columbia.
Unionized student workers in SWC-UAW 2710 were among the hundreds of picketers who have been protecting the Gaza Solidarity Encampment, which students set up at Columbia on April 17 to pressure administrators to divest from weapons manufacturers, tech companies, and other entities that benefit from Israel's apartheid policies in the occupied Palestinian territories.
The Ivy League institution, protesters say, will remain complicit in Israel's bombardment and blockade on Gaza, the killing of at least 34,183 Palestinians in the enclave since October, and the intentional starvation of dozens of people, until it entirely divests from Israel.
"As workers, we stand in solidarity with our union siblings in SWC-UAW 2710 who were arrested and face suspension," said the unions, including the Mother Jones Staff Union, Irvine Faculty Association, and Cleveland Jobs With Justice. "We call for their and their classmates' immediate reinstatement and for Columbia to drop all charges against them, both legal and academic. We deplore [Columbia president Minouche Shafik]'s actions and call for Columbia to immediately end the repression of protest."
The protests at Columbia—where more than 100 students were suspended, arrested for trespassing, and in some cases, evicted from their housing—have galvanized college students and faculty members at a growing number of universities in recent days.
Campus groups at the University of Minnesota and the University of Pittsburgh both announced early Tuesday that they were setting up their own encampments in solidarity with Columbia students and victims of the Israel Defense Forces' relentless attacks on Gaza, which the International Court of Justice said in January was "plausibly" a genocide.
After police arrested students at the University of Minnesota Tuesday afternoon and broke up the encampment, thousands of members of the school community rallied to demand that the university divest from all arms manufacturers.
Encampments were also erected Monday at University of California, Berkeley and University of Michigan.
Jessica Christian, a photojournalist for the San Francisco Chronicle, reported that students were stopping to "ask what supplies the campers need as they walk by to class" at Berkeley, where roughly 50 tents were set up on Tuesday.
On Monday night, dozens of students at Yale University and New York University were arrested for protesting, setting up encampments, and "disorderly conduct."
The arrests at Columbia last week have not stopped students and educators from speaking out against the administration. A new encampment was set up last Friday and hundreds of faculty members staged a walkout Monday in support of the students.
In their letter, the unions on Tuesday warned that "the repression and criminalization of activists, students, professors, and academic workers across the country are violations of our elementary rights to free speech and protest."
"The right to protest is necessary for every struggle, and the direct attack on this right is an attack on labor as well," said the unions, "An injury to one is an injury to all—if the Columbia students can be repressed for protesting, Columbia workers and all workers could be too. Workers stand in full solidarity with this student movement."
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Person Self-Immolates Outside Courthouse of Trump's NY Trial
An unverified online manifesto identifies the person as "an investigative researcher" who has discovered that "our own government (along with many of their allies) is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup."
Apr 19, 2024
This is a developing story... Please check back for possible updates...
Law enforcement officials confirmed to CNN that someone lit themself on fire Friday outside the New York City courthouse where former President Donald Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee, is on trial for allegedly falsifying business records.
"The man walked into the park across the street from the courthouse, throwing flyers into the air," the network reported, citing law enforcement. "He then pulled something out of a backpack—it was not immediately clear what the item was—and lit himself on fire."
Journalists were in the area for the historic trial and CNN anchor Laura Coates was among those who described the scene live on-air as New York Police Department officers and emergency responders worked to extinguish the fire.
Police were "slow to respond in part because of barricades around park," Politico's Emily Ngo explained, sharing photos and videos from the scene on social media. There is "only one way to get into park outside the courthouse without jumping the fence. It's been barricaded in anticipation of protests. And since there hasn't been much in the way of protests, police presence is light. Police had to run all the way around to get to the man."
The person who self-immolated "was responsive when he was removed but he is very, very badly burned. Body charred," Ngo said.
CNN reported that the flyers featured allegations of wrongdoings against New York University and said, "NYU is a mob front."
A self-identified citizen journalist named Jack shared on social media a photo of a booklet the person reportedly left in the dirt.
An unverified Substack post says in part: "My name is Max Azzarello, and I am an investigative researcher who has set himself on fire outside of the Trump trial in Manhattan. This extreme act of protest is to draw attention to an urgent and important discovery: We are victims of a totalitarian con, and our own government (along with many of their allies) is about to hit us with an apocalyptic fascist world coup."
Inside Manhattan Criminal Court, the remaining jurors were sworn in for Trump's case, in which he faces 34 charges for records related to alleged hush money payments to cover up sex scandals during the 2016 election cycle. There are 12 jurors and six alternates.
The former president was indicted by a New York grand jury last spring. He also faces two federal criminal cases—one related to his handling of classified material and another for trying to overturn his 2020 loss, which culminated in the January 6, 2021 insurrection—as well as an election interference case in Georgia.
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