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university of massachusetts
UMass Arrests: What Would Daniel Ellsberg Do?
I am quite sure he would have been, as I am, deeply inspired by the passion of these young students.
May 20, 2024
I have been a history professor at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst for 20 years. On May 7, I was one of a handful of faculty members arrested for standing in support of hundreds of students who were engaged in nonviolent protest of university complicity in the ongoing slaughter and suffering of Palestinians in Gaza. They want the school to divest from companies profiting from the carnage.
In the hours before UMass Chancellor Javier Reyes called in more than a hundred state police in riot gear to arrest anyone who did not disperse from the area in and around a small encampment, I wrestled with questions of conscience and practicality. Am I willing to be arrested? Is it the right thing to do? Could it make a difference? Would there be negative consequences for my career?
In the end, it was not a hard choice. I simply asked myself, “What would Daniel Ellsberg do?”
In 1971, Ellsberg released to the press and public the Pentagon Papers--a 7000-page classified history of the Vietnam War exposing decades of government lies about its causes and conduct. For that act of moral courage, he sabotaged his career and faced a possible 115-year sentence. Outside a federal court in Boston, Ellsberg was asked if he was worried about going to jail. His response: “Wouldn’t you go to prison to help end this war?”
Ellsberg asked himself that very question in 1969 when he met some of the 3,250 young men who went to prison rather than submit to the Vietnam War draft. “It was the first time that I had come face-to-face with Americans willing to go to prison for refusing to collaborate in an unjust war.” Their bravery inspired his own. As he often said, “courage is contagious.”
I’m very proud that UMass acquired Ellsberg’s papers in 2019, funded many projects to promote his legacy, and in 2023 awarded him an honorary degree. Those commitments are one reason why I was so shocked and grieved by the UMass administration’s decision to crackdown on peaceful antiwar protest at an encampment that had been in place only seven hours. It was a betrayal not only of Ellsberg’s example, but the university’s own bold motto, “Be Revolutionary.”
The police arrest of faculty came first, and we were treated with reasonable restraint. However, as many videos and personal testimonies demonstrate, there was widespread use of excessive force against students. One of my graduate students was thrown face down to the ground, with a knee pressed so hard in his back he struggled to breathe. He was zip-cuffed so tightly his hands soon began to swell. He was then put in the back of a small windowless police van for several hours before being driven to the Mullins Center arena to join many of the 134 arrested protestors. His experience was not exceptional; some arrestees were subjected to greater violence. At the arena, many were held all night (still zip-cuffed), denied food or water, and were only allowed to use the bathroom after hours of pleading, if at all.
The Chancellor and his supporters, including Governor Maura Healey, have defended the mass arrests on the grounds that they were necessary to ensure safety. Yet no one’s security was at risk until the police were ordered onto campus. Nor should we take seriously the Chancellor’s claim that he had negotiated in good faith with a delegation of protestors prior to the arrests. As a detailed report of the meeting makes clear, he told the students repeatedly that he would not even consider discussing their demands until the encampment was taken down. Moreover, although the Chancellor insisted that calling the police was an “absolute last resort,” they were massing on campus even as the “negotiations” were just beginning.
What would Daniel Ellsberg do? We can’t know with complete certainty because he died last June at the age of 92. We do know that in the 50 years after he released the Pentagon Papers, he devoted his life to principled nonviolent activism and was arrested more than 80 times for acts of civil disobedience in the struggle for peace and nuclear disarmament. And when I wrote his widow, Patricia, to tell her of my arrest she wrote back these words, used with her permission: “I’m sure Dan would have advised you to get arrested. In some ways, I’m glad he is no longer here because he would have been anguished over the horror perpetrated by Israel on Gaza and probably arrested many times in protest.” I am also quite sure he would have been, as I am, deeply inspired by the passion and commitment of this generation of young activists.
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DOE Investigating Columbia University for Anti-Palestinian Harassment
"Students have the right to speak out against the genocide of Palestinians, without fear of unequal treatment, racist attacks, or being denied access to an education by their university," one lawyer said.
May 02, 2024
Palestine Legal announced Thursday that the U.S. Department of Education has launched a federal investigation into "extreme anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab, and Islamophobic harassment" at Columbia University a week after the advocacy group filed a complaint on behalf of four students and a campus organization.
"While the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) looks into all complaints it receives, it only opens a formal investigation when it determines the facts warrant a deeper look," Palestine Legal pointed out on social media. "The complaint explains how Columbia has allowed and contributed to a pervasive anti-Palestinian environment on campus—including students receiving death threats, being harassed for wearing keffiyehs or hijab, doxxed, harassed by [administration], suspended, locked out of campus, and more."
"Instead of protecting Palestinian and associated students when their voices are most needed to oppose an ongoing genocide, Columbia has taken actions to reinforce this hostile climate in violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964," added the group.
"The law is clear, if universities do not cease their racist crackdowns against Palestinians and their supporters—they will be at risk of losing federal funding."
Palestine Legal senior staff attorney Radhika Sainath stressed that "the law is clear, if universities do not cease their racist crackdowns against Palestinians and their supporters—they will be at risk of losing federal funding."
"Students have the right to speak out against the genocide of Palestinians, without fear of unequal treatment, racist attacks, or being denied access to an education by their university," the lawyer added.
Since the filing, which highlighted that Columbia University President Minouche Shafik invited "the New York Police Department (NYPD) onto campus for the first time in decades to arrest over 100 students who had been peacefully protesting Israel's genocide of Palestinians," the Ivy League leader has called officers back to the school for more arrests.
On Tuesday night, the NYPD "violently arrested and brutalized dozens of student protestors, some with guns drawn, using sledgehammers, batons, and flash-bang explosives," noted Palestine Legal, which represents Maryam Alwan, Deen Haleem, Daria Mateescu, and Layla Saliba as well as Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP).
Columbia is one of many American campuses where administrators have called the police, who have behaved aggressively toward students and faculty nonviolently demonstrating to demand that their schools and the U.S. government stop supporting the Israeli assault of Gaza, which has killed at least 34,596 Palestinians in under seven months.
The Interceptrevealed last week that OCR opened an investigation into the University of Massachusetts Amherst after Palestine Legal filed a complaint "on behalf of 18 UMass students who have been the target of extreme anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab harassment and discrimination by fellow UMass students, including receiving racial slurs, death threats and in one instance, actually being assaulted."
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.)—who has supported peaceful student protests and whose daughter Isra Hirsi was suspended from Columbia's Barnard College for protesting last month—highlighted the reporting on social media and some of the verbal attacks that students have endured.
OCR has opened a probe into Emory University following a complaint filed by Palestine Legal and the Council on American Islamic Relations, Georgia (CAIR-GA), according toThe Guardian. The newspaper noted Thursday that complaints have also been filed about Rutgers University in New Jersey and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Emory spokesperson Laura Diamond said in a statement that the university "does not tolerate behavior or actions that threaten, harm or target individuals because of their identities or backgrounds."
CAIR-GA executive director Azka Mahmood said that she hopes the investigation into Emory helps "make sure that the systems put in place against bias are used for everyone across the board—so we can produce a comfortable, equitable place for Palestinian, Muslim, and Arab students in the future."
The probes and complaints are notably being conducted and reviewed by an administration that has condemned campus protests while arming Israeli forces engaged in what the International Court of Justice has called a plausibly genocidal campaign in Gaza.
After U.S. President Joe Biden delivered brief remarks on the demonstrations Thursday morning, Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a civil rights attorney and national deputy director at CAIR, said his "claim that 'dissent must never lead to disorder' defies American history, from the Boston Tea Party to the tactics that civil rights activists, Vietnam War protesters, and anti-apartheid activists used to confront injustice."
"And if President Biden is truly concerned about the conflict on college campuses," Mitchell added, "he should specifically condemn law enforcement and pro-Israel mobs for attacking students, and stop enabling the genocide in Gaza that has triggered the protests."
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Denting Reelection Hopes, 60% of US Voters Disapprove of Biden's Israel Policy
"Except for core Democratic voters, the American public is telling Biden they are not impressed, despite the economy bouncing back and paychecks rising for many," said one analyst.
Feb 06, 2024
Along with persistent protests at public events held by U.S. President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, recent polling is continuously demonstrating that the White House's vehement support for Israel's bombardment of Gaza despite the rising civilian death toll is not winning them accolades among the voters whose backing they depend on in the upcoming election—and a new survey out Tuesday was no exception.
In the UMass Poll, the University of Massachusetts Amherst and YouGov found that out of 1,064 respondents nationwide, just under 60% said Biden is not handling "the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas" well, while just 31% approved of Biden's policy regarding Israel.
Taken from January 25-30, the poll asked American voters about a wide range of topics, from inflation and their individual ability to afford necessities to their views on whether Israel is committing a genocide in Gaza, where the Israel Defense Forces have killed at least 27,585 people in air and ground attacks as well as blocking nearly all humanitarian aid—plunging the enclave into a crisis of widespread starvation and disease.
Days after an Economist/YouGov survey found that 50% of 2020 Biden voters believe the Israeli assault that the U.S. has helped fund is a genocide, Tuesday's poll found identical results for the country at large.
"We found that Americans are evenly split on this issue, with 50% viewing Israel's actions as genocidal while 50% push back against this declaration," said Tatishe Nteta, a political science professor at UMass Amherst. "Like many issues, both domestic and international, the question of whether the Israelis are committing genocide has become a reflection of the nation's partisan, gender, racial, and generational divisions as majorities of Democrats, progressives, people of color, women, and young people believe that genocide is being committed while Republicans, conservatives, whites, men, and older Americans oppose this notion."
Analysts at UMass Amherst said respondents held "persistently dim views of the national economy—even in the face of low unemployment, bullish stock markets, and easing inflation," and Nteta warned that "with the specter of a rematch with former President [Donald] Trump on the horizon, Biden will need to work to bolster his low approval numbers or face the prospect of becoming a one-term president."
Ray La Raja, another political scientist at the university, suggested that although Biden got voters' "highest praise for creating jobs and the Russian-Ukrainian conflict," with 42% of respondents saying they approved of the president's handling of those issues, their positive outlook on select actions by Biden was not enough to counter widespread disapproval of Biden, with just 39% of voters expressing overall approval.
"Majorities of voters have not been impressed with Biden on other issues," said La Raja. "Except for core Democratic voters, the American public is telling Biden they are not impressed, despite the economy bouncing back and paychecks rising for many."
Israel's war in Gaza, which the Biden administration has insisted is targeting Hamas despite top Israeli officials' statements about clearing the enclave of all Gazans, appeared to loom large for respondents when they were asked about their top fears about a second term for Biden, with many replying, "War."
The new survey bolstered the analysis of The American Prospect co-founder Robert Kuttner last week regarding another recent poll by Quinnipiac University, which showed that Biden was leading Trump, who is leading the race for the Republican presidential nomination, 50-44 overall.
"All of these gains could make little difference as long as the Israel-Gaza conflict is a festering mess, sponsored and funded by the U.S., that splits the Democratic Party and alienates younger voters and voters of color," wrote Kuttner of the Quinnipiac survey.
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