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university of north carolina
US College Students Demonstrate in Solidarity With Palestinians, Columbia Protesters
"Columbia University made a huge mistake calling the cops on student protesters," said one educator. "It has transformed the activism of hundreds of students into a student movement of thousands."
Apr 19, 2024
Undeterred by Columbia University's sanctioning of a crackdown by the New York Police Department in which at least 108 people were arrested on Thursday for protesting Israel's war on Gaza, dozens of students continued to camp out on the campus' West Lawn Friday as solidarity protests cropped up at other schools across the country.
Students at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill (UNC) set up tents at a rally, while the Harvard College Palestine Solidarity Committee announced a walkout to express solidarity with "steadfast Columbia students" and emergency protests were announced at Boston University; Miami University in Oxford, Ohio; and Ohio State University.
"Columbia University made a huge mistake calling the cops on student protesters," said Jairo I. Fúnez-Flores, a faculty member at Texas Tech University. "It has transformed the activism of hundreds of students into a student movement of thousands with millions around the world watching."
National Students for Justice in Palestine, whose Columbia University chapter was shut down late last year after members protested against the institution's investments in Israeli companies and partnership with Tel Aviv University, called on all of its chapters across college campuses to join in solidarity actions.
"The supposed power of these administrators pales in comparison to the combined strength of the students, staff, and faculty committed to realizing justice and upholding Palestinian liberation on campus," said the national group.
At the impromptu rally at UNC, students chanted, "No justice, no peace!"
The solidarity actions came a day after Columbia president Minouche Shafik authorized the police to dismantle an encampment set up by dozens of students. Shafik testified before a Republican-controlled U.S. House committee on Wednesday where the focus was antisemitism on the school's campus, and admitted she has not witnessed anti-Jewish protests at Columbia since Israel began its assault on Gaza last October.
After the students were arrested Thursday, one student Barnard College—which is part of Columbia—posted on social media an email she had received from vice president and dean Leslie Grinage about the suspension of several students.
The students were forced to leave their housing and have had their access to all campus facilities revoked during the suspension.
Several members of the press reported being denied entry to Columbia's campus on Thursday and Friday, prompting the university's journalism school to offer its assistance and reiterate its support for a free press.
Barnaby Raine, an historian earning his Ph.D. at Columbia, urged fellow educators at the Ivy League school to demonstrate solidarity with the student-led protests.
"As my employer, Columbia University, calls armed riot police into campus to smash a peaceful protest against a genocide, we must all speak out," said Raine. "My former students have been arrested. I'm proud of you. History will be too."
Actor, activist, and former New York gubernatorial candidate Cynthia Nixon, who graduated from Barnard, condemned the administrators' response to the protests.
"I am shocked and ashamed that [Barnard] and Columbia are violently crushing the right of students to peacefully protest," said Nixon. "This is not who we are. Both schools must immediately reinstate these students and protect their right to fight for a free Palestine."
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UNC Paper Fills Front Page With Text Messages Terrified Students, Families Sent During Shooting
"These students have lived their entire lives under threat of violent death and tragedy," said one observer.
Aug 30, 2023
"Are you safe? Where are you? Are you alone?
"Hey—come on sweetheart—I need to hear from you. Can you hear any gunshots?"
"Someone is already shot."
Those are just a few of the text messages published on the cover of Wednesday's print edition of The Daily Tar Heel, the student-run newspaper at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where editors drew from the cellphones of students who were on campus during a shooting that killed one faculty member on Monday.
Classes were canceled on Wednesday after Tailei Qi was charged with first-degree murder in the killing of Zijie Yan, an associate professor in the applied physical sciences department.
The campus was locked down for several hours on Monday after Qi, a graduate student, shot Yan in a lab. Faculty, staff members, and students—including first-year students who had just arrived at UNC days before to begin their college education—were ordered to remain inside and away from windows as police warned there was an "armed and dangerous person on or near campus."
In a column in the Tar Heel on Tuesday, student and opinion columnist Georgia Roda-Moorhead described huddling with other students around her cell phone, waiting for updates while locked in the basement of a dorm as she recalled a similar scenario when she was in elementary school.
"My mind traveled back to fourth grade P.E. when the class troublemaker thought it would be funny to pull the active shooter alarm a couple months after Sandy Hook," Roda-Moorhead wrote. "Our teacher shoved us into the equipment closet and told us to stay silent. At age ten, I wrestled with the fact that I might face the same exact fate as those children who lived just a couple of states north of me... That incident might have been a false alarm, but what if this isn't?"
She added that when students first received the alert about the armed and dangerous suspect, one of Roda-Moorhead's classmates observed, "Just another day in America."
With more than 400 mass shootings recorded in the U.S. in 2023 so far, young people who were children 11 years ago when 20 first graders and six adults were massacred at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut are accustomed to the news of attacks at grocery stores, parades, concerts, and other public places.
"We are the Sandy Hook generation. We grew up crouching behind desks in pitch-black darkness, as our teachers barred the doors shut in case a 'scary person' stepped on campus," wrote Roda-Moorhead. "It is truly no wonder that my generation has become so desensitized to gun violence we make jokes about it."
"The people who say this is just another day in America are right," she added. "But does this have to be just another day?"
The Tar Heel's front page Wednesday displayed how despite the frequency of active shooter drills and news alerts about mass shootings, experiencing an attack firsthand is no less terrifying.
"Kudos to the student journalists at The Daily Tar Heel for rising to the moment," said political and media historian Brian Rosenwald. "This is a brilliant, poignant cover that exposes how utterly shameful it is that we persist in doing nothing about gun violence."
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Harm Will Come From This Right-Wing Attack on Affirmative Action
The experience of California—where affirmative action was eliminated by Proposition 209 in 1996—shows that it still will be possible to have diversity in higher education, but it will take sustained effort and it will be difficult.
Jun 29, 2023
For decades, conservatives have railed against judicial activism, but Thursday’s decision striking down affirmative action by colleges and universities in admissions was the height of conservative judicial activism. The court rejected almost half a century of precedents, overturned decisions made by public and private universities across the country, and ignored the history of the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
The experience of California—where affirmative action was eliminated by Proposition 209 in 1996—shows that it still will be possible to have diversity in higher education, but it will take sustained effort and it will be difficult.
In 1978, in University of California vs. Bakke, Justice Lewis Powell wrote the pivotal opinion and explained that colleges and universities have a compelling interest in having a diverse student body and may use race as one of many factors in admissions decisions to benefit minorities and enhance diversity. The Supreme Court reaffirmed this in 2003 in Grutter vs. Bollinger and again, most recently, in 2016, in Fisher vs. University of Texas, Austin. For decades, universities across the country have based their admissions policies on these holdings.
The immediate impact of Thursday’s decision cannot be overstated. At least in the short term, there will be a dramatic change in admissions decisions and students of color will be harmed.
Nor did the conservatives on the court pay attention to the judgment of university educators that diversity in the classroom matters in education. I have been a law professor for 43 years and have taught classes that are overwhelmingly white and those with a significant number of minority students. The discussions in the classrooms are vastly different and the educational experience for all students is enhanced when there is diversity.
As Justice Sandra Day O’Connor explained in the Grutter decision, preparing students for our diverse society requires that they experience diversity. But the six conservative justices have now substituted their views and flatly rejected decades of experience of those in higher education.
And nor did the conservative justices who profess to be originalists, and are committed to following the original meaning of the Constitution, pay attention to the history of the 14th Amendment. The Congress that ratified it in 1868 also adopted race conscious programs, like the Freedman’s Bureau that today undoubtedly would be considered affirmative action.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a powerful dissent, cuts straight to the status of race in this country and explains why the Supreme Court itself has affirmed over and over again that affirmative action is constitutional. She wrote: “The Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter. The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society.”
The court’s decision on Thursday will have an enormous impact because it applies to all colleges and universities, public and private. There were two cases, one against a public university, University of North Carolina, and one against Harvard College, a private institution. The majority opinion, written by Chief Justice Roberts, said that the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment outlaws affirmative action for public universities and that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits recipients of federal funds from discriminating based on race, prohibits it in private colleges.
The experience in California shows what could happen at universities all over this country. Proposition 209 had an immediate and devastating effect on diversity in the University of California. The number of Black and Latino first-year students fell by 50% in the years immediately after the ballot measure was passed. It took UCLA 19 years, until 2015, to reach its pre-Proposition 209 levels of diversity.
But the UC system—and state institutions in states like Michigan and Washington that also abolished affirmative action—have found ways to achieve diversity through concerted efforts. There still can be aggressive outreach and recruitment of students to form a diverse campus community.
Also, Roberts explicitly wrote, “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”
This appears to allow admissions decisions to examine the diversity of experience, which includes the importance of race, in the applicant’s life. And as Sotomayor wrote, universities may consider other factors—like socioeconomic status—that may yield diversity. But the court left unclear whether any factors used in admissions decisions to achieve diversity are constitutional if they are done with the purpose and effect of increasing access for minority applicants.
The immediate impact of Thursday’s decision cannot be overstated. At least in the short term, there will be a dramatic change in admissions decisions and students of color will be harmed. It is crucial to remember that this decision is not about following legal principles as they have stood and been tested over and over for a generation. It is entirely about the ideology of six conservatives on the court again moving the law far to the right.
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