The arrest of 93 USC students for protesting the liberation of Palestine, the university’s ban on the valedictorian from speaking during this year’s graduation ceremony, the deaths of 33,137 people, mostly women and children in the Strip of Gaza, and the right to free expression exploded on Wednesday at the university institution.
Following protests by pro-Palestinian students, which were repressed by USC security officers and elements of the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD), the administration decided to cancel the “main stage” of the graduation ceremony, the May 10, citing new security measures.
“The university (USC) falls into contradictions. On the one hand, students are learning about social justice, empires and genocide, and they themselves see it in practice,” said Professor Miguel Tinker Salas, professor at Pomona College in Claremont. “And then when they express themselves, they repress them.”
For Tinker Salas, there is a contradiction that USC faces, and that is linked to other universities in the United States that raise funds from transnational companies “that do not represent the values that the university disseminates.”
The USC protest was added to those carried out at the universities of Harvard, Cornell University, Columbia University and the University of Texas, Austin (UT), where 54 students were arrested. There have also been protests at Yale University, New York University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Miami University in Ohio and Temple University in Philadelphia, among other campuses.
attempts to silence
In response to Wednesday’s demonstrations on Southern California college campuses, Peter Eliasberg, senior attorney and First Amendment and Democracy director at the ACLU of Southern California, declared that “the foundation of college life is the exchange open and free of ideas, where debate is encouraged.”
“More than half a century ago, efforts to silence speech on campuses during the McCarthy era eroded the foundation on which academic communities and our democracy are built,” Eliasberg said.
He added that all students deserve equal access to education, free of discrimination based on religion, race and ethnic origin; and that schools have a responsibility to keep all students safe from violence, discrimination, and censorship.
“In California, we are fortunate that the Leonard Act extends protections similar to those provided by the First Amendment to students at private colleges and universities,” Eliasberg said.
“Colleges and universities must resist pressure from Congress and others to suppress student protests – even when the issues are contentious – and remain steadfast in their commitment to free speech, open debate, and peaceful dissent on campus.”
The ACLU urged campus administrators not to use law enforcement or private campus security to interfere with student protests and encampments, as happened at USC, and encouraged students to review policies. of their schools about demonstrations and protests, and to know their rights.”
‘Agitators at the protest’
On Wednesday, university president Andrew Guzmán said many of the pro-Palestine activists “did not appear to be affiliated” with USC and were repeatedly asked by security officials to take down tents in Alumni Park and other prohibited items and to “They will move to a place that complies with the regulations.”
“The protesters refused,” Guzmán wrote. “His actions have escalated to the point of confrontation and have threatened the safety of our officers and the university community.”
A fight for survival
The organizers of the USC occupation, who identified themselves as the “USC Divest from Death Coalition” and Jewish Voice for Peace, gave a statement saying their action is “in solidarity with the people of Palestine, as they resist genocide and continue their struggle for liberation.”
“The occupation is also a resistance to attempts by USC and other universities to suppress the student movement for Palestine on their campuses, a resistance to the silencing of students who criticize the State of Israel, a resistance to university administrators and councils. managers who profit from the genocide of the Palestinians,” the statement said.
At a press conference, three students from the Divest from Death Coalition, who did not want to identify themselves, said the group will continue its “Gaza Solidarity Occupation” until the University meets the demands outlined in the coalition’s statement.
“We, the USC Death Divest Coalition, establish our occupation fundamentally in solidarity with the people of Palestine, as they resist genocide and continue their struggle for liberation,” the group wrote in a mission statement.
“USC’s funding of the ongoing genocide perpetuated by the Zionist entity reflects the maintenance of imperialist interests abroad, as well as solidifying the shared ideology of US and Zionist institutions to preserve racialized oppression,” said one organizer. anonymous.
“Not opposing expressly racist violence here and abroad is ignoring the calls for solidarity demanded by the majority of the world,” they expressed.
Protestant demands
The statement makes six demands to USC: “end the profit from war and the investment in genocide”; “total academic boycott of Israel”; “protect free speech on campus and provide full amnesty [a los estudiantes arrestados]”; “stop displacement, from south central[Los Angeles]to Palestine”; “prohibition of campus surveillance”; and “end the silence on the genocide in Palestine.”[delosÁngeles)hastaPalestina”;“prohibicióndevigilanciaenelcampus”;y“ponerfinalsilenciosobreelgenocidioenpalestina”
The country’s students are also demanding that the university system divest from American and Israeli companies that profit from Israel’s war in Gaza.
At UT Austin alone, the university fund is estimated to have invested $52.5 million in weapons manufacturing companies, according to Women for Weapons Trade Transparency.
“I am not surprised by what I saw, because it is something similar to what has been seen historically with other protests such as the Vietnam War and the murder of George Floyd,” said Bianca Arzán Montañez, a young USC journalist, after the arrest of the 93 students.
“It’s not something new, but it is impressive to see it on my own campus and see people you know get arrested.”
“Police brutality”
Pro-Palestine and Jewish Voice for Peace students reported that on Wednesday, USC Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers, before confiscating their peaceful protest materials, attempted to drive a truck through the crowd occupying the park.
“At 11:21, security officers chased three young men, aggressively intimidating them to confiscate and forcibly steal their tents,” they said.
“At 11:35 a.m., a USC student who was documenting the event was physically assaulted by DPS officers and suffered bruising from a forceful punch to the chest.
At 11:38 a.m., DPS physically assaulted another student.”
They added that “after the student was forcibly pushed to the ground, DPS officers knelt on the student’s neck for approximately 30 seconds.”
And by 4:00 p.m., LAPD elements had begun surrounding the campus and occupation park with tactical riot gear and semi-lethal weapons, including semi-lethal bullets and tear gas.
“Later that night, Los Angeles police pushed students off school grounds and shot into the crowd with rubber bullets,” described the two students, who considered that the acts of “police brutality” showed that the administration of USC “turned our campus into a militarized zone where DPS officers and LAPD officers in tactical gear use unnecessary force against students and community members.”
Resignation USC Advisory Committee on Muslim Life
The area office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-LA) endorsed the decision of members of the Advisory Committee on Muslim Life (ACML) at the University of Southern California (USC) to resign from their positions in solidarity with the best Muslim student, Asna Tabassum for the graduation party.
USC officials recently told Tabassum that he would not be allowed to speak during the graduation ceremony in May.
ACML members sent a letter to USC President Carol Folt rejecting the university’s decision to cancel Tabassum’s speech after she began receiving a wave of hate messages online for supporting Palestine.
The USC administration issued a statement on Monday, April 15, announcing that Tabassum would not be allowed to speak in order to maintain the “safety of our campus and students” due to the volume of security threats and harassment from groups pro-Israel.
The group demanded that Chairperson Folt reinstate Tabassum’s speech by Friday, April 19, or the committee members would resign.
In the resignation announcement, ACML members said: “We, the committee members, were under the impression that the administration was committed to opposing the Islamophobia and intolerance that Muslims and marginalized students face on campus every year.” days”.
“However, the decision to cancel the graduation speech of this year’s valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, the first Muslim woman with hijabi to receive such an honor, is completely contradictory to what was promised to this committee.”
“By banning Asna’s commencement speech, Muslims on campus have received a clear message: your University will not support you if you simply appear willing to speak out against genocide, much less support Palestinians who are suffering genocide.”
In a statement, Amr Shabaik, legal director of CAIR-LA and member of ACML, said, “As a USC alumnus and member of ACML, I am embarrassed and disturbed by USC’s decision to cancel Asna’s speech . Asna represents the best of the American Muslim community and she is clearly a valedictorian.
“USC’s decision to silence her sends a clear and chilling message that it will not take steps to protect its Muslim, Palestinian and Arab students when they face harassment and intimidation, and that USC’s supposed ideals and values are not applied equally.” to those students. . “There is still time for USC to do the right thing and reinstate Asna as commencement speaker immediately.”
The conflict spreads in several universities
The war in Gaza, which has revealed the United States as the last pro-Israeli bastion in the world, as manifested last week with its sole veto of the recognition of the Palestinian State, is moving to university campuses in recent hours of all country.
The universities of Columbia, NYU (in New York), MIT in Boston, Yale in Connecticut or the from Berkeley in California and even Michigan are staging loud pro-Palestinian protests in which they are asking above all for a change of course in Washington’s policy towards Israel.
But the claims also have a university aspect, and thus ask their respective centers to cut collaboration with Israeli universities or for the rectorates to renounce receiving financing from companies that participate in one way or another in the war.
At New York University (NYU) this Monday there were 130 detainees after the police intervened to disperse the crowds, an action practically identical to that which took place the previous Thursday in Columbia, when the pro-Palestinian camp was dismantled and the police He arrested more than a hundred people.
A Columbia student told EFE that the dismantling of the camp on Thursday night does not seem to have been of much use, since on Sunday its promoters set it up again, apparently with a greater number of tents and better organized; For example, they have appointed spokespersons and asked activists not to respond individually to journalists.
The case is different at NYU, where the environment in its surroundings was completely normal, as EFE was able to verify.
A Columbia spokesperson, contacted by EFE, noted that university president Nemat Shafik is “focused on de-escalating the resentment on campus” and is working with all agencies at the university, the city and even the state in this regard.
The governor of the state of New York, Kathy Hochul, who since the war in Gaza began has multiplied pro-Israel messages, well represents the dilemma that her own Democratic Party faces in the face of these protests. Yesterday she appeared on the Columbia campus and He said he defended the right to free expression, but then stressed that “there are students who are afraid.”
Specifically, the University of Michigan (the state with the largest Arab population in the US) has not banned protests even during graduations, which begin on May 4, but has confined them to spaces where they will not mix with the families who come to celebrate that moment with the graduates. / EFE
Student Voices at UCLA
“We believe in total solidarity and that means using any means necessary, not just what we are comfortable with, and we have to give up our comforts to ensure that real change can be achieved.”
Nicole Crawford, UCLA student.
“I support this protest because it is a peaceful anti-war protest and I believe that protests have played a great role in the history of American academia and convey anti-war values that I believe in.”
Lamia Balafrej, professor at UCLA.
“Being part of a national movement means increasing that publicity, at least to get the message across and show that we’re not going to tolerate these things and hopefully we’re going to try to make some real changes.”
Brandon Fujimoto, UCLA student.
Article with information from EFE and Isaac Ceja.