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Education, ethics, Gaza, genocide, Human Rights, Israel, mass murder, News
Instead of providing encouragement to college students for having the moral courage to publicly oppose Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians in Gaza, university administrators in the U.S. are suspending, evicting and arresting them:
https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/revolt-in-the-universities?
Videos clearly show that police are using tasers and zip ties and violently throwing peaceful protesters, including professors, onto sidewalks. When professors rush to plead for mercy for their students, police aggressively apply headlocks and pin their arms behind their backs. Police at Emory University fired pepper balls and rubber bullets — which can cause permanent blindness — at students and professors. This kind of police brutality is unwarranted and university presidents must be held responsible for requesting it at their campuses.
The administrators are behaving shamefully, while the students are demonstrating their moral convictions. And for that, the administrators still have their well-paying jobs while the students are banned from campus.
One takeaway should be that students should choose other universities in the years to come. Institutions that teach about the virtues of social justice and civil disobedience while punishing students who participate in those activities should be shunned.
But for now, professors should hold votes of no confidence in their oppressive university presidents to force them out of office. Board trustees who fail to fire such university presidents should be voted out of office. Professors are also protecting students by blocking police and by standing close to officers and demanding they stop their brutality.
The over-the-top mistreatment of peaceful student and faculty protesters shocks the moral conscience and it must stop immediately. And the justification for the aggressive police behavior is bogus.
The loud and clear message that the mistreatment of peaceful student and faculty protesters is sending is that not only will the U.S. continue to support genocide in Gaza, but also that anyone who protests against the mass murder of innocent children will be beaten and arrested. Once again, history repeats itself and it is a sad time to be a U.S. citizen.
The protests have spread to at least 40 universities across the U.S. Administrators at private universities are treating students very differently than what is happening at public institutions.
Universities and colleges are supposed to be places where free speech is not only encouraged but protected as a fundamental and cherished right. “Universities have an obligation at large to engage in this conversation. … They are supposed to be that shining place, (where) free expression is the default,” said Brian Levin, a professor emeritus at Cal State San Bernardino and founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism.
Police are also violently attacking journalists, which sends the message that they want to brutalize protesters without the scrutiny of the press exposing what they are doing.
Update: UC Riverside will publicly reveal all of its investments and work toward unloading companies that produce military weapons:
The agreement was reached with students who demanded changes in response to Israel’s brutal genocidal attacks in Gaza. It also requires that a task force with student representation will provide investment oversight.
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