When the university itself became a co-defendant in student protests against the fossil fuel industry: The case of N.Y.U.
Concerns about reprisal are not the only change in modern protests. The more meaningful shift can be seen in the tenor of campus activism, where historically, a passionate if monolithic view has formed around a grievance, or set of grievances, directed at a consensus enemy. In the late 1960s a unified student body protested against Nixon and the Pentagon, and in the ’80s the apartheid government of South Africa, against the fossil fuel industry.
In nearly every case, the university itself has stood as co-defendant — an adversary by way of its complicity in whatever injustice, through its morally compromised research or financial investments.
He showed me a video of students tearing down fliers like the one he had handed me, which had been posted around campus. He was angry that letters to the administrators asking for some sort of action to be taken were not sufficiently acknowledged. He imagined an entirely different and urgent reaction, he said, if the child in the picture had been African American.
Young people arriving at elite colleges are assuming they will be well taken care of, and their politics will align with those of the institutions they have chosen to attend. They have been given little reason to think otherwise.
The letter from N.Y.U.’s president, in fact, made reference to some of these services, pointing out that the university’s division of student affairs had reached out “to all students from the affected areas with offers of support and help,” and that students had available to them “24/7” help “through the Wellness Exchange,” a counseling service. That didn’t seem to be enough in this challenging moment.
Students, administrators and faculty, at least at places like N.Y.U. and Columbia, shared an antagonism to the Trump presidency and to the police abuses at the heart of the Black Lives Matter movement. When Ray Kelly was invited to speak at Brown University a decade ago, students objected. The event was abruptly shut down when the protesters interrupted his talk.
On Israel, Progressive Jews Feel Abandoned by Their Left-Wing Allies: Rabbi Sharon Brous, a Los Angeles activist who has spoken out against Israel
There are cracks among the Democratic coalition. Younger and more liberal voters care more about the Palestinian cause than previous generations, due to the Trump administration’s actions. Among them are many American Jews who are much more critical of Israel than their ancestors, and they have gone to groups like IfNotNow and Jewish Voice for Peace to speak out against Israel.
In Los Angeles, Rabbi Sharon Brous, a well-known progressive activist who regularly criticizes the Israeli government, described from the pulpit her horror and feelings of “existential loneliness,” her voice breaking. It is clear to many in the world that the Israeli victims deserved the terrible fate they received.
“When a people have been subject to decades of apartheid and unimaginable violence, their resistance must not be condemned, but understood as a desperate act of self-defense,” Black Lives Matter Los Angeles posted on Facebook, in its first response to the attack. The reproductive-rights group criticized Zionism, saying that there can be nojustice, peace or reproductive freedom underneath colonial occupation and that the government denied Palestinians control over their bodies. Some socialist organizations did not condemn the killings by Hamas.
progressive groups in the wake of the Israeli massacre of civilians moved immediately to try to justify their actions on social media, which was the most inflammatory comment.
And many protests have included chants of “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” a slogan that leaves no place for the state of Israel to exist in its own land.
Source: On Israel, Progressive Jews Feel Abandoned by Their Left-Wing Allies
The Los Angeles Unified School Board as a Dehumanization of the Los Angeles Democrat-Socialists and the Murder of Jews
“I am in such a state of despair — in my generation, we have been warned how quickly people would turn on us and we just thought no way,” said Nick Melvoin, 38, a member of the Los Angeles Unified School Board who is now running for Congress and keeps a framed picture of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marching with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in his office. That is how it happens when you dehumanize the group. Many of us have been warned about this and have been hit with a lot of bricks.
On college campuses or on social media, the most rattling episodes have occurred, with statements from small organizations being amplified across the globe. But during a worldwide conflict, those statements have taken on totemic status, heightening fears that they are a precursor to a more treacherous and lasting shift in the standing of Jews in America.
Eric Spiegelman, a lawyer and producer in Los Angeles who serves on the boards of the cities that he lives in, was angered by the protest in New York that was promoted by the Democratic Socialists of America. He wrote hundreds of letters to Los Angeles officials urging them to label the organization a hate group. The D.S.A. has since backed away from the protest and apologized “for not making our values explicit.”
A political group that believes in affordable housing, raising the minimum wage, and the wholesale murder of Jews was what Mr. Spiegelman described as a political organization that he belonged to. “Two out of three ain’t bad!”
“We need to remember that anyone dehumanizing Israelis rightly has zero representation in the United States government, while many federal officials have been dehumanizing Palestinians for decades,” Eva Borgwardt, the political director of IfNotNow, said in an interview.