Johnson to call on Columbia University president to resign
Mike Johnson said he will call on the president of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik, to resign when he joins Jewish students at the university later today.
The House speaker, in an interview with Hugh Hewitt this morning, accused Shafik of being “a very weak, inept leader”, adding:
They cannot even guarantee the safety of Jewish students? They are expected to run for their lives and stay home from class? It’s maddening.
He continued:
What we are seeing on these college campuses across the country is disgusting and unacceptable and every leader in this country, every political official, every citizen of good conscience has to speak out and say that ‘this is not who we are in America.’ And we got to have accountability and that is what my colleagues and I will be working on.
Key events
Pro-Palestinian protesters launched an encampment at Harvard University’s Harvard Yard this morning to protest the suspension of the university undergraduate Palestine solidarity committee and demand the university divest from Israel’s war in Gaza.
The encampment marks the largest protest on Harvard’s campus since former university president Claudine Gay’s resignation earlier this year, the Harvard Crimson reports.
The student newspaper said the university was restricting access to Harvard Yard to only university ID holders until Friday.
Harvard interim president Alan Garber told the paper on Monday that he would not rule out a police response to protests, but said it would require a “very high bar”.
Biden does not plan to visit Columbia University protests – report
Joe Biden does not plan to visit Columbia University when he visits New York on Friday, White House and campaign officials told CNN.
White House spokesperson Andrew Bates said yesterday that the White House was monitoring “closely” the protests on college campuses and that the president takes seriously the conversations he has had with community leaders about the current “painful moment”. Bates told reporters:
But as I said, when we witness calls for violence, physical intimidation, hateful, antisemitic rhetoric, those are unacceptable. We will denounce them. The president knows that silence is complicity and that’s why he uses the platforms he has to try and ensure that our fellow Americans are safe.
Joe Biden praised legislation he signed today that rushes in foreign aid including more than $26bn to Israel as a bipartisan legislative victory on a “good day for world peace”.
The president, in remarks delivered from the White House, shortly after signing the legislation, said:
It’s going to make America safer. It’s going to make the world safer.
The bill includes about $1bn in humanitarian relief for Palestinians in Gaza.
In remarks delivered from the White House, Biden urged Israel to ensure the humanitarian aid for Palestinians in the bill reaches Gaza “without delay”.
President Biden praises the foreign aid package including aid for Israel and Gaza, but warns Israel not to block humanitarian aid:
“Israel must make sure all this aid reaches the Palestinians in Gaza without delay.” pic.twitter.com/Epz9J7YxUB
— The Recount (@therecount) April 24, 2024
Dharna Noor
Cameron Jones first learned about fossil fuel divestment as a 15-year-old climate organizer. When he enrolled at Columbia University in 2022, he joined the campus’s chapter of the youth-led climate justice group the Sunrise Movement and began pushing the school in New York to sever financial ties with coal, oil and gas companies.
Today, 19-year-old Jones, like many other student protesters and campus organizers, is just as focused on pushing the school to divest from another group of businesses: those profiting from Israel’s war in Gaza. He and others see the issues as firmly connected, with activists learning from tactics used in both of the often overlapping movements.
On Monday, Jones, speaking from the student encampment of demonstrators on Columbia’s campus who are protesting against the war and the university’s ties to Israel, said:
Once we see large institutions like universities taking the steps to sever ties with harmful institutions, we will then hopefully see corporations and countries and cities follow suit.
In particular, students are demanding the university drop its direct investments in companies doing business in or with Israel, including Amazon and Google, which are part of a $1.2bn cloud-computing contract with the state’s government; Microsoft, whose services are used by Israel’s ministry of defense and Israeli civil administration; and defense contractors profiting from the war such as Lockheed Martin, which on Tuesday reported its earnings were up 14%.
Read the full story: How divestment became a ‘clarion call’ in anti-fossil fuel and pro-ceasefire protests
Dani Anguiano
Cal Poly Humboldt, a public university on California’s northern coast, remained closed on Wednesday after pro-Palestinian protesters barricaded themselves in a campus building for a sit-in.
Law enforcement and students clashed on Monday as police tried to clear Siemens Hall. Video posted by a student activist group showed students chanting “we are not afraid of you” before officers in riot gear attempted to take them into custody. Police could be seen swinging batons at demonstrators as the group pushed them back. The officers reportedly left after an hours-long standoff.
Three protesters were arrested on Monday evening after the confrontation with law enforcement, the university said in a statement. Dozens of students remain inside the building and have barricaded entrances with furniture, according to the university, while others occupied another nearby building.
The campus is closed through Wednesday and classes are being held remotely.
The encampment at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles this morning comes days after the university controversially cancelled the valedictorian speech of a Muslim student.
The Los Angeles university’s provost, Andrew Guzman, said last week that it took the unprecedented step of canceling valedictorian Asna Tabassum’s speech because of the “alarming tenor” of reactions to her selection as valedictorian – along with “the intensity of feelings” surrounding Israel’s military strikes in Gaza – had created “substantial risks relating to security”.
The university’s decision was met with outrage from the Council of American Islamic Relations (Cair), the US’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, and free speech groups. Students and faculty marched across campus last Thursday in silent protest of the university’s decision.
Tabassum described herself as “shocked … and profoundly disappointed” after being informed that she would be barred from addressing her fellow graduates at their 10 May commencement.
The university later decided to cancel the keynote speech by film-maker Jon M Chu, citing the “highly publicized circumstances surrounding our main-stage commencement program”.
Biden signs foreign aid package including $26.3bn for Israel
Joe Biden has signed into law legislation that rushes $95bn in foreign aid more than $26bn for Israel and humanitarian relief for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza.
The legislation includes $60.8bn to replenish Ukraine’s war chest as it seeks to repel Russia from its territory; $26.3bn for Israel and humanitarian relief for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza; and $8.1bn for the Indo-Pacific region to bolster its defenses against China.
Demonstrators have set up an encampment and protest at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.
The encampment began this morning at Alumni Park, according to the USC Divest from Death coalition. The group’s statement reads:
We, the USC Divest from Death Coalition, establish our occupation most fundamentally in solidarity with the people of Palestine as they resist genocide and continue in their struggle for liberation.
BREAKING: USC STUDENTS START GAZA SOLIDARITY OCCUPATION THIS MORNING
Colleges around the country are rising up for justice in Palestine! USC Divest From Death Coalition has announced their occupation of USC’s Alumni Park.
LOS ANGELES GET HERE NOW! Students need your support! pic.twitter.com/nMnZhdFDSS
— People’s City Council – Los Angeles (@PplsCityCouncil) April 24, 2024
It lists six demands of the university: “End War Profiteering and Investment in Genocide”; “Complete Academic Boycott of Israel”; “Protect free speech on campus and provide full amnesty”; “Stop the Displacement, from South Central to Palestine”; “No Policing on Campus”; and “End the Silence on the Genocide in Palestine”.
Johnson to call on Columbia University president to resign
Mike Johnson said he will call on the president of Columbia University, Minouche Shafik, to resign when he joins Jewish students at the university later today.
The House speaker, in an interview with Hugh Hewitt this morning, accused Shafik of being “a very weak, inept leader”, adding:
They cannot even guarantee the safety of Jewish students? They are expected to run for their lives and stay home from class? It’s maddening.
He continued:
What we are seeing on these college campuses across the country is disgusting and unacceptable and every leader in this country, every political official, every citizen of good conscience has to speak out and say that ‘this is not who we are in America.’ And we got to have accountability and that is what my colleagues and I will be working on.
The New York University Palestine solidarity coalition has issued a statement slamming the university’s authorization of the arrest of more than 140 protesters on Monday night.
School officials asked the New York police department for help clearing a plaza on NYU’s Manhattan campus, police said. Students, faculty and others were arrested that night.
In a statement, the university’s Palestine solidarity coalition accused the university of “acting in bad faith, stalling negotiations, and refusing to communicate decisions”. It said:
We will not let the NYU administration twist our words and actions, words and actions that are in favor of liberation. We will not let NYU administration weaponize Judaism to stifle free speech, muzzle the Palestinian fight for freedom, and get away with supporting a genocide that has been going on for 200 days.
Our response to LINDA [K]ILLS’ lies. We will not let the NYU administration twist our words and actions that are favor of liberation. Long Live Palestine! Long Live Gaza! Death to apartheid and death to settler colonialism! 🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸 pic.twitter.com/9T3NlI5EgL
— NYU PALESTINE SOLIDARITY COALITION (@nyupscoalition) April 24, 2024
The Senate yesterday voted resoundingly an aid package that includes more than $26bn for Israel and humanitarian relief for civilians in conflict zones, including Gaza.
The final vote was 79 to 18 for the package that also included aid for Ukraine and Taiwan and the Indo-Pacific.
Hundreds of protesters gathered on Tuesday night near at Grand Army Plaza in New York, on the doorstep of Senate majority leader Chuck Schumer’s Brooklyn residence, calling on him to stop arming Israel’s military, which relies heavily on US weapons, jet fuel and other military equipment.
Joe Biden praised congressional leaders and lawmakers after the Senate vote for what he called an effort “to answer history’s call at this critical inflection point”.
About 90 Brown University students set up an encampment and protest this morning, according to the university.
A university spokesperson said encampment on the university’s “historic and residential greens is a violation of university policy”, adding that students participating were informed that will be subject to “conduct proceedings”. The statement continued:
Protest is an acceptable means of expression at Brown, but it becomes unacceptable when it violates university policies that are intended to ensure the safety of members of the Brown community and that there is no interference in the rights of others to engage in the regular operations of the university.
A statement by Brown Divest Coalition called on the university to “end their ongoing repression of student protesters advocating for a liberated Palestine”.
From NBC10’s Allegra Zamore:
Hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators were arrested during a Passover seder that doubled as a protest in New York.
Protesters shut down a major thoroughfare to pray for a ceasefire and urge the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to end military aid to Israel, close to his Brooklyn home.
About 300 arrests took place at Grand Army Plaza, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for the seder, a ritual that marked the second night of the holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide.
The seder came just before the Senate resoundingly passed a military package that includes $26bn for Israel.
AOC says Columbia University calling police on protesters was a ‘reckless, dangerous act’
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has criticized the decision by Columbia University to call the police on pro-Palestinian protesters at its New York City campus.
Posting to X, the New York congresswoman wrote:
Calling in police enforcement on nonviolent demonstrations of young students on campus is an escalatory, reckless, and dangerous act.
It represents a heinous failure of leadership that puts people’s lives at risk. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.
Calling in police enforcement on nonviolent demonstrations of young students on campus is an escalatory, reckless, and dangerous act.
It represents a heinous failure of leadership that puts people’s lives at risk. I condemn it in the strongest possible terms.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) April 24, 2024
Nine students were arrested at the University of Minnesota on Tuesday, a university spokesperson said today.
The student coalition set up tents in front of the Walter Library and university police began “harassing” the encampment, protesters said. Students gathered outside the Coffman Memorial union on Tuesday night with plans to sleep in tents, but the encampment was cleared overnight, CBS news reported.
“The group was asked to disperse by 7am and told they would be arrested if they chose to stay past that time,” a school spokesperson said.
They added that the University of Minnesota “supports and respects free speech through lawful protest”, but that “tents are not allowed on any University property for any purpose without a permit”, adding:
I want to be clear that protests where groups express diverse views and opinions occur regularly on our campus and typically occur without arrests. The choice to establish and remain in a prohibited encampment led to this morning’s arrests.
