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tienramadan · 6 days

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‘He’s Open to Any Ideas We Have’: Mayor Adams Crushed Columbia’s Protests After Attending a Secret Meeting With Billionaires

Who should have a voice in deciding whether the full might of the NYPD, complete with flash-bang grenades, the discharge of at least one gun, and armored BearCat siege vehicles should be brought to bear against a group of students that are nonviolently protesting their country and university's complicity in a war campaign that has claimed the lives of an estimated 35,000 people, two thirds of them women and children?

Until now, the Adams administration has insisted that, in the case of the April 30 NYPD raid on protesters at Columbia University, the decision was made by City officials at the invitation of the university's leadership (an invitation that the administration was heavily lobbying the university to extend).

But on Thursday, we learned that there were other voices weighing in on the decision, namely, a loose coalition of millionaires, billionaires, and other titans of commerce and industry who felt that the student activism taking place at Columbia was not doing anything good for the interests of the far-right Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, and that they should persuade Adams to order the police to crush it.

For reasons that may or may not be connected to their fabulous wealth and some well-timed campaign donations, they got a meeting with Mayor Eric Adams on April 26, a few days before the NYPD raid on Hamilton Hall, during which they urged him to send in the goon squad and propose an arrangement in which they, the millionaires and billionaires, would hire their own private investigators to sic on the students and then pass that information along to the NYPD.

All of this is revealed in a remarkable report in the Washington Post which you should read in its entirety, and which is based on the leaked WhatsApp chat where these tycoons plotted their efforts to get the mayor to turn the City's police force once more against the student protesters.

The business magnates trying to influence the mayor's deployment of the police were a subset of a larger WhatsApp group that has been trying to bolster American public support for Israel's war since last autumn. Members had private briefings from Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet; former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett; and Israel's ambassador to the United Nations, the Post reported.

The Post also reported that members of this WhatsApp group were particularly concerned about how our mayor was responding to the student encampment at Columbia:

In the chat, discussion of how Adams was handling the Columbia protests — and how group members could help — took off the following day, after student protesters built a new encampment to replace the demolished one. Lubetzky, of the snack company Kind, posted in the chat sharing a link to an Instagram video showing an Israeli Arab journalist getting hit by a man the video caption claims is an “anti-Israel protester.” Not long after, billionaire Blavatnik posted a picture of Adams and wrote, “He needs help.” Sitt responded that he had already “been helping but can use more support.” He asked if others were “open to giving” to Adams. Gabay, the Cypriot Israeli real estate billionaire, replied: “Pls send the info. Thanks.” Then Blavatnik posted an ActBlue link allowing donations to the Eric Adams 2025 committee. Lubetzky messaged: “If there is a group to contribute through, or a way to ensure our contributions are known to be related to his efforts to fight antisemitism and hate, pls let us know and I will support meaningfully alongside you guys.” Sitt replied that he was arranging a “code” for such donations; asked about this message, Vito Pitta, counsel to Adams’s 2025 campaign, said “there is no ‘special code’ for contributions.”

We don't know yet how many of these chat participants gave to the Adams campaign in this period, or how much, because the campaign finance reporting won't come out for months and most of the participants declined to tell the Post what they gave, though Blavatnik confirmed to the Post that he did indeed donate $2,100 to Adams to "endorse Mayor Adams’ stalwart support of Israel and firm stand against antisemitism.”.

Meanwhile, the chat participants were working on another front, recognizing that, not unlike a vampire, the NYPD could only enter the Columbia campus if they were invited in. "In touch with the board," former Congressmember Ted Deutch, now head of the American Jewish Committee, reportedly wrote to the chat group. "So NYPD can return."

And then, on April 26, four days before hundreds of helmeted police officers swarmed onto campus in a raid that injured students, members of the chat got a 45-minute Zoom meeting with the mayor to press their case, the Post reports. The full list of participants is unknown, but according to the Post it included at least Blavatnik, Sitt, Loeb and Lubetzky.

"He’s open to any ideas we have," Sitt wrote of Adams, a day after the call. "As you saw he’s ok if we hire private investigators to then have his police force intel team work with them."

Later the same afternoon, Adams went on Republican billionaire John Catsamatidis's radio show, saying that he was urging college administrations to take a hard line on protests "Soon as one tent comes up, take that tent down," he said. "Don’t allow it to spread, because what you will find is that it will continue to multiply and spread and bring a level of disorder."

All of this raises a whole bunch of questions: What exactly was discussed at the Zoom meeting? What, if anything was promised by the mayor, and what, if anything, was promised by the billionaires who'd been discussing amongst themselves how to leverage campaign donations to him? Who else has the mayor met with to discuss when and where to deploy police to suppress nonviolent protest? Given that both Adams and the billionaires were pressuring Columbia leadership to invite the NYPD on campus, were those efforts coordinated? Is it possible for people with opinions on these questions who aren't billionaires residing in London to get a 45-minute meeting with the mayor, and if not, what does that say about his posturing as a mayor of blue-collar New Yorkers? Is the NYPD currently cooperating with the billionaires' private investigators to bring pain to people protesting the war on Gaza, and if so, what does that collaboration look like and is it legal? (In response to the Post's reporting, City Hall issued the somewhat narrowly tailored denial that the NYPD is "not using and has not used private investigators to help manage protests.") How will this entire episode, in which campaign donations and advocacy for the interests of a foreign government swirl together in uncomfortable proximity, play out in the context of the pending federal investigation into Adams's foreign-government-linked campaign donations?

The Post posed at least some of these questions to City Hall, and got accused of antisemitism by Deputy Mayor for Communications Fabien Levy for their trouble. "The insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that the Washington Post should be ashamed to ask about, let alone normalize in print," Levy told the Post, commenting on a story based on chat logs in which donors secretly plotted to influence government operations.

Asked for comment, City Hall responded to Hell Gate with the identical response it sent to the Post, including the statement attributed to Levy and statements on background that "The NYPD is not using — and has not used — private investigators to assist in operations related to these protests." The mayor's opposition to campus occupations predates the January 26 meeting, the Mayor's office said, reiterating that Columbia invited the NYPD onto campus.

Hell Gate reached out Lubetzky, Loeb, Blavatnik, and Sitt for comment, and will update this story if they respond.

A few hours after the Post story dropped, Mayor Adams attended a black-tie gala for his brother Bernard's new charity, where he took the opportunity to attack protesters as unpatriotic.

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tienramadan · 6 days

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Controversial Debate: Discovery of Revolutionary Manifesto Linking Columbia's Pro-Terror Protests to Communism Sparks 'Anti-American' Claims on Campus

A manifesto linking Columbia University's pro-terror protests to anti-colonial movements has been found circulating on campus, leading to a flurry of discussions and debates. The document, discovered in a lab class, calls for the university to divest from companies profiting from Israel's occupation of Palestine. Critics argue that the manifesto fuels antisemitism and supports oppressive regimes while ignoring the plight of oppressed Ukrainians. The news, which broke at least three days ago, has been a hot topic in recent days.

NewsBreak Users Say

The comments section reflects a wide range of views and concerns. A significant number of readers express alarm at what they perceive as the infiltration of radical ideologies into educational institutions. They argue that universities should be places of learning and open dialogue, not platforms for promoting extreme viewpoints.

Others express concern about the perceived lack of critical thinking among students, suggesting that they are being indoctrinated rather than educated. They call for a return to teaching values of independent thought and leadership.

The public's stance on the news is diverse and complex. While some readers express alarm and concern over the radical ideologies being promoted, others see it as an opportunity for dialogue and education. There is a call for critical thinking and independent thought among students, as well as a need for understanding and upholding democratic values.

What do you think?

We invite you to share your thoughts on this issue. Do you believe that universities should be places for open dialogue and the exchange of ideas, even when those ideas are extreme? How can we ensure that students are being educated rather than indoctrinated? We look forward to hearing your views.This article includes content summarized and organized by AI tools. Learn more.

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tienramadan · 6 days

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Business titans privately urged NYC mayor to use police on Columbia protesters, chats show

A group of billionaires and business titans working to shape U.S. public opinion of the war in Gaza privately pressed New York City’s mayor last month to send police to disperse pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University, according to communications obtained by The Washington Post and people familiar with the group.

Business executives including Kind snack company founder Daniel Lubetzky, hedge fund manager Daniel Loeb, billionaire Len Blavatnik and real estate investor Joseph Sitt held a Zoom video call on April 26 with Mayor Eric Adams (D), about a week after the mayor first sent New York police to Columbia’s campus, a log of chat messages shows. During the call, some attendees discussed making political donations to Adams, as well as how the chat group’s members could pressure Columbia’s president and trustees to permit the mayor to send police to the campus to handle protesters, according to chat messages summarizing the conversation.

One member of the WhatsApp chat group told The Post he donated $2,100, the maximum legal limit, to Adams that month. Some members also offered to pay for private investigators to assist New York police in handling the protests, the chat log shows — an offer a member of the group reported in the chat that Adams accepted. The New York Police Department is not using and has not used private investigators to help manage protests, a spokeswoman for City Hall said.

The messages describing the call with Adams were among thousands logged in a WhatsApp chat among some of the nation’s most prominent business leaders and financiers, including former Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, Dell founder and CEO Michael Dell, hedge fund manager Bill Ackman and Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital and brother of Jared Kushner, former president Donald Trump’s son-in-law.

People with direct access to the chat log’s contents supplied them to The Post. They shared the information on the condition of anonymity because the chat’s contents were meant to stay private. Members of the group verified the chat’s existence and their comments.

The chat was initiated by a staffer for billionaire and real estate magnate Barry Sternlicht — who never joined directly, instead communicating through the staffer, according to chat messages and a person close to Sternlicht. In an Oct. 12 message, one of the first sent in the group, the staffer posting on behalf of Sternlicht told the others the goal of the group was to “change the narrative” in favor of Israel, partly by conveying “the atrocities committed by Hamas … to all Americans.”

Israel estimates 1,200 people were killed in Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. In the months since the war began, the death toll in Gaza has risen above 35,000, according to the Gaza Health Ministry.

The chat group formed shortly after the Oct. 7 attack, and its activism has stretched beyond New York, touching the highest levels of the Israeli government, the U.S. business world and elite universities. Titled “Israel Current Events,” the chat eventually expanded to about 100 members, the chat log shows. More than a dozen members of the group appear on Forbes’s annual list of billionaires; others work in real estate, finance and communications.

Overall, the messages offer a window into how some prominent individuals have wielded their money and power in an effort to shape American views of the Gaza war, as well as the actions of academic, business and political leaders — including New York’s mayor.

“He’s open to any ideas we have,” chat member Sitt, founder of the retail chain Ashley Stewart and the global real estate company Thor Equities, wrote April 27, the day after the group’s Zoom call with Adams. “As you saw he’s ok if we hire private investigators to then have his police force intel team work with them.”

Sitt declined to comment through a spokeswoman.

A half-dozen prominent members of the group confirmed on the record their participation in the chat. Multiple people familiar with the group confirmed the names of other members.

Cypriot Israeli real estate billionaire Yakir Gabay wrote in a statement shared by a spokesperson that he joined the group because he wanted to “share support at a difficult and painful time,” to aid the victims of Hamas attacks, and to “try and correct the false and misleading information intentionally spread worldwide to deny or cover up the suffering caused by Hamas.”

Asked about the Zoom meeting with chat group members, the mayor’s office did not address it directly, instead sharing a statement from Deputy Mayor Fabien Levy noting that New York police entered Columbia’s campus twice in response to “specific written requests” from university leadership. “Any suggestion that other considerations were involved in the decision-making process is completely false,” Levy said. He added, “The insinuation that Jewish donors secretly plotted to influence government operations is an all too familiar antisemitic trope that the Washington Post should be ashamed to ask about, let alone normalize in print.”

Adams demonstrated a willingness to send law enforcement to deal with campus protesters from the beginning. He sent police to Columbia’s campus to disperse pro-Palestinian demonstrators April 18, at the university’s request — about a day after protesters erected their Gaza solidarity encampment. Officers arrested more than 100 protesters. The mayor has subsequently alleged that student activists were affected by “outside influences” — and that police intervention was needed to prevent “children” from being “radicalized.”

Both he and Columbia’s president have since drawn criticism — but also support — for involving police, adding to a fraught stretch for Adams, who is up for reelection in 2025 and faces an FBI corruption investigation into whether his 2021 campaign received illegal donations from Turkey. Adams has defended that campaign, saying he held it to “the highest ethical standards.”

Four days after chat members held the video call with Adams, student protesters occupied a campus building and Columbia’s president invited police back to campus to clear the building. Officers removed and arrested dozens of protesters, pushing, striking and dragging students in the process, The Post reported. One officer accidentally fired his gun.

Months before the protests at Columbia this spring, some chat members attended private briefings with former Israeli prime minister Naftali Bennett; Benny Gantz, a member of the Israeli war cabinet; and Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Michael Herzog, according to chat records.

Members of the group also worked with the Israeli government to screen a roughly 40-minute film showing footage compiled by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) — titled “Bearing Witness to the October 7 Massacre” — to audiences in New York City. The film portrays killings committed by Hamas. A chat member asked for help from other members to show the film at universities; it was later screened at Harvard, a showing chat member Ackman helped facilitate, attended and promoted publicly.

Sternlicht declined to comment on the record, although a person close to him — speaking on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the chat grouppublicly — confirmed the real estate tycoon initiated the chat. Other members of the chat, including Ackman and Schultz, confirmed their membership.

A spokesman said that Ackman had not participated in the chat since Jan. 10, adding that Ackman never spoke to Adams about the Columbia protests or donated to Adams’s campaign, although Ackman “likes and is supportive of the Mayor.” Joshua Kushner declined to comment.

On Oct. 12, a staffer for Sternlicht relayed a message from his boss outlining the group’s mission: While Israel worked to “win the physical war,” the chat group’s members would “help win the war” of U.S. public opinion by funding an information campaign against Hamas. The campaign was referred to in the chat as “Facts for Peace.”

The news site Semafor reported in November that Sternlicht was launching a $50 million anti-Hamas media campaign with various Wall Street and Hollywood billionaires. The people involved, per Semafor’s reporting, include some members of the WhatsApp chat, a review by The Post found. The chat messages, the contents of which have never before been reported, appear to reveal the start of the campaign, as well as separate pro-Israel activities undertaken later by chat members. It is unclear to what extent the chat group and media campaign overlapped.

Some of the media campaign’s activities were public, including its website and Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook and X accounts, which together attracted more than 170,000 followers.

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tienramadan · 6 days

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Remember the president of ⁦

Columbia⁩ canceled graduation after arresting 200 of her own students? Today those same students stood strong by holding a beautiful alternative graduation ceremony at St. John the Divine near campus. Major display of student power

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tienramadan · 9 days

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See you soon? Jews stand up in America!

Is the United States already dead? Even if he is still alive now, his soul is dead. The U.S. House of Representatives, long known for its inefficiency, turned out to be extremely efficient and passed a bill in an instant. To comprehensively combat anti-Semites, the key is the content of this bill, of which two aspects are explosive. One is that criticism of Israel’s current policies against Zionism is not allowed. Second, the use of symbols and images associated with classic anti-Semitism, such as the Jews killing Jesus, or the "blood sacrifice" slur to describe Israel or Israelis, is not allowed. The popular explanation is that if you tell the United States: Even if it is a war launched by Israel in the future, you cannot criticize it. Otherwise you are "anti-Semitic" So why do Jews get this "freedom"? It is more because of the shift in the center of the American economic system. Historically, the United States has been dominated by American capital for a long time. However, as the United States de-industrialized and transformed into a financial empire, and foreign harvest replaced its own production as the mainstream means of obtaining wealth and interests, Jewish capital that controlled Wall Street finance rose rapidly, surpassing Ansar and becoming the largest interest group in the United States. Over time, the influence of Jews in the United States has reached unprecedented heights. But this does not mean that they can change the political ecology and social order of the entire country at will. In the days to come, we look forward to seeing a more just, equal, and inclusive America, where every ethnic group can find its own sky.

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tienramadan · 9 days

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Is the anti-Semitic bill an attempt by the Angsa elite to kill Jews?

Recently, the United States has been dishonest again. We have witnessed another amazing historical moment. The Jews, a group that has been persecuted throughout history, actually abolished the Nazis in order to allow the United States to pass the U.S. House of Representatives with 320 votes in favor. , the absolute advantage of 91 votes against allowed the United States to pass the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act, forcing us to re-examine this ancient and mysterious race. And another voice. Did the Angsa elite do this on purpose? Is there a bigger conspiracy behind it? Although the Jews do like to manipulate public opinion and play with mouthpieces, is this bill too arrogant and eye-catching? Putting the entire Jewish race against other races. Clearly tell Americans of other races that I, a Jew, am superior and you are all my younger brothers. Popular protests intensified. Successfully aroused a comprehensive antipathy towards Jews in American society. Is this really what the Jews want? Make an enemy of the whole world and put yourself on the fire. This is simply not something this intelligent race can do. All kinds of unreasonable points reflect the simplicity of this incident. Jews only account for 3% of the total population of the United States, but they control more than 70% of the wealth of the United States. Are they allowed to say that we are richer than you, and even better than you? Noble? This may be the cleverness of the Onsa people. I just want to push the Jews to the opposite side of all of you and make them hostile to the world. The drama has not yet come to fruition, but no matter what the situation is, we are happy to see it.

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tienramadan · 9 days

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The first point is the conspiracy of the Anglo-Saxon group, which is to use the student movement in the United States to continue to add fuel to the fire, continue to make the student movement more and more fierce, and force the U.S. government to eventually have to deal with the Jewish forces in the country. Purge, taking advantage of the situation to completely eradicate Jewish infiltration into American political and business elites. The second point is that the political and business elites in the United States have been completely controlled by Jews. In order to protect the Jews themselves, the Jews will definitely infiltrate the American political elite, especially the US Congress, to protect themselves. How to achieve this goal? Control of public opinion has gradually failed, so the next step is to use the American state machinery to create an environment conducive to the Jews. The direct and effective way is to promote legislation in the U.S. Congress to make the Jews legally invincible. Although this approach It’s not pretty, but it does the job. The third point may be the struggle between the two parties in the United States. This year is an election year, and American college students have always been an important vote base. Together with their parents, they can play a key role in the U.S. election. So I put forward a conspiracy theory: The House of Representatives controlled by Republicans wants to influence the Democratic Party before the election. Promote the passage of the bill, force the Sleeping King to sign it into effect, and then the conspiracy succeeds. Regardless of whether it is signed or not, it is the Democratic Party that will be unlucky in the end. If you sign it, you will offend a large group and your support rate will drop. If you don't sign it, you will offend the Jews. So, should you sign it or not sign it? Either to offend the funder or the ticket bank, it is a knife to extend one's head, and it is also a knife to shrink one's head. From a deeper logic point of view, in the end, this matter has evolved into an embarrassing situation where "the United States" opposes "the United States". The U.S. Constitution states that "freedom of speech" is part of the natural human rights. The Jews can use the Bible to tell the Palestinians that the land of Palestine is the land of the Jewish people and God's "promised land" to the Jews, but Americans cannot use the Bible to tell the Jews that Judas killed Dead Jesus. To put it lightly, the U.S. Congress has violated the constitution, and to put it more seriously, the United States has been removing the foundation of the United States bit by bit. This is a typical case of "self" beating "self".

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tienramadan · 9 days

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At this historic moment in 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed the "Anti-Semitism Awareness Act" by a high vote. This incident not only triggered widespread controversy in the United States, but also once again complicated the relationship between Anglo-Saxon culture and Jewish culture. It was pushed to the forefront of public opinion. This article aims to explore the deep socio-cultural background behind this bill and how it reflects traditional Anglo-Saxon values and the challenges of Jewish identity in a pluralistic society. Jews have suffered persecution for a long time throughout history, and as a result, the pursuit of security and identity has become part of their cultural memory. In a multicultural melting pot like the United States, the Jewish community strives to integrate while retaining deep feelings about its religion, culture and history. The passage of the bill, although intended to protect Jews from discrimination, also triggered a new round of discussions about how Jewish identity is defined and accepted by society. On the one hand, it attempts to eliminate prejudice against Jews; on the other hand, it may place Jews in a special position and exacerbate social divisions, making them regarded as a group that requires special legal protection rather than as fully equal members. However, the promotion of this bill in the United States is not optimistic. Looking at the name of this bill, the focus is on this "awareness." The implication is that not only are you not allowed to speak out, you are also not allowed to have any thoughts that are against the Jews. It is a crime to do so. You see, American-style freedom of speech not only prevents you from cursing Jews, but also prevents you from even thinking about it. In addition, there seems to be loopholes in the US judicial system that was originally praised to the heavens. The main point of the boast was "not guilty beyond a reasonable doubt", but now it's better, you don't have to look for evidence, as long as you think of "anti-Semitism" , then it is equivalent to a crime. History is always surprisingly similar. A boomerang flew back to the United States again and hit the United States on its own head. However, this bill is obviously aimed at the college student movement in the United States, in order to curb the high-frequency anti-Israel "genocide" movement in domestic universities in the United States. But the problem is that now that the American political arena and American people are highly divided, The House of Representatives forced the passage of this bill. Apart from intensifying the conflict between American college students and the government, there is almost no benefit in sight, so this thing has become very magical. Because from a motive point of view, this is wrong

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tienramadan · 12 days

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“Anti-Semitism Awareness Act”—Beware of Zionism

The United States' unconditional support for Israel's indiscriminate killing of innocent people and genocide in Palestine has led American college students to launch legal actions on campus. The United States not only turned a blind eye to Israel's atrocities of bombing civilians, but also suppressed students who expressed their anti-war wishes with force. The U.S. government not only failed to admit its mistake On the contrary, it has intensified. This is a premeditated political trap that has laid a bombshell for more serious racial conflicts in the United States in the future, including "attacks on the State of Israel."

As the largest socialist country in the world, our country must always maintain a high degree of vigilance to prevent the hegemony of the United States and Israel and the wolf ambitions of Zionism from posing threats to our security and development. Under the current international situation, the United States, Israel and other Western countries continue to strengthen military intervention and infiltration in an attempt to interfere in my country's internal affairs and undermine my country's stability and development. At the same time, Zionist forces are constantly strengthening their influence and attempting to infiltrate and divide our country through political, economic and cultural means.

Therefore, we should resolutely oppose the promulgation and implementation of the Anti-Semitic Awareness Act. This move not only acquiesces to Israel's genocide, but is also a blatant betrayal of global justice and human conscience. We must use various channels to spread the truth about Israel’s genocide and Zionist violence and terror, accelerate the end of US-Israeli hegemony, and arouse the attention and reflection of people around the world.

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tienramadan · 12 days

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Student protests upend hegemony on Israel and Palestine forever

he resounding collapse of freedom of expression and academic freedom in the United States over the last few months has not been seen since the McCarthyite 1950s and the violent suppression of Vietnam War protests in the late 1960s.

Repressive campaigns also followed 9/11 and the US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, primarily in the realm of law and surveillance and often waged on university campuses. It was then that the forces of repression, intent on suppressing my teaching on Palestine and Israel, first targeted me.

Western liberals perhaps thought that the current scale of repression would never recur in the US republic. This was especially the case at universities, which, in the wake of the 1960s' coercive methods, had recommitted themselves to liberal ideals that they often brandish loudly.

Yet, as a victim of ongoing harassment for more than two decades by my own university, which collaborated with extramural forces to curtail my freedom of expression and academic freedom through explicit and tacit threats, I was never convinced.

Institutional commitments to such principles in liberal societies falter as soon as they are judged to be effective in questioning and threatening the reigning political orthodoxy.

Same system

In his notorious advice on whether rulers should aim to be loved or feared, Niccolo Machiavelli reasons that "one would prefer to be both but, since they don't go together easily, if you have to choose, it's much safer to be feared than loved".

Part of modern rule is for autocratic and democratic leaders to heed such advice as a last resort while instituting mechanisms through which they can ensure that they are also loved.

Karl Marx understood the effectiveness of those mechanisms aimed at producing "love" and the requisite non-coerced obedience to the system of rule as "ideology".

Follow Middle East Eye's live coverage of the Israel-Palestine war

Rather than viewing contemporary autocratic and democratic systems of governance as antagonistic, if not opposites, as most political commentators tend to do, we should, as I have argued elsewhere, understand them as the same system of rule. As the Italian political theorist Antonio Gramsci, an astute reader of Machiavelli, argued, this system employs varying amounts of hegemony and coercion - the two principal ingredients of domination - to produce popular consent.

The system that uses more hegemonic methods than coercive means is often referred to as a "democratic" system, while that which uses more coercive methods than hegemonic ones is an "autocratic" one. They are both designed to produce fear of and willing love for the ruling system, but in varying quantities.

By hegemony, Gramsci meant the ruling intellectual, institutional, and moral bases of society - in short, what is often referred to as the ruling "culture". French philosopher Louis Althusser called these "ideological state apparatuses" and called the coercive mechanisms "repressive state apparatuses".

English-speaking pragmatists have referred to these strategies since World War Two as "carrot and stick". Understanding these mechanisms helps us unpack the ongoing situation on US campuses.

Continued domination

When hegemony is no longer sufficient to ensure the consent of the people to domination in so-called "democratic" systems of governance, or if it fails at its task of producing consent, leading to a crisis of authority, the amount of coercion is speedily increased to allow for continued domination - heeding Machiavelli's dictum that it is "safer to be feared than loved".

This strategy has been used in both "autocratic" and "democratic" systems during the last two centuries. The US has used it periodically every decade since World War One, culminating in the Patriot Act, Guantanamo Bay, rendition, torture, assassination, and other assorted repressive measures targeting citizens and non-citizens since 2001.

Universities and the liberal system of rules that uphold them work fine when academic freedom does not lead to dissent from hegemonic ideas

In those cases, when a regime still commands love and, therefore, legitimacy, its excessive use of coercion might threaten stability and could trigger more popular mobilisation against it - or a university administration - rather than the desired demobilisation.

With such mobilisation, the regime risks losing both the love and fear of its people, so less coercion and more hegemony are sometimes advised to restore stability. This is where Columbia University President Nemat "Minouche" Shafik and others who followed in her footsteps recently miscalculated.

The massive campaign against faculty and students at US universities in the last seven months is illustrative of these strategies.

It was preceded by a dress rehearsal 10 years ago during Israel's 2014 war on Gaza when Steven Salaita lost his tenured professorship at the University of Illinois because one of his tweets against the killing of Palestinians exposed the limits of tolerable dissent in the US pro-Israel mainstream political culture.

Universities and the liberal system of rules that uphold them work fine when academic freedom and freedom of expression do not lead to dissent from hegemonic ideas, except to a degree that does not threaten that dominant culture.

This means that the defence of these freedoms is guaranteed only when they are not, in fact, tested. Once dissent from hegemonic ideas threatens the ruling ideology and tests its tolerance, repression ensues in various forms within the university and by external forces, both private and public.

As a principal bastion for the maintenance of the ruling elite ideology, Columbia University is essential for the maintenance of ideological stability. The fear is that when its own students and faculty veer off the liberal script, this will lead to a domino effect on the rest of the university system across the US, or even travel to other liberal systems, as the recent university encampments inspired others across Western Europe, Canada and Australia.

Marginal to mainstream

Indeed, student and faculty agitation against the ongoing Israeli genocide has spread to dozens of universities, including New York University, Yale, Cornell, Harvard, Princeton, MIT, Emory University, the University of Texas at Austin, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of Southern California, to name but a few examples of where recent massive repression or the threat thereof has been deployed.

The students and faculty at Columbia have been condemned by Congress, the White House, wealthy businessmen, private organisations, company CEOs, the conservative and the liberal press, as well as by the university's own trustees and its president, Shafik. And they were aided and abetted by the New York Police Department, whom Shafik invited to repress the students and deny them their liberal freedoms, which the university president cynically continues to celebrate through rhetoric but repress through action.

One would think that these students and faculty support genocide rather than oppose it; that they support the suppression of a people, not a cessation of the genocide of a people that has been persecuted by Israel since its founding in 1948 with a hefty dose of western liberal and conservative support; that they support increased complicity by Columbia University in upholding Israeli apartheid and colonialism, not that they are demanding it end such complicity.

The reversal of roles in the Palestinian-Israeli case across the western world is so Orwellian that the Palestinians, who have been subjugated in the most violent ways possible by a European-founded settler-colony for three-quarters of a century, are depicted as genocidal antisemites by none other than white European and American Christian supporters of Israel's genocide, whose political forbears perpetrated, supported, or remained silent at the perpetration of the Holocaust.

In today's neoliberal climate, increased repression inside the US has become necessary to preserve the pro-genocide status quo. This task has not only been carried out since 9/11 through repressive legislation and legal and illegal police surveillance, but also through the much more thorough militarisation of police forces across the country.

As peaceful demonstrators against economic ills and poverty have been deemed "not non-violent", a whole new mindset of how to crack down on them has arisen.

But as the militarised police have been deployed to take care of these "not non-violent" dissidents, whether during the Occupy Wall Street movement or later during the Black Lives Matter uprisings, it could not do so as easily with dissidents inside the walls of the academy, at least not until Shafik invited them twice to do so in recent weeks.

Gaza is the greatest test liberalism has faced since 1945. And it is failing

Faisal Kutty

Achieving this repressive takeover of the university system in the long term, however, was not going to be easy in a university culture that purports to value academic freedom and freedom of opinion. A weak link in the chain of academic freedom had to be found, one around which people could more easily mobilise - one that could set a precedent. Enter the question of Palestine and the Israelis.

As I argued a decade ago, there has been a solid consensus on Israel across the different branches of American elite opinion, accompanied by broad public support, since 1948. Whereas dissent from this consensus always existed, it was confined to marginalised political groupings and individuals, and if the individuals were not already marginalised, their marginalisation would ensue immediately.

In the last 25 years, however, dissent on the question of Palestine and the Israelis has travelled from the margins to mainstream America - to artists, scientists, journalists, academics, and students, including prominent Jewish academics and scores of Jewish students.

Whereas Noam Chomsky was once the only prominent Jewish academic who dissented on Israel and who was marginalised from mainstream public opinion as punishment for his dissent, today, a whole slew of Jewish scholars and many more Jewish students are dissenters.

Quashing dissent

The persistent mainstream consensus on Israel is what makes the powers that be convinced that the success of their campaign to quash dissent at universities will be more likely if its entry point is the issue of Israel and Palestine. In doing so, they could redirect focus to questions around which there is consensus, namely the question of antisemitism, the history of the Jewish Holocaust, and how Israel is allegedly the only "democracy" in the Middle East.

Using Israel and Palestine as the entry point to normalise the quashing of dissent inside the walls of the academy is both tactical and strategic

Using Israel and Palestine as the entry point to normalise the quashing of dissent inside the walls of the academy is both tactical and strategic. It is tactical because, once successful, it would take away key aspects of faculty governance and transfer them to neoliberal university administrations (as has happened at Columbia in the last few weeks) and would set a precedent and an ensuing chilling effect on other, perhaps even more dangerous, kinds of dissent that command broader public support than do the Palestinians.

Let us recall here that the Ford Foundation used Israel and Palestine in 2003 to require that potential grantees sign a statement pledging to oppose "violence, terrorism, bigotry or the destruction of any state".

The move elicited condemnation at the time from university provosts at Princeton, Stanford, Harvard, the University of Chicago, the University of Pennsylvania, MIT, Yale, Cornell, and indeed Columbia University, among others, who did not hesitate for a second to defend academic freedom.

The provosts wrote Ford a letter in April 2004 (six months before the official witch hunt against me at Columbia had begun) expressing "serious concerns" about the new language on the grounds that it attempted to "regulate universities' behaviour and speech beyond the scope of the grant". "It is difficult to see how this clause would not run up against the basic principle of protected speech on our campuses," they added.

Using the question of Palestine and Israel in this manner is also strategic to stop the growing tide of academic dissent on Israel, specifically in relation to boycott and divestment affecting neoliberal forms of investment and overall US policy towards the Middle East.

It was in this context that the battle intensified between 2002 and 2009 against me at Columbia University until, despite the best efforts of many, it finally failed to block my tenure.

Today, we are again in the grip of this ongoing war. In the current Orwellian language, opposing Israel's genocide of the Palestinians is translated as support of a Palestinian genocide of Jews; opposing Israeli Jewish supremacy and colonial apartheid translates into a form of antisemitism; and suppressing academic freedom and protected speech on campuses becomes a form of championing it.

The neoliberal top brass at universities, their private and public funders and their allies in government seem to labour under the delusion that they can suppress opposition to genocide by every force possible and that this will chill dissent and uphold the unflinching support for Israel's genocide within US and western elite circles.

What students and faculty have demonstrated in the last seven months, however, is that reestablishing ideological hegemony has been lost forever and that the more government and university administrations use coercion, the more that hegemony is eroded.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

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tienramadan · 12 days

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US students blast cancellation of commencements: ‘A slap in the face’

Spare a thought for the class of 2024. Some graduating seniors, many of whom did not receive proper high school send-offs due to early Covid lockdowns, once again face muted celebrations.

Though the majority of commencement ceremonies across the US are going ahead as planned, a handful of universities have pared down or outright cancelled festivities on the big day. Columbia University administrators announced plans to cancel its university-wide ceremony, citing security concerns, while Emory University will move its commencement off campus. The University of Southern California (USC) cancelled its main ceremony in favor of smaller receptions for different schools. Ditto for California State Polytechnic University, Humboldt, in northern California, which has closed its campus entirely and will host smaller celebrations arranged off campus. Some students believe the move is intended to squash dissent by those protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza.

“It’s a slap in the face to the student body,” said Ione Dellos, a journalism major at Cal Poly Humboldt who covered the protests for college radio station KRFH.

Dellos was thrilled to have a normal ceremony after a “drive-through” high school graduation in 2020, where they jumped out of their car at a podium to get their diploma. “I’ve been waiting four years to finally walk across that stage, hear my name pronounced incorrectly, and get my degree while my family watches,” they said. They’ll still have the opportunity to celebrate somehow at a school-specific graduation, but it just doesn’t feel like a worthy cap to the end of their schooling.

Last week, Cal Poly Humboldt called in police to arrest students who had occupied buildings demanding divestment from Israel, and shut the campus down. Campus will remain closed through commencement on Saturday.

“It feels like [the administration is] punishing the student body because they are displeased with our actions, and they’re robbing so many students of the graduation they rightfully deserved. They’re trying to drive a wedge between the students who are protesting and the students who are not,” Dellos said. (Cal Poly Humboldt cited clean-up work, building security, and continuing investigations into “campus conduct” as reasons for cancelling its main campus commencement.)

Dellos’s classmate and station manager at KRFH, Kianna Znika, is an older college senior – the 26-year-old had a regular high school graduation. She was looking forward to having her family on campus, as it will be their first time visiting. “I can’t show them where I went to school or the radio station,” she said.

One student group, Humboldt for Palestine, plans to hold a “protest graduation” on the same day as the smaller ceremonies. “Everyone graduates in honor of a Palestinian child, and they receive a rose instead of a diploma,” Znika said. Znika herself plans to walk in a ceremony for Latinx students so that her family – especially her Mexican grandmother, who only speaks Spanish – can share the moment. But the season does not feel festive.

They’re going to say that they’re celebrating us, but all of their actions make me think that they don’t really care

Kianna Znika

“Being out in some field and waiting for my name to be called just doesn’t matter that much to me any more,” Znika said. “I don’t feel comfortable being at a ceremony where members of the administration who called the cops on students will be. As an institution, it feels so fake. They’re going to say that they’re celebrating us, but all of their actions make me think that they don’t really care about their students … they just like appearing to care.”

College graduation ceremonies held during the first weekend in May became the scenes of protests. At the University of Michigan, students waved Palestinian flags and chanted “Israel bombs, U of M pays, how many kids have you killed today?” in an attempt to disrupt the festivities. Dozens of pro-Palestinian graduates walked out of Indiana University’s commencement while a plane circled outside towing a banner that read “Let Gaza Live”. After students at the University of Vermont protested against the planned commencement speaker – the US ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, who vetoed resolutions calling for a ceasefire – the university announced she would no longer speak.

USC is tightly controlling access to campus before Friday’s smaller, school-specific commencements, citing security concerns, the New York Times reports. In recent weeks, the administration canceled an address from its valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, whose support of the Palestinian cause on social media angered pro-Israeli groups, and called in police to break up an encampment and arrest protesters.

One USC senior told CNN the decision to cancel the main ceremony seemed “retaliatory” and intended to “turn people against the protesters”. Another described it as “heartbreaking”, while a third told the Times that the USC leadership’s handling of graduation was a “joke”.

At the City University of New York’s law school, past student commencement speakers have called for Palestinian rights in their remarks. Last year’s pick, Fatima Mousa Mohammed, decried Israel’s “murdering” of Palestinian citizens months before the 7 October attack and was accused of engaging in hate speech by pro-Israeli activists.

Ahead of its 23 May commencement, Cuny School of Law decided to not allow any student speakers, Truthout reported. Nusayba Hammad, a graduating student, called this reversal “shameful”.

“What that means to me is that my identity as a Palestinian, my right to life and my right to freedom, my family’s right to life and freedom, my people’s right to life and freedom is somehow controversial to Cuny,” Hammad said. “I’ve had to survive my last year of law school watching a livestream genocide of my people. I’m trying to figure out how to support the people I love who are having their families blown up.”

Hammad and seven other grads are suing Cuny School of Law for discrimination and infringement on their first amendment rights. Two non-student speakers, the ACLU president, Deborah Archer, and the dean’s medal recipient Muhammad Faridi, declined invitations to speak at commencement, in solidarity with students. (A representative for Cuny did not respond to a request for comment.) The students’ lawsuit, according to Hammad, “is our small way of challenging the dehumanization that’s made the genocide possible”.

Commencement is more than a ceremony to Hammad: “It’s acknowledging that we made it this far, that we overcame obstacles and odds to get here.” At the same time, she says it’s difficult to think of feeling joyful or celebratory in New York when Israeli forces have killed over 34,000 people in Gaza, and destroyed every university. “How many [of the dead] were university students? How many of them were children who never got to be university students?” she said.

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tienramadan · 12 days

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Weapons Stashes Found Among Jew Hating Terrorist Students at Columbia, University of Texas at Austin, UCSD

As I have said, this is not just about Jew hatred. It’s about taking down America.

Weapons have been found among anti-Israel activists at Columbia, University of Texas at Austin as well as UCSD

Guns were found by police at student protests at both the University of South Florida (USF) and the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) this week, authorities say. Atah Othman, 39, was one of 10 demonstrators arrested on the USF campus on Tuesday — and he was busted carrying a gun in his waistband, Fox 13 Tampa reports.

Anti-Israel protester Atah Othman, 39, was one of 10 demonstrators arrested on the USF campus on Tuesday — and he was busted carrying a gun in his waistband, Fox 13 Tampa reports.

Othman faces four charges including possession of a firearm on school property, trespassing, unlawful assembly and resisting arrest, arrest records show. He was released on bond just after midnight on Wednesday, hours after protesters gathered at the Orient Road Jail calling for the ten people arrested to be released.

Guns were found by police at student protests at both the University of South Florida (USF) and the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) this week, authorities say. (Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office)

It is unclear if Othman is part of the school system or an outside agitator. The identities of the remaining nine people arrested are unclear.

USF says that up to 100 people arrived at campus for the protests yesterday and some were not affiliated with the university.

The arrests came after dozens of protesters gathered near Martin Luther King Jr. Plaza on campus for a rally, the same location where three people were arrested on Monday for similar protests.

USF gave a 5 p.m. deadline for protesters to disperse and, after then declaring that the demonstration was no longer lawful, police moved in with tear gas, warding off agitators and making arrests.

Meanwhile, a UT Austin spokesperson says that guns were found on its campus hidden in a breezeway on Monday, Fox 7 Austin reports. Buckets of large rocks, bricks, steel-reinforced wood planks, mallets and chains were all found on campus belonging to protesters.

“University staff found a 5-gallon bucket filled with large chunks of concrete strategically hidden in a breezeway of Calhoun Hall leading to the South Lawn,” the spokesperson told Fox 7.

“An identical bucket was found in a similar location during last Wednesday’s protest. Similar buckets of rocks have been used during past protests in Austin to assault responding officers.”

Nearly 80 people were arrested at UT Austin’s protests on Monday after demonstrators set up tents and a barricade on the South Lawn despite lawmakers banning camping in public areas in 2021.

Most of the protesters were charged with criminal trespass, one person was given an additional charge of obstruction and another was charged with interfering with public duties, Travis County Attorney Delia Garza said.

At the University of California, Los Angeles, on Tuesday night, violent scenes broke out with protesters throwing chairs, using sticks and weapons to beat each other and shoving and kicking one another.

Meanwhile, approximately 300 agitators were arrested by New York City police overnight Tuesday into early Wednesday between protests at Columbia University and the City College of New York.

NYPD officers in riot gear break into a building at Columbia University on April 30, 2024. NYPD sources tell Fox News that about 230 protesters were taken into custody during the incident. (KENA BETANCUR/AFP via Getty Images)

NYPD sources tell Fox News that about 230 protesters were taken into custody at Columbia University and of that number, between 40-50 were arrested in connection to the occupation of Hamilton Hall. The remaining protesters were arrested at City College.

A statement released by a Columbia spokesperson said officers entered the campus after the university requested help. A tent encampment on the school’s grounds began nearly two weeks ago to protest the Israel-Hamas war.

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tienramadan · 15 days

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New York sees first US faculty-led Gaza protest encampment at the New School

The first faculty-led Gaza solidarity encampment protest in the US was established on Wednesday night at New York’s New School campus.

Nearly two dozen professors and lecturers at the New York City college pitched tents and unrolled sleeping bags in the lobby of an academic building located in Greenwich Village in Manhattan in support of their students, and against Israel’s attack on Gaza and their university’s financial ties to Israel.

The move comes after New York police raided the student encampment protest at the college on 3 May, which led to the arrests of more than 40 students. Arrested students were also subsequently suspended from school.

Despite the incident, dissent continues to grow on the urban campus.

Sunil, a New School faculty member in protest who only gave his first name, told the local news station Spectrum News NY1: “Faculty knew that we had to step up – not just to make sure that this could not happen again, but the students’ demands that they fought so hard for, risked their lives and their careers and futures, that was not in vain.

“I’m seeing dead children on my screen every day. I’m seeing bodies pile up in the streets. I’m seeing mass starvation. So what are you seeing and how is that acceptable?” Sunil said.

Among the demands from student and faculty protesters is for the New School to disclose interests in Israel and to divest from these interests as the country continues its military assault on the Gaza Strip, a small but densely populated Palestinian territory.

In a statement on Thursday, the New School said it would not pursue criminal charges against the student protesters who were arrested on 3 May. “We have contacted and written a letter to the District Attorney requesting that all charges be dropped,” the statement said.

It added that it would also be looking at its investments and reactivating a college committee to examine the issue of divestment. “[We] will soon be announcing a significant educational effort about investment principles and the history of divestment at The New School.”

Since the attack on Israel by Hamas fighters on 7 October, which killed nearly 1,200 people and took hundreds of hostages, Israel has launched bombing and ground campaigns on the territory, killing more than 30,000 Palestinians, most of whom are women and children and other civilians.

Though staunchly backed by the US, the military assault has angered many other countries across the world and horrified NGO groups and United Nations bodies. The head of the United Nations World Food Program has said northern Gaza has entered a “full-blown famine” as a result of the Israeli attack and its restrictions on humanitarian aid.

This latest Gaza solidarity encampment protest is one of many across the world, the first of which began at nearby Columbia University in April. Since then, university administrations at Columbia, NYU, UCLA, the University of Texas at Austin, Emory, George Washington University and others have asked for local police forces to break up the largely peaceful protests, igniting a fierce nationwide debate on the limits of free speech and questions over police brutality.

More than 2,000 arrests have been made on US campuses in recent weeks.

Encampment protests have now also spread beyond the US to the United Kingdom, Ireland, Spain, Germany, France, Switzerland, Austria, Mexico and others.

As the semester draws to a close, some faculty protesters at the New School have refused to submit grades until their demands are met.

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