In early August, Columbia University told Congress that most of the students arrested in the past year for protesting against Israel’s war on Gaza would be allowed to return to campus for the fall.

Then a congressional inquiry applied pressure. Last week, the Republican chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, which has been conducting an inquiry into Columbia’s handling of the protests since this spring, published a letter blasting the school for not punishing students harshly enough and issued a subpoena for internal records.

Now dozens of student protesters have received notices that their cases are being fast-tracked to university disciplinary hearings, short-circuiting Columbia’s own investigation process. Scheduled interviews with students have been canceled, and cases are moving directly to the University Judicial Board, which can expel or otherwise punish students, according to an email reviewed by The Intercept.

https://www.migrationdataportal.org/themes/human-trafficking

The far-right extremist playbook would immediately raise taxes for the middle class by thousands of dollars while also pushing for long-term changes that could raise taxes by $5,900.

Free speech is dying in once-liberal democracies that are now ruled by unaccountable administrative bureaucracies.

As students and faculty in the U.S. return to campuses for the fall semester, there are innumerable reasons to continue demonstrating against institutional complicity with Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza. The need for those protests is as urgent as it’s ever been.

University and college administrations, however, are not only signaling plans to treat pro-Palestinian speech with intellectual dishonesty, they’re making clear they plan to use their specious logic to inflict evermore repressive intolerance.

Tucked into a document purportedly offering clarification on school policy, the new NYU guidelines introduce an unprecedented expansion of protected classes to include “Zionists” and “Zionism.” Referring to the university’s nondiscrimination and anti-harassment policy, known as NDAH, the updated conduct guide says, “Speech and conduct that would violate the NDAH if targeting Jewish or Israeli people can also violate the NDAH if directed toward Zionists.”

By Argiris Malapanis and Geoff Mirelowitz

August 15, 2024

[a #revolutionary #socialist viewpoint on #Trump and the upcoming elections ]