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Justine McDaniel, Susan Svrluga and Emily Davies
Washington Post
Excerpt: Columbia University disciplined more than 70 students for participating in a May protest of the Israeli government’s actions in Gaza, the school said Tuesday, days after university officials hoping to cut a deal with the Trump administration to restore federal funding attended a meeting at the White House.
The university suspended or expelled more than 80 percent of the students sanctioned in connection with a demonstration at the university’s Butler Library, according to university spokeswoman Millie Wert. Some will have their degrees revoked, while others were put on probation.
Jacob Sullum
Reason Magazine
Excerpt: Mahmoud Khalil, a legal permanent resident who was the first target of President Donald Trump's crusade against foreign students he calls "terrorist sympathizers," could soon be released from custody thanks to a preliminary injunction that a federal judge in New Jersey granted this week. The reasoning behind that injunction underlines the chilling impact of Trump's attempt to treat speech he does not like as a deportable offense.
[U.S. District Judge Michael] Farbiarz stayed his injunction until 9:30 this morning to allow for a government appeal of his decision. That deadline came and went without an appeal. An Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) official nevertheless told Khalil's lawyers "the government has no immediate plans to release him," The New York Times reports.
Tom Perkins
The Guardian
Excerpt: The University of Michigan is using private, undercover investigators to surveil pro-Palestinian campus groups, including trailing them on and off campus, furtively recording them and eavesdropping on their conversations, the Guardian has learned.
The surveillance appears to largely be an intimidation tactic, five students who have been followed, recorded or eavesdropped on said. The undercover investigators have cursed at students, threatened them and in one case drove a car at a student who had to jump out of the way, according to student accounts and video footage shared with the Guardian.
Alice Dreger
Free the Inquiry, Heterodox Academy
Excerpt: Two questions – what counts as activism in academia and what (if anything) should be done about it – formed the core of our lively webinar last Wednesday as I spoke with the University of Wyoming’s Martha McCaughey and the University of Chicago’s Tom Ginsburg and took questions from Heterodox Academy members.
Schuyler Mitchell
The Intercept
Excerpt: New York University School of Law barred 31 pro-Palestine law school students from campus facilities and demanded that they sign away their right to protest in exchange for being allowed to return. If the students — deemed “personae non grata,” or PNG — don’t renounce their right to protest on campus, they will be unable to sit for final exams.
Jerry A. Coyne
Why Evolution is true
Excerpt: This article in The Atlantic by Frank Foer, former editor of The New Republic (and who attended Columbia) gives a thorough and excellent summary of the history of antisemitic protests at the school. You can probably access it for free by clicking on the headline below, or you can find the article archived here. It’s well worth reading.
