University of Minnesota took over the administration building yesterday.
The protest didn’t last long. The police charged in and have arrested 11 students and alumni. It’s the principle, though: they were protesting the university’s investment in Israel and our country’s bomb-making industries. It’s not as if the Democrats are working for peace, and you know the Republicans love them some civilian casualties, so it’s good that someone is raising a ruckus and declaring that genocide is not a good business decision.
One of the organizers, Juliet Murphy, had a few words for the administration.
“And I think we’re kind of calling it out at this point and saying, ‘You have always taught us that we should stand up for what we believe in, we should be the motivators for change, but yet, when it no longer benefits you, it doesn’t seem like you really want to continue having those conversations. It doesn’t seem like you really care about listening to your diverse student body,’” Murphy said.
The administration had a counter: you will be silent, you will be orderly, or you shall be ejected from the campus.
The University of Minnesota’s Board of Regents voted in August to reject student calls for divestment from Israel — and to block most future student divestment campaigns.
The university also rolled out guidelines this summer stating demonstrations must be limited to 100 people and end by 10 p.m., and that they cannot use tents nor remain in buildings after scheduled closing hours, among other rules. Violation can result in immediate interim suspension, arrest and being barred from campus.
The smug, comfortable assholes on the Board of Regents really don’t get it: the whole point of a protest is to make the other side uncomfortable. Rejecting disagreement from a position of power does not resolve the point of contention, but only makes the opposition angrier and more determined.
Free Palestine. End the genocide. Divest now. Those are simple, clear ideas that won’t be answered by arresting people.
somehow i thought protests would be treated differently here in minnesota.
i was wrong.
i am disappointed with the regents.
The vast majority of regents/board members/etc got their positions because they are connected to money and power. Doesn’t matter where in the world or whether it is a private or public institution. They are used to being comfortable, having safe spaces for themselves, and generally do not act for interests outside of their own little worlds. The obscene reactions to student protests for the last few years have driven this home.
Reports say the arrested students had barricaded and locked themselves in Morrill Hall along with employees still working there are were trapped. Seems like that might be some relevant information to include. (Not a justification of the regents response last summer)
The Regents of the University of California as well have a history of doing the same thing, over and over and over again. In fact, I remember them doing the same in the 1970s and 1980s, when students (and staff and faculty) were trying to get them to divest from apartheid South Africa. They (the Regents) were part of the economic and political system that kept apartheid going then, and of course is doing the same today.. And, oh yeah, does anybody remember what they did during Occupy? The message here is “shut up, sit down, and keep the system going, little drones. If you don’t, you’re on our hit list.” The real story today is that you’re supposed to watch an open genocide every day and just sit back. Ever wondered what you’d have done during an earlier genocide? You’re doing exactly that, right now.
I read Paul Krugman’s latest article just before this one. Dr. Krugman talks about the demands made by the southerners regarding slavery before the civil war. The college administrators and regents are acting just like the southerners. They want to repress any and all criticism of their actions.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/21/opinion/trump-lincoln-arnold-palmer.html
Lorax, how do you know that is true? From the linked story:
And later:
Notice the change of tone from the first university statement, which is a reactive statement of events, and the subsequent statement when the PR team had to justify arrests using obvious weasel words. Exactly how long is ‘an extended period of time’? (Less than an hour apparently.) Why were people unable to leave if the protestors had actively asked them to?
Then have a look at the rest of that article. This protest is a follow-up to a protest in May that only ended after the university agreed to disclose its previously secret investments in Israel. Essentially the regents were forced be honest, and then wrote new rules to make it almost impossible for students to protest in any meaningful way with specific restrictions against any and all divestment protests, i.e. at all costs protect the money ahead of student rights. Why should we trust anything they say?
Here’s how it should work. Students angry at the genocide and the University’s investment in Israeli enterprises and the arms industry set up a camp outside the administration offices. They include Jewish students who ae placed in a central part of the camp to give them protection when the inevitable “pro-Israel” fascist outsiders come in ad try to attack them with compliant Murdoch media in tow to blare out claims of antisemitism. They are blocked by other students and University security and police are called to remove them. Of course the lazy media reports it as an antisemitic attack on Jewish students and “interviews” a few who claim they are afraid to walk on campus. The protest continues for a few months and eventually after meeting with students the administration agrees to wind back their investments in the war criminal and the encampment goes away. A fairy tale? No that actually happened at an Australian university.
On another note in Sydney every Sunday upwards of 30,000 people gather to march through the city to protest the Australian government’s, both state and federal, support for genocide by Israel. The government and police tried to ban the march and the protestors went to court to get the right to march. It was granted and a route and procedures were negotiated with the police whose main task was controlling pro-Israel agitators who tried to stage a performance for the media by trying to infiltrate the march carrying Israeli flags. The demonstrations continued peacefully over the bleatings of the Zionist lobby who claimed they felt threatened by those antisemitic marchers. Then the anniversary of the Hamas attack rolled around and again the Zionists urged the march be banned on the grounds that the time was too sensitive to allow it. Never mind the 40-50,000 Palestinians who had been murdered by their genocidal state. A compliant coward of a state premier agreed so the marchers made it plain that hey were going to march anyway and took the premier and police to court and won. The march went ahead like all the previous ones, very loud but peaceful. Thats not the way it should be done. From day one the cowards that sit in parliament should have condemned the Hamas attack but warned Israel not to murder civilians. When Israel began the genocide they should have got on the right side of history and divested from investments in Israeli arms manufacturers and closed the ports to Israeli shipping. They should have made it a criminal offense for citizens and residents to travel to Israel to don the IDF uniform and participate, (thats actually happening). They didn’t. A year on and 50,000 Palestinians and several Lebanese lives later, not to forget the UN staff and foreign aid workers, including at least one Australian citizen murdered by Israel their undying support for genocide under the rubric of self defence continues.
What truth value exists in the following from PZ’s linked article:
This article has: https://mndaily.com/290455/top-story/three-non-students-arrested-for-morrill-hall-occupation/
So was spray painting limited to security cameras? Why were windows broken? Who did that? A bit much.
And what was gained by?:
Really? Why Fauci?
I’d stop short of academic boycotts against Israel for the most part (unless it’s Jackass Settler University of “Judea” and “Samaria”), but avoiding dealings with any business interest connected to settlements and subjugation of Palestinians in the West Bank should be on the table and any investments connected to the Israeli military effort in Gaza. Yet on the other hand some of the optics with student protests across campuses are troublesome and downright obnoxious. In light of what Hamas did on October 7th, persuading people by inconveniencing them on campus is not really going to happen. And it plays badly in the media. May well have the opposite backfire effect.
Hamas has long been a massive public relations disaster for the Palestinian cause from the 2nd intifada with suicide bombings through their takeover of Gaza not too long after the dark art realpolitik disengagement by Arik to the present. BDS seems the opposite of Bibi and the post-Revisionist hardliners with their own one-state dogma. People should still have the right to boycott Israel as they see fit without the scourge of the placating anti-BDS laws.
That said I wish the US would cut ALL military aid to Israel, especially under Bibi and the settler friendly coalitions, and let them fend for themselves since they allegedly made the desert bloom all on their own, right? It’s ridiculous that pro-Israel and Cuban exilio lobbyists have such a disproportionate influence over US foreign policy.
Between Hamas and other Islamist groups and post Revisionist Zionism adding the radical Judaic religious settler element there is an intractable mutually entangled expansionist eliminationism with no room for nuance and a workable two-state solution that nearly everyone disses anymore.
Funny thing that for all his warts the New Atheist horseman Christopher Hitchens had some decent pro-Palestinian and Zionism-critical views that very rarely get acknowledged.
Jeez… I’m so glad I don’t work for these assholes anymore, but I’ll sure take their pension in 2 years.
@Chrislawson
“Exactly how long is ‘an extended period of time’? (Less than an hour apparently.)” So strangers enter a building you are in and begin barricading the doors (you may not be aware this is happening as you’re on an upper floor or in the bathroom). You don’t know how long you may be stuck or what might happen next. It could be argued that the people in Morrill were hostages or felt like they were…although it was less than an hour, so no worries.
“Why were people unable to leave if the protestors had actively asked them to?” Stranger asks you to leave work, so you just do it. Did the protestors go door to door to make sure they actively asked everyone to leave? When cops yell BS orders to citizens, do you respond in comments that people should just do as they’re told?
What’s the relationship between the first, quoted, sentence of that paragraph, and the rest? The complaint against the protestors is that people were “unable to leave”, so asking, in effect, “Why should they have left at the request of the protestors?” is simply irrelevant.
Lorax@10– you are missing my point. What I asked was why we should trust the administration’s statement given its glaring lack of precision in the context of the administration’s track record of secret investments and suppression of student dissent. I am not generally in favour of trapping people in buildings even for causes I believe in, although from the report it seems like the protestors took steps to minimise the impact on staff members (i.e. waiting until just before the end of office hours, using easily moved barricades).
But it’s impossible to have a meaningful protest that causes no inconvenience — any protest that causes zero inconvenience will lead to zero action. What is your position on the protesters that occupied the same hall as part of the Civil Rights Movement? Those protestors were even more disruptive. They occupied the building for 24 hours. Were they wrong to do so?
These people are misguided as is PZ. The only attempted genocide is of Jews in Israel. Hamas has made it clear over and over that they want all of the land and that they will use any and all means to achieve it. They murder civilians. They kidnap. They rape. It is a matter of policy.
I am not claiming that Israel is blameless. But if they put down their arms, they would be annihilated. If Hamas put down their arms, there would be peace. Over a million non-Jews live in Israel with equal rights. How many Jews were permitted to live in Gaza under Hamas? How many people live in Gaza with freedom of religion, the right to vote, the right to peacefully dissent from Hamas, the right to consensual sex? I would be murdered for committing blasphemy if I went there. So would PZ. These people are not our friends.
You’ve just described what Israel does to Palestinians in the West Bank.
cf. https://www.ohchr.org/en/press-releases/2024/02/israelopt-un-experts-appalled-reported-human-rights-violations-against
cf. https://www.un.org/unispal/document/escalating-settler-violence-against-palestinians-in-the-west-bank-ohchr-16aug24/
etc.
—
“These people are not our friends.”
They’re all people. But Israel has learnt how to genocide.
It’s burning through whatever goodwill remains among civilised nations.
cf. https://www.vox.com/politics/378913/israel-gaza-genocide-icj
@chrislawson I agree with you that we should not simply buy the narrative of the admin or police, etc. I also do not believe we should minimize the experiences of those behind the barricades. We ‘know’ there was no violent intent from the protesters. Did the people in the building in the moment (in the US where violence for violence sake is part in parcel with being an American)?
Inconvenience and potential kidnapping are not equivalent in my opinion. Blocking traffic is a hassle (inconvenience), not taking buses hurts bus companies (inconvenient, though the inconvenience was on the protesters primarily). Yes, I agree policies do not change simply from rationale discussion.
You may have noticed I never expressed concern about potential damage to the buildings, spray painting cameras. I think busting up the tents and preventing overnight protests on the mall was a huge fucking fail from the regents. I was simply putting myself in place of those in building who had no idea what was happening and think there’s a fair bit of privilege to simply call it an ‘inconvenience’ in the moment.