NEW YORK: Columbia canceled in-person classes, dozens of protesters were arrested at Yale and the gates to Harvard Yard were closed to the public on Monday as some of the most prestigious US universities sought to diffuse campus tensions over Israel’s war with Hamas.
The various actions followed the arrest last week of more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators who had camped out on Columbia’s green, as schools struggle with where to draw the line between allowing free expression while maintaining a safe and inclusive campus.
In addition to the demonstrations at the Ivy League schools, pro-Palestinian encampments have sprouted up on other campuses, including the University of Michigan, New York University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The protests have pitted students against one another, with pro-Palestinian students demanding that their schools condemn Israel’s assault on Gaza and divest from companies that sell weapons to Israel. Some Jewish students, meanwhile, say much of the criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitism and made them feel unsafe, and point out that Hamas is still holding hostages taken during the group’s Oct. 7 invasion.
Tensions remained high Monday at Columbia in New York City, where the campus gates were locked to anyone without a school ID and where protests broke out both on campus and outside.
US Rep. Kathy Manning, a Democrat from North Carolina who was visiting Columbia with three other Jewish members of Congress to view the encampment, told reporters after meeting with students from the Jewish Law Students Association that there was “an enormous encampment of people” who had taken up about a third of the green.
“We saw signs indicating that Israel should be destroyed,” she said after leaving the Morningside Heights campus.
A woman inside the campus gates led about two-dozen protesters on the street outside in a chant of, ” From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free! ” — a charged phrase that can mean vastly different things to different groups. Meanwhile, a small group of pro-Israel counter demonstrators protested nearby.
University President Minouche Shafik said in a message to the school community Monday that she was “deeply saddened” by what was happening on campus.
“To deescalate the rancor and give us all a chance to consider next steps, I am announcing that all classes will be held virtually on Monday,” Shafik wrote, noting that faculty and staff should work remotely when possible and that students who don’t live on campus should stay away.
Protests have roiled many college campuses since Hamas’ deadly attack on southern Israel, when militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. In response, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry, which doesn’t distinguish between combatants and non-combatants but says at least two-thirds of the dead are children and women.
Prahlad Iyengar, an MIT graduate student studying electrical engineering, was among about two dozen students who set up a tent encampment on the school’s Cambridge, Massachusetts, campus Sunday evening. They are calling for a ceasefire and are protesting what they describe as MIT’s “complicity in the ongoing genocide in Gaza,” he said.
“MIT has not even called for a ceasefire, and that’s a demand we have for sure,” Iyengar said.
He also said MIT has been sending out confusing rules about protests.
“We’re out here to demonstrate that we reserve the right to protest. It’s an essential part of living on a college campus,” Iyengar said.
On Sunday, Elie Buechler, a rabbi for the Orthodox Union’s Jewish Learning Initiative at Columbia, sent a WhatsApp message to nearly 300 Jewish students recommending they go home until it’s more safe for them on campus.
The latest developments came ahead of the Monday evening start of the Jewish holiday of Passover.
Nicholas Baum, a 19-year-old Jewish freshman who lives in a Jewish theological seminary building two blocks from Columbia’s Morningside Heights campus, said protesters over the weekend were “calling for Hamas to blow away Tel Aviv and Israel.” He said some of the protesters shouting antisemitic slurs were not students.
“Jews are scared at Columbia. It’s as simple as that. There’s been so much vilification of Zionism, and it has spilled over into the vilification of Judaism,” he said.
The protest encampment sprung up at Columbia on Wednesday, the same day that Shafik faced bruising criticism at a congressional hearing from Republicans who said she hadn’t done enough to fight antisemitism. Two other Ivy League presidents resigned months ago following widely criticized testimony they gave to the same committee.
In her statement Monday, Shafik said the Middle East conflict is terrible and that she understands that many are experiencing deep moral distress.
“But we cannot have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view,” Shafik wrote.
Over the coming days, a working group of deans, school administrators and faculty will try to find a resolution to the university crisis, noted Shafik, who didn’t say when in-person classes would resume.
Several students at Columbia and its sister school, Barnard College, said they were suspended for taking part in last week’s protests, including Barnard student Isra Hirsi, the daughter of Democratic US Rep. Ilhan Omar.
At Yale, police officers arrested about 45 protesters and charged them with misdemeanor trespassing, said Officer Christian Bruckhart, a New Haven police spokesperson. All were being released on promises to appear in court later, he said.
Protesters set up tents on Beinecke Plaza on Friday and demonstrated over the weekend, calling on Yale to end any investments in defense companies that do business with Israel.
Nadine Cubeisy, a Yale student and one of the protest’s organizers, said it was disturbing that “this university that I’m going to, that I contribute to and that my friends give money to is using that money to fund violence.”
In a statement to the campus community on Sunday, Yale President Peter Salovey said university officials had spoken to the student protesters multiple times about the school’s policies and guidelines, including those regarding speech and allowing access to campus spaces.
School officials said they spoke with protesters over several hours and gave them until the end of the weekend to leave Beinecke Plaza. The said they again warned protesters Monday morning and told them that they could face arrest and discipline, including suspension, before police moved in.
A large group of demonstrators regathered after Monday’s arrests at Yale and blocked a street near campus, said Bruckhart. There were no reports of any violence or injuries.
Last week, the University of Southern California took the unusual step of canceling a planned commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian, who had publicly supported Palestinians. The university cited security concerns in a decision that was praised by some pro-Israel groups but criticized by free-speech advocates.
Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia
https://arab.news/9ntv7
Pro-Palestinian protests sweep US college campuses following mass arrests at Columbia
- Columbia University canceled in-person classes and police arrested dozens of students at New York University and Yale
- Pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up encampments on other campuses around the country
Okinawa marks 80 years since end of one of harshest WWII battles with pledge to share tragic history
Okinawa marks 80 years since end of one of harshest WWII battles with pledge to share tragic history
With global tensions escalating, its governor said on Monday it is the Okinawan “mission” to keep telling the tragic history and its impact today.
The Battle of Okinawa killed a quarter of the island’s population, leading to a 27-year US occupation and a heavy American troop presence to date.
Monday’s memorial comes one day after US attacks on Iranian nuclear facilities, adding to a sense of uncertainty on the island about the heavy American military presence and in its remote islands, already worried about getting embroiled in a potential conflict in Taiwan.
Gov. Denny Tamaki, noting the escalating global conflicts and nuclear threats, made a resolve to contribute to global peace studies, disarmament and the preservation of war remains. “It is our mission, as those living in the present, to preserve and pass on the reality and lessons to future generations.”
Fierce battle and civilian deaths
US troops landed on the main Okinawa island on April 1, 1945, beginning a battle in their push toward mainland Japan.
The Battle of Okinawa lasted nearly three months, killing some 200,000 people — about 12,000 Americans and more than 188,000 Japanese, half of them Okinawan civilians including students and victims forced into mass suicides by Japan’s military.
Okinawa was sacrificed by Japan’s Imperial Army to defend the mainland, historians say. The island group remained under US occupation until its reversion in 1972, two decades longer than most of Japan.
Monday’s memorial was held at the Mabuni Hill in Itoman City, where the remains of most of the war dead reside.
Remembering the tragedy
Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba was in a hot seat when he attended Monday’s ceremony. Weeks earlier, one of his ruling party lawmakers Shoji Nishida, known for whitewashing Japan’s wartime atrocities, denounced an inscription on a famous cenotaph dedicated to students as “rewriting history” by portraying the Japanese army as having caused their deaths, while Americans liberated Okinawa. Nishida also called Okinawa’s history education “a mess.”
His remark triggered an uproar in Okinawa, forcing Ishiba days later to apologize to the island’s governor, who had criticized the remark as outrageous and distorting history.
The Himeyuri Cenotaph commemorates student nurses who were abandoned near the end of the battle and killed, some in group suicides with teachers. Japan’s wartime military told the people never to surrender to the enemy, or die.
Nishida’s remarks add to concerns about the whitewashing of Japan’s embarrassing wartime past as memories of the tragedy fade and ignorance about the suffering grows.
Ishiba, at Monday’s memorial, said Japan’s peace and prosperity is built on the sacrifices of Okinawa’s history of hardship and that it is the government’s responsibility to “devote ourselves to achieve a peaceful and prosperous Okinawa.”
Postwar years and growing fear
Okinawa remained under US occupation from 1945 until the 1972 reversion to Japan. The US military maintains a heavy presence there due to Okinawa’s strategic importance for security in the Pacific. Their presence serves not only to help defend Japan but also for missions elsewhere, including in the South China Sea and the Middle East.
Private properties were confiscated to build US bases, and the base-dependent economy has hampered the growth of local industry.
Fear of a Taiwan conflict rekindles bitter memories of the Battle of Okinawa. Historians and many residents say Okinawa was used as a pawn to save mainland Japan.
There are also ancient tensions between Okinawa and the Japanese mainland, which annexed the islands, formerly the independent kingdom of the Ryukus, in 1879.
Burden of history
Okinawa remains home to the majority of about 50,000 US troops stationed in Japan under a bilateral security pact. The island, which accounts for only 0.6 percent of Japanese land, hosts 70 percent of US military facilities.
Even 53 years after its reversion to Japan, Okinawa is burdened with the heavy US presence and faces noise, pollution, aircraft accidents and crime related to American troops, the governor said.
Nearly 2,000 tons of unexploded US bombs remain in Okinawa, with some regularly dug up. A recent explosion at a storage site at a US military base caused minor injuries to four Japanese soldiers.
Remains of hundreds of war dead are still unrecovered on Okinawa, as the government’s search and identification effort is slow to make progress.
Pakistan condemns Trump for bombing Iran a day after recommending him for a Nobel Peace Prize
- Pakistan condemned the US for attacking Iran, saying the strikes “constituted a serious violation of international law” and the statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency
ISLAMABAD: Pakistan condemned US President Donald Trump for bombing Iran, less than 24 hours after saying he deserved a Nobel Peace Prize for defusing a recent crisis with India.
Relations between the two South Asian countries plummeted after a massacre of tourists in Indian-controlled Kashmir in April. The nuclear-armed rivals stepped closer to war in the weeks that followed, attacking each other until intense diplomatic efforts, led by the US, resulted in a truce for which Trump took credit.
It was this “decisive diplomatic intervention and pivotal leadership” that Pakistan praised in an effusive message Saturday night on the X platform when it announced its formal recommendation for him to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Less than 24 hours later, however, it condemned the US for attacking Iran, saying the strikes “constituted a serious violation of international law” and the statute of the International Atomic Energy Agency.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, in a phone call Sunday with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, expressed his concern that the bombings had targeted facilities that were under the safeguards of the IAEA. Pakistan has close ties with Iran and supports its attacks on Israel, saying it has the right to self-defense.
There was no immediate comment on Monday from Islamabad about the Trump Nobel recommendation, which also followed a high-profile White House lunch meeting between the president and Pakistan’s powerful army chief, Asim Munir.
Thursday’s meeting, which lasted more than two hours, was also attended by the Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Steve Witkoff, the US Special Representative for Middle Eastern Affairs.
According to a Pakistani military statement, a detailed exchange of views took place on the “prevailing tensions between Iran and Israel, with both leaders emphasizing the importance of the resolution of the conflict.”
While Pakistan was quick to thank Trump for his intervention in its crisis with India, New Delhi played it down and said there was no need for external mediation on the Kashmir issue.
The Himalayan region of Kashmir is divided between Pakistan and India but claimed by both in its entirety. India accuses Pakistan of backing militant groups in the region, which Pakistan denies.
Thailand heads into political turbulence as Cambodia row festers
- Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has come under fire after a phone call between her and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen to diffuse a long-festering border dispute became public last Wednesday
BANGKOK: Thailand’s government said on Monday it would push ahead with a cabinet reshuffle this week, facing down a backlash against its handling of a border row with Cambodia that has left Prime Minister Paetongtarn Shinawatra hanging on to power by a thread.
Tensions with Thailand and Cambodia remain elevated, with the Southeast Asian neighbors announcing tit-for-tat measures that are stoking nationalist fervor on both sides and stymieing bilateral trade, including a suspension by Phnom Penh of all Thai fuel and gas imports that came into effect on Monday.
In Bangkok, days after the parliamentary majority of the ruling coalition led by Paetongtarn’s Pheu Thai party was threatened by the exit of a major alliance member, Deputy Prime Minister Phumtham Wechayachai sought to project unity.
“I’m 100 percent confident that we will move ahead strongly after the cabinet reshuffle is completed this week,” he told reporters.
“You will see a new way of working that’s different from before.”
Paetongtarn, a 38-year-old political novice and daughter of divisive former Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has come under fire after a phone call between her and former Cambodian leader Hun Sen to diffuse a long-festering border dispute became public last Wednesday.
In the audio, which was released in full by Hun Sen after the initial leak of a clip, the Thai premier appears to grovel before the Cambodian politician and also denigrates a senior Thai military commander in charge of the disputed border area.
Hours after the audio became public, the second-largest coalition member, the Bhumjaithai Party, quit the government, putting its parliamentary majority and Paetongtarn’s premiership under threat.
Pheu Thai has managed to hold the remainder of its coalition together, with the cabinet reshuffle meant to redistribute ministerial positions previously held by Bhumjaithai.
The coalition’s stability will be tested in parliament, which reconvenes next week, and on the streets as anti-government groups plan a major protest to call for the prime minister’s resignation which will start on Saturday.
Adding to the pressure, Paetongtarn also faces scrutiny from the judiciary after a group of senators seeking her removal petitioned the Constitutional Court and an anti-graft body to investigate her conduct over the leaked phone call.
“The government cannot take anything for granted,” said Titipol Phakdeewanich, a political science professor at Ubon Ratchathani University.
“There’s more instability ahead.”
TRADE UNDER THREAT
At the root of the current crisis for Paetongtarn and Pheu Thai is a historic border dispute with Cambodia, which has previously led to violent clashes, including the death of a Cambodian soldier during a skirmish last month.
Partly banking on strong ties between the Shinawatra family and Hun Sen, the government initially pushed for a diplomatic solution to the flare-up, even as Cambodia moved to petition the International Court of Justice to resolve the matter.
However, the unexpected release of the audio not only brought the Thai government to the brink, it has also led to a further deterioration in relations between the neighbors.
Hun Manet, Cambodia’s prime minister and Hun Sen’s son, said on Sunday that his administration would stop all fuel and gas imports from Thailand, following an earlier move to stall the entry of some Thai agricultural produce.
“Fuel supply companies in Cambodia are able to import sufficiently from other sources to meet domestic fuel and gas demands,” he said in a post on Facebook.
For its part, the Thai government has handed over control of border crossings along the Cambodian frontier to its military, which has tightened entry restrictions and shut down one crossing point, citing security concerns.
Cambodia was Thailand’s 11th largest export market last year, with $10.4 billion in bilateral trade between the neighbors, dominated by precious stones, jewelry and fuels, according to Thai government data.
And more than half a million Cambodian workers are employed in Thailand, according to the Thai Labour Ministry.
“The Cambodia situation is complex; it isn’t about just a conflict between the two countries,” said Titipol, “There is also a Hun-Shinawatra dimension that could still shake the government.”
President Lee picks South Korea’s first civilian defense chief in 64 years
SEOUL: South Korean President Lee Jae Myung nominated a five-term liberal lawmaker as defense minister Monday, breaking with a tradition of appointing retired military generals.
The announcement came as several prominent former defense officials, including ex-Defense Minister Kim Yong Hyun, face high-profile criminal trials over their roles in carrying out martial law last year under then-President Yoon Suk Yeol, who was indicted on rebellion charges and removed from office.
Ahn Gyu-back, a lawmaker from Lee’s Democratic Party, has served on the National Assembly’s defense committee and chaired a legislative panel that investigated the circumstances surrounding Yoon’s martial law decree.
Yoon’s authoritarian move involved deploying hundreds of heavily armed troops to the National Assembly and election commission offices in what prosecutors described as an illegal attempt to shut down the legislature and arrest political opponents and election officials.
That sparked calls to strengthen civilian control over the military, and Lee promised during his election campaign to appoint a defense minister with a civilian background.
Since a 1961 coup that brought military dictator Park Chung-hee to power, all of South Korea’s defense ministers have come from the military — a trend that continued even after the country’s democratization in the late 1980s.
While Ahn will face a legislative hearing, the process is likely to be a formality, since the Democrats hold a comfortable majority in the National Assembly and legislative consent isn’t required for Lee to appoint him. Among Cabinet appointments, Lee only needs legislative consent for prime minister, Seoul’s nominal No. 2 job.
“As the first civilian Minister of National Defense in 64 years, he will be responsible for leading and overseeing the transformation of the military after its mobilization in martial law,” Kang Hoon-sik, Lee’s chief of staff, said in a briefing.
Ahn was among 11 ministers nominated by Lee on Monday, with longtime diplomat Cho Hyun selected as foreign minister and five-term lawmaker Chung Dong-young returning for another stint as unification minister — a position he held from 2004 to 2005 as Seoul’s point man for relations with North Korea.
Tokyo voters punish Japan ruling party ahead of national election
- Public support for PM Ishiba has been at rock bottom for months, partly because of high inflation, with rice prices doubling over the past year
TOKYO: Voters in Tokyo knocked Japan’s ruling party from its position as the largest group in the city assembly, results showed Monday, a warning sign for Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba’s unpopular government before July elections.
Japanese media said it was a record-low result in the key local ballot for the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), which has led the country almost continuously since 1955.
Public support for Ishiba, who took office in October, has been at rock-bottom for months, partly because of high inflation, with rice prices doubling over the past year.
The LDP took 21 Tokyo assembly seats in Sunday’s vote, including three won by candidates previously affiliated with the party but not officially endorsed following a political funding scandal.
This breaks the party’s previous record low of 23 seats from 2017, according to the Asahi Shimbun and other local media.
Ishiba described the results as a “very harsh judgment.”
“We will study what part of our campaign pledge failed to resonate with voters and ensure we learn from this,” he told reporters on Monday.
Tomin First no Kai, founded by Tokyo governor Yuriko Koike, increased its seats in the 127-member assembly to 31, becoming the largest party.
The funding scandal “may have affected” the result, Shinji Inoue, head of the LDP’s Tokyo chapter, said Sunday as exit polls were released.
Policies to address inflation “didn’t reach voters’ ears very well” with opposition parties also pledging to tackle the issue, Inoue said.
Within weeks Ishiba will face elections for parliament’s upper house, with reports saying the national ballot could be held on July 20.
Voters angry with rising prices and political scandals deprived Ishiba’s LDP and its junior coalition partner of a majority in the powerful lower house in October, marking the party’s worst general election result in 15 years.
Polls this month showed a slight uptick in support, however, thanks in part to policies to tackle high rice prices.
Several factors lie behind recent shortages of rice at Japanese shops, including an intensely hot and dry summer two years ago that damaged harvests nationwide, and panic-buying after a “mega-quake” warning last year.
Some traders have been hoarding rice in a bid to boost their profits down the line, experts say.
Not including volatile fresh food, goods and energy in Japan were 3.7 percent higher in May than a year earlier.
To help households combat the cost of living, Ishiba has pledged cash handouts of 20,000 yen ($139) for every citizen ahead of the upper house election.
Masahisa Endo, a politics professor at Waseda University, described the Tokyo assembly result as “severe” for the ruling party.
“Tokyo is not a stronghold for the LDP, but it’s possible that its support is weakening across the nation,” he said.
Even if Ishiba fails to win an upper-house majority, it is hard to see who would want to take his place, while Japan’s opposition parties are too divided to mount a credible challenge to the LDP’s power, Endo told AFP.
The opposition Democratic Party For the People (DPP) won seats for the first time in the Tokyo assembly vote, securing nine.
The DPP’s campaign pledge for the July election includes sales tax cuts to boost household incomes.
Sunday’s voter turnout rate was 47.6 percent, compared to the 42.4 percent four years ago, according to local media.
A record 295 candidates ran — the highest since 1997, including 99 women candidates, also a record high.
The number of women assembly members rose to 45 from 41, results showed.
