WASHINGTON: University of Southern California law student Elizabeth Howell-Egan isn’t allowed on campus because of her role in last spring’s anti-war protests, but she is keeping up her activism.
She and like-minded students are holding online sessions on the Israel-Hamas war and passing out fliers outside the campus, which is now fortified with checkpoints at entrances and security officers who require students to scan IDs.
“Change is never comfortable. You always have to risk something to create change and to create a future that we want to live in,” said Howell-Egan, a member of the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter, which is calling on USC to divest from companies profiting off the war.
The stakes have gone up this fall for students protesting the war in Gaza, as US colleges roll out new security measures and protest guidelines — all intended to avoid disruptions like last spring’s pro-Palestinian demonstrations and protect students from hate speech. Activism has put their degrees and careers at risk, not to mention tuition payments, but many say they feel a moral responsibility to continue the movement.
Tent encampments — now forbidden on many campuses — so far have not returned. And some of the more involved students from last spring have graduated or are still facing disciplinary measures. Still, activist students are finding other ways to protest, emboldened by the rising death toll in Gaza and massive protests this month in Israel to demand a ceasefire.
Tensions over the conflict have been high on American campuses since the war began on Oct. 7, when Hamas-led militants killed 1,200 people in Israel and took 250 hostage. The war in Gaza has killed more than 40,000 people, according to Gaza health officials.
As the pro-Palestinian demonstrations took off nationally, Jewish students on many campuses have faced hostility, including antisemitic language and signs. Some colleges have faced US civil rights investigations and settled lawsuits alleging they have not done enough to address antisemitism.
A desire ‘to be part of something’
Temple University senior Alia Amanpour Trapp started the school year on probation after being arrested twice last semester during pro-Palestinian protests. Within days, she was back on the university’s radar for another demonstration.
As she reflects on the fallout from her activism, she thinks of her grandfather, a political prisoner killed in 1988 massacres orchestrated by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini.
“He paid the ultimate price for what he believed in. And so, I feel like the least I can do is stand my ground and face it,” she said.
Trapp, a political science major, devotes much of her time outside classes to Students for Justice in Palestine, which led her to the back-to-school protest on Aug. 29. The group of a few dozen protesters made several stops, including outside the Rosen Center, a hub of Jewish life that is home to Temple’s Hillel Chapter.
Some Jewish students inside said they were shaken by the demonstration. Protesters used megaphones to direct chats toward people inside, Temple President Richard Englert said. The university called it intimidation and opened an investigation.
“Targeting a group of individuals because of their Jewish identity is not acceptable and intimidation and harassment tactics like those seen today will not be tolerated,” Englert said.
Trapp said they were not out to intimidate anyone, but to condemn Hillel for what she called its support of Zionism. “To the students inside that felt threatened or harmed, I’m sorry,” she said.
Trapp is appealing a Temple panel’s ruling that she violated the college’s conduct code last spring. As she reflects on the discipline, she recalls a Temple billboard she saw on Interstate 95 after her first visit to campus.
“Because the world won’t change itself,” the ad beckoned. It reassured her that Temple was the right fit. “I so badly wanted to be part of something, you know, meaningful,” she said, “a community committed to change.”
A renewed push for divestment
At Brown University, some students who were arrested last spring are taking another tack to pressure the Ivy League school to divest its endowment from companies with ties to Israel.
Last spring, the university committed to an October vote by its governing board on a divestment proposal, after an advisory committee weighs in on the issue. In exchange, student protesters packed up their tents.
Now students including Niyanta Nepal, the student body president who was voted in on a pro-divestment platform, say they intend to apply pressure for a vote in favor of divestment. They are rallying students to attend a series of forums and encouraging incoming students to join the movement.
Colleges have long rebuffed calls to divest from Israel, which opponents say veers into antisemitism. Brown already is facing heat for even considering the vote, including a blistering letter from two dozen state attorneys general, all Republicans.
Rafi Ash, a member of the Brown University Jews For Ceasefire Now and Brown Divest Coalition, declined to say what activism might look like if the divestment push fails. A Jewish student who was among 20 students arrested during a November sit-in at an administrative building, Ash dismisses critics who see the anti-war protests as antisemitic.
“The Judaism I was taught promotes peace. It promotes justice. It promotes ‘tikkun olam’ — repairing the world,” said Ash, who is on disciplinary probation. “This is the most Jewish act I can do, to stand up for justice, for everyone.”
Barred from campus, but strategizing on protests
For Howell-Egan, the crackdown at USC and her suspension only deepened her desire to speak out.
“Even with this threat of USC imposing sanctions and disciplinary measures, I am at peace with it because I am standing up for something that is important,” Howell-Egan said. “There are no more universities in Gaza. We are in an incredibly privileged position for this to be our risk.”
She is not allowed to attend in-person classes because she was suspended in May for joining protests at the private school in Los Angeles.
There has been a trend of heavier punishments for students engaging in activism than in the past, including banishment from campus and suspensions that keep students “in limbo for months,” said Tori Porell, an attorney with the nonprofit Palestine Legal, which has supported student protesters facing disciplinary measures. Howell-Egan sees it as part of a strategy to stifle free speech.
In a memo this month, USC President Carol Folt said the campus has seen peaceful protests and marches for years. “However, the spring semester brought incidents that tested our values, disregarded our policies, sparked fears, and required unprecedented safety measures,” she said.
For now the focus of the USC Divest Coalition, which includes several student organizations, has moved off campus, to incorporate the wider community and take a cautious approach as students get a handle on the university’s new rules, Howell-Egan said.
In addition to the community outreach, students have been holding teach-ins.
“The idea is to raise our skill set and our understanding of where we stand in this moment, and where we are in this fight,” Howell-Egan said, “especially as we continue with it.”
As US colleges raise the stakes for protests, activists are weighing new strategies
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As US colleges raise the stakes for protests, activists are weighing new strategies
- “You always have to risk something to create change and to create a future that we want to live in,” said Howell-Egan, a member of the school’s Students for Justice in Palestine chapter
- The stakes have gone up this fall for students protesting the war in Gaza, as US colleges roll out new security measures and protest guidelines
Biden praises COP29 deal, vows US action despite Trump
- Biden hailed the goal as “ambitious,” though poorer nations quickly decried it as inadequate
- As agreed, developed nations will pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters
WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden praised the COP29 deal Saturday as a “significant step” to fighting global warming, and pledged continued action by America despite his incoming successor Donald Trump’s climate skepticism.
“While there is still substantial work ahead of us to achieve our climate goals, today’s outcome puts us one significant step closer,” Biden said in a statement.
After two exhausting weeks of negotiations in Azerbaijan, the pact hammered out commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developing countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters.
Biden hailed the goal as “ambitious,” though poorer nations quickly decried it as inadequate.
The Baku meeting kicked off shortly after Trump won a new term in the White House, potentially setting the stage for him to undo actions by Biden’s administration.
Biden, who leaves office on January 20, said he was “confident” the United States “will continue this work: through our states and cities, our businesses, and our citizens, supported by durable legislation like the Inflation Reduction Act.”
“While some may seek to deny or delay the clean energy revolution that’s underway in America and around the world, nobody can reverse it — nobody.”
A $300B a year deal for climate cash at UN summit sparks outrage for some and hope for others
BAKU, Azerbaijan: United Nations climate talks adopted a deal to inject at least $300 billion annually in humanity’s fight against climate change, aimed at helping developing nations cope with the ravages of global warming in tense negotiations.
The $300 billion will go to developing countries who need the cash to wean themselves off the coal, oil and gas that causes the globe to overheat, adapt to future warming and pay for the damage caused by climate change’s extreme weather. It’s not near the full amount of $1.3 trillion that developing countries were asking for, but it’s three times a deal of $100 billion a year from 2009 that is expiring. Some delegations said this deal is headed in the right direction, with hopes that more money flows in the future.
But it was not quite the agreement by consensus that these meetings usually operate with and some developing nations were livid about being ignored.
COP29 President Mukhtar Babayev gaveled the deal into acceptance before any nation had a chance to speak. When they did they blasted him for being unfair to them, the deal for not being enough and the world’s rich nations for being too stingy.
“It’s a paltry sum,” India negotiator Chandni Raina said, repeatedly saying how India objected to rousing cheers. “I’m sorry to say we cannot accept it.”
She told The Associated Press that she has lost faith in the United Nations system.
After a deal, nations express their discontent
A long line of nations agreed with India and piled on, with Nigeria’s Nkiruka Maduekwe, CEO of the National Council on Climate Change, calling the deal an insult and a joke.
“I’m disappointed. It’s definitely below the benchmark that we have been fighting for for so long,” said Juan Carlos Monterrey, of the Panama delegation. He noted that a few changes, including the inclusion of the words “at least” before the number $300 billion and an opportunity for revision by 2030, helped push them to the finish line.
“Our heart goes out to all those nations that feel like they were walked over,” he said.
The final package pushed through “does not speak or reflect or inspire confidence,” India’s Raina said.
“We absolutely object to the unfair means followed for adoption,” Raina said. “We are extremely hurt by this action by the president and the secretariat.”
Speaking for nearly 50 of the poorest nations of the world, Evans Davie Njewa of Malawi was more mild, expressing what he called reservations with the deal. And the Alliance of Small Island States’ Cedric Schuster said he had more hope “that the process would protect the interests of the most vulnerable” but nevertheless expressed tempered support for the deal.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a post on X that he hoped for a “more ambitious outcome.” But he said the agreement “provides a base on which to build.”
Some see deal as relief following tough talks
There were somewhat satisfied parties, with European Union’s Wopke Hoekstra calling it a new era of climate funding, working hard to help the most vulnerable. But activists in the plenary hall could be heard coughing over Hoekstra’s speech in an attempt to disrupt it.
Eamon Ryan, Ireland’s environment minister, called the agreement “a huge relief.”
“It was not certain. This was tough,” he said. “Because it’s a time of division, of war, of (a) multilateral system having real difficulties, the fact that we could get it through in these difficult circumstances is really important.”
UN Climate Change’s Executive Secretary Simon Stiell called the deal an “insurance policy for humanity,” adding that like insurance, “it only works if the premiums are paid in full, and on time.”
The deal is seen as a step toward helping countries on the receiving end create more ambitious targets to limit or cut emissions of heat-trapping gases that are due early next year. It’s part of the plan to keep cutting pollution with new targets every five years, which the world agreed to at the UN talks in Paris in 2015.
The Paris agreement set the system of regular ratcheting up climate fighting ambition as away to keep warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. The world is already at 1.3 degrees Celsius (2.3 degrees Fahrenheit) and carbon emissions keep rising.
Hopes that more climate cash will follow
Countries also anticipate that this deal will send signals that help drive funding from other sources, like multilateral development banks and private sources. That was always part of the discussion at these talks — rich countries didn’t think it was realistic to only rely on public funding sources — but poor countries worried that if the money came in loans instead of grants, it would send them sliding further backward into debt that they already struggle with.
“The $300 billion goal is not enough, but is an important down payment toward a safer, more equitable future,” said World Resources Institute President Ani Dasgupta. “This deal gets us off the starting block. Now the race is on to raise much more climate finance from a range of public and private sources, putting the whole financial system to work behind developing countries’ transitions.”
And even though it’s far from the needed $1.3 trillion, it’s more than the $250 billion that was on the table in an earlier draft of the text, which outraged many countries and led to a period of frustration and stalling over the final hours of the summit.
Other deals agreed at COP29
The several different texts adopted early Sunday morning included a vague but not specific reference to last year’s Global Stocktake approved in Dubai. Last year there was a battle about first-of-its-kind language on getting rid of the oil, coal and natural gas, but instead it called for a transition away from fossil fuels. The latest talks only referred to the Dubai deal, but did not explicitly repeat the call for a transition away from fossil fuels.
Countries also agreed on the adoption of Article 6, creating markets to trade carbon pollution rights, an idea that was set up as part of the Paris Agreement to help nations work together to reduce climate-causing pollution. Part of that was a system of carbon credits, allowing nations to put planet-warming gasses in the air if they offset emissions elsewhere. Backers said a UN-backed market could generate up to an additional $250 billion a year in climate financial aid.
Despite its approval, carbon markets remain a contentious plan because many experts say the new rules adopted don’t prevent misuse, don’t work and give big polluters an excuse to continue spewing emissions.
“What they’ve done essentially is undermine the mandate to try to reach 1.5,” said Tamara Gilbertson, climate justice program coordinator with the Indigenous Environmental Network. Greenpeace’s An Lambrechts, called it a “climate scam” with many loopholes.
With this deal wrapped up as crews dismantle the temporary venue, many have eyes on next year’s climate talks in Belem, Brazil.
Daesh group claims attack on Sufi shrine in Afghanistan
- A local resident, who said he knew victims of the attack, said worshippers had gathered at the Sayed Pasha Agha shrine on Thursday evening
KABUL: Daesh (IS-K), the terrorist group’s branch in Afghanistan, on Saturday claimed responsibility for a gun attack that left 10 people dead at a Sufi shrine in northern Baghlan province.
Taliban authorities in Kabul have repeatedly said they have defeated IS-K, but the group regularly claims responsibility for attacks, notably against Sufi or Shiite minorities, targets they consider heretical.
On Friday, interior ministry spokesman Abdul Matin Qani told AFP that a gunman opened fire on Sufis “taking part in a weekly ritual” at a shrine in a remote area of Nahrin district, killing 10 people.
A local resident, who said he knew victims of the attack, said worshippers had gathered at the Sayed Pasha Agha shrine on Thursday evening.
They had begun a Sufi chant when “a man shot at the dozen worshippers,” he said on condition of anonymity.
“When people arrived for morning prayers, they discovered the bodies,” he added.
The UN special rapporteur for human rights in Afghanistan, Richard Bennett, wrote on X: “Religious minorities remain under grave threat. More prevention, protection & justice needed.”
The Daesh group accuses Sufis of worshipping more than one god because of their devotion to saints.
In mid-September, the group claimed responsibility for an attack in central Afghanistan that killed 14 people who had gathered to welcome pilgrims returning from Karbala in Iraq, one of the holiest sites for Shiites.
India opposes COP29 finance deal after it is adopted
BAKU: India strongly objected to a climate finance deal agreed at the United Nations COP29 summit on Sunday, but their objection was raised after the deal was formally adopted by consensus.
“I regret to say that this document is nothing more than an optical illusion. This, in our opinion, will not address the enormity of the challenge we all face. Therefore, we oppose the adoption of this document,” Indian delegation representative Chandni Raina told the closing plenary session of the summit.
UN secretary general says more work needed on COP29 finance deal
- Final deal commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developed countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters
- Climate chief Simon Stiell says it was “no time for victory laps”
UNITED NATIONS/BAKU, Azerbaijan: UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres expressed concern that the climate finance deal agreed early Sunday in Azerbaijan did not go far enough, as he urged nations to view it as a “foundation” on which to build.
“I had hoped for a more ambitious outcome — on both finance and mitigation — to meet the great challenge we face,” Guterres said in a statement, adding that he is appealing “to governments to see this agreement as a foundation — and build on it.”
After two exhaustive weeks of negotiations, the final deal commits developed nations to pay at least $300 billion a year by 2035 to help developed countries green their economies and prepare for worse disasters.
That is up from $100 billion now provided by wealthy countries under a commitment set to expire — and from the $250 billion proposed in an earlier draft Friday.
The deal “must be honored in full and on time,” Guterres said.
“Commitments must quickly become cash. All countries must come together to ensure the top-end of this new goal is met.”
He called on countries to deliver new economy-wide climate action plans “well ahead of COP30 — as promised.”
“The end of the fossil fuel age is an economic inevitability. New national plans must accelerate the shift, and help to ensure it comes with justice,” he said, closing with a message to activists pushing for more to “keep it up.”
“The United Nations is with you. Our fight continues. And we will never give up,” Guterres said.
‘No time for victory laps’
UN climate chief Simon Stiell on Sunday said it was “no time for victory laps” after nations at COP29 in Azerbaijan agreed a bitterly negotiated finance deal.
“No country got everything they wanted, and we leave Baku with a mountain of work still to do. So this is no time for victory laps,” Stiell said in a statement.
