​​​​As a journalist, you usually go to the front line to find the news. But sometimes the front line finds you. This happened to me not once but twice on Thursday, as an epic battle over freedom of expression on college campuses unfolded from one end of Manhattan to another.

The first was when I happened to be on the campus of Columbia University, speaking at a class. While leaving the classroom, I came upon a tent camp that had sprung up on one of the campus’s lush lawns. It was, as college protests often are, an earnest but peaceful affair. A few dozen tents had been pitched, and students hung a sign reading “Gaza solidarity encampment.” Their tactics were a mild echo of those of an earlier generation of students, who effectively shut down the campus in April 1985 to demand that Columbia divest from South Africa — protests that were in turn an echo of the 1968 student takeover of the university amid the broad cultural rebellion against the Vietnam War.

The police on Thursday said at least 108 protesters at Columbia University’s campus had been taken into custody, after university officials called for law enforcement help to respond to a pro-Palestinian demonstration and dismantle a tent encampment.

The crackdown prompted more students to vow that demonstrations would continue, expressing outrage at both the roundup of the student protesters and the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.

College students have been at the forefront of the movement for a ceasefire in Palestine since Israel’s ongoing incursion of Gaza after the October 7 Hamas attack. As soon as organizing for that movement began, there was backlash against it, including doxxing and harassment at Harvard, attempted state-level bans of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters in Florida, and also the banning of protests and SJP chapters at other universities. In Vermont, Palestinian college students on a walk, wearing kuffiyehs, were shot at during Thanksgiving break. (The reported shooter, who has pleaded not guilty to attempted second-degree murder, remains in jail as the case proceeds.)

Over the past few weeks, several student protesters have received criminal charges, expulsions, suspensions, and campus bans due to their involvement in protests for Palestine. This includes students at Columbia, who say they are being scapegoated before an April 17 congressional hearing to investigate Columbia University over campus antisemitism. (After a similar proceeding in December, the president of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania each stepped down.) According to Inside Higher Ed’s reporting, “some observers have described [the April hearing as] a political trap set by Congressional Republicans critical not only of campus leaders’ response to antisemitism but also of higher education in general.”

THU APR 25, 2024, 7:30 PM

ABOUT THE FILM:
In Danish, Spanish, French with English subtitles.

An astonishingly beautiful and gripping Western starring Viggo Mortensen, JAUJA begins in a remote outpost in Patagonia during the late 1800s.

Captain Gunnar Dinesen has come from abroad with his fifteen year-old daughter to take an engineering job with the Argentine army. Being the only female in the area, Ingeborg creates quite a stir among the men. She falls in love with a young soldier, and one night they run away together. When Dinesen realizes what has happened, he decides to venture into enemy territory, against his men’s wishes, to find the young couple.

AERO THEATRE
1328 Montana Ave Santa Monica, CA 90403

A huge fire has engulfed Copenhagen’s old stock exchange, one of the Danish capital’s most famous landmarks, causing its spire to collapse as staff and citizens scrambled to rescue paintings and historic artefacts from the blaze.

Stunned commuters and onlookers watched as the raging fire could be seen swirling around the building’s distinctive 56-meter spire – shaped as the tail of four entwined dragons – moments before it collapsed and fell into the street below.

El pasado jueves se confirmó la salida de Ruben Darío Insua de San Lorenzo. En sus casi dos años como entrenador del club, marcó la carrera de varios jugadores: desde algunos que pudieron dar el salto a Europa a otros que se convirtieron en referentes del club. Por eso le dedicaron algunas palabras luego de su salida.