Read our editorial on student occupations here.
On August 1, the Manhattan Criminal Court held hearings for two high-profile cases stemming from pro-Palestine activism in New York City: the CUNY 8 and the dozens of people arrested during the Basel al-Araj Popular University disruption of Columbia University’s Butler Library last May.
Since their arrests during the April 2024 Gaza solidarity encampments, the CUNY 8 continue to stand their ground, insisting that they will not accept “coercive offers” that include probation and mandated courses on protest law. If convicted, the activists face a maximum sentence of seven years in prison.
August 1 also marked the second court appearance for those charged in connection with the Popular University protest at Columbia. During the hearing, the defendants’ lawyer noted how 161 NYPD officers responded to a teach-in of 80 students and activists, arguing that the mass arrest was a repression of free speech. The activists maintained their innocence and rejected the farcical plea deals being offered, which would require them to admit to trespassing on school property despite many being students of the school and their repeated demands to be released after Columbia’s “public safety” officers encircled and brutalized them. Their next appearance is set for September.
Columbia University Apartheid Divest (CUAD) condemned the state’s strategy of dragging out legal proceedings as a deliberate effort to “divide, weaken, and silence the movement for Palestinian liberation.” CUAD emphasized continued solidarity, stating, “From CUNY to Columbia to the streets of New York and the entire world, we stand united against the genocide and occupation of Palestine.”
Meanwhile, on July 31, the day before the court hearings, around 100 faculty and staff gathered at the gates of Brooklyn College to protest the recent firings of four professors. The dismissed faculty members had been recommended for reappointment by their departments but were terminated for their vocal support of Palestine. The rally came in the wake of CUNY Chancellor Félix Matos Rodríguez’s testimony before Congress, during which he stated that faculty had been dismissed for allegedly violating the university’s antisemitism policies.
One CUNY student who was suspended for Palestine solidarity activism told The Worker, “CUNY firing and suspending faculty and student for their support of Palestine is not happening in isolation, this is all apart of a calculated strategy to repress the movement against Genocide in Gaza. We see right through CUNY’s efforts to intimidate, but they will soon come to find that their plots will only backfire because increased repression causes increase resistance.”
Brooklyn College faculty, staff, and students have a history of successfully defending their pro-Palestine activism through mass mobilization in the face of government and administrative repression. In 2011, the school fired adjunct Kristofer Petersen-Overton just two days after a letter from then–Assemblymember Dov Hikind accused him of “supporting terrorism” for his academic work on Palestinian resistance. After five days of public pressure from faculty, students, academic organizations, and the union, Petersen-Overton was reinstated.
In 2013, the college’s Political Science Department came under political fire again for co-sponsoring a talk by Omar Barghouti, a founding member of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement. The event prompted threats from New York City Council members to strip the college of public funding. The administration ultimately allowed the event to proceed.
Photo: Despite students and activists at Columbia demanding to leave the library following their May 7 teach-in, only to be blocked in by Columbia’s “public safety” officers, prosecutors are attempting to charge them with trespassing. The Worker.
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