
16/12/2024 إنكليزي

16/12/2024 إنكليزي

16/12/2024 إنكليزي

16/12/2024 إنكليزي

1. The New York Times, April 22, 2024
Universities Struggle as Pro-Palestinian Demonstrations Grow, By Alan Blinder
In this report, The New York Times covers the crackdown on Palestine solidarity student movements across the country. College campuses are described as militarized, shuttered, dystopian places at the fault of Palestine solidarity protests. From the headline, NYT frames pro-Palestine students as a problem, prioritizing the stance of university administrators and disregarding students' calls for divestment. The newspaper’s framing: Educational life at some of the country’s most well-renowned universities has become the victim of protest, regarding police assault on campuses as inevitable in the present political climate.
The article begins by spotlighting the militarization of campuses primarily on the east coast: “Police swept into,” NYU one night, which ended in a “standoff,” Columbia’s “classroom doors were shut,” and students were “urged to stay home,” Yale students’ “wrists were placed into zip ties,” while Harvard yard was “shut to the public.” NYT’s angle is concerned with what has occurred on college campuses this month, with inadequate attention placed on why. Alan Blinder depicts pro-Palestine advocacy as a contagious fervor — referring to anti-genocide protests as a “spiraling uproar,” which “helped fuel protests on other campuses.”
The only context provided in the piece for motivating nationwide encampments is the “Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel,” — failing to mention the over 34,000 Palestinians murdered by Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza at the time. A rise in antisemitism and the concerns of Jewish students, particularly at Columbia, were addressed five times throughout this piece. Yet, the piece provided no mention of the struggles faced by Muslim and Arab students as a result of the rise in Islamophobia since Oct. 7, 2023. Blinder failed to offer any evidence of Jewish students' concerns, lacking quotes or citations that explain the alleged fears outlined.
The report glosses over the arrests, suspensions, and unhousing of over a hundred students at Columbia. Blinder briefly states the presence of faculty, student, and alumni voices in favor of free speech and against the repression of these students’ activities. Riddled with ambiguous language describing the cause of nationwide Palestinian solidarity encampments as rooted in the ongoing “conflict,” this piece was written to paint the presence of student disruptions on campus as culpable for necessitating the militarization of Columbia University.
However, Blinder also writes selectively about the brutality student protesters faced at the hands of the police. Only once throughout the entire piece is it made clear that the New York Police Department — an entity trained by and alongside Israeli Occupation Forces (IOF) — was given license to arrest student organizers at Columbia and NYU, crediting officers rather than university administrations with arrests.
Regarding coverage of Yale’s student protests, Blinder prioritizes statements from Yale’s administration on the “increasingly difficult” campus environment that arose out of a lack of “successful talks,” antagonizing students. Peter Salovey, Yale’s president, is later quoted saying the decision to authorize arrests at dawn on Monday, Apr. 22, was, tangibly, “to allow access to university facilities by all members of our community.” Blinder’s selective quoting of administrators mischaracterizes the ethics of the encampment leaders and participants, lacking evidence from the student movement itself.
This article pairs photos of tackled students with lukewarm language regarding the nature of the scenes of arrest, dismissing the context of the student movement and the reality of suppression. The distress endured by students on the receiving end of arrest at the hands of IOF-trained officers was given little to no voice throughout this piece. The Islamophobia and anti-Arab attacks experienced by students leading up to these protests, as well as at the protests, seem to have vanished into thin air.
2. The Wall Street Journal, April 22, 2024
Colleges Struggle to Contain Intensifying Pro-Palestinian Protests, By Douglas Belkin, Alyssa Lukpat, Erin Ailworth and Jon Kamp
Similar to the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal reported on nationwide Palestine solidarity encampments by highlighting the ineptness of collegiate administrators. WSJ blamed universities for failing to order their students to fall in line, creating room for congressional and federal spectators to become involved.
Minouche Shafik, Columbia’s former president, is described as needing to pull several stops to “‘de-escalate the rancor,’” such as calling in the NYPD and briefly moving classes online. The authors cite the NYPD stating that they had to bring in special teams to handle protesters, demonizing students and justifying militarization. The muted language used to describe Shafik unleashing the NYPD onto student organizers contrasts starkly from a photo in the article depicting a student pinned to the ground, facing flat down on the pavement while fellow protesters surround her in fear.
Beginning with a focus on the “over 100” Columbia students and “nearly 50” Yale students that had, by that point, experienced a first round of arrests and disciplinary proceedings, the article expands to universities across the country. WSJ introduces additional university encampments to emphasize elements of their protests which could be deemed disruptive and deserving of arrest. The authors refer to the April encampments as part of an ongoing “war on campuses” across the US, that have “flared episodically since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7.”
Protests are characterized by their most “controversial” elements. Chants calling for a free Palestine “from the river to the sea” were regarded as inherently antisemitic and enough to invalidate any other aspect of demonstrators’ programming. The authors intentionally omit any substantial reference to the motivations behind student protests — namely, Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza. Depicting protest actions and decisions as inherently operating in bad faith by citing propaganda referring to certain chants as antisemitic, the authors bar from readers the context of the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians since the start of the Nakba in 1948.
The student protests covered in this article are positioned outside of their motives, framed in the vitriolic rhetoric of policymakers and administrators who see the protest momentum as a security threat. Additionally, there is a stark inequity in the students characterized as victims of April’s heightened on-campus tensions. University of Southern California’s 2024 valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, a South Asian woman who was censured from giving a graduation speech due to her pro-Palestine leanings, is the only Muslim ‘tragedy’ given space. At least three Jewish students were platformed by WSJ in this piece to highlight their experience of antisemitism on campus.
There is no mention of Islamophobia, while the authors referenced concerns regarding antisemitism’s growth on campuses on four separate occasions. The coverage in this piece, as well as the previously discussed article by NYT, pay no attention to the impact of doxxing on Muslim, Arab, and pro-Palestinian students in general, nor do they address the detrimental effects on students who were suspended, expelled from, or arrested by their universities. Instead of highlighting the police brutality many students have been subjected to, the attention is entirely elsewhere. The angle of this article is a disservice to the young people risking their livelihoods to shine a light on the generations lost in Gaza over the past fourteen months.
Moreover, the word “Gaza” is shockingly not mentioned once in the entire piece, and Palestine is never brought to work unless mentioned in the context of a direct quote. These are strategic editorial decisions that work to delegitimize the people of Gaza and the land of Palestine. In failing to provide a complete picture of the causes behind actions they deem to be uncivilized, disruptive, or combative, the Wall Street Journal is intentionally fueling campaigns of misinformation that seek to prioritize the humanity, comfort, and quality of life of one group over another. The work of dehumanization, of us versus them, is facilitated with dramatic effect by Western media. The Wall Street Journal has dishonored the meaning of journalistic integrity in the pursuit of truth.
3. The Washington Post, April 25, 2024
Conflict Between University Protesters and Police Spreads Beyond Columbia, By Dan Rosenzweig-Ziff, Reis Thebault, Richard Morgan, and Niha Masih
In this article, Washington Post reporters seem to have adopted the role of ‘civility critics.’ However, this article is significantly more sympathetic to students and their cause against genocide in Gaza than the NYT and WSJ. The authors describe interactions between police forces imposed upon student protesters as “clashes” and “skirmishes,” with some police “struggl[ing] with protesters as they sought to break up an on-campus tent encampment.” They are also wary of disregarding the immense danger faced by students across the country, primarily focusing on the University of Texas at Austin, USC, and Columbia.
This piece highlights the “mounting pressure” on Columbia’s administration after widespread arrests of Columbia’s students invigorated protests across the country. WaPo intentionally highlights that “the student protesters at the heart of the crisis” were omitted from the coalition formed to advise Columbia’s president Shafik. The authors detail a press event at Columbia where House Speaker Michael Johnson (R-La) denounced rising antisemitism on campus and called for Minouche Shafik’s resignation, hoping to build common ground with encampment participants.
Detracting from an accurate portrayal of aggressor and victim, the article warps the Congressman’s politics as one respectful of the student organizers in quoting his “irritated” response: “‘Enjoy your free speech.’” Johnson’s rhetorical antagonization of the protests, and his presence against students' right to organize for Palestine, stands against these students' constitutional right to free speech.
In contrast to The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal’s complete disappearance of the calamities of Palestinians in Gaza, this article by the Washington Post includes context highlighting the ongoing genocide. The authors write that the nationwide solidarity encampment protests, beginning in April, come due to “students denouncing the bloodshed in Gaza and calling for an end to Israeli occupation of Palestinian territory.” They also note how students demanding divestment remain fearful of the militarization of campuses, quoting a Columbia student asking “Where could I go — that treats students with more respect? I just saw students at Yale get hauled to jail in a Yale shuttle.”
In comparison to NYT and WSJ, this piece gives a nuanced look at the way student protesters were disregarded and left unconsidered by administrators and faculty.