[[link removed]]

THE THREAT OF DEMOCRACY ON CAMPUS AT UMASS  
[[link removed]]


 

Kevin Young
May 21, 2024
The Nation
[[link removed]]


*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

_ The real danger posed by the Gaza solidarity encampments is their
attack on unfettered autocratic governance by university
administrations and wealthy benefactors. _

Students holding Palestinian flags and signs walk out of the UMass
Amherst commencement ceremony in protest on May 18, 2024, as
Chancellor Javier Reyes takes the stage to speak. , John Tlumacki /
The Boston Globe via Getty Images

 

Before arriving at UMass Amherst last fall, Chancellor Javier Reyes
was already notorious for his cavalier approach
[[link removed]]
to critics. But few foresaw what he did on May 7.

Earlier that day, organizers from a coalition of campus solidarity
groups had erected tents on a small section of the lawn by W.E.B. Du
Bois Library. Like virtually all the recent encampments
[[link removed]]
in this country, there was no hint of violence from the campers.

It was the latest tactic in a seven-month campaign to end UMass’s
complicity with the US-Israeli war on Gaza. The organizers had four
demands: that UMass disclose its financial ties to weapons makers and
corporations with links to Israel, that it divest from those
corporations, that it end study abroad programs in Israel, and that it
drop all charges and sanctions against the students arrested in a
peaceful building occupation last October.

Instead, Chancellor Reyes summoned the police, citing an alleged
threat to campus safety. As the sun went down, UMass PD and State
Police in riot helmets began arresting faculty, students, alums, and
community supporters. By 1 am, they had arrested
[[link removed]]
134 people. Journalists counted 117 police vehicles
[[link removed]].

Faculty members in orange vests were arrested first. Then the gloves
came off. Numerous arrestees were held prone on the ground and
zip-cuffed. Many protesters standing nearby were also arrested. Police
reportedly covered up their badges
[[link removed]].
Videos show armored police tackling
[[link removed]]
unarmed people, kneeling
[[link removed]]
on prone arrestees, attacking
[[link removed]]
video journalists, and charging
[[link removed]]
into groups of protesters.

One graduate student I know was thrown to the ground and a police
officer “landed with full force on my lower back, which caused me to
lose my breath.” The officer got up briefly but then “came back
and stomped on my back.” After the arrest, the student was
zip-cuffed and kept in an airless police wagon for three hours, then
taken to the campus hockey arena all night, where he was denied access
to water “until eight or nine hours in.” When “we told the
officer our zip ties were too tight and we were in pain and losing
circulation,” the officer replied that “we should have thought
about the consequences beforehand.”

The five biggest campus unions condemned
[[link removed]]
the repression. The Student Government Association and graduate
workers’ union
[[link removed]],
followed by faculty and librarians
[[link removed]],
all issued votes of no-confidence in Chancellor Reyes. Commencement
speaker Colson Whitehead withdrew in protest
[[link removed]].

Meanwhile, the higher-ups doubled down. Reyes claimed
[[link removed]]
that “involving law enforcement [had been] the absolute last
resort,” given that students had “rejected” his offers and had
engaged in “confrontations and outright violations of university
policy and the law.” He later told the Faculty Senate that deploying
police was simply “something we had to do.”

UMass system President Marty Meehan
[[link removed]]
and board of trustees chair Stephen Karam
[[link removed]]
likewise claimed, in nearly identical statements, that “Chancellor
Reyes and his team have engaged in good faith discussions, offered
meaningful paths to a resolution, and done everything within their
power to engage sincerely and protect students’ rights to free
speech.” The state’s Democratic governor Maura Healey implied that
the protesters were violent and antisemitic, saying
[[link removed]]
that “there’s no place for hate or for violence or threats of
violence on our college campuses.”

None of these officials provided any evidence for their claims. As one
reporter noted
[[link removed]]
on May 9, “UMass has not pointed to any incidents of violence among
the protesters or specific threats that warranted involving law
enforcement.”

Attorney Rachel Weber, who teaches part-time at UMass and belongs to
Jewish Voice for Peace, has witnessed the administration’s
repression of protesters all year. Students “have been stonewalled,
vilified, betrayed, and punished by the administration since October
for demanding that their tuition money not be spent on genocide. Their
arguments have been well-researched and well-articulated.”

Administrators’ arguments, not so much. They’ve followed what
Weber calls a “decades-old playbook about how to discredit
dissent”—and not a very sophisticated playbook at that. One
strategy is blaming so-called outside agitators. Yet on May 7 “the
only outside agitators, the only violent actors, were the police.”

As a faculty witness to the May 7 negotiations meeting between
students and administrators, I am in a position to counter some of the
administrators’ public claims
[[link removed]]
about that day.

Two of their lies are particularly egregious. First is that calling
the police was the “last resort.” Reyes had already ordered police
to begin amassing near the encampment when he entered the negotiations
around 4:30 pm—not exactly a good-faith gesture. When student
negotiators cited examples of campuses where leaders have negotiated
[[link removed]] with
students in good faith or at least declined to order their arrest,
[[link removed]]
Reyes and his team dodged.

Reyes’s claim in the meeting that “there’s nothing that I can
do” to meet student demands is also a lie. Although the chancellor
cannot simply decree divestment, he could advocate for it publicly,
and he could unilaterally fulfill many of the students’ other
demands. When pressed to advocate for divestment, he finally admitted
he just didn’t want to, because it would upset some people.

On that last point, at least, he was correct. And that’s the deeper
problem. Javier Reyes is particularly unsavory, but he also reflects a
systemic sickness in higher education. As public universities are
defunded, they increasingly cater to wealthy donors, corporations, and
the Pentagon
[[link removed]].
Financial dependency on those entities necessitates autocratic
governance; democracy could upset the sponsors. At UMass Amherst, 73
percent of undergraduate student voters support divestment
[[link removed]].
Suppressing such impulses requires that university boards
[[link removed]]
be stacked with plutocrats, [[link removed]] who
naturally prefer administrators like Reyes.

UMass student organizers insist on holding Chancellor Reyes
accountable, but they also realize he’s a tool of bigger forces. The
profound anti-Palestinian racism
[[link removed]]
of most university leaders is but one symptom of authoritarian
governance. Whether our aim is confronting war profiteers, ending
campus carbon emissions,
[[link removed]]
or cutting financial ties to polluters
[[link removed]], we’d have a
much easier time winning if we had a democratic university governance
structure accountable to students, workers, and the public. That’s
true at higher levels too: If either the United States
[[link removed]]
or the United Nations [[link removed]]
functioned democratically, both the slaughter in Gaza and the
underlying Israeli occupation
[[link removed]] would have ended
long ago.

Democracy is the only genuine threat posed by the encampments.

===

_Copyright c 2024 The Nation. Reprinted with permission. May not be
reprinted without__ permission_
[[link removed]]_.
Distributed by__ _PARS International Corp
[[link removed]].

Please support  progressive journalism. Get a digital subscription
[[link removed]]
to _The Nation_ for just $24.95!  

* University of Massachusetts; Protest of Israeli Occupation of
Gaza; Campus Arrests;
[[link removed]]

*
[[link removed]]
*
[[link removed]]
*
*
[[link removed]]

 

 

 

INTERPRET THE WORLD AND CHANGE IT

 

 

Submit via web
[[link removed]]

Submit via email
Frequently asked questions
[[link removed]]
Manage subscription
[[link removed]]
Visit xxxxxx.org
[[link removed]]

Twitter [[link removed]]

Facebook [[link removed]]

 




[link removed]

To unsubscribe, click the following link:
[link removed]