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As leaders of America’s colleges, universities, and scholarly societies, we speak with one voice against the unprecedented government overreach and political interference now endangering American higher education. We are open to constructive reform and do not oppose legitimate government oversight. However, we must oppose undue government intrusion in the lives of those who learn, live, and work on our campuses. We will always seek effective and fair financial practices, but we must reject the coercive use of public research funding.

America’s system of higher learning is as varied as the goals and dreams of the students it serves. It includes research universities and community colleges; comprehensive universities and liberal arts colleges; public institutions and private ones; freestanding and multi-site campuses. Some institutions are designed for all students, and others are dedicated to serving particular groups. Yet, American institutions of higher learning have in common the essential freedom to determine, on academic grounds, whom to admit and what is taught, how, and by whom. Our colleges and universities share a commitment to serve as centers of open inquiry where, in their pursuit of truth, faculty, students, and staff are free to exchange ideas and opinions across a full range of viewpoints without fear of retribution, censorship, or deportation.

Because of these freedoms, American institutions of higher learning are essential to American prosperity and serve as productive partners with government in promoting the common good. Colleges and universities are engines of opportunity and mobility, anchor institutions that contribute to economic and cultural vitality regionally and in our local communities. They foster creativity and innovation, provide human resources to meet the fast-changing demands of our dynamic workforce, and are themselves major employers. They nurture the scholarly pursuits that ensure America’s leadership in research, and many provide healthcare and other essential services. Most fundamentally, America’s colleges and universities prepare an educated citizenry to sustain our democracy.

The price of abridging the defining freedoms of American higher education will be paid by our students and our society. On behalf of our current and future students, and all who work at and benefit from our institutions, we call for constructive engagement that improves our institutions and serves our republic.

Signed,

• Andrés Acebo, Interim President, New Jersey City University
• Kenneth Adams, President, LaGuardia Community College
• Kimo Ah Yun, President, Marquette University
• Jonathan Alger, President, American University
• Barbara K. Altmann, President, Franklin & Marshall College
• Carmen Twillie Ambar, President, Oberlin College
• Suzanne Ames, President, Peninsula College
• Michelle J. Anderson, President, Brooklyn College
• James J. Annarelli, President, Eckerd College
• Michael D. Anthony, President, Prairie State College
• Joseph E. Aoun, President, Northeastern University
• Virginia “Ginny” Arthur, President, Metro State University
• Roslyn Clark Artis, President, Benedict College
• Cheryl Aschenbach, President, Academic Senate for California Community Colleges
• Valerie Sheares Ashby, President, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
• Michael Avaltroni, President, Fairleigh Dickinson University
• Lynn Babington, President, Chaminade University of Honolulu
• Thomas R. Bailey, President, Teachers College, Columbia University
• Sanda Balaban, Executive Director, Project Pericles
• Andrew W. Barnes, President, Pennsylvania College of Art and Design
• Denise A. Battles, President, SUNY Geneseo
• Ian Baucom, Incoming President, Middlebury College
• Erika D. Beck, President, California State University, Northridge
• Jeff Bellantoni, Interim President, Woodbury University
• Allan Belton, President, Pacific Lutheran University
• Hubert Benitez, President, Saint Peter’s University
• Joanne Berger-Sweeney, President, Trinity College (CT)
• Rebecca M. Bergman, President, Gustavus Adolphus College
• Peter Berkery, Executive Director, Association of University Presses
• Jay M. Bernhardt, President, Emerson College
• Michael A. Bernstein, President, The College of New Jersey
• Joe Bertolino, President, Stockton University
• Audrey Bilger, President, Reed College
• James Birge, President, Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts
• Erik J. Bitterbaum, President, SUNY Cortland
• Mary M. Black, Acting President, Millikin University
• Robert E. Bohrer II, President, Hiram College
• Sarah Bolton, President, Whitman College
• Mary H. Bonderoff, President, SUNY Delhi
• MJ Bosia, Executive Director, International Studies Association
• Leon Botstein, President, Bard College
• Eric Boynton, President, Beloit College
• Vincent Boudreau, President, The City College of the City University of New York
• Lola W. Brabham, President, The Commission on Independent Colleges and Universities
• Corey Bradford, Interim President, Governors State University
• Elizabeth H. Bradley, President, Vassar College
• John C. Bravman, President, Bucknell University
• Frances Bronet, President, Pratt Institute
• Brian Bruess, President, College of Saint Benedict and Saint John’s University
• Joshua C. Brumberg, President, The Graduate Center, CUNY
• Stephanie Bulger, President, Lane Community College
• Andrew Burton-Jones, President, Association for Information Systems (AIS)
• Adam Bush, President, College Unbound
• Alison Byerly, President, Carleton College
• Dara N. Byrne, Dean, Macaulay Honors College
• Wendy Cadge, President and Professor of Sociology, Bryn Mawr College
• Stephen Cady, President, Brite Divinity School
• Christopher Callahan, President, University of the Pacific
• Nancy Cantor, President, Hunter College CUNY
• Alberto Jose Cardelle, President, SUNY Oneonta
• Seamus Carey, President, Iona University
• John Carmichael, President, The Evergreen State College
• Laurie A. Carter, President, Lawrence University
• Brian W. Casey, President, Colgate University
• Sandra Cassady, President, Rockhurst University
• Ana Mari Cauce, Professor and President, University of Washington
• Andrea Chapdelaine, President, Connecticut College
• Julie Chen, Chancellor, University of Massachusetts Lowell
• Thom D. Chesney, President, Southwestern College (NM)
• Sonya Christian, Chancellor, California Community Colleges
• E. LaBrent Chrite, President, Bentley University
• Christina Clark, President, La Roche University
• Frederick W. Clark, President, Bridgewater State University
• Daisy Cocco De Filippis, President, Hostos Community College/CUNY
• Bryan F. Coker, President, Maryville College
• Ronald B. Cole, President, Allegheny College
• Soraya Coley, President, Cal Poly Pomona
• Jennifer Collins, President, Rhodes College
• Michael F. Collins, Chancellor, University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School
• John Comerford, President, Otterbein University
• Katie Conboy, President, Saint Mary’s College (IN)
• Marc C. Conner, President, Skidmore College
• Joy Connolly, President, American Council of Learned Societies
• Jane C. Conoley, President, California State University, Long Beach
• Robert A. Coons, President, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
• Melanie Corn, President, Columbus College of Art & Design
• Eugene J. Cornacchia, Interim President, Georgian Court University
• John L. Cox, President, Cape Cod Community College
• La Jerne Terry Cornish, President, Ithaca College
• Grant Cornwell, President, Rollins College
• Jennifer Coyle, President, Pacific University
• Isiaah Crawford, President, University of Puget Sound
• Ann E. Cudd, President, Portland State University
• Lindsay Currie, CEO, Council on Undergraduate Research
• Emily F. Cutrer, Interim President, Sonoma State University
• James M. Danko, President, Butler University
• Camille Davidson, President and Dean, Mitchell Hamline School of Law
• Janine Davidson, President, Metropolitan State University of Denver
• Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America
• Fernando Delgado, President, Lehman College
• Gregory G. Dell’Omo, President, Rider University
• Nora Demleitner, President, St. John’s College
• Rev. John F. Denning, C.S.C., President, Stonehill College
• Kent Devereaux, President, Goucher College
• Mantosh Dewan, President, SUNY Upstate Medical University
• Risa Dickson, President, University of La Verne
• Jim Dlugos, Interim President, Landmark College
• Bethami Dobkin, President, Westminster University
• Peter Donohue, OSA, President, Villanova University
• Susan M. Donovan, President, Bellarmine University
• Tawny Dotson, President, Yuba College
• Rev. Robert A. Dowd, C.S.C., President, University of Notre Dame
• Michael V. Drake, President, University of California System
• Suri Duitch, President, Kingsborough Community College
• Harry Dumay, President, Elms College
• Bonita R. Durand, Interim President, Buffalo State University SUNY
• Raj Echambadi, President, Illinois Institute of Technology
• Pam Eddinger, President, Bunker Hill Community College
• Melanie Ehrlich, President, Epigenetics Society
• Christopher L. Eisgruber, President, Princeton University
• Michael A. Elliott, President, Amherst College
• Margee Ensign, President, The American University in Bulgaria
• Alexander Enyedi, President, SUNY Plattsburgh
• Kristin G. Esterberg, Chancellor, University of Washington Bothell
• Arthur C. Evans, Jr., Chief Executive Officer/Executive Vice President, American Psychological Association
• Marcheta P. Evans, President, St. Catherine University
• Joseph A. Favazza, President, Saint Anselm College
• Jane Fernandes, President, Antioch College
• Roland Fernandes, General Secretary, General Board of Higher Education and Ministry
• Damian J. Fernandez, President, Warren Wilson College
• Amy Ferrer, Executive Director, American Philosophical Association
• David Fike, President, Golden Gate University
• David Fithian, President, Clark University
• John P. Fitzgibbons, S.J., Interim President, University of San Francisco
• Victoria N. Folse, President, Ripon College
• Michael L. Frandsen, President, Wittenberg University
• Jeff Frederick, President, Drury University
• Lisa C. Freeman, President, Northern Illinois University
• Julio Frenk, Chancellor, UCLA
• Ryan Frisinger, Executive Director, International Center of Medieval Art
• John Fry, President, Temple University
• Montserrat Fuentes, President, St. Edward’s University
• Mark A. Fuller, Chancellor, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
• Robert Gaines, Acting President, Pomona College
• Lawrence Galizio, President and CEO, Community College League of California
• James Gandre, President, Manhattan School of Music
• Rev. Michael Garanzini, S.J., President, Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities
• Alan M. Garber, President, Harvard University
• Jay D. Gatrell, President, Eastern Illinois University
• Uttam Gaulee, President, STAR Scholars Network
• Michael H. Gavin, President, Delta College
• Mark D. Gearan, President, Hobart and William Smith Colleges
• Robert Gervasi, President, Mount Saint Mary College
• Melissa Gilliam, President, Boston University
• Howard Gillman, Chancellor, University of California, Irvine
• Jeff Gingerich, President, St. Bonaventure University
• Mark R. Ginsberg, President, Towson University
• Lane A. Glenn, President, Northern Essex Community College
• Cindy Gnadinger, President, Carroll University
• Carole Goldsmith, Chancellor, State Center Community College District
• Jorge G. Gonzalez, President, Kalamazoo College
• Janet L. Gooch, Chancellor, University of Illinois Springfield
• Ellen M. Granberg, President, The George Washington University
• Mary K. Grant, President, Massachusetts College of Art and Design
• Domenico Grasso, Chancellor, University of Michigan-Dearborn
• Jonathan D. Green, President, Susquehanna University
• David A. Greene, President, Colby College
• James J. Greenfield, OSFS, President, DeSales University
• Kate Griffin, Executive Director, American Studies Association
• James Grossman, Executive Director, American Historical Association
• Robert M. Groves, Interim President, Georgetown University
• William R. Groves, Chancellor, Antioch University
• Jeremy Haefner, Chancellor, University of Denver
• Grant Hagiya, President, Claremont School of Theology
• Kevin F. Hallock, President, University of Richmond
• Merodie Hancock, President, Thomas Edison State University
• Robyn Hannigan, President, Ursinus College
• Yoshiko Harden, President, Renton Technical College
• David Harker, Executive Director, Partners for Campus-Community Engagement (PCCE)
• Kathleen E. Harring, President, Muhlenberg College
• Anne F. Harris, President, Grinnell College
• David Harris, President, Union College
• James T. Harris, President, University of San Diego
• Marjorie Hass, President, Council of Independent Colleges
• Susan Hasseler, President, Muskingum University
• Sam Hawgood, Chancellor, University of California San Francisco
• Antoinette Hays, President, Regis College
• Chris Heavey, Interim President, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
• Peggy Heinrich, President, Elgin Community College
• Richard J. Helldobler, President, William Paterson University
• Daniel S. Hendrickson, S.J., President, Creighton University
• Wendy Hensel, President, University of Hawaii
• James Herbert, President, University of New England
• Alejandro (Alex) Hernandez, President, Champlain College
• Chad Hickox, President, Walla Walla Community College
• Doug Hicks, President, Davidson College
• Mary Dana Hinton, President, Hollins University
• Donna Hodge, President, Fitchburg State University
• John L. Hoffman, President, Bemidji State University and Northwest Technical College
• Danielle R. Holley, President, Mount Holyoke College
• Jonathan Holloway, President, Rutgers University
• Robin Holmes-Sullivan, President, Lewis & Clark College
• Ali A. Houshmand, President, Rowan University
• Jessica Howard, President/CEO, Chemeketa Community College
• David C. Howse, President, California College of the Arts
• Lily S. Hsu, President, Laboure College of Healthcare
• Robert H. Huntington, President, Heidelberg University
• Nicole Hurd, President, Lafayette College
• Elaine Ikeda, Executive Director, LEAD California
• Colin Irvine, President, Concordia College
• Wolde-Ab Isaac, Chancellor, Riverside Community College District
• Jiseon Lee Isbara, President, School of the Art Institute of Chicago
• Karim Ismaili, President, Eastern Connecticut State University
• Farnam Jahanian, President, Carnegie Mellon University
• J. Larry Jameson, President, University of Pennsylvania
• Bruce Jarrell, President, University of Maryland, Baltimore
• Paul E. Jarrell, President and CEO, Tillamook Bay Community College
• Lisa Jasinski, President, Associated Colleges of the Midwest
• Julia Jasken, President, McDaniel College
• Jonathan Jefferson, President, Roxbury Community College
• Anthony L. Jenkins, President, Coppin State University
• Garry W. Jenkins, President, Bates College
• Arvid C. Johnson, President, University of St. Francis
• Larry D. Johnson, Jr., President, Stella & Charles Guttman Community College
• Paula A. Johnson, President, Wellesley College
• Rebecca Johnson, Interim President, Linfield University
• Suzanne M. Johnson, President, Green River College
• John E. Jones III, President, Dickinson College
• Robert J. Jones, Chancellor, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
• Katrina Bell Jordan, President, Northeastern Illinois University
• Tuajuanda C. Jordan, President, St. Mary’s College of Maryland
• Cristle Collins Judd, President, Sarah Lawrence College
• David L. Kaufman, President, Capital University
• Colleen Perry Keith, President, Goldey-Beacom College
• Marisa Kelly, President, Suffolk University
• Robert D. Kelly, President, University of Portland
• Pradeep K. Khosla, Chancellor, University of California San Diego
• Julie Johnson Kidd, President, Endeavor Foundation
• Timothy Killeen, President, University of Illinois System
• Walter M. Kimbrough, Interim President, Talladega College
• John B. King Jr., Chancellor, State University of New York (SUNY)
• Emily Kirkpatrick, Executive Director and CEO, National Council of Teachers of English
• Heather Kirkpatrick, President & CEO, Alder Graduate School of Education
• Erica Kohl-Arenas, Faculty Director, Imagining America: Artists and Scholars in Public Life
• Jonathan Koppell, President, Montclair State University
• Sally Kornbluth, President, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
• Julie Kornfeld, President, Kenyon College
• Michael I. Kotlikoff, President, Cornell University
• Paula Krebs, Executive Director, Modern Language Association
• Robert D. Krebs, Interim President, Lake Forest College
• Marvin Krislov, President, Pace University
• Sunil Kumar, President, Tufts University
• Susan Lamb, President, Diablo Valley College
• Lee D. Lambert, Chancellor, Foothill-De Anza Community College District
• Sheila Edwards Lange, Chancellor, University of Washington Tacoma
• Cynthia Larive, Chancellor, University of California, Santa Cruz
• Bobbie Laur, President, Campus Compact
• Frederick M. Lawrence, Secretary and CEO, Phi Beta Kappa Society
• William P. Leahy, SJ, President, Boston College
• Linda M. LeMura, President, Le Moyne College
• James P. Lentini, President, Molloy University
• Richard J. Lessard, President, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences
• Bethany Letiecq, President, National Council on Family Relations
• Arthur Levine, Interim President, Brandeis University
• Charles G. Lief, President, Naropa University
• Richard P. Lifton, President, The Rockefeller University
• Teik Lim, President, New Jersey Institute of Technology
• James M. Limbaugh, President, West Los Angeles College
• Charles W. Lindsay, President, Elmira College
• Hilary L. Link, President, Drew University
• Lisa A. Lori, President, Marywood University
• Jim Lucchese, President, Berklee College of Music
• Timothy G. Lynch, President, College of Staten Island, CUNY
• Patricia A. Lynott, President, Rockford University
• Richard Lyons, Chancellor, University of California Berkeley
• Heidi Macpherson, President, SUNY Brockport
• John Maduko, President, Connecticut State Community College
• Joanne Mahoney, President, SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry
• Lynn Mahoney, President, San Francisco State University
• Daniel Mahony, President, Southern Illinois University
• Barry M. Maloney, President, Worcester State University
• Maud S. Mandel, President, Williams College
• Sarah C. Mangelsdorf, President, University of Rochester
• Christine Mangino, President, Queensborough Community College
• Andrew P. Manion, President, Edgewood College
• Amy Marcus-Newhall, President, Scripps College
• Joseph Marina, SJ, President, The University of Scranton
• Earl F. Martin III, President, Drake University
• Lizbeth Martin, President, Notre Dame de Namur University
• Karol Mason, President, John Jay College of Criminal Justice
• Felix V. Matos-Rodriguez, Chancellor, City University of New York (CUNY)
• David May, President, Bellevue College
• Gary S. May, Chancellor, University of California, Davis
• Anne E. McCall, President, The College of Wooster
• Cheryl McConnell, President, Saint Joseph’s University
• Mark McCormick, President, Middlesex College
• Richard L. McCormick, Interim President, Stony Brook University
• Thayne M. McCulloh, President, Gonzaga University
• Barbara McDonald, President, The College of St. Scholastica
• Michael McDonald, President, Great Lakes Colleges Association
• Cecilia M. McCormick, President, Maryland Institute College of Art
• Lester McCorn, President, Paine College
• C. Andrew McGadney, President, Knox College
• James McGrath, President and Dean, Cooley Law School
• Patricia McGuire, President, Trinity Washington University
• Maurie McInnis, President, Yale University
• Steve McLaughlin, Incoming President, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art
• Shari McMahan, President, Eastern Washington University
• Elizabeth M. Meade, President, Cedar Crest College
• Marty Meehan, President, University of Massachusetts
• Mojdeh Mehdizadeh, Chancellor, Contra Costa Community College District
• John Meier, CEO, American Mathematical Society
• Mildred A. Mihlon, President, Felician University
• Scott D. Miller, President, Virginia Wesleyan University
• Kristi S. Mindrup, President, Western Illinois University
• Marie Lynn Miranda, Chancellor, University of Illinois Chicago
• Jennifer Mnookin, Chancellor, University of Wisconsin–Madison
• Robert Mohrbacher, President, Centralia College
• Chris Moody, Executive Director, ACPA-College Student Educators International
• Tomas Morales, President, California State University San Bernardino
• Milton Moreland, President, Centre College
• Barbara Jean Morris, President, Prescott College
• Kathryn Morris, President, St. Lawrence University
• John R. Mosby, President, Highline College
• Ross Mugler, Board Chair and Acting President and CEO, Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges
• Juan S. Munoz, Chancellor, University of California Merced\
• David C. Munson Jr., President, Rochester Institute of Technology
• Anthony E. Munroe, President, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY
• Eric Murray, President, Cascadia College
• Kathleen Murray, Acting/Interim President, Hamline University
• Daniel J. Myers, President, Misericordia University
• Lizette Navarette, President, Woodland Community College
• Harriet B. Nembhard, President, Harvey Mudd College
• Frank Neville, President, Millsaps College
• Krista L. Newkirk, President, University of Redlands
• Ellen Neufeldt, President, California State University San Marcos
• Nancy S. Niemi, President, Framingham State University
• Stefanie D. Niles, President, Cottey College
• Cheryl L. Nixon, President, Berea College
• Lara Q. Noah, President, Association of College Honor Societies
• Peter O. Nwosu, President, State University of New York (SUNY), Oswego
• Deborah Obalil, President and Executive Director, Association of Independent Colleges of Art & Design
• Maureen O’Connor, President, Palo Alto University
• Judy Olian, President, Quinnipiac University
• Claire Oliveros, President, Riverside City College
• Meme Omogbai, Executive Director and CEO, College Art Association of America
• Santa J. Ono, President, University of Michigan
• Kirk Ormand, President, Society for Classical Studies
• Douglas B. Palmer, President, Siena Heights University
• Thomas A. Parham, President, California State University-Dominguez Hills
• Micaela S. Parker, Founder and Executive Director, Academic Data Science Alliance
• Robyn Parker, Interim President, Saybrook University
• Marc Parlange, President, University of Rhode Island
• Amy Parsons, President, Colorado State University
• Lynn Pasquerella, President, American Association of Colleges and Universities
• Laurie L. Patton, President, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
• Beth Paul, President, Nazareth University
• Christina Paxson, President, Brown University
• Rob Pearigen, Vice-Chancellor and President, University of the South
• J. Michael Pearson, Executive Director, Mathematical Association of America
• Deidra Peaslee, President, Saint Paul College
• Milagros (Milly) Peña, President, Purchase College, SUNY
• Eduardo M. Peñalver, President, Seattle University
• Steve Perez, President, California State University, Chico
• Ora Pescovitz, President, Oakland University
• Fred P. Pestello, President, Saint Louis University
• Sarah Pfatteicher, Executive Director, Five College Consortium
• Rhonda Phillips, President, Chatham University
• Darryll J. Pines, President, University of Maryland
• Nicola Pitchford, President, Dominican University of California
• Richard Plumb, President, Saint Michael’s College
• Shael Polakow-Suransky, President, Bank Street College of Education
• DeRionne P. Pollard, President, Nevada State University
• Kevin Pollock, President, Central Carolina Technical College
• Andrew David Pomerville, President, Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary
• Thomas Poon, President-Elect, Loyola Marymount University
• Susan Poser, President, Hofstra University
• Patricia A. Prelock, Interim President, University of Vermont
• Robert Prezant, President, Farmingdale State College SUNY
• Paul C. Pribbenow, President, Augsburg University
• Vincent Price, President, Duke University
• Avis Proctor, President, Harper College
• Allison Puff, Co-Interim President and EVP of Academic Affairs, Kansas City Art Institute
• Howard Purcell, President and CEO, New England College of Optometry
• Robert Quinn, Executive Director, Scholars at Risk Network
• Ravi Rajan, President, California Institute of the Arts
• Patricia Ramsey, President, Medgar Evers College (CUNY)
• Sabah Randhawa, President, Western Washington University
• Wendy E. Raymond, President, Haverford College
• Christopher M. Reber, President, Hudson County Community College
• Mark C. Reed, President, Loyola University Chicago
• Andrew Rehfeld, President, Hebrew Union College
• Joseph Reilly, S.T.L., President, Seton Hall University
• Mary Lou Retelle, President, Anna Maria College
• Javier Reyes, Chancellor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Wendy Rheault, President and CEO, Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science
• Rosie Rimando-Chareunsap, Chancellor, Seattle Colleges
• Christine M. Riordan, President, Adelphi University
• Britt Rios-Ellis, President, California State University, Stanislaus
• Suzanne M. Rivera, President, Macalester College
• Stacey Robertson, President, Widener University
• Ronald S. Rochon, President, California State University, Fullerton
• Havidán Rodríguez, President, University at Albany
• Christopher F. Roellke, President, Stetson University
• Kimberly R. Rogers, President, Contra Costa College
• Gerard J. Rooney, President, St. John Fisher University
• Laura Ann Rosenbury, President, Barnard College
• Beth Ross, President, Emmanuel College
• Michael S. Roth, President, Wesleyan University
• Vincent Rougeau, President, College of the Holy Cross
• Sue Ott Rowlands, President, Randolph College
• Paulette Granberry Russell, President and CEO, National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education
• James Ryan, President, University of Virginia
• Aaron Sadoff, President, Marian University Wisconsin
• Frank D. Sanchez, President, Manhattanville University
• Cathy Sandeen, President, Cal State East Bay
• Brian Sandoval, President, Univ. of Nevada, Reno
• Terrence Sawyer, President, Loyola University Maryland
• Michael Schill, President, Northwestern University
• Claudia Schippert, Executive Director, American Academy of Religion
• Kurt L. Schmoke, President, University of Baltimore
• Carol Geary Schneider, Acting Executive Director, Civic Learning and Democracy Engagement Coalition
• Karl Scholz, President, University of Oregon
• Claudia Schrader, President, York College, CUNY
• David Scobey, Director, Bringing Theory to Practice
• Sean M. Scott, President and Dean, California Western School of Law
• Zaldwaynaka Scott, President, Chicago State University
• Charles F. Seifert, President, Siena College
• Sanjit Sethi, President and CEO, Minneapolis College of Art and Design
• Claire Shipman, Acting President, Columbia University
• Frank Shushok, Jr., President, Roanoke College
• Susan Rundell Singer, President, St. Olaf College
• Philip J. Sisson, President, Middlesex Community College (MA)
• Darlene Brannigan Smith, Interim President, Frostburg State University
• Dwayne Smith, Interim President, Southern Connecticut State University
• Joianne Smith, President, Oakton  College
• Renee Smith, President, American Association of Philosophy Teachers
• Suzanne Smith, President, SUNY Potsdam
• Valerie Smith, President, Swarthmore College
• Paul Sniegowski, President, Earlham College
• Barbara R. Snyder, President, Association of American Universities
• Stephen Snyder, Interim President, Middlebury College
• Timothy Law Snyder, President, Loyola Marymount University
• Kristen F. Soares, President, Association of Independent California Colleges and Universities (AICCU)
• Rachel Solemsaas, President, North Seattle College
• Mike Sosulski, President, Washington College
• Weymouth Spence, President, Washington Adventist University
• Eric F. Spina, President, University of Dayton
• Stephen Spinelli, President, Babson College
• Terri Standish-Kuon, President and CEO, Independent Colleges of Washington
• G. Gabrielle Starr, President, Pomona College
• Harvey Stenger, President, Binghamton University
• Amy Storey, President, Keuka College
• David M. Stout, President, Brookdale Community College
• Karen A. Stout, President, Achieving the Dream
• Steve K. Stoute, President, Canisius University
• Tom Stritikus, President, Occidental College
• Daniele Struppa, President, Chapman University
• Marcelo Suarez-Orozco, Chancellor, University of Massachusetts Boston
• Julie Sullivan, President, Santa Clara University
• Mickey Sweeney, President, Medieval Association of the Midwest
• Zvi Szafran, President, State University of New York at Canton
• Andrea Kathryn Talentino, President, Augustana College
• Aondover Tarhule, President, Illinois State University
• Glena Temple, President, Dominican University
• Cynthia Teniente-Matson, President, San Jose State University
• Steven J. Tepper. President, Hamilton College
• Kellye Y. Testy, CEO, Association of American Law Schools
• Tania Tetlow, President, Fordham University
• Strom C. Thacker, President, Pitzer College
• Gloria D. Thomas, President, HERS (Higher Education Resource Services)
• Scott L. Thomas, President, Sterling College
• Linda Thompson, President, Westfield State University
• Adela de la Torre, President, San Diego State University
• Omar Torres, President, De Anza College
• Stephen Thorsett, President, Willamette University
• George Timmons, President, Holyoke Community College
• Sylvia Torti, President, College of the Atlantic
• Joel Towers, President, The New School
• Deborah Trautman, President and CEO, American Association of Colleges of Nursing
• Satish K. Tripathi, President, University at Buffalo, SUNY
• James Troha, President, Juniata College
• Kyaw Moe Tun, President, Parami University
• Matthew Turk, President, Toyota Technological Institute at Chicago
• Donald Tuski, President, College for Creative Studies
• Brad Tyndall, President, Central Wyoming College
• LaTanya Tyson, President, Carolina Christian College
• Matthew P. vandenBerg, President, Ohio Wesleyan University
• James Vander Hooven, President, Mount Wachusett Community College
• Rob Vischer, President, University of St. Thomas
• Jeannine Diddle Uzzi, President, Thomas College
• Laura R. Walker, President, Bennington College
• Grace Wang, President, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
• Yolanda Watson Spiva, President, Complete College America
• Phil Weilerstein, President, VentureWell
• Adam Weinberg, President, Denison University
• Steven A. Weiner, President, Menlo College
• Kevin C. Weinman, President, Marist University
• Lamont A. Wells, Executive Director, Network of ELCA Colleges And Universities
• Susan R. Wente, President, Wake Forest University
• Kristina Whalen, President, Foothill College
• Darrell Wheeler, President, SUNY New Paltz
• Michaele Whelan, President, Wheaton College (MA)
• Manya C. Whitaker, Interim President, Colorado College
• Julie A. Manley White, Chancellor and CEO, Pierce College
• Kim A. Wilcox, Chancellor, University of California, Riverside
• Crystal Williams, President, Rhode Island School of Design
• Sarah Willie-LeBreton, President, Smith College
• Ed Wingenbach, President, Hampshire College
• Mitchel L. Winick, President, Monterey College of Law
• Jim Wohlpart, President, Central Washington University
• Luke Wood, President, California State University, Sacramento
• Lynn Perry Wooten, President, Simmons University
• Frank H. Wu, President, Queens College, CUNY
• S. David Wu, President, Baruch College
• Henry T. Yang, Chancellor, University of California, Santa Barbara
• Richard Yao, President, California State University Channel Islands
• Madeline Yates, Executive Director, Transform Mid-Atlantic
• Leocadia I. Zak, President, Agnes Scott College
• Safa R. Zaki, President, Bowdoin College
• Sheahon Zenger, President, Illinois Wesleyan University
• Andy Zink, President, Deep Springs College
• Mark Zupan, President, Alfred University

We continue to accept signatures from current leaders of colleges, universities, and scholarly societies. Last updated at 10:00 a.m. ET on April 28, 2025. Currently, there are 523 signatures.

22 April 2025

Source: aacu.org

By Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai

As reported by various national and international newspapers that during a horrendous and shocking attack on foreign tourists in Pahalgam (Kashmir) on Tuesday April 22, 2025, more than two dozen innocent people, including women were killed. Pahalgam is one of the most scenic tourist places in Kashmir. These attacks are condemnable, no matter who commits them. Terrorism must be condemned in all its shades and manifestations. Terrorism must have no place in any civilized society. A life that indulges in terrorism is not worth living. That must be the shinning creed of today, tomorrow and forever. Can anyone think of anything more ennobling?

Unfortunately, Kashmir has a tragic history of such terrorist attacks. Take the case of the 35 Sikhs who were murdered at Chattisinghpora in Indian occupied Kashmir on March 20, 2000, during the visit of President Bill Clinton to India. Those innocent Sikh victims had done no harm to anyone, had not colluded with anybody. Indeed, Chattisinghpora Sikh massacre was thus unmitigated evil and an earmark of barbarism contemptuous of civilization.

Congressman Edolphus Towns of New York spoke at the United States Congress on June 6, 2006. One can read his whole speech via Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 152 (2006), Part 8] [Page 10183].[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]

I quote part of his speech here. He said, “Mr. Speaker, recently, former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright wrote a book called The Mighty and the Almighty. The introduction was written by former President Bill Clinton. In his introduction, President Clinton wrote, “During my visit to India in 2000, some Hindu militants decided to vent their outrage by murdering 38 Sikhs in cold blood. If I hadn’t made the trip, the victims would probably still be alive. If I hadn’t made the trip because I feared what militants might do, I couldn’t have done my job as president of the United States.”

It is also worth noting that Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) has been spreading rumors all along and as early as in 1992 that as many as 40 Hindu temples have been destroyed in Kashmir by Muslims. It is simply not true. Consider this brief excerpt from the February 28, 1993, issue of New Delhi-based ‘India Today’. “The evidence that the temples were not demolished or desecrated by the Muslims as claimed by the BJP, but in riot-like situations by bomb and rocket attacks. That is why the figure includes both temples and mosques. If temples were to be singled out, they could easily have been attacked in village after village. In many places such as Lukh bhawan in Anantnag, it is the Muslim who feed the fish in the pond around which stand three temples.”

As a Kashmiri American who comes from an area which is just 30 miles away from Pahalgam, I feel proud to say that Kashmir has a history of tolerance and amity between different religious communities. It has a tradition of moderation and non-violence. Its culture does not generate extremism. Sikhs, Hindus, and Muslims in Kashmir have lived fraternally for centuries. No one can deny the fact – of no small significance – that while the Subcontinent under British rule was and India is now, the scene of recurrent murderous strife, communal riots were unheard of in Kashmir? That unquestionable fact brings out the real character of Kashmir’s heritage. And it was none other than Mahatma Gandhi who said in August 1947 during his visit to Kashmir, “It is really difficult for me to distinguish between a Hindu Kashmiri and a Muslim Kashmiri. You people speak one language and have one culture. While the rest of the country burns in communal fire, I see a ray of hope in Kashmir only…”

Therefore, we demand that the Government of India must permit an independent, impartial and international agency, more preferably the United Nations, to investigate these terrorist attacks in Pahalgam, in identifying, apprehending and punishing the culprits.

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai

Chairman

World Forum for Peace and Justice

April 22, 2025

For more information please contact,

Dr. Ghulam Nabi Fai, Chairman, World Forum for Peace & Justice.

He can be reached at: WhatsApp: 1-202-607-6435 or. gnfai2003@yahoo.com

www.kashmirawarweness.org

By Hua Bin and Mike Whitney

Mike Whitney (MW): What are Trump’s tariffs on China supposed to achieve, and will they succeed?

Hua Bin (HB): I don’t think Trump has a clear idea himself because many of the supposed goals are contradictory and historically he is a shoot-from-the-hip type guy – no deep thinking, always swinging, and never ashamed of his own blatant lies.

That said, he has referred to several objectives:

1. Tariffs as a revenue source to offset his intended tax cuts for the donor class
2. Using tariffs to reshore manufacturing and reindustrialize
3. Tariffs as a way to embargo trade with China
4. Tariffs as a negotiation tool to get concessions from trading partners (to buy more US goods, invest in the US, buy 100-year interest free US Treasuries, purchase US weapons, etc.)

In Trump’s mind, numbers 2, 3 and 4 are all linked to China. China is the main perpetrator of manufacturing job-loss in the US. So, reindustrialization is largely about bringing jobs back from China. Imposing trade sanctions on China—even a full embargo—has long been in the cards as part of the decoupling of the two economies and preparation for an eventual military conflict. In fact, both sides want to reduce or eliminate dependencies on each other, although Trump is much less patient and strategic.

Lastly, I have no doubt that the concessions Trump wants from other trading partners are aimed at reducing their economic ties with China. The goal is to isolate China economically (as explicitly articulated by Bessent and Lutnick). This is essentially what the West did to Russia after the Ukraine war broke out, but Trump is ready to push the schedule ahead on China in the absence of a more credible pretext.

Trump may think he is playing 3D chess, but his plan has not been well-thought out, which is obvious now that China has refused to back down. After stocks, bonds and the Dollar went into free fall, he panicked and rolled back part of his program, which is a clear sign of poor preparation and faulty assumptions. Of course, he didn’t hesitate to help his family and friends profit from the market turmoil through insider trading (similar to the way Hunter Biden used his father’s influence for self-enrichment).

Other indications that his tariff strategy is half-baked, include the laughable math behind the “reciprocal” tariff calculation and the many contradictions of what he was trying to accomplish. For example, why did he choose to humiliate the trading partners who came to negotiate (Trump says, “Kiss my ass”)? If he was serious about enlisting their help to embargo China, how did he expect them to do that without inputs from the largest manufacturing power in the world (China) who controls many of the critical supply chains?

Personally, I would have fired anyone who presented me with such a poorly thought-out business plan. But the US is now a state that is ruled by one man alone, so there’s no accountability and Trump can do whatever he wants.

China Foreign Minister Wang Yi: “We will uphold the basic rules of free trade. We will not bow to power politics or bullying“ video (2 minutes)

Watch on X

.MW: Which country will be hurt more by the tariffs: US or China?

HB: As China has repeatedly said, there are no winners in a trade war. But in the absence of a negotiated settlement, China will likely suffer more short-term pain from loss of the US consumer market. This is going to impact GDP and employment. Clearly, the country needs to stimulate more domestic consumption, which is now more urgent than ever. It also needs to redirect some trade to other countries. There could be deflationary pressures domestically, but China has plenty of ways to fiscally stimulate consumption to mitigate the impact, especially since the state controls the flow of credit via state-owned banks. Longer term, the current trade war will likely pave the way for a complete decoupling between the world’s two economic superpowers (similar to the separation between Russia and the West).

On the US side, the short-term impact means the loss of the Chinese market for its agricultural and energy products (which represent 70% of Chinese imports from the US). Inflation is inevitable. There will be shortages of certain goods for consumers, businesses, and for many US manufacturers that rely on imported parts, components and critical minerals from China for their production (such as machine tools, rare earth, battery, and active pharmaceutical ingredients). The main thing to remember is that China sits at the very top of the global supply chain whereas, the US is at the bottom. So, any disruptions to the supply chain will cascade downward amplifying the damage to the US economy.

Given China’s pole position in many high-tech manufacturing supply chains, these impacts are likely to become long term problems. US businesses will need to invest more in CAPEX to strengthen domestic supply chains, factories, and skilled labor, etc, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars. Unfortunately, these new American industries will face stiff competition in international markets and are unlikely to be profitable for quite some time. Also, there aren’t many corporate executives who will want to invest the capital required to reindustrialize without explicit assurances from the government that their investment will be protected (Trump’s flip-flop on these matters is certainly no help).

In my opinion, the US will find the transition (back to a “country that produces things”) extremely painful and, perhaps, impossible. I suspect that’s why China is taking a hard line and made it clear that it will fight to the end if the US insists on imposing an unfair deal. In short, Trump has no cards vis-a-vis China.

MW: In your opinion, should Trump seek greater economic integration with China or continue along the current path of economic isolation, sanctions and conflict?

HB: There’s no doubt that economic cooperation is mutually beneficial and, frankly, the US could use China’s help to reindustrialize if that is the real goal. And the two economies are complimentary in many ways. The US actually runs a multi-billion surplus with China in services although the Trump regime chose to focus entirely on the trading of merchandise where it runs a structural deficit with most of the world. (Note—In 2024, the U.S. trade deficit with China was approximately $295 billion for goods alone, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. When including both goods and services, the deficit was around $263 billion, as reported by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.) The US exports far more tech, IP, financial services, business services, education, and tourism to China than the other way around. The two economies have many synergies. However, given the current US political consensus to treat China as the new bogeyman, any compromise is highly unlikely. And, even if a deal is struck, I don’t think there’s enough trust on either side to sustain an agreement for very long.

So, an economic and trade divorce is a high-probability outcome, if not immediately, then in the next three to five years. The world is likely to bifurcate into two camps with most nations trying to find a balance between China and the US.

In the long run, I believe that China has the more dynamic of the two economies and will emerge from the current trade war triumphant. In contrast, the US will find it much harder to muddle through while trying to manage plunging markets, a steadily weakening currency, and an ocean of red ink. Of course, the worst option for the United States would be a direct military confrontation with China. As I have explained in earlier articles, the US would undoubtedly lose a war with China which would greatly accelerate the pace of America’s decline. If that were to happen, the post-war international order would be kaput.

*

Michael Whitney is a renowned geopolitical and social analyst based in Washington State. He initiated his career as an independent citizen-journalist in 2002 with a commitment to honest journalism, social justice and World peace.

23 April 2025

Source: globalresearch.ca

Dear Friends

Some of you might know that the BMA cancelled me as opening keynote speaker for the BMA Medical Student Leaders annual meeting on 4 April 2025. This cancellation was accompanied by a smear campaign against me, in which they justified their actions by rehashing my accidentally watching an antisemitic video more  than 10 years ago.  This has now spilled over to the Telegraph publishing a toxic article last week defaming Medical Aid for Palestinians by innuendo.

Of course, the real elephant in the room is my over four decades of wholehearted support for the Palestinians, and I am not going to stop, come what may.

Please read the letter written on my behalf by CAMPAIGN (the Campaign against Misrepresentation in Public Affairs, Information and the News), that spells out clearly what this is all about.

Please open the link below and sign the letter to show your support against silencing me and so many other people who speak up against the historic and ongoing injustice and cruelty against the Palestinians. The genocide and impending ethnic cleansing in Gaza, the apartheid in the West Bank and the exile of 7 million Palestinian refugees for 77 years can only happen by silencing voices who speak up for them and humanise them. The first step to genocide is dehumanisation. Those accusing me of antisemitism and linking me with the Ku Klux Clan know full well I am neither!

Link for reading and signing the CAMPAIGN letter:

https://www.campain.org/open-letter-to-the-bma

Please circulate the letter far and wide.

Every signature sends a message to the Palestinians that we are with them on their painful journey and our support is unwavering. Every signature also sends a message to the silencing machinery that we defy them and will speak up against injustice and misrepresentation.

Thank you and with very best wishes

Swee Ang, Honorary Patron and Co-Founder of Medical Aid for Palestinians

12 April 2025

By Dr. Ramzy Baroud

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s vehement opposition to a Palestinian state aligns perfectly with a long-standing Zionist ideology that has consistently viewed the establishment of a Palestinian state as a direct threat to Israel’s very foundation as a settler colonial project.

Thus, the mere existence of a Palestinian state with clearly defined geographical boundaries would inevitably render the state of Israel, which pointedly remains without internationally recognized borders, a state confined to a fixed physical space.

At a time when Israel continues to occupy significant swathes of Syrian and Lebanese territory and relentlessly pursues its colonial expansion to seize even more land, the notion of Israel genuinely accepting a sovereign Palestinian state is utterly inconceivable.

This reality is not a recent development; it has always been the underlying truth. This, in essence, reveals that the decades-long charade of the “two-state solution” was consistently a mirage, meticulously crafted to peddle illusions to both Palestinians and the broader international community, fostering the false impression that Israel was finally serious about achieving peace.

Therefore, it came as no surprise that Netanyahu reacted with considerable fury to French President Emmanuel Macron’s recent announcement of France’s intention to recognize the state of Palestine next June.

In a phone call with Macron on Tuesday, April 15, Netanyahu predictably resorted to his familiar nonsensical rhetoric, outrageously equating the establishment of a Palestinian state with rewarding “terrorism.”

And, with equal predictability, he trotted out the well-worn and unsubstantiated claims about an Iranian connection. “A Palestinian state established a few minutes away from Israeli cities would become an Iranian stronghold of terrorism,” Netanyahu’s office declared in a statement.

Meanwhile, Macron, with a familiar balancing act, reiterated his commitment to Israeli “security,” while tepidly emphasizing that the suffering in Gaza must come to an end. Of course, in a more just and reasonable world, Macron should have unequivocally stressed that it is Palestinian security, indeed their very existence, that is acutely at stake, and that Israel, through its relentless violence and occupation, constitutes the gravest threat to Palestinian existence and, arguably, to global peace.

Sadly, such a world remains stubbornly out of reach.

Considering Macron’s and France’s unwavering and often obsequious support for Israel throughout the years, particularly since the onset of the Israeli genocide in Gaza, some might cautiously welcome Macron’s statement as a potentially positive shift in policy.

However, it is imperative to caution against any exaggerated optimism, especially at a time when entire Palestinian families in Gaza are being annihilated in the ongoing Israeli genocide as these very words are read. It is an undeniable truth that France, like many other Western governments, has played a significant role in empowering, arming, and justifying Israel’s heinous crimes in Gaza.

For France to genuinely reverse its long-standing position, if indeed that is the current trajectory, it will require far more than symbolic and ultimately empty gestures.

Palestinians are, understandably, weary and disillusioned with symbolic victories, hollow rhetoric, and insincere gestures.

The recent recognitions of the state of Palestine by Ireland, Norway, and Spain in May 2024 did offer a fleeting spark of hope among Palestinians, suggesting a potential, albeit limited, shift in Western sentiment that might exert some pressure on Israel to cease its devastating actions in Gaza.

Unfortunately, this initial and fragile optimism has largely failed to translate into broader and more meaningful European action.

Consequently, Macron’s recent announcement of France’s intention to recognize the state of Palestine in June has been met with a far more subdued and skeptical reaction from Palestinians.

While other European Union countries that have already recognized Palestine often maintain considerably stronger stances against the Israeli occupation, France’s record in this regard is notably weaker.

Furthermore, the very sincerity of France’s stated position is deeply questionable, given its ongoing and concerning suppression of French activists who dare to protest the Israeli actions and advocate for Palestinian rights within France itself.

These attacks, arrests, and the broader crackdown on dissenting political views within France hardly paint the picture of a nation genuinely prepared to completely alter its course on aiding and abetting Israeli crimes.

Moreover, there is a stark and undeniable contrast between the principled positions adopted by Spain, Norway, and Ireland and France’s steadfast backing of Israel’s brutal military campaign in Gaza from its very inception, a support underscored by Macron’s early and highly symbolic visit to Tel Aviv.

Macron was among the first world leaders to arrive in Tel Aviv following the war, while Palestinians in Gaza were already being subjected to the most unspeakable forms of violence imaginable.

During that visit, on October 24, 2023, he unequivocally reiterated, “France stands shoulder to shoulder with Israel. We share your pain, and we reaffirm our unwavering commitment to Israel’s security and its right to defend itself against terrorism.”

This raises a fundamental and critical question: how can France’s belated recognition of a Palestinian state be interpreted as genuine solidarity while it simultaneously remains a significant global supporter of the very entity perpetrating violence against Palestinians?

While any European recognition of Palestine is a welcome, if overdue, step, its true significance is considerably diminished by the near-universal recognition of Palestine within the global majority, particularly across the Global South, originating in the Middle East and steadily expanding worldwide.

The fact that France would be among the last group of countries in the world to formally recognize Palestine (currently, 147 out of 193 United Nations member states have recognized the State of Palestine), speaks volumes about France’s apparent attempt to belatedly align itself with the prevailing global consensus and, perhaps, to whitewash its long history of complicity in Israeli Zionist crimes, as Israel finds itself increasingly isolated and condemned on the international stage.

One can state with considerable confidence that Palestinians, particularly those enduring the unimaginable horrors of the ongoing genocide in Gaza, prioritize an immediate cessation of that genocide and genuine accountability for Israel’s actions far above symbolic acts of recognition that appear primarily aimed at bolstering France’s relevance as a global power player and a long-standing supporter of Israeli war crimes.

Finally, Macron, while reassuring Israel that its security remains paramount for the French government, must be reminded that his continued engagement with Benjamin Netanyahu is, in itself, a potential violation of international law. The Israeli leader is a wanted accused criminal by the International Criminal Court, and it is France’s responsibility, like that of the over 120 signatories to the ICC, to apprehend, not to appease, Netanyahu.

This analysis is not intended to diminish the potential significance of the recognition of Palestine as a reflection of growing global solidarity with the Palestinian people. However, for such recognition to be truly meaningful and impactful, it must emanate from a place of genuine respect and profound concern for the Palestinian people themselves, not from a calculated desire to safeguard the “security” of their tormentors.

Dr. Ramzy Baroud is a journalist, author and the Editor of The Palestine Chronicle.

21 April 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Countercurrents Collective

The Vatican announced Monday that Pope Francis has died at the age of 88, hours after he appeared at an Easter mass and appealed for an end to Israel’s war on the Gaza Strip.

The pope’s Easter address, read aloud by Archbishop Diego Ravelli, decried the “terrible conflict” in Gaza that “continues to cause death and destruction and to create a dramatic and deplorable humanitarian situation.”

“I appeal to the warring parties: call a cease-fire, release the hostages, and come to the aid of a starving people that aspires to a future of peace!” said the message from the pope, an outspoken opponent of military conflict and war profiteers, climate destruction, and runaway economic inequality.

“In the face of the cruelty of conflicts that involve defenceless civilians and attack schools, hospitals, and humanitarian workers, we cannot allow ourselves to forget that it is not targets that are struck, but persons, each possessed of a soul and human dignity,” the pope’s address continued.

News of Pope Francis’ death came after a bout with double pneumonia left him hospitalized for more than a month. The Vatican did not specify a cause of death in its announcement.

Pope Francis was a true Christian who traversed the path of Jesus in its truest spirit. The whole world will miss his spiritual guidance

Xavier Abu Eid, a political scientist and former adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization, said Palestinians have lost a dear friend with the death of Francis, whom he described as a staunch defender of their right to self-determination.

“From a diplomatic perspective, he tried to have influence in the region as he did several visits to Arab countries,” Abu Eid told Al Jazeera, adding that the most famous picture of the pontiff was him standing by the Israeli wall that separates Jerusalem from Bethlehem.

“This was an incredible moment for so many people. I was there, and it was not part of the programme. It was his decision to stop by the wall. He just walked peacefully, and all looked how he stood by and prayed in a place that then became a pilgrimage site in Bethlehem,” he said.

“He kept the same position that [Pope] John Paul II had when the wall started to be built, where he said the Holy Land needed bridges and not walls. That was repeated by Pope Francis, who stood heavily for the right of the Palestinian people for self-determination,” he added.

21 April 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

For the vast majority of civilians in Gaza, nighttime brings not rest, but horror—a relentless cycle of fear, pain, and uncertainty.

Nowhere feels safe. Not the remains of their homes, not the makeshift tents, not even the overcrowded displacement camps. As dusk falls over Gaza, people brace for what many describe as the most terrifying hours of the day.

“From 5 p.m. onwards, tank shelling intensifies,” local residents say. By 6 a.m., those who make it through the night wake to the deafening blasts of artillery, often unsure of where the missiles have landed—or who has survived.

Electricity has been cut for more than 18 months, leaving families into total darkness. There is no power, no light—only the sounds of drones, quadcopters, and bombardment.

“Night is like a nightmare,” says Ahmed Abu Saleh, a resident of Al-Maghazi camp. “It’s like we’re living inside a horror movie. Death is everywhere. Attacks, explosions, screams. People being burned alive. We hear it all.”

Before sleeping, Abu Saleh and his wife close the windows—not for privacy, but in fear. “We’re afraid a quadcopter might fly into our home,” he says. “We’ve seen them enter houses here in the camp, terrifying people even more, spying on us.”

His children, he adds, are haunted by the sound of drones. “They sleep next to me and their mother. They’re terrified. Night means bombs. Night means fear.”

Rania Abu Msameh shares a similar dread. “At night, we sleep not knowing whether we’ll wake up alive,” she says. “We all sleep in the same room. That way, we can hold each other, feel the same fear, and try to offer some comfort.”

“We wait for the morning,” she adds. “Because at least in the light, we can see where the strikes are happening. At night, we’re blind. We just hear the bombs, the Apache helicopters, the artillery shelling. The fire grows louder and closer.”

Daily life has narrowed to daylight hours. “We can’t move or do anything at night,” she says. “There’s no power, no safety. So we do everything while it’s still light. When the sun sets, we wait in the dark, helpless.”

For Gaza’s families, the night no longer offers rest—it only deepens the wounds of war.

20 April 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

By Quds News Network

In the early hours of April 17, four children were killed in a drone strike in central Gaza. Their burned and shredded bodies arrived at Shuhada’a Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir al-Balah. According to eyewitnesses, they had been playing near tents set up for displaced families when an Israeli drone hovered overhead. Moments later, it exploded.

These aren’t ordinary drones. They’re designed to kill, not scout or surveil, but to identify human gatherings and detonate mid-air. These are suicide drones, or what Israel calls “loitering munitions.” Their use in Gaza marks a chilling evolution in the occupation’s warfare: impersonal, cost-effective, and lethal with minimal accountability.

Rotem L: A Weapon Built for Urban Mass Killings

In 2018, Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) tested its “Rotem L” suicide drone in southern occupied Palestine. Built for dense urban environments like Gaza, this drone was developed specifically to target gatherings of people. It is small, fast, and deadly—designed to be operated by a single soldier. The entire system can be deployed in under a minute.

Carrying a warhead of 6.5 kilograms, the Rotem L drone flies silently for up to 45 minutes, seeking its target. Once locked, it crashes directly into human beings. It’s a flying bomb with AI-powered guidance and minimal oversight. It can be “recalled” or “re-routed,” giving Israeli operators plausible deniability when children are killed, yet often, it is not.

IAI didn’t stop with Rotem L. It also developed Harop—a kamikaze drone that blends the precision of a missile with the stealth of a drone—and the Green Dragon, a tactical loitering munition meant for small infantry units. These systems boast silent motors, long flight times, and precise targeting capabilities. But in Gaza, “precision” often translates into “plausible deniability” for war crimes.

A Drone for Every Soldier, A Death for Every Tent

What makes suicide drones especially dangerous is their convenience. They remove the need for pilots. Any soldier, with a few hours of training, can launch, steer, and kill. No chain of command, no delay, no cockpit hesitation. In Gaza, that translates to spontaneous attacks on gatherings, including refugee camps, aid queues, and family tents.

Israel claims its drones can distinguish faces. If that were true, then the decision to strike gatherings of displaced civilians becomes even more sinister. These drones are not “mistaken.” They are deliberate. Their victims are not “collateral damage.” They are targeted.

Since October 2023, suicide drones have increasingly buzzed over Gaza’s skies. Sometimes they watch, sometimes they kill. Their constant presence creates psychological terror. Fighters and civilians alike know they can turn deadly in an instant. No warning. No escape.

A War Crime Disguised as Innovation

International humanitarian law prohibits attacks that fail to distinguish between civilians and combatants. Suicide drones, by their very design, challenge this legal principle. They rely on sensors and algorithms to decide when to strike. But no sensor can measure innocence. No AI can differentiate between a child and a fighter when both are huddled under plastic sheets.

Legal scholars warn of growing accountability gaps: suicide drone strikes often occur without public oversight, clear chain of command, or external review. Civilian deaths are brushed off as “technical errors.” Investigations are rare, and when they do occur, they are internal and classified.

Israel’s deployment of suicide drones over displacement camps highlights how technology is being weaponized to obscure war crimes. With no cockpit footage to leak, no pilot testimony, and no accountability trail, drone warfare offers Israel a way to kill anonymously—and repeatedly.

Cheap, Lethal, and Exportable

Another reason for Israel’s increasing use of suicide drones is economic. Unlike jets and missiles that require imported components, drones like Rotem L are made in-house. They’re cheap to produce and can be launched in large numbers. Some drones can even be carried in a backpack, allowing entire infantry squads to field their own airstrikes.

International arms watchdogs have already criticized Israel’s drone exports. Several countries have canceled or reconsidered arms deals after seeing how these drones are used in Gaza. But instead of curbing production, Israel has doubled down, framing the use of suicide drones as “precision warfare.”

The results, however, speak for themselves: mass death, destroyed families, and a generation of Gazan children growing up in the shadow of buzzing machines that rain death without warning.

Drones Don’t “Miss”—They Are Directed to Kill

Israel’s propaganda machine insists that its drone strikes are surgical. But the images from Gaza contradict this. Charred children. Shredded tents. Burned family members who were simply seeking shelter.

The claim of “precision” is a smokescreen. In reality, suicide drones are part of a broader strategy to erode Gaza’s social fabric—to make even moments of rest or play a potential death sentence. By normalizing this new method of warfare, Israel is writing a new chapter in the playbook of modern war crimes.

20 April 2025

Source: countercurrents.org

Hi there–

I hope you’re well? Another tumultuous week– and yet another totally horrendous week for the people of Gaza. They have now passed seven weeks since the Israeli military slapped a total, wall-to-wall ban on the entry of any goods, even basic necessities, into the Gaza Strip.

That blockade– and the repeated, extremely deadly assaults from air, land, and sea the Israelis have undertaken against Gaza over the past month– have been complete violations of the agreement the Israeli government and the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) signed on January 15, which stipulated an 18-week period of ceasefire with each successive 6-week period seeing additional relief for Gaza’s hard-pressed population along with the release of additional numbers of captives by each side.

Israel has also, meanwhile, pushed the survivors among Gaza’s once- 2.3. million people into ever smaller zones within Gaza. On the UN-OCHA map here (click on it to see it better, or download the whole PDF here), Gaza’s Palestinians are now forbidden from entering all the zones shaded purple or red.

Where is international law, you may ask?

Where are the Geneva Conventions?

Where are international institutions like the United Nations, a body that was born from the defeat of the largest-scale perpetrator of genocide ever seen in the 20th century?

The United State, under most of its presidents in recent times including former Pres. Biden, has frequently used Washington’s privileged position within the U.N. to openly flout international law and to give “ironclad” support to Israel as it has also done the same.

Pres. Trump is now taking that scofflawery to totally unprecedented new levels. In international affairs as in domestic affairs he has taken a wrecking ball to institutions and norms that, while never perfect, have nonetheless proved their value over time and were previously capable of improvement.

Here within the U.S., the long-established norms of constitutional government seem to mean nothing to trump. The NYT columnist Ezra Klein– never a firebrand– phrased it well in this hard-hitting column today about the fate of deported immigrant Kilmar Abrego Garcia:

To the Trump administration, Abrego Garcia is not a mistake. He is a liability, and he is a test. A test of their power to do this to anyone. A test of whether the loophole they believe they have found — that if they can get you on a plane, they can hustle you beyond our laws and leave you in the grips of the kind of gulags they wish they had here.

They are not ashamed of this. They are not denying their desire to do it to more people.
This is how dictatorships work. Trump has always been clear about who he is and the kind of power he wants. Now he is using that power.

And everyone around him — including Marco Rubio, Pam Bondi, Stephen Miller and Kristi Noem — is defending his right to wield that power.

There is a clear, open gleefulness in the way Trump (and his foot-soldier Salvador’s President Bukele) talk about what they have done to Abrego Garcia– and to untold scores of other immigrants herded off to Bukele’s mega-prisons. This gleefulness is shocking and deeply unsettling. It is also deeply familiar to anyone who has followed the way Israeli military commanders, Defense Ministers, and foot-soldiers all openly brag about the atrocities they have already committed in Gaza, and the future ones they’re planning.

The cruelty and the open and sadistic displays of it are the point. It is a clear attempt to terrorize the rest of the public into submission.

Four years ago, I spent some months on a project to track the earliest years of the attempts that a number of White, West-European polities pursued to build sprawling empires that for the first time in human history were transoceanic and thus reliant on excellent command of shipbuilding, navigation– and naval gunnery. The first polity to launch such a project was not Spain, but Portugal. In 2021 I summarized my understanding of that effort in this piece, published free on Medium.

In a later piece I summarized the new features that building a transoceanic empire– as opposed to the kind of land-based empire that many polities have built throughout history– now allowed. Key among them was its “hit and run” capability: The people who ran these new kinds of empire no longer had to establish mechanisms that would allow their own people live alongside the peoples they had conquered. They could– and did– genocide the Indigenes wholesale, force them into slavery, and if too many of them objected the European rulers could simply round them up in large numbers and trans-ship them to a distant corner of the empire to provide unpaid slave labor there…

Sounds familiar, huh.

… Anyway, this morning I decided to reconnect with that work I did back in 2021, drawing a straight-ish line back from the cruelty that we see Trump and Netanyahu deploying against Brown people today to the cruelty the Portuguese deployed against Indigenous communities on the shores of the Indian Ocean and Arabian Sea, in the early 1500s.

I think it’s important to recognize that the deployment (and open celebration) of cruelty against non-White people is a clear feature of all the White empires that have dominated the global balance for the past 500 years. It is not a bug.

Anyway, here’s the piece I wrote on my Globalities platform about this, today. (The Bab El Mandeb Straits were a key location back in 1506 CE, for what it’s worth, just as they are today.)

I hope this essay might energize all of us to work harder to end the stranglehold that the tiny, less than 12 percent of humanity who are of West European origin have exercised over world affairs for far too long…

Maybe, just maybe, with Trump’s latest, deranged economic war against the rest of the world, we might hope to see that stranglehold being broken soon?

But Gaza is still the fulcrum. The suffering there is unbearable. And it is all being fueled and actively supported by my government, using my tax dollars to destroy the lives of my friends.

20 April 2025

By Chris Hedges

“Once a regime starts to send people to concentration camps — including those in El Salvador — it creates a system of detention that eschews due process and disappears citizens into black holes.

16 Apr 2025 – Our offshore concentration camps, for now, are in El Salvador and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. But don’t expect them to remain there. Once they are normalized, not only for U.S.-deported immigrants and residents, but U.S. citizens, they will migrate to the homeland. It is a very short leap from our prisons, already rife with abuse and mistreatment, to concentration camps, where those held are cut off from the outside world — “disappeared” — denied legal representation and crammed into fetid, overcrowded cells.

Prisoners in the camps in El Salvador are forced to sleep on the floor or in solitary confinement in the dark. Many suffer from tuberculosis, fungal infections, scabies, severe malnutrition and chronic digestive illnesses. The inmates, including over 3,000 children, are fed rancid food. They endure beatings. They are tortured, including by water-boarding or being forced naked into barrels of ice-cold water, according to Human Rights Watch. In 2023, the State Department described imprisonment as “life-threatening,” and that was before the Salvadoran government declared a “state of exception” in March 2022. The situation has been greatly “exacerbated,” the State Department notes, by the “addition of 72,000 detainees under the state of exception.” Some 375 people have died in the camps since the state of exception was established, part of El Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele’s “war on gangs,” according to the local human rights group Socorro Jurídico Humanitario.

These camps — the “Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo” (Center for Terrorism Confinement) known as CECOT, to which U.S. deportees are being sent, holds some 40,000 people — are the model, the harbinger of what awaits us.

Metal worker and union member Kilmar Ábrego García, who was abducted in front of his five-year-old son on March 12, 2025, was accused of being a gang member and sent to El Salvador. The Supreme Court agreed with District Judge Paula Xinis who found that García’s deportation was an “illegal act.” Trump officials blamed their deportation of García on an “administrative error.” Xinis ordered the Trump administration to “facilitate” his return. But that does not mean he is coming back.

“I hope you’re not suggesting that I smuggle a terrorist into the United States,” Bukele told the press at a White House meeting with Trump. “How can I smuggle — how can I return him to the United States? Like, I smuggle him into the United States? Well, of course I’m not going to do it…the question is preposterous.”

This is the future. Once a segment of the population is demonized — including U.S. citizens Trump labels “homegrown criminals” — once they are stripped of their humanity, once they embody evil and are seen as an existential threat, the end result is that these human “contaminants” are removed from society. Guilt or innocence, at least under the law, is irrelevant. Citizenship offers no protection.

“The first essential step on the road to total domination is to kill the juridical person in man,” writes Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism.” “This was done, on the one hand, by putting certain categories of people outside the protection of the law and forcing at the same time, through the instrument of denationalization, the nontotalitarian world into recognition of lawlessness; it was done, on the other, by placing the concentration camp outside the normal penal system, and by selecting inmates outside the normal judicial procedure in which a definite crime entails a predictable penalty.”

Those who build concentration camps build societies of fear. They issue relentless warnings of mortal danger, whether from immigrants, Muslims, traitors, criminals or terrorists. Fear spreads slowly, like a sulfurous gas, until it infects all social interactions and induces paralysis. It takes time. In the first years of the Third Reich, the Nazis operated ten camps with about 10,000 inmates. But once they managed to crush all competing centers of power — labor unions, political parties, an independent press, universities and the Catholic and Protestant churches — the concentration camp system exploded. By 1939, when World War II broke out, the Nazis were running over 100 concentration camps with some one million inmates. Death camps followed.

Those that create these camps give them wide publicity. They are designed to intimidate. Their brutality is their selling point. Dachau, the first Nazi concentration camp, was not, as Richard Evans writes in “The Coming of The Third Reich” “an improvised solution to an unexpected problem of overcrowding in the goals, but a long-planned measure that the Nazis had envisioned virtually from the very beginning. It was widely publicized and reported in the local, regional and national press, and served as a stark warning to anyone contemplating offering resistance to the Nazi regime.”

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, wearing plainclothes and circling neighborhoods in unmarked cars, kidnap legal residents such as Mahmoud Khalil. These abductions replicate those I witnessed on streets of Santiago, Chile under the dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, or in San Salvador, El Salvador’s capital, during the military dictatorship.

ICE is swiftly evolving into our homegrown version of the Gestapo or The People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs (NKVD). It oversees 200 detention facilities. It is a formidable domestic surveillance agency that has amassed data on most Americans, according to a report compiled by The Center of Privacy & Technology at Georgetown.

“By reaching into the digital records of state and local governments and buying databases with billions of data points from private companies, ICE has created a surveillance infrastructure that enables it to pull detailed dossiers on nearly anyone, seemingly at any time,” the report reads. “In its efforts to arrest and deport, ICE has — without any judicial, legislative or public oversight — reached into datasets containing personal information about the vast majority of people living in the U.S., whose records can end up in the hands of immigration enforcement simply because they apply for driver’s licenses; drive on the roads; or sign up with their local utilities to get access to heat, water and electricity.”

Those abducted, including the Turkish national and PhD student at Tufts University, Rümeysa Öztürk, are accused of amorphous behaviour such as “engaging in activities in support of Hamas.” But this is a subterfuge, accusations no more real than the invented crimes under Stalinism where people were accused of belonging to the old order — Kulaks or members of the petit bourgeoisie — or were convicted for plotting to overthrow the regime as Trotskyites, Titoites, agents of capitalism or saboteurs, known as “wreckers.” Once a category of people is targeted, the crimes they are charged with, if they are charged at all, are almost always fabrications.

Concentration camp inmates are severed from the outside world. They are disappeared. Erased. They are treated as if they never existed. Nearly all efforts to obtain information about them are met with silence. Even their death, should they die in custody, becomes anonymous, as if they were never born.

Those who run concentration camps, as Hannah Arendt writes, are people without the curiosity or the mental capacity to form opinions. They don’t, she notes, “even know any more what it means to be convinced.” They simply obey, conditioned to act as “perverted animals.” They are intoxicated by the God-like power they have to turn human beings into quivering flocks of sheep.

The goal of any concentration camp system is to destroy all individual traits, to mold people into fearful, docile, obedient masses. The first camps are training grounds for prison guards and ICE agents. They master the brutal techniques designed to infantilize inmates, an infantilization that soon warps the wider society.

The 250 purported Venezuelan gang members shipped to El Salvador in defiance of a federal court were denied due process. They were summarily herded onto planes, which ignored the judge’s order to turn back, and once they arrived, were stripped, beaten and had their heads shaved. Shaved heads are a feature of all concentration camps. The excuse is lice. But of course it is about depersonalization and why they are in uniforms and identified by numbers.

The autocrat openly revels in the cruelty. “I look forward to watching the sick terrorist thugs get 20 year jail sentences for what they are doing to Elon Musk and Tesla,” Trump wrote on Truth Social. “Perhaps they could serve them in the prisons of El Salvador, which have become so recently famous for such lovely conditions!”

Those that build concentration camps are proud of them. They show them off to the press, or at least the sycophants posing as the press. Secretary for Homeland Security Kristi Noem, who posted a video of herself visiting the El Salvadoran prison, used the shirtless and head shaved inmates as a stage prop for her threats against immigrants. If fascism does one thing well, it is spectacle.

First they come for the immigrants. Then they come for the activists on foreign student visas on college campuses. Then they come for green card holders. Next are the U.S. citizens who fight Israeli genocide or the creeping fascism. Then they come for you. Not because you broke the law. But because the monstrous machine of terror needs a constant supply of victims to sustain itself.

Totalitarian regimes survive by eternally battling mortal, existential threats. Once one threat is eradicated, they invent another. They mock the rule of law. Judges, until they are purged, may decry this lawlessness, but they have no mechanism to enforce their rulings. The Department of Justice, turned over to the Trump sycophant Pam Bondi, is, as in all autocracies, designed to block enforcement, not facilitate it. There are no legal impediments left to protect us. We know where this is going. We have seen it before. And it is not good.

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Chris Hedges is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who was a foreign correspondent for fifteen years for The New York Times, where he served as the Middle East Bureau Chief and Balkan Bureau Chief.

21 April 2025

Source: transcend.org