The “Palestine Exception”
The Intercept Briefing
The Intercept
4.8 • 6.3K Ratings
🗓️ 27 November 2024
⏱️ 28 minutes
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Summary
Continued campus protests against the Gaza war have sparked heated debates around free speech, academic freedom, and the role of universities in addressing global issues.
This spring saw an outpouring of students demanding that their institutions divest from Israel. Since then, universities have taken sometimes draconian measures to stop protests before they even begin.
On this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing, Intercept reporters Akela Lacy and Jonah Valdez, who have been following the protest movements for months, discuss the latest developments and how college administrators are responding.
Lacy followed one such case at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where students were hit with severe charges for vandalism. “The school is trying to make an example of student leaders in the movement for Palestine to chill further speech,” Lacy says. “I want to emphasize the fact that these are felony charges for undergraduate students for a nonviolent offense that is putting paint on a building.”
Students and organizers who spoke with Valdez anticipate even greater hostility for protesters of every kind once Donald Trump takes office again in January. “This is what a lot of organizers were telling me leading up to Election Day was that there’s going to be so many other attacks on the rights of many other people," he says, "whether it’s reproductive rights, rights of trans people, LGBTQ community at large, rights of immigrants, all on top of the ongoing genocide and occupation of Palestine.”
To hear more about the chilling effects on free speech and protest, listen to this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | No home. No address. No address. No bank account. No bank account. No job. No job. No home. No address. No bank account. No job. No bank account. No job. No home. It's time to break the vicious circle. |
| 0:22.0 | We're working with charities like Shelter to provide a bank account for people who are homeless. |
| 0:27.1 | Search HSBCUK, no fixed address. |
| 0:33.7 | Welcome to The Interceptive Briefing, a new podcast from our newsroom. |
| 0:39.7 | I'm Jordan Yule, your host this week. |
| 0:43.2 | Demonstrators were back at it for the first day of classes. |
| 0:46.5 | Today, dozens of people who support Palestine protested outside the Truesdale entrance at USC. |
| 0:52.5 | At Columbia University in New York, one flashpoint for last spring's campus turmoil, |
| 0:58.2 | long lines formed outside the gates as classes began. |
| 1:02.2 | Since the spring, anti-war protests against the U.S.'s involvement in Israel's war on Gaza |
| 1:07.8 | have erupted across college campuses nationwide. |
| 1:11.6 | In many cases, administrators have called in police, |
| 1:15.6 | resulting in the arrests of thousands of students and faculty. |
| 1:19.6 | The charges and disciplinary actions vary widely from campus to campus, |
| 1:23.6 | but the message is clear. |
| 1:26.6 | Descent is under attack. As students returned to campus this fall, |
| 1:31.7 | institutions continued their crackdown on free speech and protests, using increasingly insidious tactics |
| 1:38.9 | to silence opposition. Meanwhile, President-elect Donald Trump and his allies have been crystal clear |
| 1:46.9 | that they plan to go even further. Intercept reporters Akela Lacey and Jonah Valdez |
| 1:55.5 | have been reporting on the protests and the repercussions for months. They join me now to discuss the latest developments |
| 2:03.1 | and what lies ahead. Welcome to the show, Akela and Jonah. Thanks for having us, Jordan. |
| 2:08.8 | Yeah, thanks for having us. Jonah, I want to start with the big picture. College students have |
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