Education
WORLD
Police Tackle US Campus Protests As Los Angeles Hit By Clashes
By Etienne Laurent with Ana Fernandez in New York
05/01/24 AT 11:45 AM EDT
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Counter protesters attack a pro-Palestinian encampment set up on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA)
Counter protesters attack a pro-Palestinian encampment set up on the campus of the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) AFP
Hundreds of people were arrested at pro-Palestinian protests on US campuses as police Wednesday extended a crackdown that included clearing out demonstrators occupying a building at Columbia University in New York.
On the other side of the country, counter-protesters attacked a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Los Angeles as violent clashes erupted in the dark before police intervened.
At Columbia, the center of nationwide protests, police were on standby Wednesday after their overnight operation dismantled a weeks-long encampment and forcibly removed people occupying an academic building.
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Read MoreCOMMENTARY BY
Joshua Arnold
Joshua Arnold is a staff writer at The Washington Stand, contributing both news and commentary from a biblical worldview.
With tent cities springing up across American campuses, filled with antisemitic activists who are openly supporting U.S.-designated foreign terrorist organizations, you could be forgiven for suspecting that this activism was not wholly organic. And you would be right.
Fingerprints of Further Funding
Take the “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University, where “students sleep in tents apparently ordered from Amazon and enjoy delivery pizza, coffee from Dunkin’, free sandwiches worth $12.50 from Pret a Manger, organic tortilla chips, and $10 rotisserie chickens,” according to the New York Post. That is not the sort of event a campus student association organizes on its semesterly stipend—certainly not the sort of event a student association could sustain for now more than a week.
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Read MoreWhat’s behind awarding 100% to kids for literally doing nothing?
According to a report in The Star, students in some grade 12 classes in a York Catholic high school who have not completed any evaluation whatsoever have been awarded “placeholder” marks of 100% to be used in their postsecondary applications. The classes have been running for nearly half a semester without teachers assigned to them.
That means that the classes have been either covered by day to day supply teachers (who most likely were not qualified in the subject area), covered by “on-call” teachers (permanent teachers at the school who probably don’t have the subject qualifications either but are directed to cover the classes), or simply canceled. I would bet it has been a combo of all of the above. The bottom line is that the kids have not learned much.
So, having demonstrated no learning at all (there has been no evaluation of any kind), and facing a deadline for college and university applications, the school administration (with the support of the school board) has elected to assign a mark of 100% for every student enrolled in these teacherless courses.
Totally unfair; dumb idea.
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Read MoreChaos has broken out near a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California Los Angeles.
A large group of counterdemonstrators in black outfits and white masks entered the campus and tried to tear down barricades around the encampment late on Tuesday, the Los Angeles Times newspaper reported.
The pro-Israel counterprotesters had “violently” tried to enter the encampment, according to the Daily Bruin student newspaper. Videos on social media showed fireworks being set off and at least one going into the encampment.
“Pro-Israel counterprotesters violently clashed with the pro-Palestine encampment,” the newspaper wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “There are reports of tear gas being used and fireworks being set off in Dickson Plaza.”
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Read MoreMicrosoft invested $1 billion in OpenAI in 2019 because it was “very worried” that Google was years ahead in scaling up its AI efforts. An internal email, titled “Thoughts on OpenAI,” between Microsoft CTO Kevin Scott, CEO Satya Nadella, and co-founder Bill Gates reveals some of the high-level discussions around an investment opportunity in the months before Microsoft revealed the partnership.
The email was released on Tuesday as part of the ongoing US Justice Department antitrust case against Google, Business Insider reports.
“We are multiple years behind the competition in terms of machine learning scale,” Scott writes in his June 12th, 2019, email to Nadella and Gates. He details how it took six months for Microsoft engineers to replicate Google’s BERT language model and get it trained “because our infrastructure wasn’t up to the task.”
The email thread, which you can read below, is heavily redacted and appears to be a reply to either Nadella or Gates. While Gates stepped down from the Microsoft board in 2020 amid an investigation into an affair with an employee, he’s reportedly still been a big part of Microsoft’s ongoing relationship with OpenAI.
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Read MoreOTTAWA — Immigration Minister Marc Miller says international students will be able to work off-campus up to 24 hours per week starting in September.
The Liberals temporarily waved the 20-hour cap on work hours for international students during the COVID-19 pandemic in a bid to ease labour shortages.
That waiver expires tomorrow.
The work hours limit will return to 20 hours per week until September when the government can implement a permanent change to make it 24 hours.
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Read MoreFive West Virginia middle school students who protested a transgender athlete’s participation at a track and field meet have been banned from future events, prompting the state’s attorney general to ask the Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) to weigh in.
West Virginia Watch reported Monday Attorney General Patrick Morrisey filed a lawsuit against the Harrison County Board of Education on the students’ behalf after they were blocked from upcoming track and field meets following their protests at the April 18 shot put competition.
Five female Lincoln Middle School students stepped up to the circle for their turn before refusing to throw in the event, which was won by transgender female athlete Becky Pepper-Jackson, 13.
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Read MoreMcGill University in Montreal on Tuesday asked for police assistance in clearing out an anti-Israel encampment of dozens of tents set up on its downtown campus.
University officials said the request was made after protestors refused to leave, and noted the majority of protestors are not students at McGill or members of the school community.
Anti-Israel protests have escalated at Concordia University, Montreal, as well, with protestors at both schools refusing to stop until the schools have divested from all companies they claims are “profiting from genocide,” per the Globe & Mail.
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Read MorePrime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has said Israel will launch an invasion of the southern Gaza city of Rafah regardless of truce talks with Hamas.
It comes amid ongoing attempts to try to reach an agreement for a ceasefire and hostage releases.
His comments follow renewed warnings by the US and UN against a Rafah invasion.
The US secretary of state Antony Blinken hopes Hamas will accept what he has called Israel’s “extraordinarily generous” offer for a Gaza truce and hostage release deal. He was speaking as a Hamas delegation discussed the new proposal with mediators from Egypt and Qatar.
Meanwhile in the United States, pro-Palestinian student protesters at Columbia University, who have barricaded themselves inside a campus building, could “face expulsion”.
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Read MoreRadical anti-Israel protests have spread to several Canadian universities, including the University of British Columbia where a hostile encampment has been set up.
Meanwhile, tensions have risen at McGill, the first Canadian university to get an encampment inspired by the one at Columbia University in the U.S.
Those taking part in the UBC encampment want the university “to divest from Israel’s settler colonial occupation, ethnic cleansing, and genocide o
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