Tomgram: Norman Solomon, When Students Are a Shock to the System

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Once upon a time, in another era, maybe even another universe, the head of a university refused to call on the police, the National Guard, or even federal troops in the face of student and other protests. Instead, he opened the doors of his school to the demonstrators.

I’m thinking of Kingman Brewster, who was the president of Yale University on May 1, 1970, as read more

Does Every Person in Israel Deserve to Die?

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 6, 2024

I fervently hope, dear reader, that you do not agree that every person in Israel deserves to die. But I know some of you do, and I hope to suggest a better way of looking at it. I know that you’re even more unlikely to agree with me that nobody ever anywhere “deserves to die.” But the closer you can get to agreeing with that, the better!

Have you heard people calling the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks on Israel a “success,” despite the perfectly predictable read more

Tomgram: Helen Benedict, Students on the Right Side of History

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

I live reasonably close to Columbia University. Over the years, on my daily walks, I’ve often wandered through the gates of its striking campus on 116th Street, crossing from Broadway to Amsterdam Avenue, passing students, admiring the enormous Low Library and the scene generally. About noon on a recent day (but before students there occupied Hamilton Hall and were read more

Support Students or Support Genocide

By David Swanson, World BEYOND War, May 1, 2024

May day! May day!

We raised young people to believe that genocide was wrong. We told them they had the right to free speech and assembly. We told them that lots of wars were somehow not genocidal (pay no attention to the millions of dark-skinned corpses behind the curtain, children) and that those wars even somehow mysteriously created those rights to free speech and assembly. Now those young people are being attacked by police, beaten up by judeonazi read more

Tomgram: Rebecca Gordon, Birding in Gaza

This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.

Let me say that, in some strange way, I’m awed. A little background here: I grew up in New York City and, while still quite young, became a “birder.” Watching birds in the 1950s was not an activity a teenage boy was eager to advertise, and yet, however quietly, with my best friend (and his uncle’s borrowed binoculars), I did it in what remains a spectacular spot for read more