Month: April 2024

Per ABC NEWS, Pro-Palestinian protesters at Columbia University occupied a hall on campus early Tuesday, hours after school officials ordered the dispersal of a protest encampment. Videos appear to show protesters creating a barricade with metal chairs outside Hamilton Hall after midnight. The campus newspaper Columbia Spectator reported that those inside were working to block the building’s exits with tables, chairs and zip-ties.

Despite warnings from Columbia University (and after the school’s president said it would not divest from Israel), students who defied Columbia’s orders to vacate their pro-Palestinian protest by 2 p.m. on Monday have begun to be suspended. Ben Chang, vice president for communications and a spokesperson for Columbia University, said around 5 p.m. on Monday, about three hours after the deadline passed: “We have begun suspending students .. University representatives engaged in good faith dialogue with the organizers and maintain that dialogue. We were hopeful and we were disappointed when the student protesters couldn’t reach consensus on the issues under discussion.”

Columbia had issued notices to students on Monday in protest camps saying that if protesters left by the 2 p.m. deadline and signed a form committing to abide by university policies through June 2025 or an earlier graduation, they could finish the semester in good standing. If not, the letter said, they would be suspended, pending further investigation, and barred from completing the spring semester.  However at the encampment, protesters voted nearly unanimously to stay put, and around 2:45 p.m were seen marching on the quad, chanting “Disclose! Divest! We will not slow, we will not rest!’”

In a statement, University President Minouche Shafik had asked the protesters to voluntarily disperse, saying the demonstration had created “an unwelcoming environment for many of our Jewish students and faculty, adding that “external actors have contributed to a hostile environment” around university gates, and that it had become a “noisy distraction” for students. Shafik also cited the May 15 commencement, saying, “We also do not want to deprive thousands of students and their families and friends of a graduation celebration.” A portion of the encampment has been cleared to make space for the upcoming commencement ceremony for graduates, and picketers are largely sticking to the perimeters of the encampment.

Columbia was the first elite institution struck by protests in support of the Palestinian cause, with students demanding that the school divest from investments that support weapons manufacturing and Israel; protests spread quickly last week on campuses across the U.S.

Editorial credit: lev radin / Shutterstock.com

The Supreme Court on Monday rejected an appeal from Elon Musk over the terms of a settlement agreement with the Securities and Exchange Commission (‘SEC’) that requires him to get approval in advance of some social media posts that relate to Tesla, the electric vehicle company he leads. Musk was seeking to overturn restrictions imposed on him by the SEC following a 2018 post on Twitter (now X). The high court rejected Musk’s appeal without comment.

An appeals court’s rejected Musk’s bid last year for the so-called “Twitter sitter” provision to be modified, complainingn that the requirement amounts to “prior restraint” on his speech, violated his First Amendment rights and was “unenforceable.” Musk acquired Twitter in 2022, and filed a petition with the Supreme Court in December 2023 seeking to undo the agreement, claiming it was an unconstitutional infringement of his right to free speech.

Tweets that Musk had posted in 2018, in which he claimed he had secured funding to take Tesla private, had caused the company’s share price to jump and led to a temporary halt in trading. The tweet was ruled to be “false and misleading” and shareholders accused Tesla of securities fraud. The settlement with the SEC included a requirement that his tweets be approved first by a Tesla attorney, and also called for Musk and Tesla to pay civil fines over the tweets in which Musk said he had “funding secured” to take Tesla private at $420 per share (the funding wasn’t secured, and Tesla remains public).

The SEC’s initial enforcement action against Musk alleged that his tweets about going private violated antifraud provisions of securities laws. The agency began investigating whether Musk violated the settlement in 2021 when he did not get approval before asking followers on Twitter, now X, if he should sell 10% of his Tesla stock.

Editorial credit: Muhammad Alimaki / Shutterstock.com