PNN – In an article for the Al Jazeera news network, one of the Arab students of the University of Michigan revealed aspects of the discrimination and pressure of American universities against Arab and Muslim students.
According to the report of Pakistan News Network, yesterday’s article by “Ahmed Ibsais” states: On October 7, the Union of Pro-Palestinian Organizations at the University of Michigan (Tahrir Coalition) published an audio file of Santa Ono, the president of the university, on social media.
In the audio file, a man talks about pressure from “powerful groups” and threats to cut off federal funding if the university administration doesn’t focus solely on fighting anti-Semitism.
According to this Palestinian student, the problem is that the university is not committed to providing security and support for Muslim and Arab students.
During the last year, Israel killed more than 42,000 Palestinians, including more than 16,000 children, and more than 2,300 Lebanese, including more than 120 children, and this mass killing is very painful for Palestinian and Lebanese students. We have witnessed the destruction of our lands, the massacre, torture and starvation of our people, and we have been insulted and silenced on campus.
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Such a situation is not true of the students who have actively defended Israel’s “right to self-defense.”
The effect of this unbalanced approach is that today Muslim and Arab students face increasing harassment and discrimination, and their attackers are emboldened by the knowledge that their actions will not have any consequences.
On the other hand, the university has repeatedly sent the police to disperse our demonstrations and sit-ins, and the officers have also beaten the students, sprayed them with pepper spray, torn the headscarves of the female students, and arrested them. Also, the surveillance has been intensified and the presence of the police and the number of surveillance cameras around the Arab dining hall has increased significantly.
In the continuation of this article, it is stated: The university administration has never apologized for these actions and has not condemned the extreme violence of the police against the protesting students.
Muslim, Arab and Palestinian students increasingly feel that the Biden administration has no problem with killing our people and bombing our land.
This attitude is not unique to the University of Michigan. Across America and in the last six months alone, more than 3,000 people have been arrested on campuses for supporting Palestine. Universities that were once defenders of freedom of speech have become a hostile environment for Muslim and Arab students and their like-minded people.
What adds to our pain is the fact that student fees are invested in companies that support violence against Muslims and Palestinians. Despite protests, the University of Michigan, which quickly cut ties with Russian-linked companies after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, continues to invest in companies linked to Israel.
What was revealed in the mentioned audio file shows that the administrators of American universities no longer have moral authority. By succumbing to external pressures, they can no longer protect all students equally, and the message is clear: “Some students’ lives are more important than others.”