Inside the Campus Uprising for Palestine

Apr 24, 2024

College campuses across the United States have become sites of mass protest actions against Israel鈥檚 ongoing genocide in Gaza. They include , , , and . Police have hundreds of people, including those who have set up on-campus protest encampments.聽

Activists have been vilified as , even though they include sizable numbers of . At Columbia University, many of the students participated in a seder to mark Passover during the protest.聽

Meanwhile, the discovery of a containing more than 300 bodies in southern Gaza has lent even greater credibility to genocide allegations against Israel. The reported that victims were found stripped naked with their hands tied.聽

Shana L. Redmond, a professor of English and Comparative Literature at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity at Race at Columbia University, has been among faculty members involved in the campus protests. She spoke with YES! Senior Editor Sonali Kolhatkar on YES! Presents: Rising Up With Sonali about campus repression and false accusations of antisemitism.

Sonali Kolhatkar joined YES! in summer 2021, building on a long and decorated career in broadcast and print journalism. She is an award-winning multimedia journalist, and host and creator of聽YES! Presents: Rising Up with Sonali, a nationally syndicated television and radio program airing on Free Speech TV and dozens of independent and community radio stations. She is also Senior Correspondent with the Independent Media Institute鈥檚 Economy for All project where she writes a weekly column. She is the author of聽Rising Up: The Power of Narrative in Pursuing Racial Justice聽(2023) and聽Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords, and the Propaganda of Silence聽(2005). Her forthcoming book is called聽Talking About Abolition聽(Seven Stories Press, 2025). Sonali is co-director of the nonprofit group, Afghan Women鈥檚 Mission which she helped to co-found in 2000. She has a Master鈥檚 in Astronomy from the University of Hawai鈥檌, and two undergraduate degrees in Physics and Astronomy from the University of Texas at Austin. Sonali reflects on 鈥淢y Journey From Astrophysicist to Radio Host鈥� in her 2014聽聽of the same name.