BOSTON (JTA) – In all other years, the Massachusetts House of Representatives begins its annual budget debate on the Monday after Patriots’ Day, the state holiday that commemorates the first battles of the Revolutionary War. But this year, lawmakers broke from their time-honored traditions and postponed the ritual — in deference to their Jewish colleagues. That’s because the first Monday after Patriots’ Day this year was April 22, which coincided with the first night of Passover, when Jews around the world gather for the Passover seder. When Rep. Ruth Balser realized that the traditional ..read more

As a newly appointed professor of public health at the University of Southern California two years ago, I invited USC students to apply for a summer job interviewing pioneers of the global health and human rights movement.  One of the applicants was Asna Tabassum, the 2024 class valedictorian whose invitation to speak at commencement was rescinded by the university on April 15, after pro-Israel groups complained about a pro-Palestinian viewpoint she had shared on social media.  Ten days after Asna’s speech was canceled, USC canceled their main commencement event entirely. When confro ..read more

(JTA) — The governor of Texas cheered on the arrests of dozens of pro-Palestinian protesters at the University of Texas this week, as clashes with authorities broke out on campuses from Austin to Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, the Twin Cities and beyond. At some schools, students took over campus buildings, while others were seeing protest encampments spring up for the first time. Hundreds of people have been arrested as police and campus authorities have cracked down on the student protests in a growing number of places. Meanwhile, the University of Southern California announced Thursday that ..read more

The University of Southern California has canceled its primary May graduation ceremony after a tumultuous several days of protest and arrests that began with the university’s decision last week to disinvite of the university’s valedictorian — a young Muslim American woman whose social posts on Israel prompted widespread condemnation from Jewish groups — from speaking.  The university’s statement Thursday said the decision to cancel commencement was made for safety reasons. It comes less than a day after police arrested 93 protesters on campus for trespassing, and in the case of one p ..read more

Columbia University has been making headlines since April 17, when students set up a pro-Palestinian encampment that they called a “Liberated Zone.” There have been arrests, a constant police presence, politicians swooping in and holding press conferences and calls for the resignation of the school’s president, Minouche Shafik. At schools across the nation, at least 13 camps have sprouted up in solidarity with Columbia’s protesters. And so it would be easy to think that Columbia’s tumult would send shockwaves through the Morningside Heights neighborhood in which it is situated. But instead, fr ..read more

PROVIDENCE, R.I. — As “Gaza solidarity encampments” sprouted up this week on campuses across the nation, and colleges called in police forces to arrest hundreds of students for trespassing and other violations, Brown University took a different tack. When Brown student protesters set up tents on the campus’ main green Wednesday morning, the Rhode Island university said there would not be arrests or suspensions. And, unlike Columbia and Harvard, which closed their campuses to anyone without a student or faculty ID, Brown’s main green remained open to the public on Thursday afternoon. “Encamping ..read more

(JTA) – A former athletic director of a Baltimore-area high school was arrested Thursday morning and charged with using artificial intelligence to fake antisemitic and racist comments supposedly made by the school’s principal. The case was part of a growing body of AI-generated impersonation incidents, which experts say is a newfound worry in a growing, barely regulated field of technology. This was an unusual instance of faking antisemitic comments in order to damage a public figure’s reputation. Baltimore County police charged Dazhon Darien, formerly of Pikesville High School, with disruptin ..read more

WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Biden administration released a call from the leaders of 17 countries with citizens held hostage in Gaza calling for their immediate release in exchange for “an immediate and prolonged ceasefire” that would lead to the “end of hostilities.” Israel, which has the most citizens among the more than 130 hostages still held in Gaza, is not among the participants in the joint call. While the statement hews to conditions Israel has accepted for a hostage deal in the short term, it does not refer to Israel’s other goal in the war, which is to remove Hamas from power. “We welcome ..read more

(JTA) — Brandeis University, the historically Jewish school outside Boston, has extended its transfer application deadline in a bid to appeal to students who are unhappy with their own schools’ responses to campus anti-Israel protests. The university announced the decision on Monday, as encampment protests spread from Columbia University to campuses across the United States. The protests, which take aim at the schools’ ties to Israel, are spurred by the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza and have in some places included rhetoric that veers into antisemitism. Jewish groups and some Jewish students say th ..read more

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, responding to the chaos at Columbia, said in a video statement released Wednesday that “antisemitic mobs have taken over leading universities.” He added: “They call for the annihilation of Israel, they attack Jewish students, they attack Jewish faculty. This is reminiscent of what happened in German universities in the 1930s. It’s unconscionable. It has to be stopped. It has to be condemned unequivocally. But that’s not what happened.” PM Netanyahu's statement with regard to the latest events in American university campuses. pic.twitter.com/r0XIW03Wt ..read more