UCLA Professor Hannah Appel has accused the school of human rights violations amounting to “torture” in the treatment of pro-Palestinian protesters. The reason is the denial of water and food from being brought into a building being unlawfully occupied by protesters, even though the students were free to leave at any time.
Appel teaches in the anthropology department in the areas of “transnational capitalism and finance,” “the economic imagination,” and “anti-capitalist and abolitionist social movements.” She is also a member of Faculty for Justice in Palestine at UCLA.The Daily Bruin reports that a brief sit-in protest was held at the campus’s Dodd Hall. The students were soon cleared from the building. In the interim, Appel made her accusation of torture tactics. In a video posted on X, Appel is seen declaring “even if this is unlawful which, of course, I don’t think it is […] you cannot deny people to send in water in an effort to get them to do something against their will.” While the students were free to leave at any time, Appel objected that “you cannot use a mechanism of torture” to force people to leave.In another video Appel objects that she and other faculty were not allowed to bring food and water to the encampment demonstrators.Notably, Appel repeats a threat from faculty at various schools that they may withhold their grades in protest to pressure schools to drop any charges or allegations against protesters: “When the university sees that folks are withholding grades, they get scared. They’re scared because we’re flexing our collective power, and optimally, that fear drives them to the bargaining table, and then we win.”
Such threats have already worked as universities have caved to demands at schools like Northwestern or dropped charges against students. Yet, these professors are using the grades of students to coerce universities. It is grossly unfair to students who were not involved in the protests or may oppose these protests. They have right to their grades and these professors have a contractual obligation to supply them. They should not be a tool for faculty protests.
Professors were free to join these students in occupying university buildings so long as they were willing to bear the consequences for their actions. To withhold grades to achieve political ends should be treated as a serious violation of faculty rules of conduct.
As for the torture allegation, Appel is dead wrong. There was no denial of food or water. The students had access to both outside of the building. Unlawful occupation of a building does not create an obligation on the part of the university to support the occupiers. To call this a human rights violation is to belittle the deprivations of true victims of torture and other abuses.
So, now it’s torture to not pay for the catering for protestors who have seized control of a university. They are free to leave at any time, but it’s a human rights violation if the university does not send in pizza and soda?
Is it a human rights violation if terrorist supporters are stopped from killing Jewish students?
I remember arguing with other commenters that there was significant antisemitism on the Left, that had been normalized. Refusal to acknowledge or check this normalization of blatant antisemitism has brought us to where we are today, where Jewish students are afraid on Democrat bastion college campuses.
They want freedom for the world from the tyrranous United States. If the United States didn’t exist imagine the freedom for Putin, Ayotollah, Kim Jong Un, Xi, Latin America, just think of all that freedom and you’ll understand, finally. 4 more years!!
Fear not. All these poor emaciated students are being properly fed with leftist money. I read this post and I used up one old hanky to express my Boo Hoo tears for these poor underfed urchins. I think I heard one if them exclaim, Moorr Siir.
Appel has a PhD in Anthropology from Stanford University. I wonder if she can define a WOMAN?
I saw this story on national news and they did not bother to mention that the students were free to leave at any time. They could have gone over to McDonalds in groups of 10 and then returned. Now the professor thinks the university needs to feed people violating their own rules. The academic system is dead and gone.
The students would rather suffer dehydration than drink tap water? That’s a luxury problem if I ever heard one.
If you buy that, UCLA Professor Hannah Appel might also argue that the school should pay the protesters transportation to the school and room charges for 1-2 overnight stay at local Hilton 6 or Marriott hotels
KNOW THE ENEMY
“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War
_____________________________
Palestinians and Hamas are the enemy.
Palestinians are Hamas.
Hamas are the Palestinians.
Palestinians and Hamas have been attacked with American munitions and American support for their ally, Israel.
Palestinians and Hamas are the enemy.
Lloyd Austin built a floating pier in Gaza to provide support, aid, material, etc., to Palestinians and Hamas.
Palestinians and Hamas are the enemy.
Lloyd Austin engaged “in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
Lloyd Austin committed treason against the United States of America.
The 60’s radicals moved from protesting to teaching our college students. Remembering the violent 60’s I am not surprised at how things are at these once great institutions. I really do not have any hope for them as they are so set in their philosophy of hate and destroy.
Their “philosophy” is communism.
These fools are impossible to take seriously, and i do not for the life of me understand why their parents/grandparents are so terrified about confronting them. You could blow on these little sheets and they’d collapse. This is so beyond absolutely absurd, it beggars belief. If the parents won’t do it, the schools won’t do it, then we will. brace yourselves, young’uns. Your free pass is over very shortly.
And if you are still to checked out/brainwashed/stupid to keep sending your kids to these very expensive daycares – that is on you, wake the eff up. In the past only a kindergartener could be defeated by a snack, and these are not kindergarteners. The whole thing is pathetic, from the high chair, to the schools, all the way to the transactional receipt we call a ‘degree’. This is a bad joke, and its time has passed. The salient among us are not going anywhere anytime soon, and we will not coddle your kids the way you have. Just preposterous.
And to the crusty folks in retirement that have no idea what this is about and wonder why Jonathan continues to pound away at this: the Professor writes about these things because these things are your future, whether you like it or not, so you’d best start caring and paying attention. The days of hunkering down in a neighborhood bubble are over, likely for good; you are getting this, one way or another, no matter what you do. So do the thing that might possibly reverse it before it’s too late. I don’t worry about the folks that think the world is ending because summer is hot; i worry about the people that don’t see the bigger picture and fail to understand its broader implications, as it WILL relate, personally, to them. Critical thought seems to be dead across the board in America.
Sounds harsh, but I could give a sheet about the world we are leaving ‘the children’; I care about the world we all have to live in, and when we are gone there will be no one left to teach ‘the children’. Likely not a popular stance.