With graduation near, colleges seek to balance safety and students' right to protest Gaza war

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. (AP) — The University of Michigan is informing students of the rules for upcoming graduation ceremonies: Banners and flags are not allowed. Protests are OK but in designated areas away from the cap-and-gown festivities.

The University of Southern California canceled a planned speech by the school's Muslim valedictorian — and then “released” all its outside commencement speakers. At Columbia University, where more than 100 pro-Palestinian demonstrators were arrested last week, the protests have included a large tent encampment on the Ivy League school's main lawn, the very place graduating students and families are set to gather next month.

This is commencement season 2024, punctuated by the tension and volatility that has roiled college campuses since Hamas’ deadly Oct. 7 attack on southern Israel. Militants killed about 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and took roughly 250 hostages. In response, Israel has killed more than 34,000 Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, according to the local health ministry.

Since the war began, colleges and universities have struggled to balance campus safety with free speech rights amid intense student debate and protests. Many schools that tolerated protests and other disruptions for months are now doling out more heavy-handed discipline. A series of recent campus crackdowns on student protesters have included suspensions and, in some cases, expulsions.

Columbia University President Minouche Shafik said the Middle East conflict is terrible and she understands many are experiencing deep moral distress.

“But we cannot have one group dictate terms and attempt to disrupt important milestones like graduation to advance their point of view,” she wrote in a note addressed to the school community Monday.

The new measures have done little to stop protests. In recent days, pro-Palestinian demonstrators set up encampments on campuses around the country, including at Columbia, the University of Michigan, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Yale University, where several dozen protesters were arrested after officials said they defied warnings to leave.

While the majority of protests across college campuses have been peaceful, some have turned aggressive. Some Jewish students say much of the criticism of Israel has veered into antisemitism and made them feel unsafe.

Protesters are asking universities to take a number of actions, such as calling for a cease-fire in the war, or divesting from defense companies that do business with Israel.

“The weapons being made in this country are being sent to Israel and being used in the war on Gaza,” said Craig Birckhead-Morton, a Yale senior who was arrested Monday after refusing to leave a protest encampment. “We have to highlight the difficulties the Palestinian people are going through."

At MIT, protesters also have asked the university to stop what they say is funding from the Ministry of Defense in Israel to university projects with military objectives.

“We believe that we have a platform that students in other universities don’t have because of our unique ties to the Israeli military,” said Shara Bhuiyan, a 21-year-old senior studying electrical engineering and computer science.

The intense emotions on both sides have created a climate that has unsettled both Jewish and Muslim students. More than half of such students, and a fifth of all college students, reported feeling unsafe on campus because of their stances on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, according to a report published in March by the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats.

Among the commencement speakers likely to encounter protesters is President Joe Biden, who is speaking at ceremonies next month for Morehouse College and the U.S. Military Academy.

Earlier this month, the Anti-Defamation League sent an open letter to college and university presidents urging them to “take clear decisive action” to ensure graduation ceremonies run smoothly and safely.

“We remain deeply concerned regarding the possibility of substantial disruptions during commencement ceremonies,” Shira Goodman, the ADL’s senior director of advocacy, said in an emailed statement.

The protest movement ramped up nationally after Shafik, the Columbia president, summoned New York City police on Thursday to clear a pro-Palestinian tent camp from the university's campus after student protesters ignored demands to leave. She described the move as an “extraordinary step” to keep the campus safe.

All 100 or so students arrested were charged with trespassing and then several were suspended — but as of Tuesday, the large protest encampment remained on the main lawn where grandstands for Columbia's May 15 commencement have already been installed.

The arrests came a day after Shafik pledged during a congressional hearing on antisemitism to balance students’ safety with their right to free speech. Following similar testimony last year, the presidents of Harvard and the University of Pennsylvania — answering accusations that universities were failing to protect Jewish students — resigned.

Several other college campuses around the country kicked off the new year with revised protest rules. In January, American University banned indoor protests. Harvard started the spring semester with guidance effectively limiting protests to outdoor areas.

The University of Michigan drafted a proposed “Disruptive Activity Policy” earlier this month. Violations of the policy, which has not yet been implemented, could result in suspension or expulsion of students and termination of university staff.

The proposal came in response to a raucous March 24 protest that halted the school’s annual honors convocation, a 100-year-old tradition preceding the May 4 graduation. Protesters interrupted a speech by university President Santa J. Ono with shouts of, “You’re funding genocide!” and unfurled banners that said: “Free Palestine,” forcing an abrupt end to the ceremony.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan said in a letter to Ono that the policy “is vague and overbroad, and risks chilling a substantial amount of free speech and expression.”

But in a letter to the campus, Ono remarked that “while protest is valued and protected, disruptions are not.”

“One group’s right to protest does not supersede the right of others to participate in a joyous event,” he wrote.

At Vanderbilt University in Tennessee, more than two dozen anti-Israel demonstrators stormed the university president’s office in late March, refusing to leave for hours. Three of the students were expelled, including freshman Jack Petocz.

“It’s a very scary moment,” said Petocz, 19, who is appealing the decision. “It’s about the crackdown on free speech on campuses but it’s also about campuses becoming police states.”

Last Monday, the University of Southern California cited “substantial risks relating to security and disruption at the commencement" when it announced it would break from tradition and not allow valedictorian Asna Tabassum, a first-generation South Asian American Muslim, to deliver a speech at the May 10 commencement.

The decision sparked outrage and several days of protests on campus, prompting another unexpected shake-up days later: the cancellation of a keynote speaker for the first time since 1942.

The events at USC have raised concern that other schools will bow to pressure and erode free speech, said Edward Ahmed Mitchell, a civil rights attorney and national deputy director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.

“I am worried that schools might decline to select a qualified visibly Muslim student who advocates for Palestine, to avoid what happened at USC,” he said. “Schools are going to do more harm than good if they try to censor and silence commencement speakers, and especially students who have received the honor of speaking at their graduation ceremonies.”

Gecker reported from San Francisco.

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FILE - Students hold up a photo of University of Southern California 2024 valedictorian Asna Tabassum in protest to her canceled commencement speech on the campus of University of Southern California on Thursday, April 18, 2024. U.S. colleges and universities are preparing for end-of-year commencement ceremonies with a unique challenge: providing safety for graduates while honoring the free speech rights of students involved in protests over the Israel-Hamas war. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

Columbia University professors speak in solidarity with their students rights to protest free from arrest at the Columbia University campus in New York on Monday April 22, 2024. U.S. colleges and universities are preparing for end-of-year commencement ceremonies with a unique challenge: providing safety for graduates while honoring the free speech rights of students involved in protests over the Israel-Hamas war. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

FILE - Police in Riot gear stand guard as demonstrators chant slogans outside the Columbia University campus, Thursday, April 18, 2024, in New York. U.S. colleges and universities are preparing for end-of-year commencement ceremonies with a unique challenge: providing safety for graduates while honoring the free speech rights of students involved in protests over the Israel-Hamas war. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer, File)

Pro-Israeli demonstrators chant "Shame" in support of Columbia University assistant professor Shai Davidai, who was denied access to the main campus to prevent him from accessing the lawn currently occupied by pro-Palestinian student demonstrators in New York, Monday, April 22, 2024. U.S. colleges and universities are preparing for end-of-year commencement ceremonies with a unique challenge: providing safety for graduates while honoring the free speech rights of students involved in protests over the Israel-Hamas war. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

New York University students and pro-Palestinian supporters rally outside the NYU Stern School of Business building, Monday, April 22, 2024, in New York. U.S. colleges and universities are preparing for end-of-year commencement ceremonies with a unique challenge: providing safety for graduates while honoring the free speech rights of students involved in protests over the Israel-Hamas war. (AP Photo/Mary Altaffer)

Several hundred students and pro-Palestinian supporters rally at the intersection of Grove and College Streets, in front of Woolsey Hall on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Conn. April 22, 2024. U.S. colleges and universities are preparing for end-of-year commencement ceremonies with a unique challenge: providing safety for graduates while honoring the free speech rights of students involved in protests over the Israel-Hamas war. (Ned Gerard/Hearst Connecticut Media via AP)

FILE - Demonstrators at the University of Michigan Diag protest the university's draft Disruptive Activity Policy on Thursday, April 4, 2024, in Ann Arbor. U.S. colleges and universities are preparing for end-of-year commencement ceremonies with a unique challenge: providing safety for graduates while honoring the free speech rights of students involved in protests over the Israel-Hamas war. (Zena Issa/Michigan Public Radio via AP, File)

Massachusetts Institute of Technology student Isa Liggans, of Odenton, Md., front left, takes part in Muslim prayer with others Monday, April 22, 2024, at an encampment of tents at MIT, in Cambridge, Mass. Students at MIT set up the encampment of tents on campus to protest what they said was MIT's failure to call for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza and to cut ties to Israel's military. U.S. colleges and universities are preparing for end-of-year commencement ceremonies with a unique challenge: providing safety for graduates while honoring the free speech rights of students involved in protests over the Israel-Hamas war. (AP Photo/Steven Senne)

NYPD officers from the Strategic Response Group form a wall of protection around Deputy Commissioner of Legal Matters Michael Gerber and Deputy Commissioner of Operations Kay Daughtry, not in the picture, during a press conference regarding the ongoing pro-Palestinians protest encampment at Columbia University in New York on Monday, April 22, 2024. U.S. colleges and universities are preparing for end-of-year commencement ceremonies with a unique challenge: providing safety for graduates while honoring the free speech rights of students involved in protests over the Israel-Hamas war. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

A sign sits erected at the pro-Palestinian demonstration encampment at Columbia University in New York, Monday, April 22, 2024. U.S. colleges and universities are preparing for end-of-year commencement ceremonies with a unique challenge: providing safety for graduates while honoring the free speech rights of students involved in protests over the Israel-Hamas war. (AP Photo/Stefan Jeremiah)

FILE - Students protest a canceled commencement speech by its 2024 valedictorian who has publicly supported Palestinians on the campus of University of Southern California on Thursday, April 18, 2024. U.S. colleges and universities are preparing for end-of-year commencement ceremonies with a unique challenge: providing safety for graduates while honoring the free speech rights of students involved in protests over the Israel-Hamas war. (AP Photo/Damian Dovarganes, File)

WASHINGTON (AP) — A top U.N. official said Friday that hard-hit northern Gaza was now in “full-blown famine" after more than six months of war between Israel and Hamas and severe Israeli restrictions on food deliveries to the Palestinian territory.

Cindy McCain, the American director of the U.N. World Food Program, became the most prominent international official so far to declare that trapped civilians in the most cut-off part of Gaza had gone over the brink into famine.

“It’s horror," McCain told NBC's “Meet the Press” in an interview to air Sunday. “There is famine — full-blown famine — in the north, and it’s moving its way south."

She said a cease-fire and a greatly increased flow of aid through land and sea routes was essential to confronting the growing humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza, home to 2.3 million people.

There was no immediate comment from Israel, which controls entrance into Gaza and says it is beginning to allow in more food and other humanitarian aid through land crossings.

The panel that serves as the internationally recognized monitor for food crises said earlier this year that northern Gaza was on the brink of famine and likely to experience it this month. The next update will not come before this summer.

One of the U.S. Agency for International Development's humanitarian officials in Gaza told The Associated Press that on-the-ground preparations for a new U.S.-led sea route were on track to bring in more food — including treatment for hundreds of thousands of starving children — by early or mid-May. That's when the American military expects to finish building a floating pier to receive the shipments.

Ramping up the delivery of aid on the planned U.S.-backed sea route will be gradual as aid groups test the distribution and security arrangements for relief workers, the USAID official said.

The official spoke on condition of anonymity over security concerns for work done in a conflict zone. They were some of the agency’s first comments on the status of preparations for the Biden administration’s $320 million Gaza pier project, for which USAID is helping coordinate on-the-ground security and distribution.

At a factory in rural Georgia on Friday, USAID Administrator Samantha Power pointed to the food crises in Gaza and other parts of the world as she announced a $200 million investment aimed at increasing production of emergency nutritional paste for starving children under 5.

Power spoke to factory workers, peanut farmers and local dignitaries sitting among pallets of the paste at the Mana nonprofit in Fitzgerald. It is one of two factories in the U.S. that produces the nutritional food, which is used in clinical settings and made from ground peanuts, powdered milk, sugar and oil, ready to eat in plastic pouches resembling large ketchup packets.

“This effort, this vision meets the moment,” Power said. "And it could not be more timely, more necessary or more important.”

Under pressure from the U.S. and others, Israeli officials in recent weeks have begun slowly reopening some border crossings for relief shipments.

But aid coming through the sea route, once it's operational, still will serve only a fraction — half a million people — of those who need help in Gaza. Aid organizations including USAID stress that getting more aid through border crossings is essential to staving off famine.

Children under 5 are among the first to die when wars, droughts or other disasters curtail food. Hospital officials in northern Gaza reported the first deaths from hunger in early March and said most of the dead were children.

Power said the U.N. has called for 400 metric tons of the nutritional paste “in light of the severe hunger that is pervading across Gaza right now, and the severe, acute humanitarian crisis.” USAID expects to provide a quarter of that, she said.

Globally, she said at the Georgia factory, the treatment made there “will save untold lives, millions of lives.”

USAID is coordinating with the World Food Program and other humanitarian partners and governments on security and distribution for the pier project, while U.S. military forces finish building it. President Joe Biden, under pressure to do more to ease the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza as the U.S. provides military support for Israel, announced the project in early March.

U.S. Central Command said in a statement Friday that offshore assembly of the floating pier has been temporarily paused due to high winds and sea swells, which caused unsafe conditions for soldiers. The partially built pier and the military vessels involved have gone to Israel's Port of Ashdod, where the work will continue.

A U.S. official said the high seas will delay the installation for several days, possibly until later next week. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss operation details, said the pause could last longer if the bad weather continues because military personnel and divers have to get into the water for the final installation.

The struggles this week with the first aid delivery through a newly reopened land corridor into north Gaza underscored the uncertainty about security and the danger still facing relief workers. Israeli settlers blocked the convoy before it crossed Wednesday. Once inside Gaza, the convoy was commandeered by Hamas militants, before U.N. officials reclaimed it.

In Gaza, the nutritional treatment for starving children is most urgently needed in the northern part of the Palestinian territory. Civilians have been cut off from most aid supplies, bombarded by Israeli airstrikes and driven into hiding by fighting.

Acute malnutrition rates there among children under 5 have surged from 1% before the war to 30% five months later, the USAID official said. The official called it the fastest such climb in hunger in recent history, more than in grave conflicts and food shortages in Somalia or South Sudan.

One of the few medical facilities still operating in northern Gaza, Kamal Adwan hospital, is besieged by parents bringing in thousands of children with malnutrition for treatment, the official said. Aid officials believe many more starving children remain unseen and in need, with families unable to bring them through fighting and checkpoints for care.

Saving the gravely malnourished children in particular requires both greatly increased deliveries of aid and sustained calm in fighting, the official said, so that aid workers can set up treatment facilities around the territory and families can safely bring children in for the sustained treatment needed.

Bynum reported from Fitzgerald, Georgia. Associated Press writers Lolita C. Baldor in Washington and Edith M. Lederer at the United Nations contributed.

USAID Administrator Samantha Power speaks with U.S. Rep. Austin Scott on Friday, May 3, 2024, during a tour of the factory where the nonprofit Mana produces emergency nutritional aid in Fizgerald, Ga. Power announced USAID is investing $200 million in emergency food aid for children in Gaza, Sudan and other countries where conflict has driven up need. AP Photo by Russ Bynum Sent from my iPhone

USAID Administrator Samantha Power talks with a worker Friday, May 3, 2024, during a tour of the factory where the nonprofit Mana makes emergency nutritional aid in Fitzgerald, Georgia. Power announced USAID is investing $200 million in emergency nutritional treatment for starving children as conflicts in Gaza, Sudan and elsewhere drive up the need. (AP Photo/Russ Bynum)

USAID Administrator Samantha Power talks with Mana operations director Harry Broughton during a tour of its factory in Fitzgerald, Ga., that produces emergency nutritional aid for starving children, on Friday, May 3, 2024. Power announced USAID is investing $200 million to increase nutritional aid for starving children in Gaza, Sudan and other places where conflict has increased needs. (AP Photo/Russ Bynum)

In this image provided by the U.S. Army, soldiers assigned to the 7th Transportation Brigade (Expeditionary) and sailors attached to the MV Roy P. Benavidez assemble the Roll-On, Roll-Off Distribution Facility (RRDF), or floating pier, off the shore of Gaza on April 26, 2024. The U.S. expects to have on-the-ground arrangements in Gaza ready for humanitarian workers to start delivering aid this month via a new U.S.-backed sea route for Gaza aid. An official with the U.S. Agency for International Development tells the AP that humanitarian groups expect to have their part of preparations complete by early to mid-month. (U.S. Army via AP)