Category World News

According to separate reports, Harvard University students and staff have experienced anti-Semitism and Islamophobia as a result of the deeply polarized environment at one of the nation’s top universities.

Following the formation of separate task forces to combat anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim sentiments last year amid campus protests over Israel’s war on Gaza, reports were released on Tuesday.

Additionally, Trump claims that Harvard’s decision to freeze more than $2 billion in funding for the university was prompted by widespread anti-Semitism on campus. The president’s administration also is at odds with Trump.

According to Harvard President Alan Garber, members of the Jewish, Israeli, and Zionist communities reported hiding “overt markers of their identities to avoid confrontation,” while Muslim, Arab, and Palestinian community members described feeling “judged, misrepresented, and silenced.”

According to Garber, “particularly when given the anonymity and distance that social media offers,” the reported willingness of some students to treat one another with disdain rather than sympathy, and to be critical and ostracized.

Some students reported that their peers were pushing them away from campus life because of who they are or what they believe, thereby eroding our sense of community.

In its report, the task force on preventing anti-Semitism and anti-Israeli bias claimed bias had been “fomented, practiced, and tolerated” at Harvard and more broadly in academia.

According to the task force, 39 percent of Jewish students said they felt at home at the university, while 26 percent of them said they felt unsafe online.

According to the task force, nearly 60% of Jewish students said they had “discrimination, stereotyping, or negative bias” because of their opinions, and only 25% of them believed there was no “academic or professional penalty” for expressing their opinions.

The task force quoted an unnamed Israeli Arab student who claimed, “get used to social discrimination” from their first day on campus, one of the other instances of bias in the report.

“People refusing to speak with you.” not even attempting to be nice. Some people act nice and end the conversation when they learn that they are Israeli, and then never speak to [me] again,” the student was quoted as saying by the newspaper.

Similar to the anti-Muslim, anti-Arab, and anti-Palestinian biases that the task force identified on campus, describing a “deep-seated sense of fear” among students and a “uncertainty, abandonment, threat, and isolation” state.

According to the task force, “Muslim women who wear the hijab and pro-Palestinian students who wear keffiyehs spoke about being subjected to verbal harassment, being called “terrorists,” and even being spat upon.”

The topic of doxxing was “particularly highlighted as a significant concern that affects both current career prospects and physical safety,” it continued, referring to the practice of sharing a person’s personal or identifiable information online.

Nearly half of the Muslim students and staff surveyed felt physically unsafe on campus, and 92 percent of them felt they would face professional or academic sanctions for speaking out about their political views.

An unnamed student was quoted as saying, “As Muslims students we have been living in constant fear.”

I can’t help but think Harvard would have done more to stop it if there had been antisemitic trucks flying over campus and planes flying over with antisemitic slogans. “There have been trucks driving around campus for months, displaying the faces of Muslim students.

Both task forces put forth a number of suggestions for addressing bias on campus, including expanding access to legal services to combat doxxing and placing a premium on students who support open inquiry.

According to Garber, the university will make additional efforts to make sure it is a place where “ideas are welcomed, entertained, and contested in the spirit of seeking truth” and “mutual respect is the norm.”

Migrants and asylum seekers who have crossed into a newly established military zone along the nation’s border with Mexico have their first criminal prosecutions in the US.

According to court filings made on Monday and reviewed by US media the day after, approximately 28 people have been accused of breaking security laws for entering the military zone.

Although a misdemeanor, that charge could result in even worse penalties. According to the US Code, breaking security laws can result in fines of up to $100, 000 for individuals or a year in prison, or both.

The consequences of unlawful entry into the US are typically less severe. Critics, however, warn of the growing militarisation of the southern border region that includes Mexico as President Donald Trump’s administration intensifies its immigration crackdown.

The “New Mexico National Defense Area” was established on April 18 to facilitate the new charges.

Fort Huachuca, an Army installation that was previously owned by the Department of the Interior, was ordered by the Department of Defense to include 109, 651 acres (44, 400 hectares) of federal land.

A border land border area near Mexico becomes a US military zone as a result of the transfer’s three-year effective period. Trespassing is a serious offense punishable by serious consequences. This military area notably overlaps with the routes that illegal immigrants and asylum seekers use to enter the US without proper paperwork.

Despite US and international law, which protects the right to flee persecution, successive presidential administrations have attempted to impose a cap on asylum seekers entering the country outside of authorized ports of entry.

One of the deterrents has been the threat of more severe penalties.

Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth visited the recently established military zone last week and praised the strip as a new front against an “invasion” of migrants and asylum seekers.

“This is a piece of government property.” Federal property is present in the National Defense Area, which was formerly known as the Fort Huachuca annex zone. Hegseth said any illegal entry into that area would mean entering a military base, which is a federally protected area.

You could be held in custody. You will be held in custody. Border patrol and US troops working together will interdict you.

An estimated 11, 900 soldiers have been stationed at the border as a result of the Trump administration’s increase in troops since January.

Hegseth revealed during his visit that he intends to establish additional military berths along the US border to protect against illegal immigration. He emphasized the dangers of lengthy prison sentences and complex criminal prosecutions.

“You will be monitored if you are a crossing without permission.” US soldiers will be in custody with you. He predicted that you would be temporarily detained and turned over to Customs and Border Patrol.

The government’s property is destroyed if you have jumped over or cut through a fence. Like you would any other military base, you are evading law enforcement if you have attempted to evade. When you add up the charges against you for misdemeanors and felonies, you could face a sentence of up to 10 years in prison.

The first group to pass through the military zone, according to him, is “can’t wait to prosecute” New Mexico’s attorney general.

The new tactic is opposed by organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico, which claim military deployments to address civil offenses pose a risk to human rights.

The expansion of military detention options in the “New Mexico National Defence Area” or “border buffer zone” is a dangerous omission from the constitutional principle that the military should not be policing civilians, according to senior staff attorney Rebecca Sheff of the organization.

Beyond the government’s efforts to limit irregular immigration, Sheff added, there might be unintended effects.

Cuba’s highest court has ordered two prominent dissidents to be taken back into custody on the basis that both had separately violated the terms of their parole.

On Tuesday, the Tribunal Supremo Popular – sometimes translated as the People’s Supreme Court – authorised the arrests of Jose Daniel Ferrer and Felix Navarro.

“In addition to failing to comply with the terms of their parole, [Ferrer and Navarro] are people who publicly call for disorder and disrespect for authorities in their social and online environments and maintain public ties with the head of the United States embassy,” said Maricela Sosa, the court’s vice president.

Both men had been released earlier this year as part of a deal mediated by the late Pope Francis and the Catholic Church. As part of the agreement, Democrat Joe Biden, the outgoing United States president, briefly removed Cuba from a list of state sponsors of terrorism.

Biden’s decision was quickly reversed as Republican Donald Trump replaced him as president on January 20. The very next day, Trump ordered Cuba to be restored to the list, which restricts foreign assistance, defence sales and other financial interactions with designated countries.

Still, by March, Cuba had announced it had completed its end of the bargain, releasing a total of 553 people. While critics of the Cuban government have called them “political prisoners”, Havana maintained that the released people represented “diverse crimes”.

On Tuesday, the US Department of State issued a statement condemning the latest arrests, which also reportedly swept up Ferrer’s wife and child.

“The U.S. strongly condemns the brutal treatment and unjust detention of Cuban patriots [Ferrer], his wife and son, as well as Felix Navarro and several other pro-democracy activists,” it said in a social media post.

It added that the US Embassy in Havana “will continue meeting with Cubans who stand up for their fundamental rights and freedoms”.

One of the most prominent critics of the prisoner release was Ferrer himself. A fisherman and founder of the Patriotic Union of Cuba (UNPACU), Ferrer has advocated for democratic reforms on the island, leading to clashes with Havana’s community government.

In an interview with The New York Times following his release in January, Ferrer framed the Vatican-brokered deal as a publicity stunt for the Cuban government.

“In a gesture of supposed good will, they free a number of people who should never have been jailed, and then they want in exchange for that for the Church and the American government to make concessions,” Ferrer said.

“They are applauded, and the world sees that they are so generous.”

Ferrer had publicly refused to accept the conditions of his release, including mandatory court appearances, on the basis that he should have never been imprisoned in the first place.

Both he and Navarro had been arrested before, beginning in 2003 with an incident known as the Black Spring. That saw 75 dissidents be swept into detention based on accusations they were colluding with the US government.

Ferrer had also been arrested in 2019 on allegations he had kidnapped and assaulted a man, a charge he denies.

Then, in 2021, Cuba convulsed with mass protests at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, as basic supplies like food and medicine grew scarce. Many protesters blamed the Cuban government for the shortages and denounced the limits to their civil liberties.

Cuba – which has long blamed US sanctions for the island’s economic distress – answered the demonstrations with a police crackdown, resulting in widespread arrests. Navarro and Ferrer were among those detained, until their release in January of this year.

In a series of social media posts, Ferrer’s sister Ana Belkis Ferrer Garcia announced he had been taken back into custody early on Tuesday morning. Her brother had recently been running a soup kitchen in the city of Santiago de Cuba.

She noted that UNPACU’s headquarters were “looted” and multiple activists were arrested, along with Ferrer’s wife Nelva Ismarays Ortega Tamayo and their son Daniel Jose.

“All of them were taken to an unknown location,” Ferrer Garcia wrote on X. “Miserable and cowardly criminal tyrants! We demand their immediate release and that of all detainees and political prisoners.”

Later, she added that Ortega Tamayo and Ferrer’s son were released “after being held for several hours”.

Human rights organisations also offered condemnations of Ferrer’s and Navarro’s arrests. The Cuban Observatory of Human Rights, a nonprofit based in Spain, tied the incident to the death of Pope Francis, who passed away at age 88 on April 21.

“Raul Castro and Miguel Diaz-Canel have not waited even 72 hours after Francis’s burial to undo their commitments,” the observatory said in a statement, naming Cuba’s former and present president, respectively.