International
Columbia University president resigns after Gaza protests turmoil
Columbia University president resigns after Gaza protests turmoil
Columbia University President Minouche Shafik has resigned from her position amid a free speech debate over campus protests of the war in Gaza.
Ms Shafik’s resignation comes only a year after she took the position at the private Ivy League university in New York City, and just a few weeks before the autumn semester is due to begin.
Ms Shafik is now the third president of an Ivy League university to resign over her handling of Gaza war protests.
In April, Ms Shafik authorised New York Police Department officers to swarm the campus, a controversial decision that led to the arrests of about 100 students who were occupying a university building.
The episode marked the first time that mass arrests had been made on Columbia’s campus since Vietnam War protests more than five decades ago.
The move inflamed other protests at dozens of colleges across the United States and Canada.
In an email to students and faculty on Wednesday, Ms Shafik wrote that she has overseen a “period of turmoil where it has been difficult to overcome divergent views across our community”.
“This period has taken a considerable toll on my family, as it has for others in our community.”
Katrina Armstrong, chief executive officer of the Columbia University Irving Medical Center, will serve as the interim president.
“Over the summer, I have been able to reflect and have decided that my moving on at this point would best enable Columbia to traverse the challenges ahead,” Ms Shafik wrote in her letter.
“I have tried to navigate a path that upholds academic principles and treats everyone with fairness and compassion,” she continued.
“It has been distressing – for the community, for me as president and on a personal level – to find myself, colleagues, and students the subject of threats and abuse.”
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Students’ anger over how Israel is fighting its war against Hamas has raised fraught questions for university leaders, who are already struggling with combustive campus debates around what is happening in the Middle East.
US college campuses have been a flashpoint for Gaza war protests since Hamas attacked Israel on 7 October, and Israel’s subsequent incursion into the Gaza Strip.
The leaders of Harvard University, University of Pennsylvania (UPenn) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology all testified before the House Committee on Education and the Workforce.
The presidents of Harvard and UPenn ultimately resigned amid backlash over their handling of campus protests and congressional testimony, including their refusal to say that calling for the deaths of Jews could violate university policy.
In April, Ms Shafik defended her institution’s efforts to tackle antisemitism to Congress, saying that there had been a rise in such hatred on campus and the college was working to protect students.
Ms Shafik is a highly-respected Egyptian-born economist who formerly worked for the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund and the Bank of England.
She also previously served as president of the London School of Economics.
Ms Shafik, who received a damehood in 2015, was previously considered to be on the shortlist for the Bank of England governor, the BBC reported in 2019.
Her letter adds that she has been asked by the UK Foreign Secretary to lead a “review of the government’s approach to international development and how to improve capability”.
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The decision, she wrote, “enables me to return to the House of Lords and to reengage with the important legislative agenda put forth by the new UK government”.
Her resignation comes after three Columbia University deans also resigned last week, after text messages showed the group used “antisemitic tropes”, according to a statement by Ms Shafik, while discussing Jewish students.
The text exchanges were originally published by the Republican-led House Committee on Education and the Workforce in early July.
Congresswoman Virginia Foxx, the chairwoman of the congressional committee, praised the decision by the three administrators to resign.
“About time. Actions have consequences,” she said in a statement last Thursday, adding that the decision should have been made “months ago”.
“Instead, the University continues to send mixed signals,” she continued, adding that the administration is allowing a dean who has not resigned to “slide under the radar with no real consequences”.
Universities around the US are preparing for the academic year to begin in the next several weeks, as the conflict in Gaza continues.
On Tuesday, a judge in California ruled that UCLA – which saw violent protests break out on campus in May – must prevent protesters from blocking Jewish students from campus facilities.
Judge Mark Scarsi ruled that protesters had “established checkpoints and required passers-by to wear a specific wristband to cross them”, and blocking “people who supported the existence of the state of Israel”.
“Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith,” Judge Scarsi wrote in the order. “This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating.”
The university has blamed outside agitators for the checkpoints and said it objected to the ruling.
Hamas-led gunmen killed about 1,200 people in an attack on Israel on 7 October, taking 251 others back to Gaza as hostages.
That attack triggered a massive Israeli military offensive against Gaza and the current war.
At least 39,897 Palestinians have been killed in the Israeli campaign, according to Gaza’s Hamas-run health ministry.
Columbia University president resigns after Gaza protests turmoil
BBC
International
Israel ejects Gaza hospital, detains medical personnel
Israel ejects Gaza hospital, detains medical personnel
The last major functioning hospital in northern Gaza was forcibly evacuated by the Israeli military on Friday after dozens of people were reportedly killed in Israeli strikes targeting the area.
Medical staff, including the director of the Kamal Adwan Hospital, have also been detained, Gaza health officials said on Saturday.
The hospital director, Dr Hussam Abu Safiya, was among the first to report that about 50 people had been killed in Israeli air strikes targeting the vicinity of the hospital on Friday.
The IDF had said it was carrying out an operation in the area, alleging the hospital was a “Hamas terrorist stronghold”.
On Friday, patients at the hospital were forcibly moved to the nearby Indonesian Hospital which doctors warn is damaged and unsuitable due to a lack of power generators and water.
Eid Sabbah, head of the nursing department at Kamal Adwan, told the BBC the military had ordered the evacuation around 07:00 on Friday, giving the hospital about 15 minutes to move patients and staff into the courtyard.
Israeli troops then entered the hospital and removed the remaining patients, he said.
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The IDF said it had “facilitated the secure evacuation of civilians, patients and medical personnel” before beginning the operation.
Seriously ill patients were moved to the nearby Indonesian Hospital, itself evacuated earlier in the week, which medics have described as non-functional.
“You can’t call it a hospital, it’s more of a shelter. It’s not equipped for patients,” Gaza’s deputy minister of health, Dr Abu-Al Rish, told the BBC on Friday.
Dr Sabbah, from Kamal Adwan Hospital, said: “It’s dangerous because there are patients in the ICU department in a coma and in need of ventilation machines and moving them will put them in danger.”
He had said critically ill patients needed to be moved in specialised vehicles.
The World Health Organization said the raid “has put this last major health facility in north Gaza out of service”.
“Initial reports indicate that some key departments were severely burnt and destroyed during the raid,” it posted on X on Friday.
Nadav Shoshani, international spokesman for the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), said in a post on Friday evening on X that a “small fire broke out in an empty building inside the hospital that is under control”.
This was when IDF troops were not inside the hospital, he said, adding that “after preliminary examination, no connection was found between IDF activity to the fire”.
The director of Kamal Adwan hospital had said on Friday that approximately 50 people had been killed, including five medical staff, in a series of Israeli air strikes targeting the vicinity of the hospital.
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The statement from Dr Hussam Abu Safiya said a building opposite the hospital was targeted by Israeli warplanes, leading to the death of a paediatrician and a lab technician, as well as their families.
He said a third staff member who worked as a maintenance technician was targeted and killed as he rushed to the scene of the first strike.
Two of the hospital’s paramedics were 500m (1,640ft) away from the hospital when they were targeted and killed by another strike, the statement continued, with their bodies remaining in the street with no-one able to reach them.
The Israeli military said on Friday morning that it was “unaware of strikes in the area of Kamal Adwan hospital” and was looking into the reports that staff had been killed.
Kamal Adwan hospital in Beit Lahia has been under a tightening Israeli blockade imposed on parts of northern Gaza since October, when the military said it had launched an offensive to stop Hamas from regrouping there.
The UN has said the area is under a “near-total siege” as the Israeli military heavily restricts access of aid deliveries to an area where an estimated 10,000 to 15,000 people remain.
In recent days, the hospital’s administrators have issued desperate pleas appealing to be protected, as they say the facility has become a regular target for Israeli shelling and explosives.
Oxfam said that attempts by aid agencies to deliver supplies to the area since October had been unsuccessful because of “deliberate delays and systematic obstructions” by the Israeli military.
Additional reporting by Shaimaa Khalil
Israel ejects Gaza hospital, detains medical personnel
BBC
International
Trump asks Supreme Court to suspend law for TikTok ban
Trump asks Supreme Court to suspend law for TikTok ban
US President-elect Donald Trump filed a brief Friday urging the Supreme Court to pause a law that would ban TikTok the day before his January 20 inauguration if it is not sold by its Chinese owner ByteDance.
“In light of the novelty and difficulty of this case, the court should consider staying the statutory deadline to grant more breathing space to address these issues,” Trump’s legal team wrote, to give him “the opportunity to pursue a political resolution.”
Trump was fiercely opposed to TikTok during his 2017-21 first term, and tried in vain to ban the video app on national security grounds.
The Republican voiced concerns — echoed by political rivals — that the Chinese government might tap into US TikTok users’ data or manipulate what they see on the platform.
US officials had also voiced alarm over the popularity of the video-sharing app with young people, alleging that its parent company is subservient to Beijing and that the app is used to spread propaganda, claims denied by the company and the Chinese government.
Trump called for a US company to buy TikTok, with the government sharing in the sale price, and his successor Joe Biden went one stage further — signing a law to ban the app for the same reasons.
– Reversing course –
Trump has now, however, reversed course.
At a press conference last week, Trump said he has “a warm spot” for TikTok and that his administration would take a look at the app and the potential ban.
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Earlier this month, the president-elect met with TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew at his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida.
Recently, Trump told Bloomberg he had changed his mind about the app: “Now (that) I’m thinking about it, I’m for TikTok, because you need competition.”
“If you don’t have TikTok, you have Facebook and Instagram — and that’s, you know, that’s Zuckerberg.”
International
Romeo and Juliet actress Olivia Hussey dies at 73
Romeo and Juliet actress Olivia Hussey dies at 73
Actress Olivia Hussey, who shot to international prominence as a teenager for her role in the acclaimed 1968 film version of Romeo and Juliet, has died aged 73.
The Argentinian-born actress, who grew up in London, died on Friday surrounded by her loved ones, a statement posted on her Instagram said.
Hussey won the best new actress Golden Globe for her part as Juliet, but decades later she sued Paramount Pictures for sexual abuse as she was aged just 15 when she filmed the movie’s nude scene.
Her other most notable screen role was as Mary, mother of Jesus, in 1977 TV miniseries Jesus of Nazareth.
“As we grieve this immense loss, we also celebrate Olivia’s enduring impact on our lives and the industry,” the statement said.
Hussey was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1951, before moving to London aged seven and studying at the Italia Conti Academy drama school.
1968’s Romeo and Juliet was nominated for best picture and director Oscars
She was 15 when Romeo and Juliet director Franco Zeffirelli discovered her onstage, playing opposite Vanessa Redgrave in the play The Prime of Miss Joan Brodie
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Zeffirelli was looking for someone who was young enough to be a convincing Juliet in what he intended to be the definitive cinematic version of the Shakespeare play.
He cast Hussey alongisde British 16-year-old Leonard Whiting as Romeo in the film.
The film was nominated for an Oscar for best picture and director. Hussey missed out on an Oscar nomination herself in a strong year in which Barbra Streisand won the main award for Funny Girl.
But at that year’s Golden Globes Hussey won the award for best new star.
Decades later, she and Whiting sued Paramount Pictures alleging Zeffirelli – who died in 2019 – had encouraged them to film nude scenes despite previous assurances they would not have to.
The pair sought damages of more than $500m (£417m), based on suffering they said they had experienced and the revenue brought in by the film since its release.
But last year a judge dismissed the case, finding the scene was not “sufficiently sexually suggestive”.
In 1977, Hussey had reunited with Zeffirelli for Jesus of Nazareth to play the Virgin Mary, before appearing in Death on the Nile a year later based on Agatha Christie’s novel.
Her roles in early slasher film Black Christmas (1974) and TV film Psycho IV: The Beginning earned her recognition as a scream queen. In the latter, she p[layed Norman Bates’s mother in a prequel storyline.
In later years she also took on work as a voice actress, appearing frequently in video games.
But she did have one final reunion with her former Romeo – as she and Whiting appeared together in the 2015 British film Social Suicide, which was loosely based on Romeo and Juliet, albeit set in the social media era.
Romeo and Juliet actress Olivia Hussey dies at 73
BBC
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