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CMC ranked 1st among colleges in student comfort expressing ideas. Photo Credit: WordPress This morning, the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) published their 2025 College Free Speech Rankings . After plummeting  to 73rd in the rankings in 2024, Claremont McKenna College (CMC) regained their 2023 ranking of 6th in the country for free speech. The rankings leverage FIRE’s college speech code ratings  as well as College Pulse survey data  from 57,609 students. For the past several years, FIRE has granted  CMC a “Green light” speech code rating, meaning that the college’s policies “nominally protect free speech.” The data include 103 respondents from CMC. Across colleges, CMC ranked 1st in student comfort expressing ideas, 100th in willingness to disrupt campus speaking events, 44th in openness to difficult conversations, 9th in perceived administrative support for free speech, 3rd in tolerance for controversial speakers, and 10th in willingness to self-censor. According to the data, CMC has about 5 students who identify as liberal for every student who identifies as conservative, which is in line with historical data . FIRE also notes that since 2019, CMC administrators have “sanctioned” 3 scholars for speech-related controversies. According to FIRE’s Scholars Under Fire Database , Professors Chris Nadon, Eva Revesz, and Robert Faggen all received administrative backlash for use of the n-word in their classrooms. Other Claremont Colleges fared much worse in the rankings, with Scripps ranked 123rd, Harvey Mudd ranked 153rd, Pitzer ranked 180th, and Pomona ranked 242nd.

BY HENRY LONG IMAGE COURTESY OF THE MIAMI HERALD Throughout his term as Florida governor, Ron DeSantis has signed several K-12 public education reforms into law. The Parental Rights in Education Act , known colloquially as the Don’t Say Gay Bill, grants parents more power to prevent their children from learning about certain topics in school. The Individual Freedom Act , also known as the Stop the Wrongs to Our Kids and Employees (W.O.K.E) Act, prohibits the teaching of specific ideas related to race. Another law adjusts the requirements for the acceptance and retention of books in school libraries. Republican governors across the country are taking similar steps to adjust K-12 public school curricula. As such, it might be enlightening to examine Supreme Court precedent related to these kinds of K-12 public education cases. The Supreme Court has generally recognized that state and local authorities have broad discretion over educational curriculum—within certain constitutional limits. Some of the earliest Supreme Court education cases reveal these limits. In Meyer v. Nebraska (1923) and Bartels v. Iowa (1923) , the Supreme Court ruled that state laws proscribing the teaching of foreign languages were unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Due Process Clause. According to the Court in Meyer, “the purpose of the legislation was to promote civic development by inhibiting training and education of the immature in foreign tongues and ideals before they could learn English and acquire American ideals.” In his majority opinion, while Justice McReynolds did not question “the State’s power to prescribe a curriculum,” he wrote that “no emergency has arisen which renders knowledge by a child of some language other than English so clearly harmful as to justify its inhibition.” The Court has also been clear that a state’s jurisdiction over the curriculum can be limited on Establishment Clause grounds. In Epperson v. Arkansas (1968) , the Court found an Arkansas statute prohibiting the teaching of evolution to be unconstitutional under the First Amendment since the law was found to be religiously motivated. On behalf of the majority, Justice Fortas wrote that “a State’s right to prescribe the public school curriculum does not include the right to prohibit teaching a scientific theory or doctrine for reasons that run counter to the principles of the First Amendment.” The Court also ruled in Edwards v. Aguillard (1987) that a Louisiana law prohibiting the teaching of evolution unless accompanied by the teaching of creationism was unconstitutional under the First Amendment. Justice Brennan, on behalf of the majority, wrote that “because the primary purpose of the Creationism Act is to endorse a particular religious doctrine, the Act furthers religion in violation of the Establishment Clause.” In a concurrence, Justice Powell clarified that “nothing in the Court's opinion diminishes the traditionally broad discretion accorded state and local school officials in the selection of the public school curriculum.” The Supreme Court has also identified limits to compulsory student speech under the First Amendment. While the Court found that a compulsory pledge of allegiance was constitutionally acceptable in Minersville School District v. Gobitis (1940) , they reversed their decision just three years later in West Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette (1943) . In the latter case, Justice Jackson, on behalf of the majority, wrote that “Boards of Education . . . have, of course, important, delicate, and highly discretionary functions, but none that they may not perform within the limits of the Bill of Rights.” Thus, the Court has repeatedly affirmed the broad discretion of state and local authorities in matters of educational curricula—provided that their discretion remains within constitutional bounds. Supreme Court precedent on the removal of books from school libraries is more complicated. The Court has only faced one case on this issue— Board of Education, Island Trees Union Free School District No. 26 v. Pico (1982) . In the case, the school board removed books it characterized as “anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-Sem[i]tic, and just plain filthy.” The final ruling was messy—the Court only came to a plurality and not a majority decision. The plurality, led by Justice Brennan, acknowledged that while schools have broad discretion over the acquisition of new library books, “the First Amendment imposes limitations upon a local school board’s exercise of its discretion to remove books from high school and junior high school libraries.” While schools could remove books from libraries if they were “pervasively vulgar” or of questionable “educational suitability,” the plurality held that schools could not remove books in a “narrowly partisan or political manner.” The plurality based their conclusion on a “right to receive ideas.” Justice Blackmun, in his partial concurrence, denies that students have any such right. Justice White’s partial concurrence sided with the majority on the ruling but dismissed its constitutional pontification as unnecessary. Regardless of these disagreements, however, Pico demonstrates that schools’ power to remove books is not unlimited. Supreme Court precedent has repeatedly affirmed the discretionary authority of state and local officials to dictate K-12 public school curricula. These precedents mean that as governor, DeSantis has broad leeway to mandate the teaching of certain topics and bar the teaching of others in a K-12 public school classroom. That said, there are limits to this authority. Opponents of DeSantis’s laws have already filed and may continue to file lawsuits under the First and Fourteenth Amendments, and others may file suits challenging DeSantis’s laws as unconstitutionally vague . The courts have already blocked the portions of the Stop W.O.K.E. Act that apply to public colleges and universities. Many of the legal decisions will hinge on how the laws are enforced—both by DeSantis’s Department of Education and by teachers in the classroom. If the application of the laws violates students’ due process rights, limits student expression of certain viewpoints, or is conducted in a narrowly partisan manner, courts might object on constitutional grounds. Ultimately, while DeSantis’s K-12 education laws are no doubt controversial, it remains to be seen whether they will be found unconstitutional.

In 2018, the CMC Board of Trustees published a memo detailing their Open Academy commitments to “freedom of expression, viewpoint diversity, and effective dialogue.” As part of this commitment, the Board vowed to strengthen “student recruiting, faculty and staff hiring, curricular offerings and syllabi choices, invited speakers and engaged formats at the Athenaeum that both bring and take full advantage of viewpoint diversity (whether it derives from experience or belief systems or any combination of the two).” Put simply, the Board committed to recruiting more ideologically diverse students and faculty. The question is: does the data reflect the Board’s commitment to viewpoint diversity? CMC’s oldest available viewpoint diversity data is from the Salvatori Center’s 2016 political attitudes survey, which was conducted 2 years before the 2018 Open Academy memo. According to the data, 53 percent of CMC students identified as liberal, 25 percent as moderate, and 21 percent as conservative, with a liberal-to-conservative ratio of 2.5 to 1. While not perfect, this breakdown reflects a fairly ideologically diverse student body for an elite liberal arts institution. Seven years later, despite the Board’s intervening commitment to viewpoint diversity, ideological diversity at CMC has declined sharply. According to 2024 survey data from CollegePulse and the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE), 58 percent of CMC students identify as liberal, 20 percent as moderate, and 12 percent as conservative, with a liberal-to-conservative ratio of almost 5 to 1. Over these seven years, the conservative population at CMC was cut in half . In the 2018 memo, the Board pronounced that “since its founding, CMC has been a leader in ideological diversity.” Now, if you compare CMC to its peer institutions, CMC is no longer a leader in this regard. In FIRE’s 2024 data, 6 out of the 21 predominantly liberal private colleges with enrollments under 2,000 students had a lower liberal-to-conservative ratio than CMC: Washington and Lee University, DePauw University, Amherst College, Davidson College, Connecticut College, and Berea College. While CMC is still more ideologically diverse than many of its peer institutions like Pomona and Pitzer, CMC is no longer a leader among liberal arts colleges in regard to its ideological diversity. This summer, I attended the Summer Honors Academy, an academic program at the American Enterprise Institute, which is nonpartisan but known as a center-right institution. According to the organization’s website , “the program gathers students from diverse ideological backgrounds for substantive dialogue and debate about the most pressing issues facing the country and world.” Every year, AEI publishes the political attitudes of its participants. In 2023, 48 percent of AEI students identified as conservative, 12 percent as moderate, and 30 percent as liberal, with a conservative-to-liberal ratio of just over 1.5. It’s disappointing that an ideologically oriented organization can attract a greater modicum of political diversity than CMC, a non-ideological liberal arts college purportedly committed to viewpoint diversity. As a disclaimer, given the small sample sizes, the possible response bias, and other difficulties, no political attitude survey of the CMC student body will be perfect. Some have critiqued FIRE’s methodology and rightly indicated the difficulty of drawing conclusions from the data. That said, the data seem to paint a bleak picture of the outlook for ideological diversity at CMC. Political ideology ratios are also a blunt metric for viewpoint diversity. Geographic, religious, socioeconomic, and ethnic diversity likewise enrich campus discourse. Regardless, political diversity is probably the best proxy we have for viewpoint diversity. If the Board truly values viewpoint diversity at CMC, they must renew their commitment and address the sharp decline in students who identify themselves as conservative. In the board’s own words, “freedom of expression without an equal commitment to viewpoint diversity is of little value.”

Claremont McKenna College, by virtue of its esteemed Robert Day School of Economics, renowned Soll Center for Student Opportunity, and prestigious Robert Day Scholars program, has garnered a reputation as perhaps the pre-professional liberal arts college. Is this a fundamental contradiction of terms? Could a CMC education be at odds with the liberal arts? First and foremost, what exactly are the liberal arts? The term “liberal” in “liberal arts” is derived from the Latin word libertas , which translates to “freedom.” But what kind of freedom? Historically, the “liberal arts” stood in contrast to the “servile arts,” which encompassed education in trades like masonry. Institutions focusing on vocational, trade, and technical education fall under the servile arts, as would pre-medicine and pre-law undergraduate programs. While the servile arts are important and often overlooked, their objectives and methodologies differ markedly from those of the liberal arts. In my Classical Philosophy course this semester, we read Plato’s Republic , a staple of most liberal arts curricula. In the book, Socrates describes three types of goods: those valuable for their own sake, those valuable for their consequences, and those valuable both for their own sake and for their consequences. Socrates places knowledge in the category of goods valuable for their own sake and for their consequences. While the servile arts are concerned with the aspects of knowledge that are useful for other purposes, the liberal arts are concerned with knowledge insofar as it is intrinsically valuable. This summer, I took a course about the liberal arts under (married) Baylor Professors David and Elizabeth Corey. In a 2013 article , David Corey explains that “only at a great liberal arts college do we find people engaged in history, science, physics, music, and art as ends in themselves , not as a prelude to a job or a stepping stone to ‘success.’” Elizabeth Corey likewise laments how modern colleges too often sideline liberal education to promote predetermined practical or political purposes. Under these premises, the CMC ethos seems somewhat anathema to the liberal arts. According to its mission, CMC seeks to “prepare its students for thoughtful and productive lives and responsible leadership,” suggesting that a CMC education is but a prelude for a future career rather than an end in itself. CMC’s unofficial motto is “learning for the sake of doing,” implying that the ultimate purpose of a CMC education is the future doing rather than the present learning. The unofficial motto also raises an important question: Learning for the sake of doing… what? A liberal arts education is meant to answer these questions—not assume them from the outset. Another professorial couple under whom I studied, Ben and Jenna Storey, argue that “many institutions today have forgotten that liberal education itself was meant to teach the art of choosing, to train the young to use reason to decide which endeavors merit the investment of their lives.” In other words, liberal arts education is not simply deliberation about means. If a student has a particular goal, call it X, a liberal arts education is not about showing the student the most effective way to accomplish X. Rather, a liberal arts education involves a deliberation about ends that will challenge the student to defend and possibly reevaluate her original goal X. This is why the growing lack of viewpoint diversity at CMC is so alarming. If most of a student’s peers have similar beliefs about value, purpose, and meaning, the student loses out on opportunities to learn about competing conceptions of the good life and might leave CMC with some of her most fundamental beliefs unchallenged. CMC’s official motto, “ crescit cum commercio civitas ,” translated as “civilization prospers with commerce,” runs counter to the liberal arts project in a more subtle way. Claremont Independent columnist Charlie Hatcher writes , “as a student seeking a liberal education, I oppose any effort for my college to take an institutional stance on political issues. To do so would be an offense to the university’s truth-seeking mission.” But that is exactly what CMC’s motto does: take an institutional stance on a political issue. The motto makes debatable claims about the nature of civilizational flourishing and the value of commerce. Regardless of whether you find this particular position objectionable, it seems an affront to the liberal arts for a college to assert it dogmatically. As someone who loves both the unique character of CMC and the special project of the liberal arts, the tension between the two is difficult for me to reconcile. And certainly, there are professors, students, and administrators at CMC who are genuinely interested in the liberal arts project. But I think that CMC education might be improved by an increased emphasis on the intrinsic rather than extrinsic value of knowledge and a greater willingness to ask and answer questions about fundamental values.

On April 5, 2024, about twenty students occupied  Pomona President Gabrielle Starr’s office in Alexander Hall. On April 6, 2017, exactly seven years before the final activists were released from the Claremont Jail, about 250 protestors obstructed  the entrance of Claremont McKenna College’s Athenaeum to prevent author Heather MacDonald from speaking. Campus protests like these are deeply American. Since the free speech movement  at Berkeley in the 1960s, students have leveraged free assembly to advocate for myriad causes, resorting to civil disobedience where protected expression has failed. But might protests distract from the university’s role as a truth-seeking institution and undermine liberal education? David Corey explains  that liberal education involves the study of subjects like “history, science, physics, music, and art as ends in themselves ” rather than as a means to some practical, professional , or political end. In other words, liberal education is liberal  because it is freed from practical concerns. Elizabeth Corey argues  that when universities prioritize activism, they regard education as “a vehicle for the intellectual and moral transformation of society” rather than as an end in itself. At such universities, she writes, “students arrive with views already formed, ready to get the diploma that will allow them to go out and act as agents of social change.” Two recent   op-eds  in The Student Life (TSL)  condemn Pomona for infringing activists’ “​​right to free speech.” Beyond conflating civil disobedience and protected speech, the authors misunderstand the purpose of campus free expression. Free expression commitments are meant to promote  the fearless pursuit of truth in the classroom—not to indulge megaphones and megalomania on the campus quad. For this reason, Claremont Colleges policies  include content-neutral restrictions on protests that are peaceful but disruptive to the academic mission of the colleges. Moreover, walk-outs and sit-ins are not particularly educational . Regardless of the activists’ cause, demonstrations that involve skipping class or occupying educational facilities distract from liberal education. Both TSL  writers object, instead claiming that activism is essential to liberal education. They insist that liberal education is vain if classroom learning is not applied into practical action through “praxis.” But the invocation of “praxis” betrays a fundamental misunderstanding of the liberal arts project. “Praxis,” originally a Greek term used by Aristotle, was co-opted by Karl Marx and later by Paulo Freire. Those who invoke praxis in relation to education reveal themselves—whether knowingly or unknowingly—as disciples of Freire. In his seminal work, Pedagogy of the Oppressed , Freire writes that “only men are  praxis, the praxis which, as the reflection and action which truly transform reality, is the source of knowledge and creation.” Since praxis continually shapes reality and is the source of knowledge, “education is thus constantly remade in the praxis.” Under this view, education is and only ought to be a medium for actively reshaping the world. Freire’s pedagogy aims at liberation—albeit a very different kind of liberation than the one offered by liberal education. Freire understands liberation as a continual struggle towards the removal of external limitations on human self-affirmation. According to Freire, nothing is constant except the eternal struggle for liberation. History has no final horizon, and there is no telos  or final end for the human person. David Corey writes  that Paulo Freire’s model of “liberation education is rapidly replacing the older educational tradition known as liberal education.” While liberal education focuses on knowledge insofar as it is intrinsically  valuable, liberation education focuses on knowledge insofar as it is instrumentally  valuable in the fight for liberation. But if, as Freire admits, the Sisyphean struggle for liberation is endless, the value of knowledge can never be realized. As such, while activism may indeed be a noble pursuit, it is a pursuit antithetical to liberal education. Liberal education and disinterested study  demand a modicum of separation  from the concerns of daily life. Activism renders education a mere means of prolonging the quotidian quest for political liberation. Back in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, Claremont Colleges faculty voted to cancel classes amidst escalating student protests . Harry Neumann, a philosophy professor at Scripps, continued to hold class. When a faculty member asked whether Neumann would ever close the university, Neumann replied, “when all the answers to all the important questions have been found, then it would be appropriate to close the university, and for all the people who have all the answers to all the important questions, the university is already closed.” Let us not prematurely close the university, for there is still much learning to do.

From 8 a.m. Thursday morning until 8 a.m. Friday morning, CMC students had the opportunity to vote on a resolution   passed  by the Associated Students of Claremont McKenna College (ASCMC). The header of the resolution describes its purpose: On April 5, 2024, Pomona College’s administration called for the arrest of Claremont Colleges students as they exercised their right to free speech and assembly in support of divestment from ‘Israeli apartheid and weapons manufacturing.’ We condemn the escalation of violence on campus by Pomona College and the administration’s subsequent institutional retaliation due to their chilling impact on discourse, free speech, and the principles of Open Academy. We also reject the use of police due to their presence causing particular risk for Black, Indigenous, brown, Undocumented, and other students. In light of these findings, we call for the 7C Demonstration Policy and CMC FAQs to be revised to protect students’ right to protest and speech. The resolution was approved by 22% percent of the student body and rejected by 9% of the student body. Out of a student body of 1362 students, 419 submitted ballots for a voter turnout of 31%. Of students who submitted a ballot, 70% voted to approve the resolution and 30% voted to reject.  According to ASCMC Chief Ethics and Procedural Officer Paloma Oliveri, “Approval of this resolution means that ASCMC will continue to collaborate with the authors and DOS to determine next steps. We will be in touch shortly with further updates.”

Harris’s rise to the top of the ticket awakened an enthusiasm for Democrats not felt since the Obama administration. Harris speaking at the 2019 California Democratic Party Convention (Credit: Gage Skidmore via Flickr) Over the past months, as the country grew increasingly devoid of hope for unity among its political leaders, as turmoil abroad and rumors of economic downturn stoked an unsettling fear within Americans, and the stakes of a Biden or Trump re-election climbed ever higher, Kamala Harris emerged as a meme on internet platforms everywhere.  Her token laugh was edited into songs, her word-salads mocked, and the all too familiar coconut-tree video  either made viewers think she was funny or delirious. Vice President Harris even embraced some of the digital fanfare herself, adding the phrase coined by Drew Barrymore, “ Momala ” onto her official Instagram bio. But now, Harris can no longer exist simply as a memeable figure in the comfortable but ceremonious office of Vice President—at least not if she wants a chance to win the race for the White House.  As pressure mounted for Biden to step down, conversations over who might replace him began. Interestingly, those conversations did not immediately center around Harris—most eyes were on Gretchen Whitmer or Gavin Newsom. Though, when push came to shove and President Biden endorsed Harris shortly after he dropped out, the conversation shifted from whether Whitmer or Newsom might replace him to whether either one of the Democratic governors might be the vice presidential pick for the Harris campaign.  Many Republicans were happy to hear that Biden dropped out and happier still to see the Democrats rally so fiercely behind Harris. At first glance, the disorganization of the Democratic party and sudden dropping out of the incumbent seemed great news for Trump. But there is good reason to fear the Harris campaign, and if Harris plays her cards right, she will have a better chance at election than Biden ever did. For starters, while Trump is the oldest person to receive the nomination of a major U.S. political party, Harris is the first woman of color to do the same. Moreover, Harris had the highest fundraising day of 2024 on July 21st and has raised over $500 million  since Biden dropped out. It is clear, then, that Harris’s rise to the top of the ticket awakened an enthusiasm for Democrats not felt since the Obama administration.  The problem with Biden was that he defined himself merely as a foil to Trump. Sure, voters were rightfully worried about his speaking and thinking abilities, but he never provided voters with anything more than the sense that a vote for him was a vote taken from Trump. Because of this, the two became sworn enemies. Each side fashioned the other as a monster capable of ruining America by his own hand. Harris, with her laugh and carefree demeanor, seems incapable of inspiring the same sort of hatred and energy that made the stakes of the election feel so high. With a successful campaign behind her, Harris can remind voters of more traditional Democratic candidates from years past—not one who heralds the imminence of a possible civil war. Trump may say a defeat of Harris will be easier , but polls say otherwise . And those who found comfort in Trump, might soon wake up in a cold sweat, realizing that whatever he claimed to bring to the table was not worth the tranquility and unity of an entire people. The best thing Harris can do is separate herself from Trump’s hostility. Biden never did, which ensured that he never developed the cult of personality that might have otherwise defended him from attacks on his age and competence. The cornerstone of the Harris campaign will have to be assuring voters that those viral clips of Kamala word-salads, seemingly devoid of substance, can be backed by real legislative and political vision.  In  her role as Vice President, Harris was not obligated to fashion her own platform. Now, her ability to do so with conviction and aptitude will determine whether the Democrats secure victory in November.

This article was published in conjunction with The Claremont Independent . On Friday, Claremont Police arrested 20 demonstrators from the Claremont Colleges during a protest for Palestinians in Gaza. Over 100 protesters followed the arrested students from Alexander Hall to the Claremont Jail. Some protestors were released later that evening, and the rest were released just after midnight. The arrests came as student groups including Pomona Divest Apartheid and Students for Justice in Palestine have been demanding that Pomona College divest from all companies with ties to Israel. According to a press release by Pomona Divest Apartheid, over the past week, demonstrators built a “mock apartheid wall on Pomona College’s Marston Quad” as a piece of “protest art.” At just after 1:00 p.m. on Friday, Pomona College administrators and campus safety personnel began to dismantle the mock apartheid wall. Shortly after 4:00 p.m., protestors entered Alexander Hall, an administrative building at Pomona. At least 18 students occupied Pomona President Gabrielle Starr’s office, with dozens more occupying the hallway outside of her office. Over 100 additional protesters congregated around the building and began to chant: “Israel bombs, Pomona pays, how many kids did you kill today?” “Stop the killing, stop the slaughter, Gaza has no food or water” and “Up, up with liberation, down, down with occupation.” At 4:26 p.m., President Starr sent an email to the student body affirming the college’s commitment to students’ “right to protest,” though she expressed concern over protestors wearing masks and refusing to identify themselves. According to Starr, Pomona administrators and campus safety removed protestor materials from the Smith Campus Center in preparation for a Sunday event. Starr wrote that at this point, students began to “verbally harass staff” and used “a sickening, anti-black racial slur in addressing an administrator.” Starr stated that Pomona students involved in the Smith Campus Center or Alexander Hall events would be subject to “immediate suspension” and that other demonstrators would be “banned from campus.” A recording  shows President Starr making the same consequences known to students in Alexander Hall. Shortly thereafter, more than a dozen squad cars from the Claremont, Pomona, Azusa, La Verne, and Covina police departments arrived on the scene. The officers were dispatched with riot gear and tear gas launchers. At 5:20 p.m., all Claremont College students were notified  via text about “Police activity at Pomona Campus, Alexander Hall.” Despite being warned to “stay away from the area where law enforcement personnel are present,” students began to congregate around Alexander Hall to spectate. Shortly after 6:00 p.m., police began arresting demonstrators. They escorted  protestors out of Alexander Hall in several small groups with their hands zip-tied behind their backs while other protestors jeered and cursed at the officers. In total, the police charged 18 students with misdemeanor trespassing. During one of the arrests , a female student obstructed an officer’s path. The officer grabbed her arms and pulled her along with him. One of his colleagues then shoved her. The officers took her behind police lines, zip-tied her hands, and loaded her into a white van with other arrested protesters. The officers charged the student with misdemeanor delaying or obstructing a law enforcement officer, making for 20 total arrests. Shortly after 7:00 p.m., after the police finished taking the 19 students into custody, protestors migrated to the Claremont Jail, which is less than a mile away. According to the City of Claremont , the jail typically only houses up to 18 inmates. Around this time, local television crews and news helicopters arrived on the scene. For over 4 hours, over 100 protestors stood outside the gate of the jail. Protestors chanted more slogans: “Instead of divesting, Pomona is arresting,” “We smell bacon.” Other chants compared the Claremont Police Department to the Ku Klux Klan. Protestors provided snacks and honked car horns. According to student journalist Samson Zhang, police began to release protestors from custody around 9:30 p.m. The released students were greeted with applause and hugs from their fellow demonstrators. At 12:07 a.m. on Saturday morning, the Claremont Police Department announced over loudspeaker that all Claremont Colleges students arrested for trespassing had been released. Shortly thereafter, protestors announced their intention to continue their activism until Pomona divests from all companies with ties to Israel. They dispersed around 12:30 a.m.

This article was published in conjunction with the Claremont Independent. On Friday, 20 students were arrested at Pomona College after refusing to identify themselves while occupying a campus building during a protest for Palestinians in Gaza. All of the protesters have since been released. On Saturday morning, members of the Claremont chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine began calling for Pomona President Gabrielle Starr’s immediate resignation for what they called her “fascistic” and “absolutely reprehensible” conduct. Starr characterized the protest as part of a series of escalating incidents on campus in recent months. The activists, on the other hand, said that tensions rose after Pomona College administrators and campus safety personnel began to dismantle the mock apartheid wall on Friday around 1:00 p.m. In the days leading up to the protest, some students had been sleeping in tents in front of the wall outside the Smith Campus Center Lawn. According to President Starr, the activists had consistently targeted campus tour groups in recent weeks. Shortly after 4:00 p.m., protestors entered Alexander Hall, an administrative building at Pomona. At least 18 students occupied Pomona President Gabrielle Starr’s office, with dozens more occupying the hallway outside her office. A video posted by Pomona Divest Apartheid shows President Starr addressing the protesters inside Alexander Hall. Starr can be heard saying: “Everyone in this building is immediately subject to suspension. Harassment is following me with a camera; that is now clear. If you do not leave within the next ten minutes, every student in this building is immediately suspended from this institution… If you are from elsewhere, you will immediately be banned from this campus.” Starr authorized a call to the police, and more than two dozen officers arrived on campus, many wearing riot gear. The officers informed protesters they would be arrested if they did not leave. Shortly after 6:00 p.m., police began arresting demonstrators. They escorted protestors out of Alexander Hall in several small groups with their hands zip-tied behind their backs. The next morning, SJP organizers discussed their next steps in a Telegram group chat. One wrote, “A faculty member informed me that they need at least 30 tenured and tenured track professors to have an emergency meeting to prevent [President Starr] from suspending the students. Right now they have at least 35…” Another responded, “[As far as I know,] they do not have the power to stop the suspensions but will be trying to do a vote of no confidence with her / possibly push out a statement” SJP members also circulated email templates calling for President Starr’s resignation. The templates read: "The public has been made aware of egregious transgressions done against students at Pomona College following their college sit-in in protest of the institution’s involvement with the genocidal state of Israel. Despite their peaceful demonstration and very reasonable demands by virtue of the currently inconsolable brutality being committed by the settler state’s regime against Palestinians." "As a result of your contribution to normalizing this genocidal settler state’s existence and the repression of students on your campus calling for justice by calling a riot squad for their arrest and removal, students and the public demand the following: Should you demonstrate any semblance of having learned from your transgressions, as your final act as president, you will agree to your institution’s divestment in all regards from the genocidal state of Israel." "As a supposed representative of your institution, your conduct has been fascistic in nature and absolutely reprehensible. Should you have any shame for your conduct, you will resign, drop the charges made on students, and revoke their suspensions immediately." "Following these acts in this order, students and the public demand for your immediate resignation as president of this institution." Activists are encouraging members of the community to send these templated emails to the Pomona administration. Claremont Faculty for Justice in Palestine expressed their support for the demonstrators but stopped short of calling for President Starr’s resignation. They called upon Starr and Pomona to: “Immediately drop all charges against students; refrain from suspending students, who were exercising their protected rights to free speech and protest…" “Immediately reinstate any students who have been suspended already; refrain from banning non-Pomona students from campus…" “Apologize to the students and the Pomona College community for this violent and inappropriate escalation and police intervention on campus.”

Typically, it takes ⅔ of Congress and ¾ of state legislatures to amend the Constitution; Vivek Ramaswamy decided to skip the hassle. Fourteenth Amendment, Section 1, Clause 1: All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. At last night's GOP debate, Vivek Ramaswamy showcased his flair for oratory eloquence, even if, perhaps, not his aptitude for constitutional understanding. He announced with gravitas, “I favor ending birthright citizenship for the kids of illegal immigrants in this country.” Then, in a move reminiscent of a student who proudly answers a question in class only to get it wrong, he stated, “Now, the left will howl about the Constitution and the 14th Amendment. The difference between me and them is I’ve actually read the 14th amendment.” To prove it, he did what most people do after bragging that they’ve read the Constitution –– misquote it. Ramaswamy's confidence would be admirable if it weren't undermined by a fundamental misunderstanding. He claims that no child of a Mexican diplomat in the U.S. enjoys birthright citizenship and equates that child with the child of an illegal immigrant. While drawing loose comparisons might be effective in rhetoric, it's a perilous slope in legal matters. Vivek wants to connect his nativist approach to a constitutional interpretation espoused only by lawyers on the fringes. John Eastman, the Claremont Institute lawyer who tried to overturn the 2020 election, has argued that the 14th amendment prohibits Kamala Harris from serving as VP because her parents are immigrants. Adding to the confusion is that Vivek mentioned on NBC that at the time of his birth, neither of his parents were citizens –– implying he benefited from the birthright citizenship he now wants to abolish. It's seemingly consistent for a candidate who didn't vote in a presidential election until his 30s, yet wants to stop people younger than 25 from voting. Vivek’s misinterpretation becomes glaringly evident when one revisits the case of United States v. Wong Kim Ark. Ark, an American by birth but of Chinese heritage, was denied re-entry into his homeland, the U.S., under the shadow of his parents' nationality. The court declared Ark a U.S. citizen by birthright. Why? Because he was born here and wasn't a child of foreign diplomats or officials from China. Seems straightforward enough. A deep dive into the 14th Amendment clarifies that anyone “subject to the jurisdiction thereof” is a U.S. resident. In layman’s terms, this includes anyone who has to follow U.S. laws—with the rare exception of a diplomat’s child and some specific cases of Native Americans. Ramaswamy would perhaps benefit from a more in-depth study session on this topic, as the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" debate was settled long ago. The framers of the 14th Amendment, in their debates, expressed a clear intent to grant citizenship to all born on U.S. soil, irrespective of their parents' heritage or nationality. During discussions on the ratification, Sen. Edgar Cowan from Pennsylvania voiced his reservations about the birthright-citizenship proposal, posing the question, “Is the child of a Gypsy born in Pennsylvania a citizen?” Further, he queried, “Is it proposed that the people of California are to remain quiescent while they are overrun by a flood of immigration of the Mongol race?” Sen. John Conness of California answered that the children of these immigrants “shall be citizens” and he was “entirely ready to accept the provision proposed in this constitutional amendment.” While the Wong Kim Ark case specifically examined a child born to legal residents, it's imperative to note that anyone subject to U.S. laws, including those termed as “illegal aliens,” is under U.S. jurisdiction. The very terminology “illegal” implies their subjection to U.S. laws. Thankfully, the 14th Amendment solidified citizenship beyond the whims of political gamesmanship of people like Vivek.

The following is an updated version of an article from April 2023 President Joe Biden has grown increasingly frustrated with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in his attempts to rein in Israel’s military campaign. In their latest phone call on Thursday, Biden “reiterated his view that a military operation should not proceed without a credible and executable plan for ensuring the safety of and support for the civilians in Rafah,” the Wall Street Journal reports. Yet student activists still act as though their colleges can have more sway than the American President. JVP and SJP’s pressure to ban Haifa is part of the larger Boycott, Divest, Sanctions (BDS) movement, which aims to punish Israel to incite political change. Israel’s policies, particularly its blockade of Gaza, its retaliation against Hamas, and its settlements in the West Bank have inspired punitive action by American students and academics. The boycott advocates liken modern-day Israel to South Africa under Apartheid. If boycotts, divestment, and other economic sanctions helped to end Apartheid, the same tactics can work to end the Israeli occupation of Palestinian territories – so goes the argument. But let us ask a simple question: on whom would a boycott put pressure? For one, it would make Jewish and Israeli students on campus feel ostracized, but the obvious answer is Israeli institutions of higher education, the ostensible targets of the boycott. Yet that answer unveils the confused logic of this SJP effort. Israeli universities, like American ones, are overwhelmingly liberal and opposed to the Netanyahu government. An analogy would be trying to put pressure on an incoming Trump Administration by boycotting Pitzer. An academic boycott is the least effective of weapons. It punishes SJP’s natural allies while leaving the intended target unaffected. It would also prevent American students opposed to Israeli government policies from seeing and learning about their impact in person. Can you think of a better opportunity for 5C students interested or concerned about Israel-Palestine than a semester in Haifa? The program is an opportunity for students to travel to the region and learn first-hand from Palestinians about their experiences while attending the most diverse school in the Middle East. Among Pitzer’s core values is the promotion of intercultural understanding. Central to this is its robust study abroad program that, in the words of former Pitzer President Melvin Oliver, “enables students to reach their own conclusions about the world’s most vexing challenges through on-the-ground, face-to-face experience.” There is also an issue of consistency and double standards. Pitzer’s study abroad program sponsors students to travel to places that include Kunming, China, and Beirut, Lebanon. China is among the most egregious violators of human rights in the world, a non-democracy without basic rights for its citizens, charged with genocide against the Uighur minority and terrible oppression in Tibet. According to Amnesty International, Lebanon discriminates against women, migrants, and LGBTQ+ people. Certainly, Pitzer’s study abroad programs in those countries do not amount to endorsements of the human rights violations of their respective ruling regimes. Just as those programs are not endorsements, the banning of a study abroad program in Israel is not a meaningful act of criticism or an effective approach to changing government policies or military strategy in Israel. It’s a symbolic posture that would accomplish nothing other than increasing our own ignorance of what’s really happening there.

I’m surprised to find myself as The Forum’s resident Israel defender. Growing up, I shied away from my Jewish identity: I never had a bar mitzvah and felt Jewish holidays were a burden. My parents and sister sometimes teased me for being one of those ‘self-hating’ Jews. Yet, since October 7th, my Jewishness has been inescapable. I grapple with the weight of Benjamin Netanyahu’s actions, feeling an unwarranted personal culpability. I'm equally disturbed by some stances on the pro-Palestinian side, namely those veering into tacit or explicit support for Hamas. The instinctive alliance that many American liberals, including a notable Jewish contingent, have traditionally maintained with Israel has been in decline for some time. Just look at the evolution among American Jewish commentators, like Thomas Friedman of the New York Times, who this past summer, suggested a reassessment of U.S. aid to Israel—a stance with which I agreed. This shift was marked, though not initiated, by the exasperation various officials in the Obama administration expressed about Prime Minister Netanyahu. The Biden Administration’s vociferous assertions that relations remain unaltered are less than fully convincing. The primary cause of this estrangement is Israel's enduring occupation of Palestinian territories in the West Bank and Gaza, a consequence of the 1967 war. The protracted and oppressive occupation has cast Palestinians, many of whom have been in favor of a two-state solution, in a sympathetic light. The West Bank settlements, fueled by Biblical territorial claims, have tremendously tarnished Israel's moral image, alienating liberal allies who view the settlements policy as impractical and unjust. In some analyses, Israel serves as a stand-in for American power, or for bygone colonial struggles. Jewish leaders and organizations wonder why human rights abuses in, say, Syria or Afghanistan—where the perpetrators as well as the victims are Muslim—stir less concern from the Left. One should be able to call out the double-standards, hypocrisy, and rhetorical excess that prevail in leftist circles without being accused of being in favor of Netanyahu and all Israeli policy. The Claremont SJP and Claremont Jewish Voice for Peace, along with a dozen other groups, issued a statement in the wake of the October 7th attacks—a statement that, to me, seems not only offensive but factually unsound. Here is my response: On War With Hamas Dissecting the decolonization narrative, one finds many ways in which Gaza doesn’t fit. To begin with, it is not under conventional occupation—for nearly twenty years, no Israeli soldiers have patrolled its streets. Israel withdrew from the Strip in 2005, dismantling its settlements. Two years later, Hamas usurped power, exterminating its Fatah opponents in a brief but brutal armed conflict. It instituted a draconian Islamist regime that suppresses dissent within Palestinian society, criminalizes same-sex relationships, subjugates women, and promotes the extermination of Jews. When anti-Israel demonstrators declare their quest for a secular democracy with equal rights, it seems only fair to take them at their word. Yet the most vehement detractors of Israel may be losing sight of the core issue: Hamas’ aspirations are utterly at odds with their own. Hamas doesn’t want a pluralist state. It wants an Islamic theocracy with all the Jews removed. For a time, Israel sought to maintain an uneasy peace with Hamas, disrupted by the attacks on Oct 7. These provocations legitimize self-defense, though the resultant civilian casualties are no less tragic. On ‘Genocide’ Jews, who have themselves been victims of horrific crimes throughout history, now stand accused of crimes they once suffered. Among these accusations is the charge of “genocide” against Palestinians, a term that does not accurately describe the reality on the ground. The blockade on Gaza by Israel and Egypt was instituted following Hamas' seizure of control there, and Israel has conducted military operations in response to the barrage of rocket attacks from the territory. The 2014 Gaza War, for example, erupted after over 4,000 rockets were launched into Israel by Hamas and its affiliates, leading to a tragic loss of life with more than 2,000 Palestinians killed. According to reports from Hamas, the number of Palestinian deaths in the current conflict has reached over 8,000, including a heartbreaking number of children. But that’s not genocide, which means the systemic attempt to eliminate an entire people. The Palestinians have been victimized in many ways, both by Israel and their own brutal and corrupt leaders, who have never been willing to agree to a compromise that would create an independent Palestinian state. The discourse often deteriorates into what journalist Matt Yglesias calls “discourse lawyering,” (which I have been guilty of) where the rhetoric is confined to legal justification or condemnation, rather than seeking tangible solutions. This manner of debate can shroud the pressing humanitarian crises, where civilians are unable to escape due to sealed borders—a stance maintained by Egypt for its own reasons, but also, unfortunately, contributing to the portrayal of Israel as the sole aggressor in Gaza. On ‘Settler-Colonialism’ The radical narrative that presents Israel as a colonial power or a byproduct of European colonialism applies a crude ideological overlay to a complex history. It ignores the continuous Jewish presence in Palestine, which arguably dates back millennia and certainly suggests a form of indigeneity. Immigration from the 19th century onwards meant a return to an ancestral homeland. The ensuing conflict arose not from an inevitable trajectory but through failed land-sharing arrangements and a series of missed opportunities for peaceful resolution. Despite the 1917 Balfour Declaration, Great Britain powerfully resisted Zionist aspirations in the 1930s and 1940s, supporting an Arab state in Palestine without a Jewish one. It was an armed Jewish revolt, from 1945 to 1948 against British colonial power, that forged the state. The Arab-Israeli War of 1948 broke out when five Arab nations invaded territory in the former Palestine mandate immediately following Israeli independence. In this brutal war, Israelis did drive many Palestinians from their homes; others fled the fighting; and many others stayed. They and their descendants are Israeli citizens with the right to vote. To say this displacement of approximately 700,000 Palestinian Arabs occurred because of settler-colonialism is false. It occurred because Arab states attacked Israel. It is also notable that a higher number of Jews – approximately 900,000 –- fled and were driven from Arab countries as a result of the same war. As in the partition of India and Pakistan, there was an exchange of populations. On Israeli ‘Apartheid” Labeling Israel as an apartheid state has become widespread in leftist circles that it is just taken as a given. While there is an aspect of truth to this analogy, it also amounts to a crude simplification. Israelis do not have different rights based on race or religion. Twenty percent of Israel’s citizens are Arabs with full democratic rights. Residents of the occupied territories of course lack those rights and have been subjected to shameful and humiliating treatment. But under the two-state solution long supported by a majority of Israelis, they would have citizenship in an independent Palestinian state. To demand an end to Israeli “apartheid” without a peace agreement is to demand a one-state solution that would effectively mean the end of Israel. The analogy also glosses over and misconstrues the political ambitions of Hamas. In South Africa, the ANC earnestly pursued a multi-racial democracy, a commitment that eventually won over many white South Africans who feared it. Hamas, however, has not embarked on a similar campaign of reassurance. It supports not racial and religious equality, but ruthless theocratic oppression on an Iranian model. Viewing the world through a stark dichotomy of good versus evil offers the solace of clarity. But bifurcating the world into rival teams – colonizer against the colonized, oppressor versus the oppressed, white versus other races – isn’t just an oversimplification of complex realities. It applies an American political framework as its own distorting lens. As the political theorist Yascha Mounk observes in his book The Identity Trap, “The American brand of anti-colonialism” is ironically colonialist in nature.