Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-05-21 Thursday

Episode Date: May 21, 2026

Democracy Now! Thursday, May 21, 2026

From New York, this is Democracy Now. It's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about, but it's a terrible thing that's taking place. And farmers are being killed. A year after President Trump falsely claimed there's a white genocide in South Africa, the Trump administration has closed the door to all refugees around the world except for white South Africans. Since October, the U.S. has reset.

just over 6,000 refugees, all except three were from South Africa. We'll go to Johannesburg and also speak to the head of a refugee group suing Trump over the policy. Then a new study finds Trump's abrupt withdrawal of USAID funding has led to a sustained increase in violence across Africa. So our study found that in addition to the devastating impacts in terms of health care, around the world. The cuts to USAID also helped feel a surge in protests, riots, armed conflicts, and violence against civilians in many parts of Africa. Finally, as students graduate from colleges and universities across the country, many schools are taking steps to silence pro-Palestinian voices at campus ceremonies, from canceling speakers to eliminating live speeches by students

altogether. At the University of Michigan, the school's president issued a public apology after a professor delivered these remarks at commencement. Sing for the pro-Palestinian student activists. The last two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel's war in Gaza. We'll speak to a CUNY law school student and Rutgers professor Nora Erichot. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman.

Iran says it's established a controlled maritime zone in the Strait of Hormuz that ships will not be able to transit without authorization from the newly created Persian Gulf Strait Authority. On Wednesday, Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it had coordinated safe passage for 26 cargo ships and tankers, including the first shipment of Middle East oil to South Korea, since the U.S. Israel launched strikes on Iran nearly three months ago. Iran is reportedly charging tolls of up to $2 million for passage to the strait to be paid in Chinese yuan or the cryptocurrency Bitcoin. Meanwhile, Iran's foreign ministry says it's reviewing the latest U.S. peace proposal after President Trump said he's willing to delay planned attacks on Iran for a few days while he awaits Iran's response. On Tuesday, Trump spoke by phone with Israeli.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Axios reports, the Israeli leader left the meeting with his hair on fire after urging Trump to abandon diplomacy and resume bombing Iran. On Wednesday, Trump downplayed reports of friction between the two leaders and said Netanyahu would do whatever I want him to do, quote unquote. I'm right now at 99% in Israel. I could run for prime minister. So maybe after I do this, I'll go to Israel, run for prime minister. In Sudan, human rights monitors say an armed drone fired on a crowded market in West Kordofan province on Tuesday, killing 28 people and leaving dozens more wounded. Sudan's army denied the report saying it doesn't target civilians or civilian infrastructure.

The area is controlled by the rival rapid support forces. Paramilitary group last week, the Global Food and Security Monitor IPC, warned nearly 20 million people across Sudan, face acute hunger this year with more than 800,000 children. at risk of severe malnutrition due to civil war, mass displacement, and collapsing food and health systems. The USS Nimitz Carrier Strike Group arrived in the Southern Caribbean Wednesday, the same day the Justice Department unsealed murder charges against the 94-year-old former Cuban President Raul Castro. The indictment accuses Castro of ordering the shootdown of two small planes operated by the Cuban-American Exile Group Brothers to the Rescue in 1996. President Trump has repeatedly threatened military action against Cuba imposing a fuel blockade

that's triggered severe blackouts, food shortages, and economic collapse across Cuba. This is Cuba's deputy foreign minister, Carlos Fernandez de Jaseo. This accusation carries an additional threat, given the well-known dark practice of the United States using accusations like this to take military action against sovereign states. Their justification is not justice. It is the use of the immense military power that the United States government possesses. And it must be clear that any attempt to use this excuse for action against these comrades within Cuba will be met with fierce resistance from the Cuban people. Israel's continuing attacks on Lebanon despite the U.S. brokered ceasefire that was recently extended

through June. Lebanon's national news agency reports Israeli attacks on Wednesday, killed at least eight people, including five killed in an airstrike on a village near Nabatia. Meanwhile, Lebanon's health ministry says the death toll from an air raid on the town of Dirkanun and NAR has risen to 14 killed and three wounded. The strike in southern Lebanon's tire district on Tuesday, killed a family of 11, including three children along with their parents and grandparents. Israeli settlers in the occupied West Bank have set up another illegal outpost in the Masafriata district. On Wednesday, settlers backed by Israeli soldiers erected mobile homes, surrounded by fortifications near Umalachaya Village. Such outposts are illegal under international law and violate Israeli zoning laws and court orders.

Meanwhile, Palestinians in the city of Hahu say Israeli settlers attack them with impunity Wednesday as Israeli soldiers looked on. At 3 a.m., we were shocked when armed settlers assaulted us. They attacked the house. They burned two vehicles and tried to burn a third one. They also wrote racist graffiti on the walls. This happened with Israeli occupation forces and attendance. In Gaza, Israeli drones and gunfire killed four more Palestinians and wounded several others over the last 24 hours.

The Waha News Agency reports two Palestinians were killed in areas under Israeli military control in Rafa in southern Gaza. Another person was killed northeast of Han Yunus, while a fourth was killed when an Israeli quadcopter drone dropped a bomb on a group of Palestinians in Bethlehia and northern Gaza. Several others were injured in that attack. Israel's far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gavir posted a video of himself taunting hundreds of global Samud flotilla activists who were abducted by Israel and international waters this week. The video shows dozens of men and women kneeling and rose with their foreheads to the ground and their hands, zip tied behind their back at the port of Estat. According to lawyers representing the Flotilla 3 activists were taken to the hospital as a result of Israeli violence. This is a portion of Ben Gavir's video.

They came with much pride as big heroes. Look. Look. See how they look now. Look at how they look now. Not heroes and not anything. Terror supporters. I tell Prime Minister Netanyahu, give them to me for much more time. Give them to us for the terrorist prisons. This is how it should look.

Ben Gavir's video was roundly condemned around the world. Italy's Prime Minister, Georgia Maloney, said, quote, it's inadmissible that these demonstrators, including many Italian citizens, are subjected to this treatment that violates human dignity, she said. Spain's foreign minister called Ben Gavir's actions, quote, monstrous, disgraceful, and inhumane, unquote. It even drew criticism from U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who described Ben Gavir's behavior as despicable, saying the minister had, quote,

betrayed the dignity of his nation, unquote. Huckabee's rare criticism came a day after the U.S. Treasury announced sanctions against organizers of the Gaza flotilla. Here in the United States, Elon Musk's private aerospace and artificial intelligence companies, SpaceX has confirmed plans to go public and what's likely to become the largest initial public offering in history. The plan could see SpaceX valuation reached $2 trillion, surpassing the 2020 IPO of the oil giant Saudi Aramco. It could see Elon Musk's majority stake in SpaceX rise in value to more than $600 billion, making him the first trillionaire

in history. Meanwhile, OpenAI, the maker of ChatGPT, is set to follow. offer initial public offering in the coming weeks, the artificial intelligence company is valued at more than $850 billion by private investors and is working with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to prepare the paperwork. Separately, Open AI rival Anthropic is preparing an IPO that could see its valuation top $1 trillion. Meta has sent layoff notices to about 8,000 workers or 10% of the social media giants workforce. Another 7,000 meta workers will be reassigned to new artificial intelligence initiatives. The layoffs come just weeks after CEO Mark Zuckerberg confirmed in an all-hands meeting

that meta is using an artificial intelligence data tracking program to train an AI model that will replace many of its workers. A recording of Zuckerberg's comments was obtained by the news organization More Perfect Union. So we're in a phase where basically the AI models learn from watching really smart people do things. And if you're trying to get it to be able to be able to do certain capabilities, having it be able to observe really smart people doing those things is very important. Vermont's independent Senator Bernie Sanders and Democratic Congress Member Summerlee unveiled new legislation Wednesday to abolish super PACs, which allow corporations. and wealthy individuals to spend an unlimited amount of money on U.S. elections. Their bill would cap super PAC donations from individuals at $5,000.

This is Democratic Congressmember Lee. But right now, we can take a step to ensure that super PACs, that super billionaires are no longer able to buy our election. And we have to call it what it is. If we will have a democracy, we have to reject an oligarchy. The late-night comedian Stephen Colbert signs off tonight on the, the final broadcast of the late show. Following his 11-year run on CBS, the late show had broadcast from Ed Sullivan Theater in Manhattan before him it was Letterman since 1993. Its cancellation came even though Colbert was consistently the top-rated light-night host. Last July, CBS cited financial reasons for

canceling the late show. As CBS parent company Paramount sought the Trump administration support for a controversial merger with Skydance and after Trump repeatedly called for Colbert to be fired. The merger was approved just one week after CBS announced Colbert's ouster, Colbert's late-night competitor on ABC. Jimmy Kimmel said he will not record his own program today out of respect for Colbert's final show. Paramount Skydance is now seeking approval from the Trump administration to acquire Warner Brothers discovery, which would give the company control of CNN, HBO, CBS, and other media properties as well. And in Bolivia, there are growing calls for the center-right president Rodrigo Paz Padero to step down.

For two weeks, demonstrations led by the Bolivian Workers Central, peasant unions and minors have clash with police in the capital of Paz. Their blockade has led to empty markets and depleted reserves of medical supplies, including oxygen for hospital patients. The U.S. Deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, characterized the protests as an ongoing coup d'etat. Bolivia is suffering its worst economic crisis in 40 years amidst fuel shortages and rising inflation. Bolivia's presidential spokesperson is claiming Avo Morales. Bolivia's former president is fueling the protests, which Morales denies. This is a Bolivian minor who joined the protests.

We do not want dialogue or anything. We only want the resignation of the president no matter what. He leaves the good way or he leaves a social upheaval. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Mimi Goodman. And I'm Nalmien-Sheikh. Welcome to our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world.

The Trump administration is advancing plans to increase the number of white South Africans it admits to the United States as refugees in the coming months. The proposal would see an additional 10,000 white South Africans resettled into the U.S. even as the Trump administration continues to block the entry of refugees from other countries. The U.S. has resettled just over 6,000 refugees between October and April, and all except three were from South Africa. Under Trump's new proposal, which was submitted to Congress, the U.S. would lift its record low refugee admissions figure for the year from 7,500 to 17,500 with the additional openings reserved for Afrikaners. Trump has falsely claimed they face

racial persecution and genocide. This is President Trump speaking last December. It's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about, but it's a terrible thing that's taking place. And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they're white or black makes no difference to me, but white farmers. are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa. The claims of a white genocide and racial violence have been rejected by the UN Human Rights Office, among others. For more, we're joined by two guests. Levehung Pekko is a senior research fellow and political economist at the Trade Collective Think Tank

and a professor of practice at the University of Johannesburg, joining us from Johannesburg. And in Washington, D.C., Shereef Ali joins us, president of the International Refugee. Assistance Project, which is currently litigating a class action lawsuit challenging the Trump administration's dismantling of the United States Refugee Program. Let's begin with you, your lawsuit. Explain what it is. It will shock people to know, Sharif Ali, that 6,000 refugees have been accepted incredibly record, low number of refugees from around the world, but in fact, not from around the world, only from South Africa except for three. Can you explain what's going on?

And now President Trump wants to lift the Trump administration cap, but only to allow in more white South Africans. Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. What I could explain is that on his day of inauguration, he issued an executive order to suspend the U.S. refugee admissions program. And we've been in litigation since with the Pesito v. Trump. case to reopen this program, which is so vital. What's happening is not only that they're allowing

just this one population coming into the U.S., but it's happening to impact the lives of thousands of other people who've went through years of vetting, who have went through years of persecution and violence in trying to find safety. For instance, there's 12,000 people prior to this executive order that were conditionally approved for travel. Those are people that had sold all of their belongings. They are people who left their home. There are people now that don't know where they're going. And in fact, many of them are not even able to work in the countries of First Asylum in which they reside in currently. There's also over 100,000 people that were also going forward with the process of resettling in the United States. Now they are stuck and they're in limbo while we are

processing resettlement cases for white Afrikaners at a record pace. This program has never been a FAST program, and it's being expedited for just this one population. What I could tell you is this is a very clear racism, where only one group that tends to be white is allowed in the country, while you have black, brown people of Muslim origin and other nationalities and religious minorities are being told that they cannot come into this country. And Dr. Peko, if you could respond to this proposal by Trump and actually explain what the situation is in South Africa, this claim of his, that there is a white genocide and that white Afrikaners are being persecuted in the country. Thank you and to your guests as well.

So I think that one of the things that we can agree on globally is that there is no white genocide in South Africa. And I think the irony that isn't lost on many of us is that this comes at a time when there is an actual genocide being purported upon, you know, several people across the Gaza Strip, Palestine, Iran, and so forth. And it also has to do, really, we need to situate this within a few things. One is the rehabilitation of white victimhood. This is also to do with the delegitimization of African sovereignty and black majority rule. It's also important that this is also linked to demographic panic and the global shift to the right, the alt-right replacement theory. and so forth. And this leads to the kind of hostility of migration from the majority world as

my co-panel that has already eliminated. I think the danger of this is also that this links to very strong anti-black politics and anti-blackness, even though President Trump claims that he wouldn't care if these were white, if there were black farmers. The truth is that in this country, there is crime and they are, you know, killings and murders like in any country and anywhere in the world. One of the crises that we do have is certainly one of criminal justice and of criminal, you know, of crime statistics and high rates of the different sorts of social ills and social violences. Those are not racialized. Those are to do with the economies of scale. Those are to do with exclusion. Those are to do with unemployment. Those are to do with people being desperate. And those will also also to do with structural failures that we have inherited from the pre-1994 dispensation, which has meant that there are millions of people,

in this country who are not only unemployed, but unemployable, who have never found a place for themselves in this economy. We also have a history of violence, which was state-sanctioned violence, by the way, and the way that our own personal politics, inter-party politics, reproduced that violence and was also oftentimes fomented by the invisible hand of the state. So to say that this is now coming down to a white genocide, that is also trying to rewrite history and trying to re-inscript the moral authority

of our victory over settler colonialism as one that is something that is sinister. And that's the most egregious form of white revisionism. Well, let's go to what the administration, what the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, said, refuting Trump's claims that white people are being persecuted in his country, calling it a quote, completely false narrative.

Speaking at the Africa CEO forum in Abidjan Coat-Ivoire, Ramaph recounted a conversation he had with Trump about the situation in his country. I had a conversation with President Trump on the phone and he asked, he said, what's happening down there? And I said, President, what you've been told by those people who are opposed to transformation back home in South Africa, is not true. And I added to him, I said, we were well taught by Nelson Mandela and other iconic leaders

like Oliver Tumbo on how to continue to build an united nation out of the diverse groupings that we have in South Africa. We're the only country on the continent where the

colonizers came to stay and we have never driven them out of our country. So they are staying and they are making great progress. It's a fringe grouping. That does not have a lot of support. That is anti-transformation and anti-change. That would actually prefer to see South Africa going back to apartheid type of policies. So that's President Ramaphosa speaking last year. You mentioned Dr. Peko, the ongoing genocide, the genocide that is in fact occurring and has occurred. If you could talk about the context in which the U.S., the Trump administration, has made this decision, namely South

Africa's move in December 2023 to the International Court of Justice initiating a genocide case against Israel. Was that relevant? It's extremely relevant. I mean, I think we agree that There is no white genocide in South Africa. There is, however, a global machinery that continues to normalize imperial wars, occupation, and the suffering of black and brown people. And what we are seeing is that whiteness is being recast as endangered while Palestinians and Syrians and Sudanese and Congolese and other people who are facing massive violences and displacement and dispossession are denied equal global sympathy. And clearly what South Africa's, you know, stand that the ICJ does is it tries to rehumanize and to re-center a moral and a judicial ethic around what humanity should be century. And that is really to state that if we say never again, as people ourselves who were dispossessed, who were occupied, who were the first settler, you know, the first apartheid state, per se, formally inscribed by, you know, judicially. It is no doubt that certainly this seems to have come at a time when in the same breath,

there is a move towards the alt-right, the MAGA discourse, which is about replacement theory and which is absolutely about displacing the idea that anything other than whiteness is normative. President Trump and the Trump administration have made it very clear that they are very unhappy with our stand at the ICJ, which has now, of course, been accompanied. We have now been accompanied by several other countries. However, this will not be the end of it because this is not just about South Africa versus the US. It is really about a human ethic.

It is really about an anti-imperial ethic. And it's really about an ethic that should really place us at the center of a new form of internationalism and a new form of compassion. And also to really move away from the kind of bullying, imperial bullying that seems to be taking place as re-inscripted by President Trump and trying to then weaponize the stand that countries like South Africa have taken against the genocide, the real genocide that's taking place in Palestine.

LeVong Peko, I wanted to ask you about what's called the PayPal Mafia and the people who surround President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance. You've got Peter Thiel, The South African, long-time J.D. Vance patron, educated in the South African town of Swapokman, that at the time he lived there, incredibly racist, with Hitler's birthday celebrated people greeting each other with Nazi salutes when Teal was living there. And, of course, it was very similar to what we saw another South African, Elon Musk, do one of those rallies where, you know, he had that stiff-armed salute and every, when questioned was this a Nazi salute. So you've Peter Thiel, you have David Sacks, and you have Elon Musk. These are the people that are very close to Trump and J.D. Vance. Talk about what he, who he is informed by. So, I mean, you're quite right. All of these, it's a really weird

coincidence of history and geopolitics that he happened to be surrounded by. these tech bros, these tech are perfect bros, really. Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, David Sachs, Reid Hoffman as well, and all of whom have these different connections with South Africa, Southern Africa as well. It's really important because what they also represent is tech capital. They represent libertarianism. They represent a really rabid form of white nationalism. They also represent a form of rabid surveillance capital surveillance politics, which is shrouded in this idea of statelessness and the idea that the state should not intervene entirely and too deeply into the business of business and corporate.

But they also then link this with defense technology and really a put with kind of anti-liberal, libertarian politics, which purported again to be, you know, beyond. politics and yet all of them have said things around so-called anti-wokeness, a very, very problematic terminology. They have a hostility to regulation. They have an anti-D-EI agenda.

And we've seen Elon Musk trying to muscle his way and that Starlink thing of his into African markets, South African markets, as though we don't have Wi-Fi already. And they also push these really ugly civilizational decline narrative.

And it's really problematic and troubling that none of them, as far as I know, are per se deeply rooted in political science or sociology or political, you know, political philosophizing, which would give them such a strong grasp of the civilizational crisis. But they also speak to strong state politics when it protects capital or their own geopolitical interests. And a weird coincidence that these five apartheid tech bros happen to have configured around. you know, Donald Trump. Well, Cherif Ali, as the Trump administration increases, I mean, what was an unprecedented number that was so low of refugee admissions to the U.S., he's increasing this number only for white South Africans, could you explain what the situation is of all of the refugees fleeing absolutely devastating conditions from Syria to the DRC to Afghanistan, and what their fate

is in light of what the Trump administration has done and is continuing to do now with this increase exclusively for white South Africans? Thank you. Their fate is changing on a daily basis, and the fact that their status is in limbo has created more uncertainty and ambiguity in their lives, and they're suffering considerably. Their vulnerability levels are increasing at a very tremendous level. I was in Jordan and Lebanon in December, meeting with. our teams and talking to our clients and learning about the work that they, the experiences

that they're facing. Unfortunately, their vulnerability levels are increasing. So what you're seeing is that people who were planning on resettling and moving and finding safety have actually found themselves less employable without work authorizations, without safety. In Jordan specifically, there was an increase in homelessness which has led to further exploitation. People, especially women are really at risk of sexual exploitation for favors to get them to serve, to be able to live their lives. This is increasing the level of trauma and difficulty that refugees and displaced people are facing. Now, as another example, we have, after the Afghan's, the removal of the U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, the Afghan allies who were meant to come to the U.S. through special immigrant visas,

have not been able to be processed and come to America. These are part of the exceptions that the Ninth Circuit required and Congress requires of the U.S. government to fulfill. People who are from religious minorities, people who have family that are refugees, people who are wartime allies. And yet now we have a group of Afghans in a camp in Qatar who are waiting to be resettled,

and the rumor is that they will be resettled in the Democratic Republic of Congo, where they have no connection, where they have no relationship to the country, where they were not planning to resettle there, and where there's currently a major Ebola outbreak. I just want to show you that there is a real disregard for the humanity of this over 117 million people in the world today

are displaced. 45 million of them are refugees. America takes a fraction of those people into their country, into our country, and those people are now just left to, fend for themselves in a society that's not helping them. Shuri Fali, we want to thank you for being with us, President of IRAP, the International Refugee Assistance Program, which is currently suing the Trump administration over the dismantling of the U.S. refugee program.

And Lepa Heng Peko, senior research fellow and political economist at the Trade Collective Think Tank, Professor of Practice at the University of Johannesburg, speaking to us from Johannesburg, South Africa. Coming up, a new study finds Trump's abrupt withdrawal of USAID funding has led to an increase in violence across Africa.

Stay with us. by the Fatsarra, La, Aduuja Mola, Gola Munga, by Fatumata Sigina, Kinauolosigna, that no, Lamo,

abada, a biti, the molla, like no, don't know, to abada, Sa, ah,

ah, yeah. So I'm... By Fatumata Gia Ara at our Democracy Now studio. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Nermin-Sheh.

Did the abrupt defunding and dismantling of USAID, the decades-old U.S. humanitarian aid agency have an impact on violence. Well, researchers sought to answer that question and examine data from across Africa. They've just published their results in the journal Science, concluding, quote, the abrupt withdrawal of USAID led to a significant and sustained increase in conflict across Africa's most USAID dependent regions. Before it was shuttered by the Trump administration, the agency was the world's largest provider of aid, active in over 100 countries. For more, we're joined by one of the studies authors. Austin Wright is Associate Professor of Public

Policy at University of Chicago, co-author of the research article just out in science, Headlined, Aiding Peace or Conflict, the Impact of USAID cuts on Violence. If you could start off by explaining what you found, Professor Wright. This issue of the abrupt withdrawal of USAID led to a significant and sustained increase in conflict across Africa's most USA-dependent regions. Can you elaborate? Sure. So first off, thank you for having me and for amplifying the sobering findings of our research. You know, what we were able to do is to document information on the incidents of conflict activity, and that ranges from riots and protests

to armed conflict to violence against civilians across more than 870 subregions in Africa. We're then able to link that with the location of where USAID was present and operational years ago and leverage that information to understand the impact that the shutdown had. And indeed, as you mentioned already, what we find is a large, increased in violence in the months immediately after the shutdown occurred. And unfortunately, although we're able to extend the data out only for a period of time, we have yet to find a significant reduction in those effects over time, which means they continue to accumulate even now. Well, there have been a lot, Professor Wright, of inquiries and findings about the effects of

the cuts in aid in U.S. aid, but in humanitarian terms. Never in the context of violence. So what prompted this investigation? Yeah, so that's an excellent point. You know, prior research, including some work that was published in the Lancet, has focused on measures like excess death, the impact of the shutdown of humanitarian relief on health care systems. And those are certainly important dynamics. But, you know, when USAID was initially conceived by John F. Kennedy, the aim there was,

was an alternate version of putting America first, and that was creating the sort of economic and political opportunities for the rest of the world to flourish in the image of the U.S. And that includes the building of institutions and an explicit focus on stabilization. And so our project aimed at understanding another layer of those consequences of the cut, which was the conflict environment. And unfortunately, what we found is that that shutdown had these large effects,

and to help your listeners and viewers understand what we mean by large effects, these are often double-digit percentage increases in the incidence severity and lethality of violence across Africa in the affected regions. And I would say that the only silver lining element here is that in the places where USAID's work was largely achieved, those areas were able to withstand the storm created by that shutdown. But unfortunately, in a lot of other regions, the project was not yet finished. And did you make in the study, do you make a causal argument, in other words, that because the aid was cut, violence increased, or it was more of a correlation? In other words, the two happened to coincide, but you don't know precisely what the connection was or is.

Yes, I think this is a really important question, and I would encourage everyone, especially these days, to be very skeptic. of the facts that are shared. And what I can assure you is that although the paper itself is only a few pages, the work that went into assessing all of the alternate mechanisms that could have been driving this effect amounts to roughly a book that most of the readers aren't going to actually see. And what we can effectively rule out are a number of potential sources of bias that could, as you point out, have led this to be a correlation

rather than a causal relationship. And so I think we're rather bullish, ultimately, that what we've identified is a credible effect of the timing of the shutdown on violence. Austin Wright, we want to thank you so much for being with us, Associate Professor of Public Policy at the University of Chicago, co-author of the research article just out in Science magazine, headlined, Aiding Peace or Conflict, the impact of USAID cuts on violence.

Coming up, as students graduate from colleges and universities across the United States, many schools are taking steps to silence pro-Palestinian voices at campus ceremonies, from canceling speakers to eliminating live speeches by students and alum altogether. Stay with us. Bradley Roy Parsons and Howard John Pierce. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Nermine Sheikh. As colleges and universities hold graduation ceremonies across the United States,

many schools are attempting to silence pro-Palestinian voices from those commemorations, from canceling speakers to eliminating live student speeches altogether. This comes at a time of increasing repression of campus activism, supporting Palestine. The group Palestine Legal recently revealed it now receives 300, percent more requests for legal help than it did before 2023, with the overwhelming majority of requests coming from students and college faculty. Earlier this month, the University of Michigan's president issued a public apology after a professor, Derek Peterson, praised pro-Palestinian students during his commencement

address. These are some of Professor Peterson's remarks. Sing for Moritz-Levy, the first Jewish professor at the University of Michigan. Appointed Professor of French in 1896, he was to open the doors of this great university to generations of Jewish students who found in Ann Arbor a safe haven from the anti-Semitism of East Coast universities. Sing for the students of the Black Action Movement, whose members demanded a curriculum that would reflect the experience and identity of black people in the United States. this country. Sing for the pro-Colestinian student activists who have over these past two years opened our hearts to the injustice and inhumanity of Israel's war in Gaza. The greatness of this institution does not only rest on the shoulders and on the accomplishments of our student

athletes who deserve all the congratulations we can offer them. But the greatness of this university rests also on the courage and the conviction of student activists who have pushed this university down the path toward justice. That was University of Michigan Professor Derek Peterson. University president, Domenico Grasso, later called those remarks hurtful and insensitive to many members of our community. Separately, Rutgers University withdrew an invitation to the biotech CEO, Rami El-Gandur, to give a graduation address.

Last week, El-Gandur recorded a video reading the speech he'd planned to give at the Rutgers Engineering School convocation. kindness is having empathy for others who may not have a voice. It's why I care so much and speak so often about so many issues that don't directly impact me. I've spoken up about ICE, Palestine, black lives, abortion, and gender equity. It's why I got into the film business and I'm supporting stories to amplify the voice of the voiceless like Hin Rejap. And of all these topics, I've only received pushback on Palestine, multiple attempts to censor me or get me fired. Totally a coincidence the speech was canceled over Palestine, right?

But it's also the topic where I received the most support by far. I refuse to yield because I believe in the cause. And like Superman, I believe in truth, justice, and the American way. That was biotech CEO, Rami Elgandor, reading the graduation speech. he was disinvited from giving at Rutgers. We're joined now by two guests. Nora Ericott is a Palestinian human rights attorney and a professor at Rutgers University. This week, she helped organize a people's convocation for Palestine where Ramey Al-Gandor spoke.

We're also joined by Chivani Desai, a graduating member of CUNY Law School class of 2026, and a member of CUNY law students for Justice and Justice and Justice. Palestine. For the third year in a row, CUNY Law School will have no student graduation speakers. I want to begin with Professor Nura Erichot. So we covered this controversy last week. We had the CEO, Rami Elgandor, in our studio, where he had just been canceled, his address to the Rutgers Engineering School. But then talk about the alternative ceremony you set up and what this meant, the thousands, tens of thousands of students who wrote objecting, not to mention the faculty groups and so many faculty at Rutgers.

Good morning, Amy, and thank you so much. Yes, we organized a people's convocation for Palestine. We organized it in nine days to be able to celebrate all of our students, and not just the few students who the administration and the board of governors decided whose feelings mattered more than the material conditions our students are enduring. Rutgers has 70,000 students across three campuses. About 10% of those students are Muslim, something like 15% are Arab, Palestinian, and Muslim. Thousands of our students are immigrants, asylum seekers. They are of black descent, Latin X origin. They are a diverse population who together constitute the many who are opposed. to genocide. Rutgers is the largest public school in New Jersey and should be representative

of that population. And in this instant, when NAMI would have spoken for thousands of those students, the university decided to prioritize the feelings of a few in a opac process for which there was no due process or review. The student, the faculty senate issued a censor of the dean, the union issued a resolution demanding the reinstatement of Rami. The School of Engineering collected 1,300 plus letters. Professor Troy Shinrod, a professor of engineering, attempted to deliver those letters to the School of Engineering and police, almost a dozen police, blocked him from entering his own building. They are telling us that democracy doesn't matter and won't work here.

And this continues a legacy at Rutgers. In 2024, our Center for Islamic Life at Rutgers, New Jersey also happens to be the fourth largest populations of Muslims in the United States. The center for Islamic life was vandalized. Islamic objects were vandalized and destroyed. The Palestinian flag was stolen. Have you heard about it? There was no media, Hala Baloo, over it. There were no Senate hearings over it.

In fact, our former president, Jonathan Holloway, during the Senate hearings, was not asked about that, but only asked about anti-Semitism. And he didn't raise that concern. So our alternative convocation was a refusal to submit to this dictate in this moment that's telling us that democracy doesn't matter. Our students are being told that your families, your Palestinian families are expected to suffer and die. and you should be okay with it. One of our graduates, Dr. Amar Abu Atiyah, who was the 2025 Rhodes Scholar, the 26 Truman Scholar, Rutgers is so proud of him. They have blasted his face everywhere, including at Newark International Airport, has family in Gaza. And he told us at the Alternative Convocation that Rutgers wants his excellence, but not him.

I am a full professor at Rutgers. My cousin Ahmed was assassinated and killed at an illegal checkpoint in 2020. His body continues to be held in a freezer at Greensburg Forensic Institute associated with Tel Aviv University. Rutgers has an MOU with Tel Aviv University. They are telling me that they want my excellence without me being able to protest, this cruelty, this depravity, that happens against my own. family. This also reflects the fact that Rutgers has mobilized. The students

in 2024, 80% of them voted for divestment from Tel Aviv to end the MOU with Tel Aviv University to disinvest from corporations that are invested in death making, an apartheid and in genocide. The

faculty union and the adjunct union voted by 58% for divestment. The fact that they are telling us, that democracy doesn't matter should scare everyone. This is not just about Palestine, but they are telling us that there is a future they want to mold, and we cannot participate in forging that future.

In this moment, we have actually worked tirelessly to create these conditions, and now because they can't play with us, so to speak, in this open playground of free speech, of democratic participation, They want to subvert it altogether. We are not the lowest-hanging fruit as Palestinians. We are the canary in the coal mine.

We are the Trojan horse to bring in these policies that will affect everyone. As your other student will tell you now, not only did CUNY law cancel the three speakers, but NYU this year canceled 13 plus culture identity graduations. University of Texas, Austin, has dismantled black studies, women's studies, as well as Latinx programming.

Again, Palestinians here are the front line, not the lowest-hanging fruit. So, Shivani Desai, you are a graduating member of CUNY Law School, of the City University of New York. CUNY has not, CUNY Law, has not had a student speaker at commencement for three years in a row. You'll be graduating, in fact, today, just a couple of hours from now. Could you explain what's been happening there, why there hasn't been a student speaker at graduation.

And what's going to happen today at your ceremony? Yes, definitely. Thank you so much for having me. So, of course, I'm going to graduation right after this. And this will be the third graduation and commencement ceremony in a row where we do not have a student speaker, we do not have a faculty speaker, and we do not have a live stream commencement.

So CUNY law not only denied us of the chance to hear from a fellow classmate that we would democratically elect, to hear about their vision for our work and the world. They also denied us of our chance to hear from mentors that we find brilliant that we want to hear from through the faculty speech, and they denied us from a live stream commencement so that people who come from diaspora and collectivist communities could share this moment with their family across the world.

They took all of that away from us, and they took that away specifically because of Palestine repression. I want to say, Chivani, that you are wearing your graduation gown and your stole, and that stole says Palestine on it. You're going to graduation right from our broadcast? Yes, I'm going straight to graduation from this broadcast. And, you know, the reason I'm here, and I'm so excited and passionate to speak, is that I'm representing a large and vast coalition across the graduating class of 2026

and across the other years of our grade, because we entered school in the fall of 23. We entered school and this iteration of the genocide following decades of occupation began. We were one else when the genocide began. We were one else when we faced brutalization at the encampment. We were in our second year when we watched green card holders and student visa holders get arrested and detained for their Palestine speech. And we were in our third year when we watched this ice escalate its reign of terror across this country and watch the NYPD face more brutalization. We have been through a lot of brutalization, and we know that our school and our country is funding Israel's war crimes and genocides. CUNY law has blood on its hands. It has money

in Lockheed Martin, Northern Grumman, and other corporations and companies that are war profiteers and weapons manufacturers. And so we don't consent to our tuition dollars going to this genocide. We have never consented to it. CUNY law and across the CUNY system, they have tried to silence us. One thing we want to note is that CUNY law is just one example of repression across CUNY. So across the CUNY system, we've seen this kind of silencing of Palestinian activism. At City College, Hadika had her senior year stolen from her for her leadership in Palestine activism. At Brooklyn College, the Students for Justice in Palestine chapter is facing arbitrary Henderson rules and protest rules that only affect them. At the College of Staten Island,

the valedictorian is a Palestinian, and they have their speech revoked as well. And then there are four faculty members that were fired for their speech in support of Palestine. And they have also been facing a lot of retaliation. Three of them are back, but we're still waiting for one more. And I wanted to say talking about professors speaking out, following up on the clip we played of Professor Derek Peterson at the University of Michigan, looking at the publication Inside Higher Ed, they said, Professor Peterson said university officials knew he would mention pro-Palestinian protest during his speech. While drafting it, he incorporated feedback from officials to remove the word genocide in order to make it less provocative.

Even though the United Nations uses that phrase, and even though it's a scholarly descriptor, Professor Peterson said, I left it out because I didn't wish to provoke anger and unnecessary bad feelings. We had asked Eric Peterson if he would join us as well today, the professor at University of Michigan, but he is receiving death threats. His house is under police protection. Murrah Eracott, this kind of very serious threat to professors and students alike as we begin to wrap up. Yeah, Amy, you know, I think it's really important to bring this back to why this matters, which are the conditions in Gaza, right? We're seven months out from the so-called ceasefire, where 2.1 million Palestinians continue to be engaged.

The majority of them, some 77% are reliant on food aid for survival. Most of them live in emergency housing. 640,000 students. Children do not have access to education. And yet, we are being told the BOP just submitted a report to the Security Council that tells them, you know, we can't rebuild anything until Hamas disarms. I mean, the world is upside down. And as Professor Maya McDashy has repeatedly said on campus, the university is literally asking us not to teach this.

We are asked to betray the empirical record, including the one on genocide and apartheid. And we refuse to do that. And Professor Erika, before we go, you have family that attends the largest mosque in San Diego, the mosque that was just shot up with three men, including the beloved security guard who had a... eight children himself was killed? That's my mama's mosque. That's my grandma's mosque, who was born in 1937 before Israel was established. That's my uncles and aunties. Those are my cousins.

And we are so grateful that that shooter didn't come on a Friday and so distraught that this happened where they were aiming to massacre children. And yet even the response to that is inadequate. And there is a direct line between. the dehumanization of Palestinians who we cannot fight for their lives and argue against genocide and agitate for a better future and the dehumanization of these children and of our families because state, society, and media is normalizing it. The only censor in Congress happened against Rashida Tleib, honorable Rashida Tlebe, for her advocacy for Palestine. And yet Randy Fine, who has compared Muslims to dogs, has gone.

on unheld unaccountable. These things matter. Here is there. And so that is why we continue to agitate. Professor Nouraerakot, we have to leave it there. Palestinian human rights attorney, Professor at Rutgers University, author of Justice for Some Law and the Question of Palestine. And Chivani Desai, graduating member of the CUNY Law School class of 2026, a member of CUNY Law Students for Justice in Palestine. Congratulations today for all your accomplishments. That does it for our show. A very happy birthday to Tamery A Studio.

I'll be broadcasting from Denver, Colorado tomorrow. Steal the story, please. The film about Democracy Now's 30-year history will be at the C cinema in Denver as well as in Boulder. And I hope to see people in both places. I'm Ramin Scheher.